BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

FROM PASSIVE AID TO PRAGMATISM: HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY IN THE ROHINGYA CRISIS

Author: Nazmul Arifeen, Rubiat Aforze Raka

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2018v39n3a1

ABSTRACT

The ideas espoused in ‘diplomacy’ inherently contradict what ‘humanitarianism’ entails, if one goes by the realist or neoliberal institutionalist schools in international relations. They contend that states, whose primary concerns are to maximize power or security in an anarchic international system, cannot have the indulgence to be humanitarian, theoretically speaking at the very least. Nonetheless, humanitarian diplomacy has been instrumental in resolving intractable conflicts and severe crises that states and the United Nations (UN) were unable to fix. This paper explores why the idea of humanitarian diplomacy has not caught on by focusing on its tension with state-centrism, legal weaknesses and the problem of politicization by powerful states. An evolving and thriving praxis of humanitarianism is, then, discussed as the international community strives to ameliorate human sufferings. Despite tensions arising mostly out of how humanitarian diplomacy has been (ab)used by powerful states, the paper traces new trends where states are shifting their focus from passive aid to pragmatism. Based on a case study of humanitarian diplomacy in the Rohingya crisis, the paper offers some evidence on how states utilize humanitarian diplomatic instruments.