Article

Humanitarian and military action in armed conflict : side by side, not hand in hand

Torris Jaeger

• Nordic journal of international law, Vol. 78, no. 4, 2009, p. 567-579

English

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Access to populations in need is based on trust by parties to a conflict that this access is intended and used exclusively for humanitarian purposes. This imposes restrictions on humanitarian actors not to engage in non-humanitarian activties and non-humanitarian actors not to engage in humanitarian activities. Only where there is no civil alternative and needs are real and critical can assistance be provided by e.g., military actors, if this assistance is provided without discrimination on a needs first and only basis. This requires that assistance is not used to achieve non-humanitarian purposes, i.e., to win consent, gather intelligence, and so on.