The Predicament of Humanitarianism

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti provoked a spectacular wave of humanitarianism, especially in the United States, where sympathy for the victims gave rise to the mobilization of a considerable amount of private donations as well as public resources. President Barack Obama solemnly declared less than forty-eight hours after the event that the Haitian people would not be “forsaken” or “forgotten.” Exhibiting what the New York Times then described as “one of the sharpest displays of emotion of his presidency,” Obama evoked the suffering they had endured “long before this tragedy” and announced he would commit five thousand troops, $100 million, and “more of the people, equipment and capabilities that can make the difference between life and death.”¹ Certainly, this empathy was a message sent to the nation: there was a remarkable contrast with his predecessor’s indifference to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. And obviously, this generosity was not exempt of international considerations: after the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq he had inherited, it was time to give the world a different image of the country. As he phrased it: “This is one of those moments that calls for American leadership.” Many people around the globe, and in Haiti, probably shared this view that for geographical as well as historical reasons, the United States should lead the emergency and reconstruction process on the devastated island. A few dissonant voices were heard, however, and four days later the French minister of international cooperation, backed by Doctors without Borders, bitterly complained about the difficulties encountered by non-US humanitarian workers, as priority was given to the arrival of US troops by airport authorities in Port-au-Prince: “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Alain Joyandet undiplomatically declared in reference to the role played by the United States in Haiti during the first half of the twentieth century. Trying to stop the polemic and regain the initiative, President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that he was supportive of the United States’ exceptional mobilization but proposed to convene an international conference of donors. In the competitive exhibition of compassion and solidarity, France did not want to be left behind its transatlantic rival.² After all, for better or for worse, Haiti is also part of the history and even the geography of France. Or more accurately, the present Haitian situation is a shared legacy of French colonial oppression and American imperial ambition.

Like the 1985 eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia, the 1998 Hurricane Mitch in Central America, the 2000 flood in Mozambique, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, and the 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Burma, to name only a few recent natural disasters, the 2010 Haitian earthquake belongs to a long list of catastrophes whose death toll has become part of our daily news. By the images and narratives we get through the media, these events leave their imprint on our tragic experience of the global vulnerability of contemporary societies. As Clifford Geertz remarked, “the suggestion that calamity, if great enough, or fecklessness if chronic enough, may put an end to the foundations of our collective existence, that beyond separate members society is mortal, is hardly a new idea,” as “ancient history collects instances, science fiction constructs narratives, the myth of all nations parade warning examples.”³ Yet, what is probably more of a novelty is the moral concern and the emotional move aroused by such events and, more specifically, the fact that they are generally directed toward others. This altruistic trend in the context of collective adversity is linked to our modernity. Indeed, it can be traced to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which greatly impressed the thinkers of the time from Kant to Rousseau and about which Theodor Adorno observed that it had sufficed to cure Voltaire of Leibniz’s theodicy.⁴ But what was then a literally extraordinary event has become an element of our everyday experience. We are used to the global spectacle of suffering and to the global display of assistance. Images of disasters, famines, and wars, of aid organizations and relief operations, have become familiar to us. They form the...