Two survivors are saved from a shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa in which 360 people died on October 3 2013. Flickr/Guardia Costiera. Some rights reserved. ‘We need more than a humanitarian response… We need political leadership and action,’ said Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, on 8 March 2016. Referring to the fact that “Europe is now seeing record numbers of refugees, and migrants, arriving on its shores”, Grandi stressed that “this emergency does not have to be crisis, it can be managed”.
Grandi, who was speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, did not mention to what extent, in recent years, the militarisation of migration and border controls has been explicitly bound with notions of humanitarianism. Nevertheless, I suspect he is aware that the current focus on both the securitarian and humanitarian sides of the phenomenon supports a complex logic of threat and benevolence that allows for a security-humanitarian response.
Unfortunately Grandi’s concern is not new. The problematic relationship between humanitarianism and politics was clearly stressed by Médecins Sans Frontières' James Orbinski when he delivered his Nobel Lecture 17 years ago. "Humanitarianism is not a tool to end war or to create peace", Orbinski said. "It is a citizen's response to political failure. It is an immediate, short term act that cannot erase the long term necessity of political responsibility".
