Book Notes

A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. By David Rieff. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Pp. 367. $26.00, cloth.

A Bed for the Night is a critique of the uncriticizable. Author David Rieff contends that while the public may perceive humanitarianism as the morally unimpeachable solution to world problems of hunger, refugees, or even genocide, the crises in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Afghanistan have instead distorted the humanitarian ideal. Drawing on first-hand experience as a journalist covering these disasters, Rieff chronicles how aid workers and humanitarian organizations, frustrated by their inability to effectively cope with human catastrophes or change the political conditions that produce them, have sacrificed their integrity and independence by becoming part of larger political and military operations. In the effort to overcome inherent constraints on what neutral aid-givers can accomplish, humanitarianism has forfeited its moral authority and become, as Rieff gloomily concludes, “a catchall for the thwarted aspirations of our age.” To recapture their integrity, humanitarian and relief organizations must accept their limited aid-giving role and regain the moral high ground by divorcing themselves from political actors such as national governments or international political organizations.

Humanitarianism, Rieff writes, is founded on the belief that people are not meant to suffer and that, when possible, assistance should be given to the victims of war, oppression, hunger, and other calamities. The modern media has reinforced both the urgency and moral authority of this message, galvanizing support among the “international community” to act and prompting observers to proclaim a “revolution of moral concern” and to hope that humanitarianism might provide a solution for the ills of the world.

Rieff argues that these hopes are misplaced. Relief agencies depend on the media to generate moral and financial support for their operations—media whose sound bites tend to warp the public’s understanding of the situation, creating the impression that humanitarian agencies can address the problem. Humanitarian crises usually have political roots, and so feeding the orphan or housing the refugee may alleviate suffering, but cannot cure it. As Rieff writes, “the first and greatest humanitarian trap is this need to simplify, if not actually lie about, the way things are in the crisis zones, in order to make the story more morally and psychologically palatable.” Having fallen into that trap, humanitarianism suggests itself as the solution to larger political problems it is ill-equipped to solve.

What’s worse, Rieff argues, is that political actors manipulate the humanitarian message for their own purposes. This exploitation has two uncomfortable effects. First, it unrealistically exaggerates expectations that humanitarian agencies will be able to provide relief for what are essentially political problems, weakening the humanitarian movement. Second, by substituting humanitarian actors for political action, major actors who are equipped to deal with these crises, such as Western states or the UN, excuse themselves from the burden of taking action.

In Bosnia, for example, Slobodan Milošević’s campaign of ethnic cleansing produced a refugee crisis in a war-torn country, but the international community put a humanitarian band-aid on the wound. “Instead of political action backed by the credible threat of military force,” Rieff writes, “the Western powers would substitute a massive humanitarian effort to alleviate the worst consequences of a conflict they wanted to contain.” Under the auspices of the United Nations, relief workers struggled to meet the needs of a badly victimized population, serving meanwhile as a “humanitarian alibi” for inaction among policy-makers in Washington and Brussels.

Likewise in Rwanda in 1994, the UN and the United States justified their own unwillingness to intervene by pointing to the presence of the humanitarian groups. Rieff claims that “the humanitarians’ powerlessness in resisting the appropriation of their own prestige by Western governments, and their ever-increasing dependence on those governments for funds and logistical support, made them inadvertent accomplices in the cruel deception [that meaningful action was being taken].” Moreover, political manipulation of the humanitarian message also made the humanitarians’ work more difficult. Relief work in Rwanda consisted mainly of providing care in refugee camps for Hutu refugees, forcing aid workers to choose between abandoning the needy to their own defenses or acting in complicity with the perpetrators, thus casting doubt on the moral basis for providing such relief at all.

Having been manipulated as an ineffective response to political problems, Rieff contends that these organizations then lost their moral autonomy when they integrated themselves into larger political or military missions. Convinced that any effective humanitarian response had to be part of a larger international effort, relief workers succumbed to mission creep by combining their efforts with political actors and states, essentially becoming subcontractors for governments in their response to international crises. In Kosovo in 1999, humanitarianism served “as a pretext for what was essentially a political decision . . . to put an end militarily once and for all to Slobodan Milošević’s fascist rebellion in the European backlands.” Similarly in Afghanistan in 2001, “U.S. officials went to considerable lengths to point out how the military mission and the humanitarian one were parts of the same campaign.” Rieff is not opposed to such military and political actions when they are carried out to achieve a just political purpose; he is only opposed to the humanitarian label that political actors use to rally support for

their actions. Humanitarianism has been hijacked by political actors eager to veil their own actions with humanitarianism’s moral prestige.

A Bed for the Night is a rebuke of the political misappropriation of humanitarianism. By attempting to accomplish too much, the humanitarian has cast himself in the role of caregiver, emancipator, counterinsurgent, and liberator; and Rieff argues that “serious humanitarians will have to choose.” His observations are important not only for the humanitarian agencies whose founding principles are being undermined, but also for a larger audience concerned about finding a morally coherent response to suffering in the post-Cold War world.

Written with the insight that only deep and careful reflection can provide, A Bed for the Night sounds an alarm for a humanitarian movement in danger of being overrun by larger political forces. Though Rieff’s suggestion that humanitarianism must accept its limited capacity to alleviate suffering—providing care and assistance to those in need and not perpetuating illusions that it can do more—may be unpopular, his book raises important concerns about the integrity of modern humanitarianism and its tension with other notions such as the defense of human rights or the right of intervention. Given that the ideals of human rights, just intervention, and humanitarianism will continue to influence the way that international actors think about and respond to crises, this book is important for anyone wishing to develop a cogent response to conflict in the twenty-first century. A Bed for the Night is as significant for policy-makers and moral philosophers seeking to cope with humanitarian crises as it is relevant for the general public seeking to understand the various ethical and political conflicts that are signature features of the post–Cold War landscape.

—Mark R. Conrad

Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 16, Spring 2003