Saving the Saviors: Security Practices and Professional Struggles in the Humanitarian Space

Beerli, Monique Jo

doi:10.1093/ips/olx023

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Even, and perhaps especially, when humanitarian actors engage in quintessentially humanitarian taskssuch as food provision-there might be suspicions that they are aiding one party to the conflict. This is before one considers various militarized and securitized aspects of humanitarian aid, 134 such as the direct use of military assets. 135 It can thus be said that humanitarian actors' bid for 'civilian plus' status is accompanied by-and, perhaps, saturated with-a sense of dread that a lesser civilian status will affix to them instead.…”

Section: Theorizing the 'Civilian Plus'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction

Sutton¹

2020

Leiden Journal of International Law

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The civilian-combatant frame persists as the main legal lens through which lawyers organize the relationships of conflict zone actors. As a result, little attention has been paid in international legal scholarship to different gradations of ‘civilianness’ and the ways in which some civilians might compete to distinguish themselves from each other. Drawing attention to international humanitarian actors – particularly those working for NGOs – this article explores the micro-strategies these actors engage in to negotiate their relative status in war. Original qualitative empirical findings from South Sudan illuminate the way in which humanitarians struggle over distinction with individuals working for the UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS. As is shown, humanitarian actors are doing away with a static civilian-combatant binary in their daily practice. A more fluid logic informs both their self-conceptualization and their interactions with others who share the operational space. Humanitarian actors envision civilianness as a contingent concept, and they operate according to a continuum along which everything is a matter of degree and subtle gradation. As civilianness is detached from the civilian, any given actor might acquire or shed civilian-like, or combatant-like, characteristics at any moment. The distinction practices that humanitarian actors enact can be understood as a bid for legibility, so that they might be rendered intelligible in international law and in the eyes of other actors as a special kind of civilian – the ‘civilian plus’.

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Section: Theorizing the 'Civilian Plus'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction

Sutton¹

2020

Leiden Journal of International Law

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“…Over the past three decades, these decisions have been increasingly informed by methods of data collection that have shifted from face‐to‐face interactions to face‐to‐screen methods (Donini and Maxwell ). The introduction of GIS and new technologies of information and communication (NTIC) together with growing concerns for staff security (Beerli ) have made delegates like Laura the exception rather than the rule. The collection of information is no longer the sole responsibility of ICRC field delegates and increasingly relies on the technical expertise of NTIC specialists.…”

Section: Selective Proximity Periodic Presencementioning

confidence: 99%

Masters of disorder: rituals of communication and monitoring at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Billaud

2020

Soc Anthropol

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The mandate of the ICRC as granted by the Geneva Conventions is to act as a ‘guardian of International Humanitarian Law’ on the frontlines of conflicts. While its humanitarian relief operations have contributed to its international reputation, this monitoring function is rather unknown to the public. In this paper, I pay specific attention to activities carried out by ICRC delegates to protect various categories of victims in times of war. By focusing on the ways in which delegates interpret the principles (‘neutrality’, ‘impartiality’, ‘confidentiality’) that guide their actions, I seek to decipher the organisation’s ethos and worldview. I highlight the hopes as well as the frustrations and disappointments generated by myriad administrative techniques devised to engage parties to a conflict in a ‘confidential dialogue’ on the conduct of hostilities. Finally, I examine how these techniques, built on the hope in the possibility of communication, are changing as a result of external sources of pressure for ‘evidence‐based programming’, turning personalised case‐based monitoring into a new form of ‘audit culture’ based on statistical evidence. Paradoxically, relying on numbers to realise the utopia of ‘humanising war’ makes the very ‘humans’ who are supposed to benefit from it disappear from view.

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“…Like many governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations and humanitarian actors, the UN adopted security risk management in the new millennium (Aradau et al, 2008;Beerli, 2018;Duffield, 2010;UNSE-COORD, 2004, p. 2). Following a major attack on the UN's headquarters in Baghdad that killed 16 UN staff and injured over 150 persons, the UN's Director of Security Coordination, Diana Russler, concluded:…”

Section: Visual Practices and Security Risk Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the growing popularity of security risk management approaches among states, international organizations, transnational industries, and humanitarian agencies, its relationship with visual representations of security and risk applies to a growing range of issues, countries, and agents in national and international security governance (Aradau et al, 2008;Aradau & van Munster, 2007;Beerli, 2018;Lund Petersen, 2011). Yet, what kinds of everyday visualities are at play in security risk management varies significantly between actors and operations.…”

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confidence: 99%

Everyday visuality and risk management: Representing (in)security in UN peacekeeping

Krahmann

2020

Contemporary Security Policy

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Visuality is a central aspect of everyday security governance. In the recent visual turn in International Relations, however, the more mundane and routine visualities of security have been widely neglected. To address this gap, this article proposes a framework for analyzing the messages of security and risk conveyed by different modes of visual representations, ranging from press photos and educational images to outwardly appearances. Taking the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) as an example, it shows that everyday visual representations reflect and contribute to security risk management in four ways: (1) They assist in the construction of self and other identities with regard to security, (2) they help to identify potential vulnerabilities, (3) they are used to educate people how to detect, assess, and behave in risky situations, and (4) they are employed to deter violent attacks. KEYWORDS Visual; everyday; risk; UN; peacekeeping Visuality is a central aspect of everyday practices of security governance, ranging from color-coded terrorism-risk scales to the outwardly appearance of peacekeeping operations. In the recent "visual turn" in International Relations, however, such mundane and routine visualities have been largely neglected in favor of a focus on visual spectacles and shocking images (Heck & Schlag, 2012, pp. 892-894). This article helps to address this gap by proposing a framework for analyzing the messages of security and risk conveyed by different modes of everyday visual representation in contemporary security risk management. It suggests that visual images and appearances are implicated in security management in four main ways: (1) They assist in the construction of self and other identities with regard to security, (2) they help to identify potential vulnerabilities, (3) they are

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Saving the Saviors: Security Practices and Professional Struggles in the Humanitarian Space

Cited by 29 publications

References 61 publications

Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction

Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction

Masters of disorder: rituals of communication and monitoring at the International Committee of the Red Cross

Everyday visuality and risk management: Representing (in)security in UN peacekeeping

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