When Saving Lives Becomes Conditional: Have the United Nations and Its Members Abandoned Their Fundamental Principles?

Dr Anwar Al-Hadi Abdelrahman
At various stages, international discourse on wars and conflicts has shifted noticeably: from a focus on humanitarian truces, the protection of civilians, and the delivery of aid, to more explicit discussion of legitimacy, representation, and who has the right to govern the state after the war.
This shift deserves careful consideration because it raises a question that goes deeper than the details of day-to-day positions: what is the relationship between humanitarian action and the political process? Should a humanitarian truce serve as an entry point to a political settlement, or does it have independent value in its own right?
In my view, the first step should be to distinguish between the two spheres. Humanitarian action derives its legitimacy from human needs. A sick person needs medicine because they are ill; a hungry person needs food because they are hungry; and a besieged civilian needs a safe passage because their life is at risk. These rights should not depend on the success of political negotiations or on whether one side or another accepts a particular form of government.
If a person’s life can be saved during one hour of halted fighting, then that hour has complete humanitarian value, even if the truce subsequently collapses and even if it does not lead to a political settlement.
This is where time comes into play. Time in humanitarian action is not the same as time in political negotiations. A single day in a negotiating room may be perfectly ordinary. Still, in a besieged city or a hospital on the verge of running out of medicines, it may be the difference between life and death.
For this reason, a humanitarian truce does not require a political outcome to have value. Its primary and immediate value lies in what it achieves for people: saving lives, delivering food, treating the sick, evacuating civilians or providing a degree of safety, even if only temporarily.
Politics, by contrast, operates according to a different logic. Its concerns are power, legitimacy, representation, governance arrangements and state-building. Its tools include negotiation, agreements, guarantees, pressure, recognition, sanctions and political settlements. Its ultimate purpose is not to open a humanitarian corridor or deliver a consignment of medicine, but to establish arrangements that determine how the state is governed, who has the right to represent it, and how to prevent the recurrence of war.
From this perspective, a humanitarian truce does not, in itself, confer political legitimacy. It may create an environment conducive to negotiations, help build a degree of trust, and allow the parties to move from confrontation to dialogue. But all of these are political possibilities; they are not conditions for the humanitarian value of the truce itself.
This is a fundamental point. The problem does not lie in humanitarian and political considerations intersecting; reality may make such an intersection unavoidable. The problem begins when a humanitarian truce is burdened with a political function, so that saving a human life becomes conditional upon the outcome of negotiations.
At that point, humanitarian action may find itself confronted with a question it should never have had to face in the first place: is the purpose to save human beings, or to use their plight as a means of achieving a political objective?
This is why protecting the independence of humanitarian action is not merely theoretical. It is a practical requirement for preserving confidence in humanitarian work and ensuring that it remains acceptable to different communities and parties.
At the same time, the path to lasting peace cannot be exclusively humanitarian. However severe the humanitarian consequences of war may be, conflict has causes, structures, interests and political struggles that a shipment of food, a temporary corridor or a time-limited truce cannot resolve.
Sustainable peace requires a political process capable of addressing questions of the state, power, representation, the rule of law and institutions of governance, together with arrangements that prevent violence from returning once the fighting has stopped.
The relationship between the two spheres should therefore be understood precisely. Humanitarian action addresses immediate suffering and protects people from the consequences of conflict, while political action addresses the roots of conflict, the structure of the state and the future of political power. The two may intersect, but neither should replace the other.
From this perspective, any shift in international discourse from discussion of truces and humanitarian assistance towards explicit discussion of legitimacy and governance can be understood as a shift from humanitarian language to a more clearly articulated political language.
Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the substance of the political position itself, such clarity is preferable to concealing political objectives behind humanitarian language.
Politics should therefore be discussed as politics: Who represents the state? What is the basis of legitimacy? How are institutions of government to be built? And how can the conflict be brought to an end in a manner that prevents its recurrence?
Humanitarian action, meanwhile, should remain grounded in its first principle: a person who can be saved today should not have to wait for these questions to be resolved.
The conclusion, therefore, is that the humanitarian and political spheres differ in purpose and criteria, even though they may intersect in practice. The objective should not be to erect a wall between them, but to prevent confusion between their functions. Saving human lives must not be made hostage to a political settlement, nor should humanitarian language be used as a cover for political objectives that would be better stated openly and debated on their merits.
A truce may save a person’s life today, and that alone is sufficient to justify it. But who governs, who represents the state, and how power is to be reconfigured after the war are different political questions—questions that a humanitarian truce, by itself, cannot answer.

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