From humanitarian relief to humanitarian intervention: victims, interveners and pillars

Current humanitarian crises are bedeviling the United Nations, relief agencies and governments. Efforts to provide food and other basic supplies to traumatized populations are frequently stymied by uncooperative regimes, violent militias, remote locations, high costs and complicated operations. As a result, humanitarian relief operations that have focused primarily on food distribution must be radically revised to encompass the much broader agenda of humanitarian intervention, which entails an aggressive, multilateral role within states. Five ‘pillars’ are proposed—basic needs, public security, political dialogue, human rights/justice and sustained economic development—on which to base future humanitarian interventions.     

From humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care: Care and enforcement at the humanitarian border

Throughout the world, increasingly securitized and militarized border enforcement efforts have made transnational migration an increasingly deadly endeavor for unauthorized migrants. The deadly consequences of unauthorized migration has compelled the emergence of what William Walters refers to as the humanitarian border—the concentration of humanitarian aid and services along the edges of the global North. This paper expands on Walters work through an in-depth analysis of the emergence and transformation of the humanitarian border in southern Arizona, USA. Through an examination of transformations in how migrant care is provisioned, overseen, and regulated in southern Arizona, this paper traces a shift from humanitarian exceptionalism to contingent care whereby care is increasingly linked with enforcement efforts. In doing so, this analysis illustrates how care functions as a technology of border enforcement, increasing the reach of the state to govern more bodies and more spaces.     

Palaeolithic radiocarbon chronology: quantifying our confidence beyond two half-lives

It is now three decades since Waterbolk introduced evaluation criteria to ¹⁴C chronology. Despite this, and other subsequent attempts to introduce quality control in the use of ¹⁴C data, no systematic procedure has been adopted by the archaeological community. As a result, our databases may be significantly weakened by questionable dates and/or questionable associations between dated samples and the archaeological phenomena they are intended to represent. As the use of chronometric data in general becomes more ambitious, we must pause and assess how reliable these data are. Here, we forward a set of evaluation criteria which take into account archaeological (e.g. associational, stratigraphic) and chronometric (e.g. pre-treatment and measurement) criteria. We intend to use such criteria to evaluate a large ¹⁴C dataset we have assembled to investigate Late Glacial settlement in Europe, the Near East and North Africa, supported by the Leverhulme Trust. We suggest that the procedure presented here may at least form the basis of the development of more rigorous, scientific use of ¹⁴C dates.     

Managing Difference: Gender and culture in humanitarian emergencies

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has a mandate to respond to crises of human displacement on a global scale. The ways in which the organization conceives of gender and culture in this humanitarian context are problematic because they tend either to essentialize 'woman' and 'culture' in the planning process or to minimize the meaning and implications of these differences vis-a-vis gender policies which focus on integration. In this article, the discourse of 'UN humanism' is analyzed, noting a long-standing tension between culture as shared humanity and culture as a pivotal basis of difference. Drawing on current research relating to UNHCR's gender policies and on initiatives against violence towards refugee women in camps, the implications of overarching frameworks which attend to gender and cultural differences are discussed. Strategies to avoid authenticating or fixing categories of difference, on the one hand, and to avoid treating gender and culture as simply variables, on the other, are proposed in the context of emerging transnational feminist practices. Transnational approaches point to important interventions which may serve to unravel the dominant discourses of UN humanism and vulnerable groups that continue to organize UN refugee and humanitarian operations today.     

Washington's failure to resolve the North Korean nuclear conundrum: examining two decades of US policy

More than two decades of nuclear dialogue between the United States and North Korea have not prevented Pyongyang from conducting four nuclear tests and building up a nuclear weapons arsenal. Putting the blame for the failure of this dialogue solely on Pyongyang ignores the hesitancy and confusion of US policy. Historical evidence suggests that the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations consistently failed to prioritize their objectives and adopted an impatient and uncompromising negotiating strategy that contributed to this ongoing non‐proliferation fiasco. Identifying US policy mistakes at important crossroads in the dialogue with Pyongyang could help to prevent similar mistakes in the future. In this regard, the following analysis suggests a new approach towards Pyongyang based on a long‐term trust‐building process during which North Korea would be required to cap and then gradually eliminate its nuclear weapons in return for economic assistance and normalization of relations with the United States. Importantly, the United States might have to resign itself to North Korea's keeping an independent nuclear fuel cycle under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as to accepting South Korea's request to independently enrich uranium and pyroprocess spent nuclear fuel. This would be a more favourable alternative to allowing North Korea to continue accumulating nuclear weapons. Moreover, if the United States continues on the Obama administration's failed policy path, then there is a better than even chance that the Korean Peninsula may slide into a nuclear arms race.     

Cross-border connection between Hong Kong and mainland China under 'two systems' before and beyond 1997

Cross-border flows of people, goods and capital are fundamental forces triggering spatial and economic transformations in any cross-border regional production system. This study focuses on such cross-border links between Hong Kong and mainland China in the context of cross-border regional production systems. The paper examines first the close demographic ties and investment and trading relations between Hong Kong and mainland China before 1997. In terms of total direct and indirect trading, and outward investment, Hong Kong was the largest partner of mainland China and vice versa. The recent development in the cross-border development between Hong Kong and the mainland after 1997 is also analyzed. The political change, the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, did not alter the demographic-economic linkages significantly as such connections had been well established during the period 1978 to 1997 after China's opening to the outside world. Hong Kong and mainland China are two independent economic entities practicing ‘two systems’ of capitalism and socialism respectively. Contrary to common expectation, the new government in Hong Kong only played a limited role after 1997. However, a bottom-up approach has been working spontaneously and the local people and businessmen in Hong Kong have been the primary force in establishing strong relations with the mainland facilitated by the close demographic-cultural ties both before and after 1997.     

East Timor and the new humanitarian interventionism

The fate of East Timor provides a barometer for how far the normative structure of international society has been transformed since the end of the Cold War. In 1975, the East Timorese were abandoned by a Western bloc that placed accommodating the Indonesian invasion of the island before the protection of human rights. Twenty‐five years later, it was the protection of the civilian population on the island that loomed large in the calculations of these same states. Australia, which had sacrificed the rights of the people of East Timor on the altar of good relations with Indonesia, found itself leading an intervention force that challenged the old certainties of its ‘Jakarta first’ policy. The article charts the interplay of domestic and international factors that made this normative transformation possible. The authors examine the political and economic factors that led to the agreement in May 1999 between Portugal, Indonesia and the UN to hold a referendum on the future political status of East Timor. A key question is whether the international community should have done more to assure the security of the ballot process. The authors argue that while more could have been done by Australia, the United States and officials in the UN Secretariat to place this issue on the Security Council's agenda, it is highly unlikely that the international community would have proved capable of mobilizing the political will necessary to coerce Indonesia into accepting a peacekeeping force. The second part of the article looks at how the outbreak of the violence in early September 1999 fundamentally changed these political assumptions. The authors argue that it became politically possible to employ coercion against Indonesian sovereignty in a context in which the Habibie government was viewed as having failed to exercise sovereignty with responsibility. By focusing on the economic and military sanctions employed by Western states, the pressures exerted by the international financial institutions and the intense diplomatic activity at the UN and in Jakarta, the authors show how Indonesian political and military leaders were prevailed upon to accept an international force. At the same time, Australian reporting of the atrocities and how this prompted the Howard government to an intervention that challenged traditional conceptionsof Australia's vital interests, is considered. The conclusion reflects on how thiscase supports the claim that traditional notions of sovereignty are increasinglyconstrained by norms of humanitarian responsibility.     

Economic crises in the ASEAN area: types and responses

Southeast Asia, the world region covering the countries of ASEAN, lies at the crossroads between China and India. Since early times it has been part of the global economy, going through cycles of boom and bust at least from the nineteenth century onwards. This essay compares three successive economic crises during the 1880s, 1930s and late 1990s. It shows how different types of crisis reflected as well as produced changes in the connectivity between production factors and institutional arrangements. Whereas the crisis of the 1880s was ‘local’, that of the 1930s was both ‘national’ and ‘delegated global’ and that of the 1990s ‘regional’ in nature. The types of crisis and the ways in which they were handled reflected structural changes in the institutional architecture of the global economy.     

The psychologization of humanitarian aid: skimming the battlefield and the disaster zone

Humanitarian aid's psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to 'Homo sacer', to use Giorgi Agamben's term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated.     

Staff selection: the interview and beyond

Abstract

The Teaching Assistant (TA) system operating in the United States has both advantages and disadvantages to graduate students employed as TAs and undergraduates taught by these TAs. The system develops teaching and communication skills and broadens TA capability, understanding and marketability. Discussion and lab sections taught by TAs provide an arena where undergraduates are exposed to everything from simple ideas to difficult ideas that need hands‐on help. However, few quality control procedures are employed to determine prospective TAs. Moreover, TA training is of limited extent and use. TAs either sink or swim; none the less the vast majority do survive and do an excellent job. A number of measures that any university, college or department might employ if they intend to begin employing TAs are recommended: all TAs should attend TA orientation sessions that discuss university‐wide TA issues; departments should also create sessions that specially train TAs in how to teach their respective courses; and departments should develop TA evaluation schemes that quickly identify TA problems.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.     

A normative case for pluralism: reassessing Vincent's views on humanitarian intervention

While R. J. Vincent's overall goal in Human rights and International Relations was to demonstrate how human rights might be promoted in international society, there was one area in which he was sceptical about allowing human rights to serve as the basis for international conduct: military intervention. This article begins by demonstrating that Vincent's greatest fear—that legitimizing humanitarian intervention would lead to countless wars—has proved largely unfounded. Nonintervention in the face of gross violations of human rights has marked the post‐Cold War period more than rampant interventionism. Moreover, while the use of force for humanitarian purposes has become acceptable in very exceptional circumstances, the manner in which it has been legitimized and the depth of the consensus around its appropriateness illustrate lingering scepticism among states about infringements of sovereignty. The article concludes by showing how Vincent's writings on humanitarian intervention, in particular his caution about an imperialist advance of cosmopolitanism, might provide a basis for a more robust normative defence of pluralism in contemporary international society.     

The Byzantine silk industry: Lopez and beyond

The Byzantine silk industry played a major role in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Silk, a key economic asset, had strong political overtones, and the effects of its multiple influences were felt far and wide, both within Byzantium and abroad. This article highlights some of the difficulties encountered in the interpretation of important documentation surrounding the Byzantine silk industry in the period up to 1204 A.D.