ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the choices that combatants, noncombatants, and field-level relief workers make in response to shifts in the conflict. The dilemmas and challenges of humanitarian intervention facing policymakers and humanitarians would not be so pressing if combatants adhered to international humanitarian and human rights laws. In common parlance, journalists and the proverbial woman on the street tend to think of refugees rather indiscriminately as those who have been forced to flee their homes, whether or not they have left their home country. Relief workers in the field make their choices by considering the resources at hand, the directives of their donors, the mandates of their agencies, and the contexts in which they are attempting to provide assistance to noncombatants. By the end of the 1990s, however, many soldiers had volunteered repeatedly for humanitarian assignments and had become familiar with relief workers.
