Selling the Distant Other:

Humanitarianism and ImageryEthical Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action

http://sites.tufts.edu/jha/archives/411
The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance
Field experience and current research on humanitarian action and policy

Accesat la 18.03.2013

On February 28, 2009 Leave a Comment In Denis Kennedy

Acknowledgements:
For their comments and feedback, the author would like to thank Mika Aaltola, Michael Barnett, Raymond
Duvall, Tony Nadler, and Saara Srm. Earlier iterations of this paper were presented at the Helsinki Seminar on
Humanitarianism in December 2007 and at the Luce Foundation funded workshop on Humanitarianism and
Religion at the American University in Cairo in June 2008.

Humanitarianism is now big business. On the television, in the newspaper, in the mail the
public face of the aid industry is never far away. This is a face which is quite literally a face, that of
the hungry child, helpless mother, homeless refugee. Through these faces, aid agencies sell
themselves and their missions; they use marketing techniques honed over the decades by businesses
and nonprofits. When we imagine humanitarianism indeed, when we think of much of the nonWestern world we imagine it through frames advanced by aid agencies and the mass media.
Though these images have evolved, this article demonstrates that the prevailing functions of
humanitarian images remain largely consistent. Why is this? How has the humanitarian project,
seemingly resting on so little goodwill towards others been transformed into a $10 billion a year
industry? What are the ethical implications?
This article investigates this integral relationship between humanitarian relief and imagery,
focusing in particular on the ways in which aid agencies produce and disseminate images of human
suffering. The focus is on fundraising images, those that aid agencies consciously employ with the
intention of raising money. The argument is two-fold. I suggest, first, that humanitarian actors
engage imagery as a means of bridging distance. This argument situates humanitarianism in relation
to a wider theoretical literature on proximity and assistance that maintains that people are less likely
to respond to aid victims who are far away. In other words, theory holds that physical distance is
inversely related to charitable inclinations. Humanitarian organizations use imagery to bridge
distance, to bring the distant victim to donor publics. This argument also links the contemporary rise
of global humanitarianism closely to the implementation of direct mail and media technologies. In
this sense, humanitarianisms expansion is strongly correlated with the expanded use of imagebased fundraising and consciousness-raising campaigns. Aid agencies have embraced new
technologies of imagery both to fuel operational expansion and to assure themselves of a measure of
functional independence.
The second argument is related to the first. I argue that one of the results of these marketing
acts is the veritable commodification of suffering. Humanitarian fundraising appeals derive
emotional force through their reliance on human misery; suffering is, in this sense, one of the
principal currency earners for humanitarian organizations. Agencies use their moral and expert
authority to define and sell, through images, the humanitarian project. This endeavor is not without
its ethical perils. For one, fundraising images evoke and reproduce in unique ways what has been
called the humanitarian narrative: helpless victims are confronted by localized problems to which
only the aid organization in question can respond. Images thus reflect both the perceived identity of
the victim, and also the heroic and action-oriented self-conceptions of humanitarian organizations.
Moreover, they raise the specter of a fundamental humanitarian dilemma: if images of suffering are
a means towards a principled end the relief of suffering wherever it is, expressing solidarity with
Page - 1 - of 16

victims, providing human dignity they are also a powerful tool of social construction. The victim
of these fundraising pleas is, to borrow Agambens term, very much the image of bare life. When
victims are stripped of context and reduced to the most basic of rights, to pure animal emotions, they
become personless they lose their human dignity. The reliance on these images thus has
contradictory effects. On one hand, it facilitates principled action and consciousness raising. On the
other, it can discard that which is most human about the victim: autonomy, dignity, and context.
Victims have needs, not abilities.
This article situates itself within the growing literature on the political economy of relief. It
focuses in particular on ethical dilemmas raised by increased marketization. The funding
environment shapes opportunities for and forms of humanitarian action in various ways. Because
funding is far scarcer than needs, organizations scrounge for scarce resources; different agencies
inevitably compete for donor attention and funds. (1) The competition is not just among agencies; it
is also between agencies and a growing array of public and private sector firms targeting both a
piece of the pie and some of the moral consideration afforded to humanitarians. (2) Faced with this
competition, humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seek new ways of generating
capital. Aid organizations moral authority, accrued through their reputation for good works and
ethical other-centeredness, becomes a market advantage. (3) In an era of principled consumerism,
this is what gives aid agencies standing. Their expertise, acquired through years in the field and
specialization in relief and development, provides another source of authority. Agencies use this
moral and expert authority to act as interlocutors for what is happening on the ground. They engage
technologies of imagery to raise awareness of distant events, market the humanitarian project, and,
in part, construct the humanitarian imaginary.
I. Imagery and the Distant Other
The humanitarian task is not an easy one. Aid agencies must convince reluctant donor
publics to part with funds to assist distant strangers, otherwise out of sight, out of mind, and
unknowable. In what follows, I review the theoretical and philosophical literature on distance and
giving. Though scholars debate the extent to which distance should matter ethically, there is
considerable agreement that distance does, in practice, help determine charitable behavior, such that
an individual is more likely to help the neighbors child than he is to aid the distant stranger. The
reasons for this are multiple, and they all matter for aid agencies.
Imagery complicates this standard proximity claim. My argument is that technologies,
especially of imagery, have enabled large-scale humanitarianism precisely because they challenge
the notion of distance. This is embodied by Thomas Haskells concept of a recipe: humanitarian
images offer a specific sequence of steps we can take to alter the ordinary course of events. It is
further reflected by the empirical evidence: the growth of humanitarian organizations in the late 20th
century mirrors the rise of new advertising and communication technologies and flows from
organizations harnessing of these technologies to bridge distances, transporting the distant stranger
from the South to donor doorsteps.
Distance
To get to this point, we must better understand the relationship between proximity and
assistance, especially the ways in which distance and sight are intertwined. People are thought more
likely to aid physically close victims (4); as far back as Aristotle, distance has been tied to
compassion. For Aristotle, what mattered was proximity, be it geographic, age, character, habits, or
familial: you pity those you know. Diderot would later speculate that distance in space or time
weakened feelings of guilty conscience. Balzac, following Diderot, proposed an analogy between
the geographic distance of France and China and the sensorial deprivation of the blind distance is
equated with a lack of humanity. (5) Today, Deen Chatterjee writes, the vast majority of nonPage - 2 - of 16

philosophers believe that ties of community create special duties to aid. (6) Distance is geographic
(those we see), but also social (those we know) and cultural (or ethnic).
Should this be the case? Perhaps not. Peter Singer has most famously claimed that there is no
moral difference whether the person he helps is the neighbors child ten yards away or a nameless
Bengali 10,000 miles distant. (7) In his view, one should give until the marginal value of the next bit
would do equal good as famine relief and as an increment to ones available spending money. But
what people should do is not what they do: we all draw the line somewhere. As one scholar puts it,
what is morally right is not morally obligatory. (8) Even Singer freely admits to not doing all that he
could; in other words, everyone has their limits.
We must draw the line somewhere, and that means that there is clearly some difference
between the neighbors child and the distant starving stranger. This problematic is at the heart of
Thomas Haskells case of the starving stranger. He explains that, as he writes, he knows that
strangers are dying in Phnom Penh. He knows also that he could buy a plane ticket and save these
strangers. Thus his presence, sitting there, not acting, is a necessary condition for the strangers
death: Haskell is causally involved. So why does he not help? It is not for lack of ethical maxims.
But, he contends, most people are not hypocrites either. There are limits of moral responses, and
these limits are always drawn somewhere, a somewhere that falls short of much pain and suffering.
(9) Jonathan Benthall calls this a journalistic calculus. Donor publics consider two variables: first,
the number of victims; second, their proximity. (10)
This is a source of difficulty for aid agencies because the humanitarian subject is only rarely
the neighbors drowning child. Rather, the distant humanitarian event exists in a space of sensorial
deprivation from the West. As Benthall puts it, disasters do not existsave for the victimsunless
publicized by the media. In this sense the media actually constructs disasters. (11) The distant
humanitarian event is thus characterized, Judith Lichtenberg argues, by abstractness and physical
distance. It is abstract because we do not know names, faces, or anything personal. Indeed, other
peoples suffering is always abstract: it is hard to appreciate the pain of a friends backache, let
alone the hunger of distant peoples. Thus, when it is a question of distant strangers, it is simply
easier to ignore their suffering. Unlike the neighbors child, we can pretend that the distant stranger
is not dying. (12)
The humanitarian challenge, then, involves bridging this distance, making what is, in
Lichtenbergs formulation, absent, present. One way organizations accomplish this is through the
dissemination of images of humanitarian emergencies. Aid agencies launch media and advertising
pleas in which they communicate suffering, in a sense bringing the distant victim to the donor
publics doorsteps. They also attempt to harness existing media portrayals. Though this article
focuses only on images originating explicitly from aid agencies, these organizations are but one part
of a whole disaster industry.
Technology and recipes for intervention
In short, technologies of imagery enable humanitarian organizations to offer a recipe for
intervention. The concept of a recipe comes to us via Thomas Haskell. Haskell explains that our
feelings of responsibility for distant others, though not strong enough for most to hop on a plane to
save the stranger, are probably stronger today than before the airplane. What he is suggesting is that
technology can change the moral universe in which we live. By this, he means both technology as
high-tech, scientific and mechanical means of fulfilling tasks and also technology in a more basic
sense, as arts, skills, and crafts ways of doing things. In short, technology is defined as all means
of accomplishing our ends. It supplies us with new ways of acting at a distance and new ways of
influencing future events, and therefore new occasions for attributing moral culpability. Our feelings
of moral obligation can stay the same; all that changes is an expansion of the range of opportunities
available to us. (13)
Page - 3 - of 16

Haskell links the rise of humanitarianism to what he calls recipes, defined as specific
sequences of steps we can take to alter the ordinary course of events. He elaborates four
preconditions for the emergence of humanitarianism:
First and most obvious, we must adhere to ethical maxims that make helping strangers the
right thing to do A second precondition, also illustrated in the case of the starving
stranger, is that we must perceive ourselves to be causally involved in the evil event. Once
again, being causally involved does not mean that we regard ourselves as the cause but
only that we recognize our refusal to act as a necessary condition without which the evil
event would not occur. Along with this prerequisite goes the third. We cannot regard
ourselves as causally involved in anothers suffering unless we see a way to stop it. We must
perceive a causal connection We must, in short, have a technique, or recipe, for
intervening The fourth precondition is this: The recipes for intervention available to us
must be ones of sufficient ordinariness, familiarity, certainty of effect, and ease of operation
that our failure to use them would constitute a suspension of routine (14)
There are three take-away points here. First and foremost, a recipe implies that we are
causally implicated in the event taking place. Second, a recipe signifies the conditions of the
possible: we must be able to act, and, by acting, we must have a sense that we are acting
efficaciously. Third, a recipe refers also to the precise set of steps, or tactics, that must be taken to
intervene successfully. The recipe appears to function through the experience of moral obligation. If
we feel culpable, that we can make a difference, then we are no longer off the hook. (15) The
moral universe is altered.
Poza 1 lips
In the case of humanitarianism, technology, in the form of enhanced means for the rapid
dissemination of images, provides a remedy for minimizing distance. Largely as a result of
successful communication, Benthall explains, humanitarian agencies are able to attract support. He
writes that this communication shrinks the world. (16) Through the medium of the photograph the
viewer is drawn into the position of being witness to these distant events. In this way, suffering
becomes real to those who are elsewhere. Given that awareness is a factor in giving, technological
advances in telecommunications and transport mean the affluent are conscious as never before of the
condition of poor people around the world. (17) As in Haskells recipe, people increasingly feel
cognizant of and implicated in the plight of the distant other.
This image of Leila illustrates the recipe in one prominent humanitarian campaign. First,
we, the viewer, are causally implicated by the clear connection made between our action (donating
100F) and Leilas recovery. Second, we are confident of our own efficaciousness because we see
tangible proof of success. Finally, we have a precise and sufficiently ordinary set of steps to
follow: donate a modest amount of money to Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and empower them to
transform Leila in only three months.
Images in humanitarian action
Humanitarian organizations make a conscious effort to engage technologies of imagery to
bridge distance and attract support. Benthall writes that the only way out of the downward spiral of
giving towards causes is by finding new ways of using the media to inform the public. This is why
organizations like Oxfam advertise: to open hearts, open minds, and thus to open checkbooks. This
is also why Oxfam, Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF), Save the Children, World Vision, and others
work in a close relationship with the mass media. (18) By engaging imagery and employing media
techniques, aid agencies shrink the globe.
Page - 4 - of 16

Imagery is central to humanitarian campaigns, in part because of the power of a wellconstructed photo. Susan Sontag argues that a photograph has a deeper bite than television because
it freeze-frames memory its basic unit is the single image, quick and compact. Photos, like that of
Leila above, are expected to arrest attention, to startle and surprise. Indeed, the hunt for more
dramatic (as theyre often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the
normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and a source of
value. (19) From the earliest cognitive research, marketing studies have established that imageable
materials enjoy a memorial advantage. They may confer reality status and thus lend credibility or
urgency to otherwise vague or unbelievable arguments. They can also draw attention to
communication, especially in a competitive informational environment. (20) The emaciated face of
Leila both draws attention the juxtaposition of images is formidable and lends urgency: act now,
before it is too late. As one humanitarian puts it: We are gripped to see them [images], one
moment, from a magma of emotions that one cannot describe, and we feel immense commiseration
for them if the montage is successful. It is then that the West wants to do something to stop this
death (21)
This said, images of suffering do not in and of themselves logically compel a response.
People must be taught to act. Compassion must be translated into action, otherwise it withers. (22)
This is why appeals to donors tug on heartstrings and aim to convince them that they can help make
a difference through the particular aid organization making the sales pitch. ACF intended its
Leila campaign to show that hunger is not a fatality, that an association like Action Contre la
Faim has the means to save the life of malnourished people on a shoestring. (23) Again, this is a
lesson of the recipe: to act, one must be convinced of ones efficaciousness. Advertisements
empower the aid organization as the legitimate intervener, the one with the recipe.
These findings the ability of communication technologies to mediate distance, the power of
images to mobilize a response explain in part the tremendous growth of aid agencies in recent
decades. The rise of humanitarianism in this period parallels innovations in the use of direct mail,
advertising posters, and television. NGOs needed funds to fuel mission expansion and to accomplish
their ethical mandates. They turned to professional fundraising through direct mail and other
campaigns. (24)
Consider Mdecins Sans Frontires: it was through advertising that they secured operational
independence and formed a public image. In 1976 MSF launched a billboard and poster campaign
featuring the photo of a Lebanese child behind the bars of his cradle, as if imprisoned by his own
inability to act. The message: MSF in their waiting room, two billion men. The subtext: MSF
has a recipe for stopping suffering, but only if you contribute. The campaign was unprecedented in
France; MSF biographer Anne Vallaeys writes that it linked the organization and the image in the
minds of the public. (25) The organization turned next to direct mail; their first mailing was
accompanied by a strong image of a young Ugandan and story. By the late 1980s, buoyed by
these successes, fundraising had become systematic and large-scale. The organization had
developed thanks to these image-based ad appeals. (26) MSF was not alone: Oxfam was also a
pioneer in the use of direct mail fundraising. (27) Today, Oxfam launches high profile national and
international campaigns targeting politicians, media, and supporters. For Oxfam, for MSF, and for
others, image-based advertising was a powerful means of bridging distances, informing the public,
and ensuring a sufficient funding base.
II. Imagery and the Ethics of Representation
Images are never unproblematic. Even as they raise awareness and replenish the coffers of
aid organizations, they raise acute ethical questions. The image, like other forms of communication,
necessarily excludes actors and truths while also concealing a particular point of view. The image
producers and distributors wield a power of social construction over who or that which is
Page - 5 - of 16

represented, and also how it is represented. This power to define the real, to construct the mental
frames through which publics view these distant events, is derived in part from aid agencies moral
and expert authority (28) but this power is never total: images can take on lives of their own after
publication. This can lead to further complications.
My concern in this section is with the darker side of humanitarian imagery. Pictures of
victims sell humanitarianism in ways that are potentially beneficial: they mediate distance, confront
people with uncomfortable facts, and help bankroll intervention. At the same time, these images
have powerful side effects: they sell suffering in ethically questionable ways, they perpetuate a
humanitarian narrative in which Western aid organizations are empowered to act on and for
helpless Southerners, and they fundamentally challenge basic humanitarian principles of
humanity. The fundraising explosion has been funded on the basis of the suffering of others. As, one
scholar asks, what is there, post-Cold War, besides human misery upon which to base fundraising
appeals? (29) For Costas Douzinas, undifferentiated pain and suffering has become the universal
currency of the South and pity the global response of the North. (30)
Selling pain and suffering are central to humanitarian fundraising. This is not
straightforward. Elaine Scarry, notably, has theorized that extreme forms of pain are actually
inexpressible. She explains that if to have pain is to have certainty, to hear about anothers is to
experience doubt: one cannot understand anothers pain as pain, only as description. The options for
expressing pain are thus limited to a range of visual practices that can only ever point to some trace,
to some visible cause that might indicate pain in another, such as the emaciation of starvation, torn
and bleeding bodies in war, or the contorted face of a prisoner at Abu Graib. This doubt in the
spoken word drives us to visualize correlative expressions of pain (or suffering), rather than pain
itself. (31)
The image speaks pain in ways that language, for Scarry, cannot. Imperfect though it is, it
forms our dominant medium of access to the pain of the other. Images of humanitarian events
articulate pain, often shocking or unsettling the viewer. Sontag explains that in a culture of
consumption, to ask that images be jarring, clamorous, eye-opening seems like elementary realism
as well as good business sense How else to make a dent when there is incessant exposure to
images, and overexposure to a handful of images seen again and again? (32) The image of the body
in pain animates and makes possible a whole host of political activities; it has long been recognized
that vision has the power to motivate and persuade. (33) Many of these practices, including
humanitarianism, rely on the techno-logic of the visual to validate their respective projects.
Humanitarianism appropriates others bodies through photography and objectifies them toward the
service of particular kinds of policies. Thus, for Scarry, Amnesty Internationals ability to bring
about the cessation of torture depends centrally on its ability to communicate the reality of physical
pain to those who are not themselves in pain. (34) Analogously, we could say that
humanitarianisms ability to care for distant strangers rests on communicating suffering and want to
those who are relatively free from this state.
Beyond communicating pain and want, humanitarian advertisements are also transferring
guilt: the pleading eyes of the hungry child implore us to do our part. Benthall writes that the early
Oxfam advertisements in the 1960s varied between playing on compassion and on guilt. Appeals to
guilt, Benthall writes, quoting one fundraiser, are more effective for recruiting new donors. This
appears to be a common perception:
The account manager [of the United Nations Association in London] was quoted in the press
as saying: We have tried to make advertisements far more positive, and to get away from the
usual starving baby image But no one dipped their hands into their pockets. The only
thing that does it is guilt: you have to shock people. On similar lines, the chief executive of a
major British NGO has been heard in private to comment sardonically, and only halfseriously, that it is mainly a safety-valve for the guilt of the middle classes. (35)
Marketing studies have arrived at similar conclusions, though with the precaution: guilt may
also lead to anger. (36)
Page - 6 - of 16

Humanitarian images express the painful reality on the ground: many agencies feel an ethical
duty to express what they see, as vividly as they are able. (37) This reality, however, is necessarily
partial and particular: for each story of acute malnutrition or crisis there is a more day to day reality
of development, assistance, struggle, and resistance. Humanitarian organizations use abject images
because they are effective to accomplish specific goals of raising awareness and funds. In short,
suffering sells, and guilt compels.
The humanitarian dilemma
Images of suffering are a means towards a set of humanitarian ends, especially the relief of
suffering. Humanitarians propose to help suffering wherever it is, show solidarity with victims, and
provide human dignity, even in crisis situations where dignity seems impossible. The dilemma is
that the means to accomplish these ends fundraising, especially using images of suffering have
the potential to devalue the whole enterprise. The risk is that these images discard that which is most
human about the victim: autonomy, dignity, and individual specificity. When images appropriate
suffering, victimhood is abstracted to a level of universal anguishes and pure animal emotions and
victims reduced to the most basic of rights. The victims become personless without dignity. They
are reduced to bare life.
Poza 2 lips
The good news is that humanitarians are cognizant of the ambivalent effects of their
advertising appeals and reform-minded. What is permissible today is different than what was
standard 25 years ago. This first phase of objectifying images was brought to a head by
advertisements such as Save the Childrens November 1981 poster depicting a helpless childs black
hand clasped by the fat, healthy hand of a white adult. These advertisements and the resultant selfcritique yielded reform. As the communications officer for a mid-sized American NGO told me,
images in the past were probably alarmist. His organization want[s] to be sensitive. Were not
showing suffering for its own sake, or trying to beat people over the head with it. But were also not
shying away from portraying the reality. (38) Similarly, a staffer for a British aid agency recounted
that his organization has put in place stringent guidelines on photography to help local field staff.
(39) In practice, this means that agencies are less likely to use photos that portray suffering in the
most explicit waysthough this practice has not totally disappeared. Children remain as much as
ever the face of humanitarianism, though this is increasingly a smiling or at least healthier face.
These developments are not entirely unproblematic, as I discuss in later sections, but they do testify
to nascent and very real processes of critique and reform.
Along these lines, in September 1991 Save the Children UK published Focus on Images,
which Benthall calls the most thorough set of guidelines for any agency to that date. (40) Similarly,
American organizations like CARE have Brand Standards to help coordinate and codify the use of
visuals. More recently, in November 2006 the General Assembly of European NGOs updated their
Code of Conduct on Images and Messages. The revised document admits that the reality of our
world today [is] that many of the images of extreme poverty and humanitarian distress are negative
and cannot be ignored; nonetheless, images and messages should seek to represent a complete
picture of both internal and external assistance and the partnership that often results between local
and international NGOs. (41) But can images represent a complete picture, if even that is
possible?
If images are still problematic, it is often not for lack of good intentions. The proliferation of
imaging codes indicates that aid agencies are cognizant of the darker side of imagery. They all draw
a line at some point. Still, fundamental (and perhaps intractable) problems endure: images need to
be visceral and immediate, lest they lead to blandness. For Benthall, healthy, happy children
reassure, they dont provoke. Aid agencies know that images need to challenge and elicit a strong
response, otherwise they fail. (42) Indeed, most of the images I cite appeared after the 1981
Page - 7 - of 16

publication of the first set of European NGO guidelines, which expounds on themes similar to those
in the 2006 document. I return to this topic in concluding.
Raising funds through atrocity images is a morally hazardous exercise. In spite of their
prudence, NGOs are always torn between the need to raise funds and the desire not to transform
their message into a mere commercial slogan. As Philippe Lvque of Mdecins du Monde (MDM)
has explained: We do not want to lower ourselves with certain fundraising practices (gadgets, eyecatching posters, humanitarian shows). But the fact is that they sometimes allow us to touch people
who, without that, would not have given. It is a fragile equilibrium. (43)
The challenges of imagery
Image-based advertising thus represents a balancing act for aid agencies. In what follows, I
focus on five related challenges that spring directly from this marketing. To identify these
challenges is not to imply that humanitarians are unaware or even malicious in their use of images
of suffering. Rather, it is to identify a set of issues that are endemic to the image. These
consequences may be reduced, but perhaps never fully escaped.
First, marketing images of suffering may contradict humanitarianisms ethic of humanity by
propagating what is often called, following Agamben, bare life. Humanity, in the words of one
prominent humanitarian, is that: Each person admits that the human being is worthwhile for what
he is, but equally for his symbol, as representative of the species itself. Humanitarianism, he
continues, is a relationship that links two human creatures. (44) This definition contains two
elements: one speaks to the relationship between two individuals, the humanitarian providing
dignity to each suffering person; the other element references a universal humanity that transcends
regional characteristics.
In the field, the individualized ethic of personal relationships may predominate. The media,
however, one humanitarian has noted, shows nothing of human relationships but reflections. (45)
The marketed image sheds much of the specificity of the relationship in favor of the universal. One
observer calls this anonymous corporeality: Generalities of bodies dead, wounded, starving,
diseased, and homelessare pressed against the television screen as mass articles. (46)
Humanitarian images focus on universal symbols women and children, suffering and
destructionto cut across boundaries of comprehension. That human beings have ethical
obligations to each other as such requires transcending kinship, nationality, and even acquaintance.
But such images deny the very particulars that make people something other than anonymous
bodies. These images do not dehumanize, as such, but humanize in a particular mode: a mere, bare,
naked, or minimal humanity is set up. (47)
Poza 3 lips
This is man, reduced to rights and needs. He appears without differentiation or distinction,
naked and simple. This is the man of the Rights of Man, someone without history, desires or needs,
an abstraction that has as little humanity as possible, since he has jettisoned all those traits and
qualities that build human identity. (48) In reducing humanity to the lowest common denominator,
images of want and suffering jettison the humanity of relationships, specificities, and experiences.
Universal man is suddenly not man after all.
Second, and related, advertising images subordinate the self to the physical body. The images
tend to portray bare life, or bodies, not qualified life, or political beings. The victim of the
humanitarian image is powerless, helpless, and innocent, defined not by agency or ability but rather
by vulnerability and deficiency. Children are crying or, as I have discussed, even smiling, but what
are they doing? Surprisingly often, very little the child of the advertisement is doing nothing
except stare at us with pleading eyes. He or she is filling his role. Thus, the humanitarian subject is
acted on; she cannot herself act or even speak because she is not qualified. This is illustrated by the
MSF tradition: Save lives: that is the mission of the global doctor. He is too busy feeding rice to
Page - 8 - of 16

hungry mouths to listen to what these mouths are saying The bodies he cares for are
disembodied. (49) In this sense and in this case, images may not distort but rather crystallize a
specific humanitarian problem. Barnett and Weiss explain that the danger of a generic focusing on
bodies is that history disappears, politics becomes amputated, and the individual withers. This is
particularly injurious to a humanitarianism that claims to desire to restore dignity to individuals, to
develop connections that dissolve boundaries, and to deepen cosmopolitanism. (50) MSF is aware of
this critique: followed to a letter, Brauman writes, the MSF philosophy strips human beings of their
specific identity, reducing them to their pain. (51)
This relates to what Scarry and Dauphine have said about inexpressibility of pain and
suffering: because pain cannot be adequately vocalized, those who wish to express pain must resort
to visual portrayals of the trace. This visual expression of pain translates into a politics of
representation that both flattens the experience of pain and appropriates it. Humanitarian images pull
from an iconography of universally recognizable symbols that stand in for pain: images of
starvation, broken skin, and the like. (52) In the image to the left, distended stomachs speak the
language of starvation and sickness, especially through its juxtaposition with consumption
and health. Smiling faces aside, the image is not pleasant. (53) Universal markers cannot speak to
the interiority or uniqueness of the individuals experience of suffering.
Third, images can be tyrannical. This is inscribed in the logic of the photograph. In Liisa
Malkkis view, images of refugees, such as those propagated by humanitarian organizations, silence
and take away the speech of refugees. There are more established institutional contexts and uses and
conventions for pictures of refugees than for their own narrative accounts. (54)
Following Malkki, we can enumerate three tyrannical properties of images: their wordless
nature, their partiality, and their function of mediation. First, images are wordless: the photo alone
speaks and we are left to assume. We rely on our usual mental frames. This is the case in the images
above: the minimal text is intended only to enhance the immediacy of the image. In other cases,
narratives might be provided, but as a general rule, lengthy elaboration is best left to other media
forms: photos do not make us understand they haunt. (55) Words fade into the background.
Second, images are partial: to photograph is to frame; to frame is to exclude. A photo never
represents the full reality of a situation because this violates its very logic. It can show only what is
present, and can reveal only what fits, or is staged to fit, in the limited rectangle of the lens.
Moreover, the image is not a transparency: it is there because someone selected it. Someone chose
to photograph the event; someone chose to publish a particular photo. Finally, images mediate: they
speak for the victim. The distant stranger has few means at his disposal for making his story known.
The aid agency intervenes as a privileged mediator; this is a powerful role. Only the image and the
emotional or physical state of the victim have been publicized. The voice is generally that of the aid
agency.
Fourth, images of suffering elicit powerful emotions in the viewer, but these emotions are not
always those that are desired. In short, images may have deleterious, if not pornographic,
tendencies. Sontag cautions that photos can backfire: viewing the horrors of war will not necessarily
make one anti-war. In fact, these images may actually convince the viewer of the justice of the
endeavor, align her with the cruelty of the perpetrator, or blunt her sensibilities. Morbid images can
also allure. This is an aspect of what has been called the pornography of pain: violence and
pleasure can come together in unanticipated ways. (56) For instance, overtly sexual references, such
as indecent nudity, rape, and coercion, often elicit excitement. The intention is to rouse passion
and anger through images and direct it towards the eradication of particular behaviors and the
alleviation of tragedies, but this can go wrong. In short, images and tales of suffering have great
voyeuristic and pornographic potential. (57)
Finally, humanitarian advertising images reinforce what has been called the humanitarian
narrative. Bodily pain and suffering are shepherded into specific narratives that justify
humanitarian ends. Images tell a story of suffering bodies and an aid organization with the means to
intervene. David Chandler calls the humanitarian narrative a moral fairy story. There are three
Page - 9 - of 16

components: first, the hapless victim in distress, portrayed through film of the worst cases in the
worst areas; second, the villain the non-Western government or authority, causing famine,
poverty, or violence through its corruption or incompetence; and third, the savior, the aid agency or
institution, an external agency whose interests are seen as inseparable from those of the deserving
victim. (58) In advertising images, the villain is often (but not always) naturalized or minimized.
Aid agency images are largely a two actor play. For Dauphine, the suffering of the other is emptied
of its immanence and reread back to us and by us in ways that work either to condemn or excuse
in any case, to explain the violent politics that caused the pain. (59) In other words, pain is
harvested in the service of a political agenda of intervention. Moreover, the very simplicity of the
narrative, where acts of violence are localized, abstracted from any wider conflict over political
aims, and the imposition of a good v. evil framework, risks dehumanizing all involved: it reduces
conflicts to a consequence of mans atavistic, bestial urges, narrating them as products of purely
local circumstances. (60) What is clear here is the social power of discourse: the agency is the one
who speaks, who writes a script which empowers its intervention.
Poza 4 lips
Images, such as the one here, reflect both the self-identity of the humanitarians and their
perception of the victims. The characterization of the humanitarian is that of the hero: in this folk
narrative, a glamorous image simply plays better. The photo of a doctor, Benthall writes, is more
effective than that of a sanitation engineer, even though in reality the least glamorous tasks are the
most common. (61) Images also reflect a grand vision of role of the [white] humanitarian doctors,
who have been variously described by practitioners as glorious mythical conquerors under the
immodest eye of camera and as taking part in an aristocracy of risk. (62) James Dawes explains
that in humanitarian work, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the desire to help others from the
desire to amplify the self, to distinguish altruism from narcissism. (63) On another level, these
images portray the heroic West, source of civilization, intervening in the South. (64) Humanity is
split into victim and rescuer.
As for the victim, the legitimacy of humanitarianism is connected to considering the other
as a human being. Humanitarians are seen as victim-centered, as advocates for the weak. However,
the repeated use of the language and imagery of the victim makes this exceptionally difficult it
strips of all human dignity the individual whom it is supposed to define. (65) Further, the almost
universal focus on women and children in positions of fragility reproduces particular social
hierarchies. In portraying the humanitarian subject as necessarily victimized, in speaking for this
victim, humanitarian images perpetuate a set of power relations where the victim is a passive
recipient of aid from the heroic aid organization. These images thus elaborate the humanitarian
narrative. More concerning still, there is evidence that these images, interacting with common media
portrayals, have been absorbed into the Western consciousness. Benthall cites an Oxfam and EEC
report on Images of Africa which found that negative images were reinforcing stereotypes in
schoolchildren of the doomed and helpless continent of Africa. (66)
There is a certain logic to this trope. As Xavier Emmanuelli asks, should the scenario not
always be identifiable, given that any representation relies on the public for recognition? It should
refer to themes the modern spectator will recognize. Indeed, marketing studies emphasize that the
best messages are simple and to the point. (67) As an official from World Vision put it: You cant
confuse the public with complex issues. Starving babies and droughts are something that people can
understand. But trying to explain corruption or aid abuses is not going to help our fundraising and
will only hamper our work. (68) The fragility of the base of public interest and support in
humanitarian action leads to a perceived need to amplify the gravity of the situation or selectively
report the worst aspects in order to arouse a sufficient awareness and action to raise a response.
There is the belief that we are more moved by acute crises than by chronic crises, and that images
must play to this. (69)
Page - 10 - of 16

III. Conclusions: Ethics, Imagery, and Technology

Humanitarianism is tied up with the image in ways that have not largely been explored. The
image is the mediator that brings donor publics and victims of crisis together. Agencies, together
with the media, in part construct the publics vision of the developing world. (70)
Humanitarianisms relationship with images is both symbiotic the image exists in the form it does
because of the efforts of the humanitarian; the humanitarian exists because of the power of the
image in manipulating affect and also parasitic dehumanization is a genuine concern; donor
fatigue is a risk.
I have argued that the humanitarian enterprise is characterized by acting at a distance.
Images, especially of suffering and want, serve a bridging function: organizations use them to
bolster outreach and fundraising campaigns. Contemporary humanitarianism is the result of
agencies employing advanced media technologies; this has enabled them to fundamentally alter the
moral universe by shrinking the globe, implicating people in others suffering, and offering
[themselves as] solutions. This is the notion of the recipe. And yet, there is a darker side to
fundraising imagery, namely, the appropriation and commodification of suffering: humanitarians
attempt to balance the scales between fundraising necessities and increased capacity for
intervention, on one hand, and ethics of representation, on the other.
A recurring element throughout this discussion has been the interplay between interests and
principles, especially so far as imagery is concerned. This is a preoccupation shared with works such
as Fiona Terrys Condemned to Repeat? and Cooley and Rons The NGO Scramble. (71) Both of
these studies draw centrally from the observation that the multi-faceted nature of aid organization
mandates can at times provoke conflicts between principles, especially when satisfying one task
compromises another. In much the same way, this article has demonstrated that the pursuit of
operational independence through image-based fundraising may mean exploiting images of
suffering, and thus reducing human dignity. Further, humanitarian impartiality can mean that all
humans are reduced to little other than their universal commonalities.
There are practical concerns, too. If humanitarianism is sold as a commodity, like detergent,
then people can get sick of it, as with any other product. NGO revenue expansion is only achieved
by means of marketing campaigns whose persistence Time magazine or the Readers Digest would
not be ashamed of, Benthall writes. (72) Whatever the term used compassion, donor, or appeal
fatigueall of these concepts are rooted in a concern that repeated motifs or long-lasting
emergencies sap public goodwill, that shock can become familiar or wear off. This is a
preoccupation shared by many in the field and evidenced by declining rates of return in advertising
campaigns. (73)
In spite of this, it is equally clear that aid agencies are concerned about their representative
practices, concerned to the point of debating and implementing codes on visual practices. I
mentioned earlier that the Assembly of European NGOs issued an updated Code of Conduct on
Images and Messages. This is an example of an initiative that originated in one national setting
Dchas, the Irish grouping of NGOs, led the effort and has spread to wider attention. So, could the
situation be any different? Can we conceive of humanitarianism without images or with different
images? Harrell-Bond cites an unnamed African refugee at an Oxford conference who asks: Why
not publicize our energy and our power to help ourselves? We talk about UNHCR and we talk
about NGOs, but we forget the refugees themselves. We forget the power they have to help
themselves. (74) Why not indeed? Harrell-Bond explains that the portrayal of this image of the
refugee would severely undermine the raison dtre of relief agencies: Who would give money to
refugees to help themselves? Humanitarian agencies are in a straitjacket with little else than human
misery upon which to base their appeals. (75) This question speaks volumes about the modern
humanitarian enterprise and the social hierarchies on which it rests. It is worth noting that even in
this citation, the refugee is nameless, as if one refugee is the same as any refugee.
Page - 11 - of 16

As previous quotes have indicated, these images are used because they get results. Shock
works. One might even ask whether it is ethical to sacrifice efficaciousness for a more
humanizing, but perhaps less successful, advertising campaign. There are competing incentives.
As Dauphine observes, it is difficult to question the ethics of imagery because images have the
capacity to animate important forms of political resistance, though there is no ethically pure way to
circulate them. (76) Indeed, is there such a thing as an ethically pure form of representation?
Perhaps not. James Dawes has studied narratives of suffering and argues that even in narrative, there
are acute risks of aestheticization and of taking voice from the victim (77). Text is not necessarily
an ethically pure option. Such is the complexity of the issue.
Still, even as we recognize that there are no ethically pure ways of communicating crisis (or
communicating anything), we can just as surely posit that there are better practices. There are
ways of portraying humanitarianism that avoid or at least minimize some of the power effects.
What is determinant is how techniques of representation are used. To return to an earlier point,
technology has an enormous capacity to alter the moral universe. Just as direct mail and visual
technologies have shrunk the world and heightened feelings of connectedness, future technological
advances may enable us to break out of this humanitarian dilemma by offering new, more nuanced
ways of portraying crisis and not just crisis. For instance, the Internet holds great potential for
humanitarian organizations to develop new types of moral appeals, and also for victims to express
for themselves their circumstances. Indigenous photography and User Generated Content are two
additional developments with the potential to alter the moral universe.
2 The absence of a name is notable here, especially given the generally critical nature of the
article in which the quote is found. Of the refugees cited in the article, one is quoted by name.
However, it is not enough that technology change; the ethical use of technology is contingent on
ethical practices. Technology is ambivalent: it can offer nuanced ways of portraying distant others,
but it can also enable new mechanisms of domination and control. It is not enough if new
technologies are used in new ways to fetishize suffering or exoticize the other. The Internet can
provide new means of conveying information, of linking peoples, and of appealing for assistance. It
can help us better visualize and know a place: articles can be backed with links, stories can be
supplemented with refugee narratives, a full array of photos can be used. At the same time,
depending on how Internet technology is used, it can simply magnify current practices. For instance,
CARE offers Virtual Field Trips. Thus, you can Journey with CARE to Guatemala in the
comfort of your computer chair, complete with guides (American students), photos, student journal
entries, and information on CAREs mission. In one of the journals, the student guide writes:
Within minutes, we are zooming through the outskirts of Guatemala City, oohing and ahhing
over the lush terrain surrounding us. For the vast majority of us, this is our first time in Guatemala.
And we are not disappointed. (78) In this case, new technologies are used in familiar ways.
Guatemala is exoticized; American aid workers (and disaster tourists) are, again, the mediators. A
novel approach to technology might allow the Guatemalans, the recipients, to speak for themselves,
to take the photos, to write the journals.
This is the principle behind indigenous photography members of local communities should
be able to photograph themselves. What could be more ethical than, in a sense, giving the camera to
the beneficiary? Once again, much depends on how promising technologies are used. Along these
lines, D. J. Clark has argued that, in the cases he studies, the photographers ethnicity and local
knowledge does not actually impact the final images used. This is because it is not enough that
locals hold the camera: economic forces help shape the publication of photos (79). He or she who
chooses the image exercises a power over the message. Similarly, news media and the entertainment
industry have been challenged, even threatened, by User Generated Content (UGC). Much like
indigenous photography, UGC is produced locally and at the grassroots. It refers to publicly
available media content produced by end-users. This is one more way in which technological
advances have opened possibilities for novel forms of representation. That said, even here the trend
Page - 12 - of 16

in web and news media has been towards increased professionalization and the shepherding of
content in particular ways ways that are useful for the overall message and bottom line (80).
How then might better visual practices engage new technologies? I suggest we return to an
earlier assertion, that humanitarian images function to translate compassion into action. What is
compassion in this? Is it simply the shock of being confronted with an unpleasant reality and an
immediate, reflexive reaction? Is it, to return to a quote from Xavier Emmanuelli, that: We are
gripped to see them [images], one moment, from a magma of emotions that one cannot describe, and
we feel immense commiseration for them if the montage is successful. It is then that the West wants
to do something to stop this death (81) Is it that we see and we instinctively react? Or, are there
other ways of approaching compassion, other ways of mobilizing action around emotion? I suggest
we view compassion much as Juha Kpyl does, as bifold. On one hand, we have judgments of
the body that seem to manifest themselves rather spontaneously, and then there are more
complex and enduring forms of conditional compassion that include cognitive content that can be
rationally considered and deliberated. (82) Humanitarian advertisements that rely on reflex
reactions on judgments of the body translate compassion into action in certain ways, such as into
donations and into limited engagement with the distant other. We see, we react, and, often, we
forget. This approach views the public as a donor public. The publics action is limited to picking up
the phone or clicking the computer mouse. I suggest that aid agencies might instead emphasize the
more sustained form of compassion, cognitive compassion, by focusing on practices that both
compel and inform in deeper ways. This would entail a shift from viewing the public as a donor
public to viewing it instead as a civic, engaged humanitarian public. Might agencies then be able to
mobilize compassion for deeper, more fundamental engagements?
In short, despite good agency intentions as manifested in image codes and despite
changing technologies, representing distant others remains an ethically fraught terrain. For aid
agencies, the challenge seems to lie in developing ways of communicating that are urgent and
coherent, while allowing the recipient of aid to speak and act as qualified life. Technology offers the
potential to change the moral universe, but it is in the hands of the wielders of this technology to
implement critically aware practices.
References
(1) For more, see Stephen Hopgood, Saying No to Wal-Mart? Money and Morality in Professional
Humanitarianism, in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, ed. Michael Barnett and
Thomas G. Weiss (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). In the same volume, see also Craig Calhoun,
The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian
Action, and Michael Barnett and Thomas Weiss, Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present. See
also David Rieff, The Humanitarian Trap. World Policy Journal 12, no. 4 (1995/6): 1-12.These studies cite
humanitarianisms increased exposure to market forces, heightened competition among agencies, and the
changing needs of maturing and bureaucratizing organizations.
(2) In marketing literature, the rise of the ethical consumer is referred to as new consumerism. See Susan
Baker, New Consumer Marketing: Managing a Living Demand System (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003).
Corporations cultivate their image by donating to and engaging in popular causes. As Hopgood has put it,
corporate money can enter a previously hallowed space, legitimizing itself by claiming that allowing the
free play of market forces advances real freedom. (Hopgood, Saying No to Wal-Mart, 15.)
(3) Hopgood, Saying No to Wal-Mart. For a related and detailed argument on moral and expert authority
in the context of international organizations, see Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the
World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
(4) The victim remains distant in other ways: the example of the child is itself demonstrative of a certain
distance between empowered giver and helpless recipient.
(5) See Carlo Ginzburg, Killing a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance, Critical Inquiry
21, no. 1 (1994): 47-51. In short, the Western man can kill the Chinese mandarin and remain safe from both
opprobrium and guilt.

Page - 13 - of 16

(6) Deen K. Chatterjee, Introduction, in The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, ed.
Deen K. Chatterjee (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3.
(7) Peter Singer, Outsiders: our obligations to those beyond our borders, in Chatterjee, The Ethics of
Assistance, 11.
(8) Richard J. Arneson, Moral limits on the demands of beneficence? in Chatterjee, The Ethics of
Assistance, 51.
(9) Thomas Haskell, Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, American Historical
Review 90, no. 2 (1985): 354.
(10) Jonathan Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media (New York, NY: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1993), 8.
(11) Ibid., 27.
(12) Judith Lichtenberg, Absence and the unfond heart: why people are less giving than they might be , in
Chatterjee, The Ethics of Assistance, 82-7.
(13) Haskell, Capitalism and the Origins, 354-6.
(14) Ibid., 357-8.
(15) Lichtenberg, Absence and the unfond heart, 90; F. M. Kamm, The new problem of distance in
morality, in Chatterjee, The Ethics of Assistance.
(16) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 6.
(17) Carrie A. Rentschler, Witnessing: US citizenship and the vicarious experience of suffering, Media,
Culture & Society 26, no. 2, 296-304; Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York, NY: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2003), 21; Lichtenberg Absence and the unfond heart, 76.
(18) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 39, 66, 167-8; Xavier Emmanuelli, Les Prdateurs de laction
humanitaire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), 194.
(19) Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 23.
(20) Philip J. Mazzocca and Timothy C. Brock, Understanding the Role of Mental Imagery in Persuasion: A
Cognitive Resources Model Analysis, in Creating Images and the Psychology of Marketing
Communication, ed. Lynn R. Kahle and Chung-Hyun Kim (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 2006),
65.
(21) Emmanuelli Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 243. All translations are my own.
(22) Rentschler, Witnessing, 300; Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 101.
(23) Action contre la Faim, 25 ans de lutte contre la faim: Ensemble, continuons le combat! (Action contre
la Faim, 2004),14.
(24) Jean-Luc Ferr, Laction humanitaire (Paris: Milan, 1995), 30; Benthall Disasters, Relief and the Media,
57.
(25) Anne Vallaeys 2004: 183-95; see also Benthall 1993: 128, Ferr 1995: 31.
(26) Vallaeys 2004, Mdecins Sans Frontires : la biographie (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 372-4; Olivier Weber,
French Doctors : Les 25 ans dpope des hommes et des femmes qui ont invent la mdecine humanitaire
(Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995), 178-9, 304-5. Catherine Ninin and Pierre-douard Deldique, Globe Doctors :
20 ans daventure humanitaire (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1991), 144.
(27) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 58.
(28) Marketing research indicates that credible sources are powerful. Credibility springs from expertise and
trustworthiness. See Glen G. Sparks, Media Effects Research: A Basic Overview (Toronto, ON: Wadsworth,
2002), 142. On the sources of moral and expert authority, see Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World.
Aid agencies have cultivated moral authority by claiming to represent universal values and by emphasizing
forms of duty-based ethics. They claim expert authority through their experience on the ground and through
specialization in relief work.
(29) Barbara Harrell-Bond, Humanitarianism in a Straitjacket, African Affairs 84, no. 334 (1985): 9.
(30) Costas Douzinas, The Many Faces of Humanitarianism, Parrhesia, no. 2 (2007): 19.
(31) Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 1985), 4-13; Elizabeth Dauphine, The Politics of the Body in Pain: Reading the Ethics of
Imagery, Security Dialogue 38, no. 2 (2007): 141.
(32) Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 23.
(33) For a historical view, see Karen Halttunen, Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in AngloAmerican Culture, American Historical Review 100, no. 2 (1995): 305-7.
(34) Scarry, The Body in Pain, 9; Dauphine, The Politics of the Body in Pain, 139-44.
(35) See Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 65. See also U. Chifolo, Le Miroir humanitaire : Retour

Page - 14 - of 16

de Somalie (Paris: LHarmattan, 1996), 73. Chifolo describes the emotionality of humanitarian appeals:
Information must always depend on sentiment, very little on reason. Its intellectual level must be at least as
low as the mass of people to touch is more numerous.
(36) Sparks, Media Effects Research, 144-5.
(37) From World Visions 1980 handbook: WVs programs and informational pieces are often emotional,
and theres a very good reason for that. The needs with which WV works are very emotional. It is difficult
for most of us to realize the extreme physical and spiritual needs of people thousands of miles away. But WV
field workers have been with these people, and have seen their desperate needs. When they report what they
see, it would be unethical for us not to relay the severity of the situation to concerned friends. (qtd. in
Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 158)
(38) Telephone interview with author, 6 December 2007.
(39) Electronic communication, 15 October 2008.
(40) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 177-85. For more on this critical reflection, see Bertrand
Taithe, Reinventing (French) universalism: religion, humanitarianism and the French doctors, Modern
and Contemporary France 12, no. 2 (2004), 153-4.
(41) European General Assembly of NGOs, Code of Conduct on Images and Messages (2006).
(42) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 177-87.
(43) Qtd. in Ferr, Laction humanitaire, 31. See also Benthall Disasters, Relief and the Media, 221.
(44) Emmanuelli, Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 239, 241. See also Rony Brauman, Contradictions
of Humanitarianism, in Social Insecurity: Alphabet City no. 7, ed. Len Guenther and Cornelius Heesters
(Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2000). Rony Brauman is a former MSF president. He defines humanity as
a plurality of beings. Humanitarianism, which passes itself off as the realization of feelings of humanity,
enters into conflict with the principle of humanity because it approaches human life as a homogenous totality
to be healed and treated. Clearly, there are those in the aid community who are well aware of the tensions
facing their endeavor.
(45) Emmanuelli, Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 241.
(46) Feldman, qtd. in Liisa H. Malkki, Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and
Dehistoricization, Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 3 (1996), 388.
(47) Malkki, Speechless Emissaries , 390; See also Calhoun, The Imperative to Reduce Suffering, and
Thomas Keenan, Humanism without Borders: A Dossier on the Human, Humanitarianism, and Human
Rights, in Guenther and Heesters, Social Insecurity.
(48) Douzinas, The Many Faces of Humanitarianism, 2.
(49) Alain Finkielkraut, qtd. in Barnett and Weiss, Humanitarianism.
(50) Barnett and Weiss, Humanitarianism.
(51) Brauman, Contradictions of Humanitarianism, 47-8.
(52) Dauphine, The Politics of the Body in Pain, 142.
(53) Are smiling faces any less problematic? There is something jarring about this photograph of sick,
starving children smiling, oblivious, as if only we can recognize their condition for what it is.
(54) Malkki, Speechless Emissaries, 386.
(55) Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 89; Malkki, Speechless Emissaries, 390.
(56) Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 8, 95-6; Halttunen, Humanitarianism and the Pornography of
Pain, 304, 325. See also Chifolo, Le Miroir humanitaire.
(57) Douzinas, The Many Faces of Humanitarianism, 17-8.
(58) David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention (London, UK:
Pluto Press, 2002), 36-7; Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 189.
(59) Dauphine, The Politics of the Body in Pain, 148.
(60) Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul, 37; Calhoun, The Imperative to Reduce Suffering.
(61) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 190.
(62) Ibid., 135, citing Xavier Emmanuelli and Bernard Kouchner, respectively.
(63) James Dawes, That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007), 122.
(64) Emmanuelli, Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 232; Chifolo, Le Miroir humanitaire, 93; Douzinas,
The Many Faces of Humanitarianism, 12. Emmanuelli is at once hailing the heroism of the mythical
conquerors while at the same time denouncing the general image of the Western intervener, which his
heroic analogy helps perpetuate.

Page - 15 - of 16

(65) Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul, 37.

(66) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 180; See also Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 71.
(67) Emmanuelli is not uncritical of this. Emmanuelli, Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 231. On
marketing literature, see Sparks, Media Effects Research, 143.
(68) Qtd. in Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat?: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithica, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2002), 231.
(69) Lichtenberg , Absence and the unfond heart, 87; Terry, Terry, Condemned to Repeat?, 230.
(70) Even as we interrogate humanitarianisms use of challenging images, we must recognize that they are in
turn only one part of a much larger disaster machine. Humanitarianism is fundamentally linked to wider
media structures, and, in the eyes of at least some in the aid industry, this relationship is integral and
inescapable. This is central to Bernard Kouchners la loi du tapage (the law of hype): journalists and
humanitarians are locked into a necessary partnership whereby they popularize misfortunes and make use of
feelings of remorse. See Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 133; See also Rieff, The Humanitarian
Trap, 7-8; Steven S. Ross, Humanitarian relief and the media: making the relationship more effective,
Humanitarian Exchange Magazine 27 (2004), http://www.odihpn.org/report.asp?id=2645 (accessed
November 20, 2007).
(71) Terry, Condemned to Repeat?; Alexander Cooley and James Ron, The NGO Scramble: Organizational
Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action, International Security 27, no. 1 (2002), 5-39.
(72) Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 39.
(73) See Harrell-Bond, Humanitarianism in a Straitjacket, 7. With respect to fundraising, by 1993, the
success rate for a cold mailing was only 1% (Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, 58).
(74) Qtd. in Harrell-Bond, Humanitarianism in a Straitjacket, 4.
(75) Ibid.
(76) Dauphine, The Politics of the Body in Pain, 148-9; see also Halttunen, Humanitarianism and the
Pornography of Pain, 330.
(77) Dawes, That the World May Know.
(78) See CARE, Journey with CARE to Guatemala: Virtual Field Trip,
http://www.care.org/vft/guatemala/index.asp (accessed November 15, 2007).
(79) D. J. Clark, The Production of a Contemporary Famine Image: The Image Economy, Indigenous
Photographers and the Case of Mekanic Philipos, Journal of International Development 16, no.5 (2004),
693-704.
(80) See Alfred Hermida and Neil Thurman, A Clash of Cultures: The Integration of User-Generated
Content within Professional Journalistic Frameworks at British Newspaper Websites, Journalism Practice 2,
no.3 (2008), 343-56. See also Zvi Reich, How Citizens Create News Stories: The news access problem
reversed, Journalism Studies 9, no.5 (2008), 739-58 and Tony Dokoupil, Revenge of the Experts,
Newsweek, 6 March 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/119091 (accessed February 7, 2009).
(81) Emmanuelli Les Prdateurs de laction humanitaire, 243.
(82) Juha Kpyl, Humanitarianism and the Politics of Emotions: Preliminary Steps Towards an Emotional
Framing of Humanitarianism(s) and World Order, Paper contributed to the World Conference on
Humanitarian Studies (1st), Groningen, Netherlands (2009, February).

Page - 16 - of 16