Achieving Civil-Military Unity of Effort in Conflict Prevention and/or Humanitarian assistance/ Disaster Response Operations

Achieving civil-military unity of effort in conflict prevention and/or humanitarian assistance/ disaster response operations

The righteous civil-military unity is crucial to the protection of humanitarian principles, and thus, ascertaining an effectual humanitarian response. Nevertheless, in the late years, it has underwent numerous key and frequently interrelated challenges, counting in the progressively more incorporated global intercessions in conflict-affected and fragile states, the development in the scale and frequency of natural catastrophes and the swift and escalating propagation of humanitarian actors, counting in, the private sector, the not-for-profit organizations, and the NGOs. In spite of the fact that the militaries and the humanitarian organizations operate progressively more in similar settings, there is a constrained appraisal in the current literature regarding the way their association works, when it comes down to it. There is particularly, petty study available regarding the way the association has been impacted, in terms of the operation, by the varying disposition of the conflicts and the progression of increasingly incorporated approaches to the global intercessions. To a certain extent, the arguments regarding the civil-military unity have been apt to focus on the intangible problems and have been mainly dealt with the issues of principle, having lesser debate and analysis regarding the way the association works on a practical level, and more significantly, on the way this association effects the humanitarian consequences for populaces, looking forward to the humanitarian protection and assistance.

The rise of military engagement in humanitarian action

The responsibility of international or foreign militaries in the delivery of humanitarian support is not a novel trend. The involvement of military actors in the humanitarian act is deep rooted into history, as it is demonstrated in the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and 1935-36 Abyssinian Crisis. Nonetheless, what is novel is the goal or purpose reinforcing this involvement and the scope and nature of the military engagement. The main driver of military involvement in the humanitarian action has perhaps been the progression of across-the-board global intercessions in the context of conflicts and crisis, and their varying disposition. Specifically, throughout the past ten years, intercessions have become classified by the stabilization or comprehensive strategies which have overtly tended to merge military and humanitarian spheres together with others, according to a political, over-arching aim. In the compass of this rubric, the military forces have progressively embarked on a variety of humanitarian measures themselves for the order of achieving tactical or strategic goals. The two of these trends challenge the current frameworks of civil-military unity in the humanitarian realms (Wilder, 2009).

The involvement of military in the humanitarian activities in not confined to the contexts of conflicts only. The involvement of foreign military in the effort for relief has significantly escalated in the past ten years, as in natural disasters as well. Several Western regimes, since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, have implemented their respective militaries for supporting the states impacted by the natural catastrophes like extreme weather conditions, tsunamis, floods, and ...