The times they are a-changin': Prevention and humanitarianism

Since the end of the Cold War both preventive action and humanitarian assistance have become exceptionally attractive. Especially prevention has widely been praised as the solution to the various forms of violent conflict. In addition to the shifts in prevention, humanitarian aid has experienced a significant boost. The re-definition of this particular issue-area is dependent on both the global normative transformations after the East-West conflict and the change of central contextual conditions, i.e. the spread of internal violence and complex humanitarian emergencies such as refugee flows or hunger. Given these dimensions of change today the question arises whether the structural transformations within the international system represent a paradigmatic change and whether the rise of a ‘culture of prevention’ and human rights standards challenge the normative foundations of partial orders such as the humanitarian sphere and affect their normative standards. Normatively and conceptually, humanitarian aid and prevention are related concepts. Both depend on the constitutive norms of international order and point to the regulation of violent conflicts and/or their most disastrous effects. On the operational level, however, the contribution of humanitarian aid to the prevention of deadly conflicts is limited since humanitarian aid has its special advantages in providing relief to the victims. Moreover, the use of relief aid as a palliative for the missing political will or as a tool of prevention and dispute resolution jeopardizes the humanitarian principles. The paper focuses, thus, on normative and conceptual linkages of prevention and humanitarianism as well as on operational and structural boundaries in concrete situations.