Humanitarian action relies on negotiations with counterparts at local, national and international levels. These negotiations are filled with ethical dilemmas like cooperating with war criminals and repressive regimes, striking deals that favour certain social groups and accepting agreements that put the lives of local staff at risk.
Led by Kristoffer Lidén, Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), this project will map problems related to the ethics of negotiation and cross examine these challenges through cases from Syria, Bangladesh, Colombia, Nepal, the Mediterranean and the UN Security Council.
Kristina Roepstorff is Deputy project leader in a part-time PRIO capacity. The project team also includes NCHS Co-Director, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert (PRIO), along with Carsten Wieland (PRIO), Zenonas Tziarras (PRIO Cyprus Centre), Sulagna Maitra (Network on Humanitarian Action (NOHA), University College Dublin), Claude Bruderlein (Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation), Manuel E. Salamanca Rangel (Institute of Human Rights and Peacebuilding, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá), Pitambar Bhandari (Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu), Emanuela-Chiara Gillard (Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford), and Lars Christie (Department of Law, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences).
The Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation – a collaboration between the ICRC, UNHCR, WFP, MSF and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue – will be actively involved in consultation and training activities. The project team will also develop online university courses at MA and PhD levels and professional trainings.
The project is hosted by the PRIO in association with the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS).
Blog
Humanitarian action relies on negotiations with counterparts at local, national and international levels, which are invariably filled with ethical dilemmas. This blog puts forward the need for a research agenda to further examine the ethics of humanitarian action.
Webinar
Organised by PRIO and the NCHS, this virtual roundtable examined the principle and practice of humanitarian neutrality during the Syrian civil war since 2011.
Webinar
Organised by PRIO and the NCHS, this virtual roundtable examined where to draw red lines for humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the ban on women aid workers.
Webinar
This virtual roundtable examined engagement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, including similarities and differences between current international engagement and what happened over 20 years ago.
Webinar
This virtual roundtable explores the role of moral duties in Western responses to Covid-19 and vaccine distribution, and lessons for the ethics of humanitarian action.
Paper
This NCHS paper explores the concept of humanitarian mediation, considering what humanitarian mediation is in practice, how it differs from humanitarian negotiations and the ethical implications.
In this episode of Talking Humanitarianism, Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council shares his experiences with humanitarian negotiations, particularly in Afghanistan and Syria.
Paper
This NCHS paper examines the implications of tacit engagement in humanitarian negotiations through the lens of two prevalent ethical challenges faced by humanitarian practitioners: (1) risk transfer and (2) the ability to push back on unreasonable demands from interlocutors.