The Use of Civil and Military Defense Assets in Emergency Situations

The humanitarian landscape has changed considerably during the last two decades. On the one hand, large population displacements as a result of protracted conflict seem to be on a downward trend. On the other, the number of people affected by natural disasters—particularly sudden onset ones related to meteorological hazards—has grown exponentially. With this backdrop, the use of international military and civil defense assets in humanitarian operations has grown significantly. In large-scale sudden onset natural disasters, responding to the needs of affected populations often requires logistical capacity that only military actors, often international military actors, possess. In conflict-related crises, the drive toward deeper integration among the political, security, and humanitarian agendas had a significant impact on the role of the military, expanding they remit more broadly into the delivery of development and humanitarian assistance. This has generated impassioned debate within the humanitarian community, whose principal positions have been that the military are a poor fit for such work, and that co-opting assistance as a tool to achieve local, national, and even international security is not effective. Humanitarians have also argued that blurring the distinction between humanitarian and military, and consequently, other political objectives, not only puts humanitarian staff at risk but, by undermining the key principles of impartiality and neutrality, also endangers the humanitarian enterprise as a whole. The use of military and civil defense assets in emergency situations does not benefit from an internationally recognized binding legal framework. All that is available are two sets of non-binding guidelines developed with the participation of a large number of stakeholders, crucially involving member States, and another two reference documents developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and therefore relevant primarily for the humanitarian community.