op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

standably dismayed by the time preempted from day-to-day
activities by high-profile cases, they were properly judged
according to the benefits of their large-scale interventions on
individuals. Public scrutiny helped identify ill-considered
policies and cases of poor judgment.
Yet freelance humanitarian action proved a mixed blessing
for the established organizations and for broader humanitarian
interests. Every undertaking by well-meaning individuals
and groups was not necessarily a contribution to the
cause. “The bitter lesson of the Bosnian conflict,” ICRC President
Cornelio Sommaruga observed in a conclusion that might
apply to the entire U.N. operation, is that “humanitarian work
can be neither negotiated nor conducted by politicians without
becoming ensnared in the issues that divide the parties to
the conflict.”
Too important to be left to the professionals, humanitarian
action was too demanding to be entrusted to amateurs. There
was no substitute for seasoned judgments by competent humanitarian
professionals. To the extent that other post-Cold
War conflicts also showcase humanitarian action, aid organizations
increasingly may face challenges in utilizing outpourings
of popular humanitarian concern while exercising their
own best and dispassionate judgment.
Nurturing Constituencies for the Long-Term
A new level of professionalism therefore requires support
from a more discerning constituency. That constituency showed
signs of schizophrenia about the plight of people in the former
Yugoslavia.
On the one hand, there was considerable support for a
major humanitarian effort to respond to the Yugoslav crisis.
U.N. organizations, donor governments, and NGOs alike
believed that their respective publics would tolerate nothing
less than their full-scale involvement in the crisis. Contributors
wanted to see agency personnel and vehicles, with logos
prominently displayed, distributing relief on the frontlines.
On the other hand, there was also a sense of futility.
“When you have these ethnic groups intent on killing each
other,” said one commentator on a North American talk show
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