1 00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:07,280 The new book on the leading scholars on my journey studies with a particular expertise in protection, 2 00:00:07,300 --> 00:00:10,470 civilians, humanitarian ethics and peace process. 3 00:00:10,470 --> 00:00:17,430 And in the 25 year period, both academia and international aid, whose work has been served as well as the UN in Morocco, 4 00:00:17,940 --> 00:00:28,440 Ethiopia and Bangladesh, and has also worked with the U.S. in Geneva II, as well as with Oxfam and as an advisor to the Red Cross. 5 00:00:29,010 --> 00:00:35,729 I also publish numerous, numerous articles that you must read, as well as how to write fabulous books and most recently, 6 00:00:35,730 --> 00:00:39,629 protection provided humanitarian agency and killing civilians. 7 00:00:39,630 --> 00:00:47,580 That goes along with the morality. We've also the director priority of tolerance for crisis in solidarity with you here 8 00:00:47,580 --> 00:00:55,260 though when we talked about 45 minutes or so and then he is actually thank you very much. 9 00:00:55,260 --> 00:01:02,550 And I've actually been very modest about the Oxford Humanitarian Group because it's something that she her idea, which she wanted to start. 10 00:01:03,030 --> 00:01:07,800 And so we like to think that this is the sort of first meeting of it and that 11 00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:11,780 people will go on from all that sort of humanitarian institutions here in Oxford, 12 00:01:11,820 --> 00:01:14,879 not just adoption groups that we hear from groups here. 13 00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:18,860 And Oxfam is the world's leading humanitarian agencies here as well. 14 00:01:18,870 --> 00:01:23,490 So hopefully that group will take off. And and people, as I've actually said, 15 00:01:24,210 --> 00:01:32,910 will start networking and just presenting their work to each other and making Oxford a sort of centre of thinking and activism on the issue. 16 00:01:33,690 --> 00:01:39,030 And in that spirit is, if you'll permit me, I thought I would start in a sort of work in progress way, 17 00:01:39,270 --> 00:01:45,929 which is code for not very prepared way and also staff not with sort of a straight into an issue. 18 00:01:45,930 --> 00:01:52,020 But I thought it might be helpful for the first meeting of the Oxford Humanitarian Group if I start started sort of a back of basics, 19 00:01:52,020 --> 00:01:58,020 a bit sort of things that we all know, but maybe thinking about being humanitarian, what does it mean? 20 00:01:58,020 --> 00:01:59,910 What is our project? 21 00:02:00,400 --> 00:02:09,330 And I thought I would try and talk about it, looking at two aspects of being humanitarian that probably exist for us and in the world. 22 00:02:09,960 --> 00:02:14,130 And one is the very personal part of being humanitarian. 23 00:02:14,370 --> 00:02:20,880 What does it mean for me, for you, for us? What is the sort of eye experience of being humanitarian? 24 00:02:21,540 --> 00:02:30,780 And then me? And look, in some ways that the more complicated aspects of when one tries to make humanitarianism a political project in the world, 25 00:02:31,020 --> 00:02:38,670 amongst other competing political projects. So that's what I'm going to try to do and perhaps think a little bit in that respect, 26 00:02:39,750 --> 00:02:46,140 if this is a good and useful distinction between what it is to be a third party humanitarian, 27 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:55,650 someone who is coming into someone else's war as a third party, and what it means to be a main party humanitarian. 28 00:02:55,890 --> 00:03:02,250 How is it to try and be humanitarian when you are one of the sides in that war where you are one of these parties? 29 00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:07,230 So I think I'm trying to draw that distinction and see if it helps us at all. 30 00:03:10,800 --> 00:03:16,020 I thought I'd also say I'm one of the themes of this lecture is that I have not 31 00:03:16,020 --> 00:03:20,040 read anything about humanitarianism for about three years because I'm a punchy, 32 00:03:20,040 --> 00:03:22,350 aggressive, very commercial businessman, a novelist. 33 00:03:22,920 --> 00:03:29,370 And so every time out of touch with where the thinking is and if you've been writing, you've been evaluating all that sort of thing. 34 00:03:29,730 --> 00:03:36,030 So any definition of humanitarianism that readily came to mind when I sat down to 35 00:03:36,030 --> 00:03:41,280 write about this on an aeroplane from Madagascar to Johannesburg for 30 days, 36 00:03:41,280 --> 00:03:48,090 and I've just been in Madagascar working for a major mining company who's asked us to help them with conflict resolution with the local community. 37 00:03:48,570 --> 00:03:54,090 And that's a pretty fascinating new adventure. And I was actually doing the Martin Griffiths feasibility monitoring too. 38 00:03:54,090 --> 00:04:00,800 So this big commercial company had these two of, you know, very few in terms of that strength and blockades. 39 00:04:02,340 --> 00:04:14,280 Anyway, as I sat on this aeroplane flying over Madagascar, I was faced with this blank page in humanity who told us, I can't have anything. 40 00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:19,499 I haven't been book Bukavu paper. You know, if I'd done this a few years ago, you say easy, 41 00:04:19,500 --> 00:04:26,520 because I just thought of John Piketty and I started with sort of definition of the principle of humanity, like an aeroplane. 42 00:04:27,150 --> 00:04:31,379 And I would have ended up to conduct my age panel and I might have left some of 43 00:04:31,380 --> 00:04:34,800 my old papers and I might have read some of your papers and that sort of thing. 44 00:04:34,800 --> 00:04:39,030 And I'm going to give you an easy lecture. I actually thought I could do this stuff. 45 00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:44,130 All my books are sort of sleeping on the shelf in Oxford, and I haven't touched them for three years. 46 00:04:45,090 --> 00:04:48,719 But then I did remember one of breakfast some time ago, 47 00:04:48,720 --> 00:04:54,660 given my children were quite small and could be that they were quite small and I was lecturing books and 48 00:04:54,660 --> 00:04:59,430 I was about to give a lecture about humanitarianism and was struggling as usual with the definition. 49 00:04:59,430 --> 00:05:06,980 And I remember my daughter Jessie was. The name of David Hatch reflects My son Solly was sitting on his cornflakes and I. 50 00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:12,880 I don't ask him because, you know, sometimes out of the mouths of babes and children, you get extraordinary insights. 51 00:05:13,510 --> 00:05:19,570 So I said, I'm sitting. And I said, What do you think it is to be humanitarian in the war? 52 00:05:23,600 --> 00:05:31,850 I think being humanitarian and war is being kind to people in war, especially children, women and those people. 53 00:05:34,490 --> 00:05:38,440 It's not bad. And I can see my little boy dying to say something to him. 54 00:05:39,140 --> 00:05:42,050 What do you think being a humanitarian in war is? 55 00:05:42,640 --> 00:05:50,000 And he said, I think I think being humanitarian in war is being paid in war and sharing your guns and bombs with your friends. 56 00:05:51,840 --> 00:05:56,550 And is to me, actually is I really thought about the Mozambique Channel on Saturday. 57 00:05:56,600 --> 00:05:57,259 I thought, well, yeah, 58 00:05:57,260 --> 00:06:05,450 I think this is the problem because it depends where you sit on what your just cause causes in a war and how humanitarian you can be, 59 00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:15,320 and whether you feel that the morality you're fighting for requires you to share guns and bombs and wind, or whether the morality you're fighting for. 60 00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:18,620 And as we all said, we came as you try to fight a war. 61 00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:21,500 So that is the most immediate definition I had, 62 00:06:21,500 --> 00:06:30,380 and I thought we might try and work between those two today as I try and think about the personal and and the political. 63 00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:42,200 And I will say, as I was flying in my little plane scribbling in this book, I also remember basically that humanitarianism is about two things, 64 00:06:42,470 --> 00:06:52,130 really, because I remember it is about giving people things as part of you, trying to be kind to them, which people call systems. 65 00:06:53,240 --> 00:07:01,940 And it's also about trying to protect people from other things which we have increasingly over the last few years called protection. 66 00:07:03,050 --> 00:07:14,720 And I remember also the great mantra of the ICRC that being humanitarian is about putting limits to violence. 67 00:07:14,960 --> 00:07:17,960 It's trying to put boundaries around human violence. 68 00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:24,100 So, as they say in ICRC, even war has exhibits. 69 00:07:24,650 --> 00:07:28,280 So I did remember that much. And that I think is important. 70 00:07:29,930 --> 00:07:38,360 But really I was aware on this aeroplane that I sort of returned to a sort of pre humanitarian state as an academic or a thinker or a person. 71 00:07:38,960 --> 00:07:42,620 And I couldn't just easily trot out a lecture anymore. 72 00:07:42,890 --> 00:07:48,890 So I thought I would take advantage of that and start from scratch again. 73 00:07:49,430 --> 00:07:52,669 And I would be like Rousseau's Noble Savage. 74 00:07:52,670 --> 00:07:58,820 I'd be a sort of naval humanitarian savage who hadn't read anything that we've all written, 75 00:07:59,300 --> 00:08:05,750 hadn't read books, but was going to be a humanitarian without being an expert on humanitarianism. 76 00:08:06,020 --> 00:08:13,640 And so what would that look like? How would you discover what it means to be humanitarian? 77 00:08:14,870 --> 00:08:21,199 And then I did have one book with me actually, which I don't know if is the Christian New Testament, which still sits in my rucksack. 78 00:08:21,200 --> 00:08:24,830 And I remember I did have that book with me and I didn't know how many of, you know, 79 00:08:25,070 --> 00:08:30,290 Christian parables, but they're all two parables, which of course Jesus gives, 80 00:08:30,290 --> 00:08:36,350 which if you had to live in Christian texts for basic ideas of what it is to be humanitarian, 81 00:08:37,250 --> 00:08:41,450 there are two stories which would put that basic stuff done. 82 00:08:41,450 --> 00:08:45,589 The first is a parable about the sheep in the gates of Charles Judgement Day. 83 00:08:45,590 --> 00:08:51,650 Jesus says that people will be divided two ways on a rather grim one on those good one, 84 00:08:52,310 --> 00:08:55,430 and the goats will go one way to have the sheep with that one way to heaven. 85 00:08:55,850 --> 00:09:06,230 And a criteria on which that selection will happen is quite simply on whether when he was destitute, 86 00:09:06,410 --> 00:09:12,440 you get your chance when he was hungry and delivering food and when he was in prison, you visited him. 87 00:09:13,580 --> 00:09:19,159 And of course, that's really a pretty basic humanitarian injunction to you, that that is what it means to be humanitarian. 88 00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:26,030 It's that simple. But there's another parable which is interesting and of course, more famous, which is the parable of the Good Samaritan. 89 00:09:26,930 --> 00:09:34,190 And I'll just recap in case some of you there may and it's the very famous story of about a Jewish guy who sets 90 00:09:34,190 --> 00:09:39,440 off down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and gets halfway and he gets beaten up and beaten up very bad. 91 00:09:39,620 --> 00:09:43,310 So he's lying with all his stuff next and lying, bleeding on the road. 92 00:09:43,880 --> 00:09:44,209 And of course, 93 00:09:44,210 --> 00:09:56,240 the famous thing is that a very devout Jew that comes along and sees him and crosses the road and does not help or touch him and walks off, 94 00:09:57,380 --> 00:10:02,300 and a Samaritan who at the time considered very low rent, 95 00:10:02,390 --> 00:10:08,710 despicable creatures by first century Judaism, comes along and he does stop and he does help. 96 00:10:09,740 --> 00:10:17,250 And what's interesting about that, I think, is that it illustrates another issue with humanitarianism in the world that would be charity. 97 00:10:17,270 --> 00:10:21,860 Humanitarianism is that actually it's not easy. It doesn't happen very often. 98 00:10:21,860 --> 00:10:25,560 We decide not. Often we walk across the other side of the road. 99 00:10:25,980 --> 00:10:29,760 So humanitarianism is a difficult project. It's by no means guaranteed. 100 00:10:29,790 --> 00:10:35,910 It's quite tricky. If I can go back to my main source for this extra game, which is my daughter when she was a tiny girl. 101 00:10:36,210 --> 00:10:40,230 I remember most of the book of that from some church, 102 00:10:40,370 --> 00:10:44,370 I think cathedral we visited once and she always knew the story as the good American 103 00:10:44,580 --> 00:10:47,670 because she conveyed the mass marriage so she would refer to the good American. 104 00:10:48,090 --> 00:10:52,320 And I remember asking everyone to let me drive with them in the kind of thing they want. 105 00:10:52,740 --> 00:10:56,670 Now, do you think the first is going to stop? Which is why? 106 00:10:57,540 --> 00:11:02,339 Because a lot of people won't get involved in the black community at that point about contaminants, 107 00:11:02,340 --> 00:11:05,610 which actually was true because in Jewish voice you run to wait from the rabbi. 108 00:11:07,560 --> 00:11:14,490 But more importantly, it means a lot a lot of humanitarian action is actually opted out of because it means potential 109 00:11:14,490 --> 00:11:19,680 real escalation and a real engagement for which you can't tell the consequences politically. 110 00:11:20,250 --> 00:11:24,899 Does it mean greater entanglement? Are you getting sucked in? Is it Vietnam syndrome? 111 00:11:24,900 --> 00:11:29,940 All the stuff it creates with meditation? Now that's quite a good answer. 112 00:11:31,400 --> 00:11:36,530 There is a few other reasons why it might have stopped, and she thought she had been sitting in her handbag. 113 00:11:36,730 --> 00:11:43,770 I said, Well, maybe he was getting off safe enough that his government is going to have a big job to do. 114 00:11:44,350 --> 00:11:49,910 I need to actually, because in many ways, in humanitarian action, let me make it a political project. 115 00:11:49,920 --> 00:11:56,880 We make choices and we actually prioritise one over another for all sorts of mixed interests reasons. 116 00:11:57,270 --> 00:12:02,050 And I thought Boris has been quite well elected lecture that and I feel betrayed again. 117 00:12:02,100 --> 00:12:08,110 I said, Well, Jesse, what any other reason that he he might he might have just crossed over the other side of the rage. 118 00:12:09,450 --> 00:12:11,580 Maybe he knew this American was coming along behind. 119 00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:16,470 And that's another interesting thing, because actually a lot of the politicisation of humanitarian action, 120 00:12:16,830 --> 00:12:21,600 people do leave the responsibility to others or they assume someone else will pick it up. 121 00:12:21,960 --> 00:12:28,170 And the whole question of responsibility, state and international responsibility is very important. 122 00:12:28,170 --> 00:12:32,240 And people often share that responsibility and others. 123 00:12:32,610 --> 00:12:39,810 And I thought, I'll give it one last shot. So I said, okay, yes. Any other reasons why he may cross the road, walk past this guy? 124 00:12:40,260 --> 00:12:44,700 He thought you said because he was a man. If he was a woman, she would definitely stopped. 125 00:12:45,630 --> 00:12:54,240 So maybe there are gender issues, too, in this subject that if we had more women running offshore and the UN Security Council and state governments, 126 00:12:54,930 --> 00:12:57,900 maybe there'd be more humanitarian action. Who knows? We'll have to wait and see. 127 00:12:59,280 --> 00:13:11,100 So I was thinking also, if I was to start defining what it meant to be humanitarian, what would what would I be talking about? 128 00:13:11,550 --> 00:13:17,670 And this is where I want to make a distinction to a third party humanitarian and a main party person trying to be humanitarian. 129 00:13:18,270 --> 00:13:24,239 And at this point in my aeroplane, if I was flying over Mozambique, we'd crossed the mainland and I looked and I saw Mozambique and I thought, 130 00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:28,559 my God, and there are people in this room who remember that war in the eighties. 131 00:13:28,560 --> 00:13:33,180 That was the 1990. That was the one of the most brutal civil wars of all time. 132 00:13:33,870 --> 00:13:41,700 And so I thought, right, well, what does it mean to be a humanitarian if I am perhaps Oxfam in that war? 133 00:13:42,660 --> 00:13:50,190 And what does it mean to be humanitarian if I am? RENAMO In that war, which was a terrible armed group. 134 00:13:51,120 --> 00:13:54,840 What sort of sense does being humanitarian make to Renamo? 135 00:13:55,710 --> 00:14:02,880 Because we are asking another management project that both sides be there to solve the Geneva Conventions, and that's what we all ask. 136 00:14:03,510 --> 00:14:06,090 So I then I thought, I think about that for a bit, and so let's do that. 137 00:14:06,450 --> 00:14:11,670 And as a third party humanitarian, as my I began to remember my own story as an aid worker. 138 00:14:12,030 --> 00:14:15,980 And again, I'm afraid, because I haven't been in books lately, I'm going to rely on a bit of autobiography here. 139 00:14:15,990 --> 00:14:25,830 So let me please do that, if you don't mind. And I remember my own story as an aid worker started when I was seven and I was sitting as a little 140 00:14:25,830 --> 00:14:30,930 boy after school watching an old black and white television and having a boiled egg for tea. 141 00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:36,720 And I remember suddenly being completely mesmerised by these images that came up on the screen, 142 00:14:37,230 --> 00:14:42,920 which was the televised moves at the finalisation of the Biafran Civil War, the Nigerian Civil War. 143 00:14:42,930 --> 00:14:48,030 And I stood there all sat and watched it, egg telly watching this thing. 144 00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:55,560 And it was very striking because there were lots of thousands of really skinny and dying but African people. 145 00:14:56,100 --> 00:15:02,850 And then there were these rather articulate, nice white doctors from Save the Children and nurses talking to the camera about it all. 146 00:15:03,300 --> 00:15:09,650 And I was incredibly struck by that moment. And I think in some ways it was sort of the projection of the founding moments, 147 00:15:09,670 --> 00:15:17,400 my projection of fantasy to become a humanitarian that I wanted to be like these white doctors who were doing such good things. 148 00:15:18,150 --> 00:15:22,420 And so what did I feel in that sort of finding humanitarian moment in. 149 00:15:22,500 --> 00:15:28,829 We can call it that. I think and this is where maybe the humanitarian personal motive comes from. 150 00:15:28,830 --> 00:15:33,569 I felt immediately an urge to pity. I felt extraordinary pity for these people. 151 00:15:33,570 --> 00:15:38,060 I've never seen such skinny, dying people, and I felt an urge to save. 152 00:15:38,070 --> 00:15:41,280 So I felt and urged her to reach out and do something. 153 00:15:42,270 --> 00:15:47,099 I also still felt an urge to be good because that felt quite nice. 154 00:15:47,100 --> 00:15:53,550 If I could actually be like one of these guys who was quite good as MSF has proved, because they as they met in France, 155 00:15:53,880 --> 00:15:59,130 the Met and this sense of a doctor or nurse is the most desirable marriage prospect. 156 00:16:00,210 --> 00:16:02,550 They didn't want anything if you want to percentage and that was one of them. 157 00:16:02,730 --> 00:16:12,150 So even at seven, I had a hunch were maybe worse, you know, playing this good card and I feel good and I might even be famous actually, 158 00:16:12,150 --> 00:16:20,040 because I could get on telly and I would be heroic because to do that would be heroic. 159 00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:26,670 And so I think that's probably what began as my sort of humanitarian reach out moment. 160 00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:32,309 And then, of course, 17 years later, I found myself in a place called Ward County, 161 00:16:32,310 --> 00:16:37,560 which was a really terrible refugee camp from the Ethiopian to Grand Sudanese border. 162 00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:41,520 And I was doing it and I had everything. 163 00:16:41,520 --> 00:16:48,990 And my wife, Tony, is actually a member of this committee, the British. They broke André, the huge staff. 164 00:16:49,020 --> 00:16:52,050 Lots of television cameras would come by. And I was doing this stuff. 165 00:16:52,740 --> 00:17:00,299 And at that moment, in being humanitarian, I suppose I was still labouring under this sort of literally this white knight, 166 00:17:00,300 --> 00:17:03,410 this chivalric knight delusion, probably. 167 00:17:04,890 --> 00:17:09,270 I thought it was quite heroic what I was doing, and it was quite a lot about me. 168 00:17:09,930 --> 00:17:13,259 But then one day I did find myself going to be a medical doctor about something. 169 00:17:13,260 --> 00:17:16,710 I find myself alone in one of the massive hospitals there. 170 00:17:17,370 --> 00:17:22,500 And in what kind of when it began, there were about 200 people dying a day. 171 00:17:22,650 --> 00:17:26,370 In what kind of which was an awful lot of people. And I'm in the city. 172 00:17:26,850 --> 00:17:35,220 I really I went into a ward and a four person line, and it was a really, really emaciated, dying young adolescent boy. 173 00:17:35,940 --> 00:17:39,570 And I got his name. 174 00:17:39,780 --> 00:17:45,430 And so I went over and I just held his hand for a bit. And he was really near death. 175 00:17:45,460 --> 00:17:49,230 It was the death rattle, and you could hear him and he must have had TB as well. 176 00:17:50,220 --> 00:17:59,250 And I held his hand for a bit. And if I think back to that moment, that physical reach, that moment of humanitarian action, 177 00:18:00,750 --> 00:18:08,040 I suppose what we do as humanitarians is we accept the appalling tragedy of war. 178 00:18:08,520 --> 00:18:16,110 We accept the terrible unfairness of war that it takes people who often have no direct responsibility in war. 179 00:18:16,650 --> 00:18:23,850 And the other thing it said to me that moment and it's still done, is that the reasons we. 180 00:18:25,480 --> 00:18:31,750 Have a humanitarian project has because we do feel that every life is so precious and that there's 181 00:18:31,750 --> 00:18:37,390 something so precious about each life that we have to fight for each life if we get the chance. 182 00:18:37,870 --> 00:18:44,290 And I went back the next day and he was no longer there because he had died and thousands did not die. 183 00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:51,460 Once Save the Children, then Oxfam and Sudanese workers and people in Tigrayans got that can't go. 184 00:18:52,030 --> 00:18:56,770 But that's why we did. Because the life of every person is is precious. 185 00:18:58,360 --> 00:19:03,010 Maybe a little in my little biography, I then married into a Jewish family and I have a Jewish family, 186 00:19:03,020 --> 00:19:06,820 so my children are Egyptian, my wife is Jewish, a bit Jewish going on. 187 00:19:07,330 --> 00:19:14,320 And that was interesting, too, because then I encountered the Holocaust, not objectively, 188 00:19:14,340 --> 00:19:18,100 abstractly, but on account of the Holocaust from inside a Jewish family. 189 00:19:18,550 --> 00:19:30,250 It's a very different place to encounter it from. And it all the tragedy of that boy's death and came home in millions of people's individuals lives. 190 00:19:31,180 --> 00:19:34,930 And then I began to write a book about civilians. And then I spent five years well, 191 00:19:35,170 --> 00:19:41,829 three or four years just reading a current and a current account of hundreds 192 00:19:41,830 --> 00:19:46,990 and thousands of those lives being lost because of war and writing about it. 193 00:19:47,500 --> 00:19:57,190 And then, I suppose my my humanitarianism, my humanitarian project at a personal level changed a bit. 194 00:19:59,530 --> 00:20:03,879 You begin to you read as you all do, and now you read about so many lives being lost. 195 00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:10,720 You get a feeling of being devastated by this, and then you get a feeling of being quite outraged and angry. 196 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:16,420 And I suppose that's the time when I became probably a bit more passionate and outraged as a humanitarian. 197 00:20:17,590 --> 00:20:22,540 And I suppose you could say that one enters a humanitarian fury at some level. 198 00:20:22,540 --> 00:20:25,269 I certainly did when I was writing that book, because it was just so appalling, 199 00:20:25,270 --> 00:20:30,070 all the accounts and it's for every one of us when we read the Human Rights Watch document or something, we do understand that. 200 00:20:30,940 --> 00:20:33,819 And I suppose I began to move to think more about human rights as well, 201 00:20:33,820 --> 00:20:40,000 and say that these things are rights and we must struggle with people to ensure that those rights are protected in war, 202 00:20:40,510 --> 00:20:47,470 say my own humanitarian motivation began to probably politicise a little more in that way. 203 00:20:50,230 --> 00:20:55,780 And then I also read a little about rescuers. I don't know if any of you have read the rescue literature from the Holocaust and from other places. 204 00:20:55,780 --> 00:21:05,379 And of course, what's sad about today's wars is because so few extraordinary acts of humanitarian action by 205 00:21:05,380 --> 00:21:09,100 ordinary people in these wars are ever told because they're in the country writing about them. 206 00:21:09,100 --> 00:21:12,190 They didn't have researchers in universities who wrote retrospectively about them. 207 00:21:12,940 --> 00:21:19,209 But of course, when you read the Holocaust literature, you do come across this group of rescuers who did take in Jewish people and hid 208 00:21:19,210 --> 00:21:22,900 them for four years or something for smuggling across borders or did whatever. 209 00:21:23,260 --> 00:21:29,740 And what was interesting about the rescue literature is that rescuers are not of a particular group. 210 00:21:30,010 --> 00:21:33,669 It's quite hard to anticipate what sort of a person a rescue will be. 211 00:21:33,670 --> 00:21:38,290 Some would be very dramatic and heroic and humanitarian, be outraged, others just wait. 212 00:21:38,890 --> 00:21:42,280 And when they talk about taking in a family or something, they often do survive. 213 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:46,719 It is the right thing to do. I don't know why you're asking me. It's just obvious to them. 214 00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:52,810 They're extraordinary people and what they talk about and what they show us about being humanitarian is it's about kindness. 215 00:21:55,060 --> 00:22:03,070 It's really also about that old motto from the Vatican's from the Jewish scriptures, do as you would be done to you, the golden rule. 216 00:22:04,540 --> 00:22:10,990 And it's also about a fundamental recognition that you do this because the person in front of you is like you. 217 00:22:11,830 --> 00:22:16,690 These people are like us and that's why we it, because they are equally precious. 218 00:22:18,430 --> 00:22:22,180 So if I was to sum up this third party, humanitarian, the personal humanitarian, 219 00:22:22,180 --> 00:22:26,650 what it means to be humanitarian as an individual, as a person, as you, me and us. 220 00:22:27,100 --> 00:22:33,700 Maybe that's what I would say, that it is a mixture of pity and of valuing the preciousness of every life. 221 00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:41,080 It's got a bit of vanity in that minded anyway, maybe yours doesn't fury it's got a bit of fury. 222 00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:48,760 It's got a bit of political passion and outrage and it's got a very deep sense of kindness. 223 00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:56,920 That kindness is important because we might need it one day ourselves or we might want that for our children if war came to Oxfordshire. 224 00:22:57,790 --> 00:23:06,430 So it's also got this very profound point that each person in front of us is like us. 225 00:23:07,570 --> 00:23:11,500 I don't know whether any of you have read Emmanuel Levinas, the French philosopher. 226 00:23:12,130 --> 00:23:17,870 It's probably right to say if you have to try to be in that role. It is because he is a French philosopher, which is a nightmare for me. 227 00:23:18,670 --> 00:23:24,240 But he believes very profoundly that the whole question of being philosophically is not a complex. 228 00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:27,630 The logical question of, you know, the meaning of my life. 229 00:23:28,110 --> 00:23:31,229 What does it mean? You know, sort of Cartesian stuff. I think that therefore I am. 230 00:23:31,230 --> 00:23:36,750 It's not all about me. He believes that the whole question of being is instantly informed. 231 00:23:36,750 --> 00:23:45,900 It only becomes a question when you're faced with the face of the other, which is his great faith phrase in the face of the other being. 232 00:23:46,020 --> 00:23:52,260 It doesn't become an existential question. It instantly becomes an ethical and moral question. 233 00:23:52,770 --> 00:23:58,790 Ontology is ethics, and I think that's what we as humanitarians trying to well, I think that's where we start. 234 00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,970 That's what we believe that in the face of the other, the other who is like us, 235 00:24:03,630 --> 00:24:09,270 that brings what some people call this imperative to recognise the preciousness. 236 00:24:10,650 --> 00:24:14,280 So there we are. If I say that, that in a sense is the first part. 237 00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:19,290 That is how I understand being a humanitarian person as you and me as us. 238 00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,520 Then that's what you can do when you're a third party humanitarian. 239 00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,450 You can rush into people's worlds, wages, 240 00:24:27,120 --> 00:24:36,990 aeroplanes and things like that because you don't have a few places that you can arrive and you can start acting on these feelings and those beliefs, 241 00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:42,210 and you do your best to save as many lives as you can in that context. 242 00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:49,829 But then what about and at this point in my flight, I kind of made them, 243 00:24:49,830 --> 00:24:55,170 because one of the lovely things about travelling so much that you do find these amazing people walking through it. 244 00:24:55,170 --> 00:24:58,260 I mean, I think it's an incredible descent into Johannesburg. 245 00:24:58,770 --> 00:25:01,290 And suddenly, after the clear skies of the Mozambique Channel, 246 00:25:01,290 --> 00:25:06,180 we have these huge cumulus nimbus clouds, extraordinary times like mountains all around us. 247 00:25:06,450 --> 00:25:13,469 And it seemed appropriate to me at the time with my second glass of wine at that point, that we should be entering more cloudy territory. 248 00:25:13,470 --> 00:25:17,160 When I was about to start thinking about what it means to be humanitarian. 249 00:25:17,370 --> 00:25:21,180 If you are one of the sides in the war because it is more difficult. 250 00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:26,910 So I then thought back about, Well, how do I learn about this in my life? 251 00:25:27,510 --> 00:25:35,820 And I remembered 9/11. And I remember watching 911, actually, funnily enough, an ICRC head office in Geneva where I happened to be in evaluation. 252 00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:38,970 And we had gathered around and saw the Twin Towers. 253 00:25:39,780 --> 00:25:49,740 And then I remember thinking a bit later I thought, Wow, there are people who would really like to kill me and my family. 254 00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:56,100 And I remember thinking I didn't want them to. You know, I'm quite happy we fight a war against these people. 255 00:25:56,910 --> 00:26:01,050 I think it's probably rather good we try and stop them. That might mean killing some of them. 256 00:26:03,240 --> 00:26:11,940 And I think you should kill them first before they kill us. And I remember sitting in my room at the time, oh, god, I'm not one of the combatants. 257 00:26:12,450 --> 00:26:21,390 And actually, I'm not thinking of humanitarianism from a rather different perspective because I'm thinking about it full on, not as a third party, 258 00:26:21,570 --> 00:26:30,900 but as one of the main parties in the war say, how am I going to fight this war but also be humanitarian because I really want to win this war. 259 00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:34,080 And I suddenly thought, God, I'm like a Somali, 260 00:26:34,290 --> 00:26:41,910 and I can see these itineraries that I'm like a Sierra Leonean born Israeli or Palestinian or Serbian or Kosovo. 261 00:26:43,020 --> 00:26:48,000 It's quite easy to be a third party humanitarian, but what does it mean to be humanitarian when you're a main party? 262 00:26:48,090 --> 00:26:52,620 How do you how do you do that? Can I be humanitarian? 263 00:26:53,850 --> 00:27:00,870 So my moral life, I mean, ethically, at that point, my concern came not so much about censoring other people's behaviour in war. 264 00:27:00,870 --> 00:27:12,720 As a third party humanitarian. It actually became thinking, how do I control my own violence or as a as a combatant, as one of the sides in a war? 265 00:27:14,430 --> 00:27:21,419 And how do I manage this very difficult trade-off between winning and sinning in 266 00:27:21,420 --> 00:27:26,130 the sense that's what the main party person who is trying to be humanitarian, 267 00:27:26,190 --> 00:27:33,930 it's really tough because they have to balance winning and sinning and trying to make sure that they win. 268 00:27:35,580 --> 00:27:44,100 So I realise now that being at war and being humanitarian at the same time is not so easy. 269 00:27:44,580 --> 00:27:47,370 It always seems easy when you're a third party. Sometimes it seems easy. 270 00:27:47,370 --> 00:27:59,880 And so I looked briefly and thinking, What do people who are in war, at war, what is their approach to being humanitarian? 271 00:28:00,390 --> 00:28:04,440 And I thought maybe there are four approaches. If you're the main party in war. 272 00:28:05,190 --> 00:28:10,410 And the first is that most people simply don't bother, they reject it. 273 00:28:11,100 --> 00:28:16,290 They think winning is so important. I think it is stuff by the other things. 274 00:28:16,980 --> 00:28:19,559 And that was a big part of writing my book about killing civilians. 275 00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:24,150 I realised that most people in war and if you look at a lot of water in the world through history most. 276 00:28:24,370 --> 00:28:28,330 Operate with an anti civilian ideology, not oppressive ideology. 277 00:28:29,230 --> 00:28:34,090 So I realise that. And what does that mean? They actually opt in order to win. 278 00:28:34,210 --> 00:28:37,510 They opt to take a genocidal mentality. 279 00:28:38,170 --> 00:28:42,470 They make arguments of necessity on the basis of asymmetry. 280 00:28:42,490 --> 00:28:52,690 They say, Look, we're such a small person, group of people being so oppressed, whether you're al Qaeda or Hamas or whatever you say. 281 00:28:52,690 --> 00:28:58,929 Right. It's necessary for us to use targets that tend to use strategies that are not humanitarian. 282 00:28:58,930 --> 00:29:06,490 And that's fine and fair because we've got to win. And you get other people taking much more consequentialist arguments ethically. 283 00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:13,870 They say, Look, this is such a huge thing. We've got to do that. We have to do everything required to make sure what we win. 284 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:23,329 And some people just decide, I'm not interested in being humanitarian because it looks weak and I need to look really powerful. 285 00:29:23,330 --> 00:29:28,310 So I'm just going to use a lot of power around the place and put my foot down on all sorts of people. 286 00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:33,320 So there's the first category of main party people who actually decide not to be humanitarian. 287 00:29:34,010 --> 00:29:37,520 The second part probably are a group of people who say, well, to be nice, 288 00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:42,450 to be humanitarian as much as we can and must judge on a case by case basis in this war how I can be. 289 00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:46,010 If you take the example of our own society of World War Two, you get the Brits saying, 290 00:29:46,460 --> 00:29:50,930 Yeah, we can be humanitarian prisoners of war, so we treat prisoners of war very well. 291 00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:57,110 But actually grabbing humanitarian civilians would kill hundreds of thousands of them from the air and Japanese as well. 292 00:29:57,650 --> 00:30:04,640 It's a case by case thing. So in business speak, they would say, yeah, being humanitarian is a nice to have, but it's not a must have. 293 00:30:05,750 --> 00:30:11,110 And in a way, that's how some main parties approach being humanitarian. 294 00:30:11,150 --> 00:30:12,140 It's sort of optional. 295 00:30:13,670 --> 00:30:21,950 And the third group, I think, do there are a third group of combatants who work very hard to respect humanitarian and be it as much as they can. 296 00:30:22,430 --> 00:30:26,600 And there are those in Afghanistan which get an idea because I need to talk. 297 00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:33,470 But you could look at NATO and say, well, this is a force that has really tried hard to limit its funds and think about it 298 00:30:33,740 --> 00:30:39,770 and fight in a way that is being humanitarian as much as it is trying to win. 299 00:30:40,370 --> 00:30:48,379 So that's the third approach you can take. And there's probably a fourth approach people as the main party can take to being humanitarian. 300 00:30:48,380 --> 00:30:57,980 And that is probably to decide to really use humanitarianism, to really use it, and in our terms, perhaps sometimes abuse it, but to really use it. 301 00:30:58,700 --> 00:31:02,120 And of course, they don't have much choice now because if you look at the last 50, 60 years, 302 00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:05,780 probably particularly since that the Afghan war that I watched as a child on telly, 303 00:31:07,130 --> 00:31:17,300 we have created out of Western money and Western moral ambition a massive international welfare system of humanitarian action, 304 00:31:17,300 --> 00:31:20,120 which now has agencies and staff and budgets, 305 00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:26,960 which means that wherever the war happens in the world, that welfare system will reach out and try and address it and be there. 306 00:31:27,830 --> 00:31:34,639 So if you're a main party now, that system is going to arrive, whether you like it or not, as a system, 307 00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:39,080 it's interfered with the way wars are fought to a great degree, 308 00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:44,900 and it's interfered physically because now you get massive refugee camps and IDP camps. 309 00:31:46,130 --> 00:31:53,510 You get food distributions. You get all sorts of changes to the battlefield physically. 310 00:31:54,890 --> 00:31:59,330 And it's interesting. I mean, when the Turks decided to kill, the Armenians were as many as they could. 311 00:31:59,330 --> 00:32:07,070 They followed the usual strategy of terrorising their villages and just pushing them to walk out into the desert. 312 00:32:07,430 --> 00:32:11,720 And the famous phrase they used, the word is that the sun and starvation do the rest. 313 00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:14,920 And it did for most of them. Now, that doesn't really have anything to do. 314 00:32:14,930 --> 00:32:20,930 It's not a strategy you can pursue, because if you do as happened in Darfur or push people out to sea, there's hope. 315 00:32:21,020 --> 00:32:27,799 They just wander off. They'll be caught by this huge system that will set out these things without having to feed them and everything. 316 00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:32,000 So the demography of the battlefields changed dramatically by this welfare system. 317 00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:40,099 The other area which humanitarianism and the system and the new norms, if you like, have changed. 318 00:32:40,100 --> 00:32:50,329 The battlefield is reputationally because you can be humanitarian politically and wage is a badge of respectability as a main party, 319 00:32:50,330 --> 00:32:59,780 which is what native would be trying to do. But you can also be constantly under a spotlight of international shame and blame games if you're not. 320 00:32:59,990 --> 00:33:08,600 So reputationally, it creates new issues to you. But most importantly perhaps is that strategically the big welfare system of 321 00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:13,670 humanitarians that gives you new strategic choices in the way you run the world. 322 00:33:14,690 --> 00:33:24,170 And it probably does this in three main ways. The first is that you can do big clearing strategies, clearing out a population, 323 00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:29,749 and somebody will do your country for you because the international community 324 00:33:29,750 --> 00:33:34,190 will come and create the ghettos that might serve your purpose quite well. 325 00:33:35,420 --> 00:33:40,640 So you can use humanitarianism to win demographic battles on the battlefield. 326 00:33:42,620 --> 00:33:48,649 You can push your population into camps where they'll be localised and fed by 327 00:33:48,650 --> 00:33:54,470 humanitarianism so you can create new urban realities by using humanitarian action. 328 00:33:56,150 --> 00:34:06,830 The second way you can use humanitarianism as a main party is that you can create a sort of populist front against these interveners. 329 00:34:06,830 --> 00:34:14,900 So it can really help your populism to constantly attack this great welfare system from the international monetary Western community. 330 00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:26,180 As a sort of invading force and you can criticise it later and creating a popular ism against it, but it serves to boost your power base. 331 00:34:27,530 --> 00:34:33,080 And then maybe the third way you can use it is for liberal state building. 332 00:34:33,710 --> 00:34:43,040 And this we know because that's what our own counterinsurgency coin operations 333 00:34:43,550 --> 00:34:48,080 have been trying to do for a long time in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places, 334 00:34:48,710 --> 00:34:56,990 because you can use this great humanitarianism and humanitarian projects and because the boundary between humanitarianism development is very broken. 335 00:34:56,990 --> 00:35:01,430 Now you get the sweep of girls education and food distribution. 336 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:07,490 That is the humanitarian project. So you can instrumentalize that to build a liberal state, which is part of your war aims anyway. 337 00:35:08,090 --> 00:35:12,290 So that's the other way you can use humanitarianism as the main party. 338 00:35:12,740 --> 00:35:20,389 And of course, engineers do that too, because most engineers are liberal, progressive, western driven ones with the dosh. 339 00:35:20,390 --> 00:35:26,870 So a lot of them are trying to build liberal states as well, and they do the same things in war as part of the humanitarian system. 340 00:35:27,410 --> 00:35:34,700 So you can use humanitarian development actually as a crucial part of your war ends to win and create a liberal state. 341 00:35:36,650 --> 00:35:39,350 And of course, it's also the same for insurgents, you know, 342 00:35:39,350 --> 00:35:48,860 asymmetric warfare and things that insurgents have often been able to use humanitarian infrastructure as core bases for themselves. 343 00:35:49,190 --> 00:35:56,570 Refugee camps, whatever, food supplies, you know, the chance to step back into somebody else's country and refresh, 344 00:35:56,660 --> 00:36:02,720 really ideologies galvanise your group who can't move anywhere and start fighting again. 345 00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:06,310 So insurgents use it to not just counterinsurgency. 346 00:36:08,870 --> 00:36:15,410 So there we are. I tried to think about being humanitarian as a third party and being humanitarian as a main party. 347 00:36:15,830 --> 00:36:23,390 And there is surprise, surprise. We find that being humanitarian is as ambiguous as being human. 348 00:36:23,570 --> 00:36:33,920 When we begin to make it a political project internationally, personally, we understand that being humanitarian is all about that kindness, 349 00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:43,220 that recognition of the precious, precious nature of human life, that recognition that people are like Earth but as political project. 350 00:36:43,700 --> 00:36:49,910 In a war, there are always mixed motives, as in everything else. 351 00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:59,480 And being humanitarian as a as a warring party involves it as being one of the things you are trying to achieve in your strategy, 352 00:36:59,630 --> 00:37:01,160 your political strategy of winning. 353 00:37:02,660 --> 00:37:12,530 So one of the reasons we get so many complications in the application of being humanitarian internationally and in wars is because the 354 00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:25,010 immediate duty based morality of being kind clashes with wider consequentialist morality is the causes of a war and the desire to win a war. 355 00:37:26,270 --> 00:37:31,400 And this is what creates the turbulence and the failures and the successes in humanitarianism. 356 00:37:33,110 --> 00:37:44,660 So just for the last minute, if I can try and sum up this midday ramble, I'm being humanitarian at a personal level is a very deep, 357 00:37:45,110 --> 00:37:52,590 vital and compassionate response to the other, to the human other who you recognise in some way as yourself. 358 00:37:55,160 --> 00:38:01,100 And you can do that as a third party and you can pursue that goal singularly as a third party. 359 00:38:01,370 --> 00:38:07,940 That is what you're trying to do, and you can do it impartially, just basing your approach on need. 360 00:38:09,140 --> 00:38:17,300 But as a main party, politically, a limiting approach to war is what you're trying to do. 361 00:38:17,810 --> 00:38:21,110 If you're being humanitarian, you're trying to mitigate the worst effects of war. 362 00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:29,900 But being humanitarian when you're a main party is never something that is pursued singularly as your only goal. 363 00:38:30,290 --> 00:38:39,890 It's always been pursued alongside other often much more deeper held goals, consequentialist goals of winning the war. 364 00:38:41,570 --> 00:38:45,860 So I suppose if I'm trying to conclude about being humanitarian personally and politically, 365 00:38:48,620 --> 00:38:59,630 I would always have to say that being humanitarian is always going to be being competing with being many other things in war and that it always will. 366 00:39:00,290 --> 00:39:04,190 It will always compete with other moralities, other big causes. 367 00:39:04,430 --> 00:39:09,080 And that's why it seems difficult and that's why it is genuinely a struggle. 368 00:39:09,650 --> 00:39:14,570 And in a sense, that struggle, I think, is well captured in the Geneva Conventions. 369 00:39:14,570 --> 00:39:20,480 And I. We are lucky to have them because they are realistic documents saying let's try and limit these wars. 370 00:39:20,780 --> 00:39:25,940 We know that won't always be the primary aim of combatants because they'll be trying to win them, but that's trying to limit them. 371 00:39:26,750 --> 00:39:30,620 And I think that's it really is probably the best thing we can hope for. 372 00:39:30,650 --> 00:39:34,760 The political project of humanitarianism. And I'll stop there. 373 00:39:35,390 --> 00:39:35,750 Thanks.