Humanitarian Action and Peacebuilding: Incompatible or Complementary?

Abstract

This chapter examines the changing role of humanitarian organizations in Africa’s conflict zones and how humanitarianism has become a highly contested space on the battlefield. Through an analysis of several ongoing peace operations in Africa, this chapter demonstrates how the principles of humanitarian relief have been undermined by the major powers and the UN in their pursuit of ostensibly noble objectives. Organizations and donors have become complicit in compromising humanitarianism, especially in multi-mandated UN missions, by inserting humanitarian workers into the realm of both service delivery (associated with the process of building a state) and as a political tool to win “hearts and minds.” Peacebuilding will be better served, the chapter concludes, by restoring humanitarianism to its original role and ethos.