Humanitarian futures and adaptive failures

Scientific and technological change will intensify over the next two decades, profoundly affecting the global economy and the environment, as well as demographic trends and political and security structures in most parts of the world. An unintended consequence may be an exponential rise in human exposure to disasters and emergencies. Such humanitarian crises may, in no small part, be due to planners’ inability to anticipate potential hazards and to appreciate their significance, and to decision-makers’ inability to reconcile competing demands for resources. This article suggests that most disasters and emergencies are the result of an individual and institutional failure to respond effectively to change, new information and contending interests. It explores various psychosocial approaches to individual and group dynamics, and utilises a range of organisational and political-science models to evaluate potential constraints on adaptive capacities. Ultimately, it proposes a five-point strategy to assist both policy-planners and decision-makers in thinking in a more ‘non-linear’ fashion and in being more responsive to the direction and implications of change.     

Democracy and the multinationals

The relationship between western multinational corporations' perceived commercial interests and democratic quality in developing markets is more varied than habitually argued. While autocratic policy making and low-intensity democracy have been judged to provide benefits to investors, they are also increasingly recognized to generate features prejudicial to commercial operations. Many investment trends reflect the adverse impact of democratic limitations in developing markets. Multinational companies can be faulted less for a uniform effort to frustrate democratic improvements than for a failure to develop a coherent or proactive engagement in relation to the international democracy promotion agenda.     

论人道主义干涉及其严格限制--一种侧重于伦理和法理的阐析

人道主义干涉往往成为大国霸权主义的政治工具,所以必须对这类干涉予以符合伦理和法理的严格限制.本文认为,一项人道主义干涉要能够是合理与合法的,就须同时具备至少六项限制性的先决条件,特别是必须有严格限定的正当理由,必须由联合国作为唯一合法的国际干涉权威来发动、进行或监管,必须仅仅将武力的使用当作不得已的最后手段,而其使用方式和预期后果必须是适当的.     

Humanitarian dilemmas in peace and war

Humanitarian assistance is becoming more complex and the environment in which it operates more competitive. Nevertheless, humanitarianism is shielded from such pressures by a set of principles that are reflected in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which all governments ostensibly accept. The issue for the wider international community as well as for donor and recipi ent governments and humanitarian organizations is whether such principles can endure in light of the dilemmas posed in times of conflict and post-conflict. Humanitarian Dilemmas in War and Peace explores the dilemmas that humanitarianism not only confronts but also creates in seeking to protect and preserve life of the disaster and emergency-affected. In so doing, it views humanitarianism from three perspectives: (i) humanitarian principles in times of conflict; (ii) humanitarian principles from the perspective of many within the Group of 77; and (iii) humanitarianism from the perspective of institutional survival. The opinion piece concludes that, despite the dilemmas suggested by these perspectives, humanitarian principles can be upheld even amidst the complex and com petitive aid environment. It would require inter alia a more focused definition of humanitarian action, mechanisms that hold humanitarian organizations to higher standards of accountability, a commitment to more consistent and coherent advocacy and greater strategic perspectives to anticipate and respond to factors creating large-scale human vulnerability.     

Democracy and the demographic transition

This article addresses the role of demographic factors in contributing to the emergence of democracy. It maintains that, other things being equal, progress in the demographic transition promotes democratization. The argument is developed with reference to the effects of interrelated changes in mortality, natural increase (i.e. population growth), fertility, and population age structure. Suggestions are also made with respect to how demographic and democratic trends should be gauged. An analysis of data for the period 1970–2005 for 77 countries that were initially non-democratic provides substantial support for the argument. Some implications are discussed, as are future trends in democratization from a demographer’s perspective.     

The European Endowment for Democracy and Democracy Promotion in the EU Neighbourhood

The European Endowment for Democracy (EED) is a recently established instrument of democracy promotion intended to complement existing EU tools. Fashioned after the US National Endowment for Democracy, the EED’s privileged area of action is the European neighbourhood. Meant as a small rapid-response, actor-oriented ‘niche’ initiative, its main task is to select those actors, from both civil and political society able to produce a change in their country. The EED represents a step forward in the EU’s capacity to foster democracy, but does not necessarily go in the direction of more rationality and effectiveness. Not all EU member states support the EED with the same enthusiasm and it is still not clear how it fits into the EU’s overall democracy promotion architecture. Its actions may be successful in a very constrained timeframe. However, recent crises at the EU’s borders would seem to call for a strategy that takes into consideration systemic hindrances, post-regime change complexities, regional dynamics and finally rival plans of autocracy promotion.     

西方人道主义干预理论批判与选择

本文在探讨“人道主义干预”的语义内涵的基础上 ,从法理角度对西方人道主义干预理论分歧的焦点作了基本归纳 ,认为人道主义干预在理论上的争论是在西方文化价值观、国家利益、冲突局势烈度、国际法规范力度等诸多因素的制约下 ,围绕着人道主义干预的标准、中立性、政治性、法律性等问题展开 ,在实践上西方国家和发展中国家以联合国为中心展开政治较量 ,提出“人道主义干预”应该遵循秩序与道义平衡的原则 ,必须保障联合国在正当国际干预法律化、规范化过程中的主导作用 ,在干预主体、方法、目标以及约束机制等方面对非联合国的“人道主义干预”作出严格限制。     

浅议人道主义干预的立法规制

在国际伦理上 ,人道主义干预是有其存在意义的 ,但在现实中它却与强权扩张结下不解之缘 ,被称作“潘多拉的盒子”。理想与现实冲突的困境 ,根源于人道主义干预的制度化缺失。本文针对学界研究的薄弱之处 ,着墨于现行国际法框架下的人道主义干预的立法规制 ;主张将人道主义干预纳入联合国集体安全机制 ,明确规定单方面人道主义干预的非法性 ,并从原则、实施条件、程序设计三个层次对立法规制进行探讨 ,其中对个别程序作出设计 ;试图在理想与现实的夹缝里寻求一条将人道主义干预引向理性与制度化的道路。     

叙利亚冲突与国际人道主义法的“劫难”

国际人道主义法致力于规制武装冲突,以实现"军事需要"与"人道主义"之间的平衡。叙利亚冲突导致了震撼人类良知的人道主义灾难,也导致了国际人道主义法的巨大灾难。叙利亚冲突本身的特征、一些国家暴虐"反恐"的泛滥,国际人道主义法本身的缺陷,都影响了叙利亚冲突各方关于如何实现"军事需要"的考量,导致各方几乎都忽视了国际人道主义法的要求。以参与方的不平等和非对称为核心特征的叙利亚冲突,代表着全球范围内武装冲突的"新常态"。以平等为基础、以互惠为条件的既有国际人道主义法,已经难以满足此种"新常态"。在推进国际人道主义法的建设过程中,国际社会须将当代武装冲突的非对称性考虑在内,推动某种共同但有区别的责任与义务。国际社会迫切需要确定"恐怖主义"的定义,以免"恐怖主义"标签被进一步泛化和滥用。国际社会还需检视和减少国际人道主义法与国内外其他规范体系之间的矛盾和冲突,弥合不同规范体系之间的裂痕。     

Humanitarian Intervention and Communal Civil Wars:

How do policymakers in democratic nations mobilize support for hard-line strategies? Existing answers to this question emphasize the exaggeration of external threats. Yet this overlooks an important dilemma: because democratic citizens expect their leaders to explore peaceful solutions or less aggressive alternatives when foreign dangers are ambiguous, the same conditions that make threat inflation necessary also make it difficult to employ successfully. To mobilize support for hard-line measures when the public wants its leaders to demonstrate restraint, policymakers may therefore attempt to shift blame onto an adversary by using “counterfeit diplomacy.” Specifically, democratic leaders may adopt more cooperative or less coercive options than they believe are necessary, but which they anticipate will fail. This approach can be a risky one, however, because an opponent might accept a nation's demands, accede to its conditions, or offer counterproposals in the hope of diffusing support for more confrontational measures.     

Soldiers,Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention

Approval from the United Nations or NATO appears to have become a necessary condition for US humanitarian military intervention. Conventional explanations emphasizing the pull of legitimacy cannot fully account for this given that US policymakers vary considerably in their attachment to multilateralism. This article argues that America's military leaders, who are consistently skeptical about humanitarian intervention and tend to emphasize its costs, play a central role in making multilateral approval necessary. As long as top-ranking generals express strong reservations about intervention and no clear threat to US national security exists, they can veto the use of force. In such circumstances, even heavyweight “humanitarian hawks” among the civilian leadership, who initially may have wanted to bypass multilateral bodies to maximize US freedom of action, can be expected to recognize the need for UN or NATO approval—if only as a means of mollifying the generals by reassuring them about the prospect of sustained multilateral burden sharing. Two case studies drawing on interviews with senior civilian and military officials illustrate and probe the plausibility of the argument.