‘EU military operations put relief workers at risk’

By David Cronin

Date: 21/04/05

The head of the world's largest emergency relief organisation has urged the EU to ensure that its military operations do not "blur the lines" between the work of humanitarian groups and soldiers.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that the independence of aid workers from warring parties was "an important and very practical operational concept". Any perception that impartiality had been compromised could mean that aid workers would become more vulnerable to attack or lose access to victims, he told European Voice.

Kellenberger raised his concerns with Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, last week.

Launching the European human security study in September 2004, Solana argued that aid groups would have to ditch their reluctance to work in tandem with soldiers. The best illustration of where liaison proved beneficial was in the Kosovo war in 1999, where NATO forces set up refugee camps and aid workers attended to the food and medical needs of the displaced, Solana declared.

But the European Commission's humanitarian office has recognised recently that aid groups have felt that their working environment in Afghanistan has become less safe because American troops have provided humanitarian assistance to the local population.

Kellenberger drew a clear distinction between the "humanitarian dimension [of conflicts] and humanitarian acts".

"Ideally, the military's main task is to create a secure environment; that is something that has an important humanitarian dimension. It is only in a secure environment that people can go to work and development is possible. But we strongly feel that the task of military forces is about security. Humanitarian organisations are trained to do a humanitarian job.

"For us independence and neutrality means we have the best chance to have access to all people in need of our assistance and protection."

With a staff of 13,000, the Red Cross has its independence rooted in international law. The Geneva Convention ascribes it a mandate to provide relief to victims of war or disaster and says that it should not be impeded from doing so by warring parties.

According to Kellenberger, the Red Cross has decided not to seek military protection in Iraq, despite coming under attack from insurgents. In 2003, 35 people were killed in a bomb attack on the organisation's Baghdad headquarters.

The Red Cross inspected more than 2,000 prisons in 80 countries last year. Its policy of keeping reports on conditions of detention confidential has provoked much criticism, especially with the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Nick Young, head of the British Red Cross, is among those to have argued it should be prepared to speak out more.

But Kellenberger defended the confidentiality rule. Dropping it, he said, would result in less access to prisons.

"It is always difficult to decide if we should speak out publicly or not. But if we want to have credibility, we cannot speak out publicly just because of media or public attention in one context and not do so in another context."

Jakob Kellenberger, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the world's largest emergency relief organisation, urged the EU to ensure that its military operations did not 'blur the lines' between the work of humanitarian groups and soldiers. He said that the independence of aid workers from warring parties was 'an important and very practical operational concept' and that any perception that impartiality had been compromised could mean that aid workers would become more vulnerable to attack or lose access to victims.