Authors:
Prof. Lisa Eckenwiler | George Mason University | United States
Elyse Conde | University of the Philippines | Philippines
Matthew Hunt | McGill University | Canada
Isabel Munoz Beaulieu | McGill University | Canada
Lisa Schwarz | McMaster University | Canada
Humanitarian action aims to provide emergency relief to populations affected by crises. However, its history is associated with the logic of emergency and “an ethic of rescue”, what Slim calls the “expeditionary model” where outside experts rush to aid hapless victims for a discrete period, yet sometimes overlook longstanding injustices or adverse implications of their interventions. To the extent that humanitarianism is now linked to an imperial and (neo)colonial history, international humanitarian organizations grapple with inherent tensions. These tensions raise important ethical questions about humanitarian organizations’ roles and responsibilities as they (inevitably) approach closure of their projects. Here we offer a way of framing humanitarians’ responsibilities for project closure, a notion we describe as “an ethics of the temporary”. It calls for re-examining some of the key assumptions guiding humanitarian’s rescue ethics: ontological, epistemological, temporal, and ethical. Longstanding ethical concepts, principles, and frameworks (such as the Core Humanitarian Standard) are still needed for guidance in analyzing particular actions, practices and policies. Yet we offer the “ethics of the temporary” as an orienting ethical concept to help humanitarians frame and critically reflect upon their responsibilities at the outset of, during, and at the closure of projects, as these responsibilities relate to affected communities’ pasts, presents, and futures. After explaining the key assumptions guiding the notion, we offer examples of how it can enrich the analysis of what virtues (e.g., trustworthiness) and principles (e.g. procedural justice, sustainability, health equity) demand in specific circumstances.