ABSTRACT
This chapter explores humanitarian assistance both as a source of support to war-torn societies and as a facilitator of conflict itself. It outlines how humanitarian aid played key roles in responding to complex emergencies in Ethiopia and Sudan in the 1980s and in Somalia and the Great Lakes region in the 1990s. In part in response to these tragedies, humanitarian organizations developed “Do No Harm” principles and the international community considered the principles that could justify humanitarian intervention. After the attacks on New York and the Pentagon in 2001, new challenges to humanitarian assistance developed as the lines between civilian and military interventions in weak states blurred and some worried that “New Humanitarianism” was becoming a tool to help win hearts and minds as part of a counter-counterinsurgency agenda.
