Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent, professionally competent and focused only on preventing and alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these principles when others do not share them, while persuading political and military authorities and non-state actors to let an agency assist on the ground requires savvy ethical skills. Getting first to a conflict or natural catastrophe is only the beginning, as aid workers are usually and immediately presented with practical and moral questions about what to do next. For example, when does working closely with a warring party or an immoral regime move from practical cooperation to complicity in human rights violations? Should one operate in camps for displaced people and refugees if they are effectively places of internment? Do humanitarian agencies inadvertently encourage ethnic cleansing by always being ready to 'mop-up' the consequences of scorched earth warfare? This book has been written to help humanitarians assess and respond to these and other ethical dilemmas.

Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster

Politics & Social Sciences

Slim, Hugo

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

This is a book about how civilians suffer in war and why people decide that they should. Most civilian suffering in war is deliberate and always has been. Massacres, rape, displacement, famine and disease are usually designed. They are policies in war. In meetings or on mobile phones, political and military leaders decide that civilians are appropriate or inevitable targets. The principle that unarmed and innocent people should be protected in war is an ancient, precious but fragile idea. Today, the principle of civilian immunity is enshrined in modern international law and cherished by many. But, in practice, leaders in most wars reject the principle. Using detailed historical and contemporary examples, Killing Civilians looks at the many ways in which civilians suffer in wars and analyses the main anti-civilian ideologies which insist upon such suffering. It also exposes the very real ambiguity in much civilian identity which is used to justify extreme hostility. But this is also, above all, a book about why civilians should be protected. Throughout its pages, Killing Civilians argues for a morality of limited warfare in which tolerance, mercy and restraint are used to draw boundaries to violence. At the heart of the book are important new frameworks for understanding patterns of civilian suffering, ideologies of violence and strategies for promoting the protection of civilians. This is the first major treatment of the hard questions of civilian identity and protection in war for many years. Written by one of the humanitarian world's leading thinkers and former aid worker, it provides a unique and accessible text on the subject for professional and public readerships alike.

Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War

History

Military

Killing Civilians: Method, Madness, and Morality in War (Columbia/Hurst)

When civilians suffer in war, it is often a deliberate act. Massacres, rape, displacement, famine, and disease are the strategic decisions of political and military leaders who make civilians their targets in order to gain the upper hand in battle. Yet there still exists the precious and fragile belief-ingrained in modern international law-that unarmed and innocent people should be protected in war, even if, in practice, the principle of civil immunity is often ignored or rejected.
Hoping to rectify this injustice, Hugo Slim uses detailed historical and contemporary examples to reveal the many ways civilians suffer in war. A leading commentator on international humanitarian action and the protection of civilians in war, Slim analyzes the anti-civilian ideologies that encourage and perpetuate suffering and exposes the exploitation of moral ambiguity that is used to sanction extreme hostility. At what point does killing civilians become part of winning a war? Why are some methods of killing used while others are avoided? 
Bolstering his claims with hard fact, Slim argues that civilian casualties are not only morally reprehensible but also bad military science. His book is a clarion call for action and a passionate defense of civil immunity, a concept that is more urgent and necessary today than ever before.

Columbia University Press

Listening for a Change: Oral Testimony and Community Development

Cross, Nigel

Bennett, Olivia

Thomson, Paul Richard

Social Sciences

New Society Pub

Solferino 21: Warfare, Civilians and Humanitarians in the Twenty-First Century

Review\n"Slim's accessible and sparkling Solferino 21 interprets Henri Dunant's humanizing response to carnage as a tradition to reinvent, keeping up with the evolving realities of war and the priority of civilian protection."-- Samuel Moyn, Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War\n"An urgent, provocative, controversial and thoughtful meditation on the past and future of humanitarian aid. It is a call to reform and think afresh humanitarian work in the face of changing notions of what wars are and will be."-- Bertrand Taithe, Professor of Cultural History and Director at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester\n"Engaging, sophisticated and informed, this is an important contribution to humanitarian thought and practice on the 160th anniversary of Dunant's seminal essay on Solferino. Slim's continuing optimism is persuasive, but this is also a sober analysis of current trends." -- Michael Newman, Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, and author of Humanitarian Intervention\n"This compelling tract is an irrepressible call for justice, humanity and genuine universality, in a 'humanitarian rethink; for the twenty-first century. Impeccable scholarship, and an electrifying, potentially transformative text."--Rama Mani, Co-founder, Home for Humanity\nWarfare is at a tipping point today as it passes from the age of industrial warfare to a new era of computerized warfare and a renewed risk of "big war" between global powers. Humanitarian response is also developing fast as "big aid" demands more and more money and tries to digitalize and prepare for new needs in long wars and escalating climate crisis.\nThis book starts with the founding moment of modern of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 and tracks the big changes in war and humanitarian response in our own times. Organized in three parts, it assesses twenty first century experience of warfare, civilians and humanitarians and looks at where they are heading in the next ten years. It examines the nature of warfare in the century so far and how it is now being transformed by digitalization. It explains how civilians suffer and survive in wars today and how "digital civilians" will be central in wars to come. Finally, it looks at today's big humanitarian agencies and how their world is changing too.\nInspired by Henri Dunant's seminal humanitarian text, completed 160 years ago in 1862, Hugo Slim alerts military and humanitarian policymakers alike to the big changes underway in their professions and points to key areas where they must adapt or fail.

Hurst

Listening for a change: Oral testimony and development (The Panos oral testimony programme)

Panos Publications

Warfare is at a tipping point today as it passes from the age of industrial warfare to a new era of computerized warfare and a renewed risk of "big war" between global powers. Humanitarian response is also developing fast as "big aid" demands more and more money and tries to digitalize and prepare for new needs in long wars and escalating climate crisis. This book starts with the founding moment of modern of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement at the Battle of Solferino in 1859 and tracks the big changes in war and humanitarian response in our own times. Organized in three parts, it assesses twenty first century experience of warfare, civilians and humanitarians and looks at where they are heading in the next ten years. It examines the nature of warfare in the century so far and how it is now being transformed by digitalization. It explains how civilians suffer and survive in wars today and how "digital civilians" will be central in wars to come. Finally, it looks at today's big humanitarian agencies and how their world is changing too. Inspired by Henri Dunant's seminal humanitarian text, completed 160 years ago in 1862, Hugo Slim alerts military and humanitarian policymakers alike to the big changes underway in their professions and points to key areas where they must adapt or fail.

Reference

Humanitarianism 2.0: New Ethics for the Climate Emergency

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