Forced migration
A clash of principles? Humanitarian action and the search for stability in Pakistan
How can humanitarian action be effected in the midst of the conflcit in Pakistan?
Authors:
Publisher:
Humanitarian Policy Group, ODI, 2009
This paper analyses how humanitarian action can be effected in the midst of Pakistan’s military offensive against Taliban insurgents in the west of the country - which has generated a population exodus on a scale unmatched since the founding of the state in 1947. For despite the scale of the crisis, with millions of people displaced, reports in June 2009 suggest that, the author asserts, the international community’s response has been ‘unacceptably slow and insufficient’.
The author also details:
- Different conflict perspectives in relation to the current conflicts in Pakistan
- Challenges to the principles of humanitarian action in the immediate response
- Return, recovery and stabilisation
- Principles and the utility of humanitarian action - whether agencies should support stabilisation efforts as a means to achieve humanitarian outcomes.
The paper's key messages include:
- Political and military interests have tended to override humanitarian considerations in the emergency response to the crisis in Pakistan occasioned by government offensives against the Taliban
- Aid agencies are faced with the dilemma of engaging with and supporting government efforts to promote stability or maintaining a principled approach. Supporting stabilisation efforts in Pakistan inevitably entails coordination, if not alignment, with the national government and its international allies
- Irrespective of the approach adopted, advocacy has a significant role to play - i.e. ensuring sufficient
humanitarian funding; that efforts to promote stability ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable are met; and that political and security considerations do not override the humanitarian imperative.
