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Accepted Contribution:
Humanitarian critique in times of genocide
Julie Billaud
(Geneva Graduate Institute)
This contribution proposes that an engaged anthropology of humanitarianism in times of genocide should consist in analysing humanitarianism’s unintended effects while continuing to support the moral standards promoted by international humanitarian law.
Contribution long abstract:
Is it morally legitimate to criticize humanitarianism at the very moment when the minimalistic protection it offers is systematically violated? What productive critique of humanitarianism can anthropologists articulate in light of the mass violations of international humanitarian law currently taking place in Gaza? My contribution to this roundtable is based on a two-year embedded ethnographic fieldwork at the International Committee of the Red Cross, both in Geneva and in various ‘missions’, including Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, carried out between 2016 and 2018. I examine how, as a result of the prolonged occupation of Palestine, the institutionalisation of humanitarian programs in the region has created a number of contradictions. Because the long-term experience of life lived in relief has powerfully shaped Palestinians’ subjectivities, humanitarianism has functioned as a “politicizing machine” turning the humanitarian apparatus into a site for the articulation of political claims and their violent repression. Simultaneously, the Israeli state has instrumentalised humanitarian programs and used them as technocratic tools for managing the “undesirables”. Building on my (failed) attempts at triggering internal discussion on the limits of humanitarian action in such a context, I reflect on the conditions of possibility for collectively rethinking solidarity with and justice for Palestine beyond the dominant humanitarian frame. I argue that an engaged anthropology of humanitarianism should consist in ‘provincializing’ humanitarianism, analysing its unintended effects, documenting alternative forms of care from a Global South perspective while supporting the universal moral standards promoted by humanitarian law, especially in times of genocide.