Has humanitarian space collapsed as a consequence of the Global War on Terror?

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Considering how difficult to keep the humanitarian space in the conflict on-going place, there is a widespread belief among academic scholars that indicates insecurity for humanitarian aid workers leads shrink of humanitarian space under the civil war situation. Although public interest and budget for humanitarian aid have been growing in the world post-9/11, and following this, humanitarian space has been widened at the same time. However, it has been argued that keeping humanitarian space is still not easy to achieve. Especially in the situation of civil war, number of humanitarian aid workers lost life incidentally. Indeed many analytic researches show the evidence that humanitarian space is not declining in total. Contrary some literature highlights that a humanitarian space in particular situation such as conflict must be reduced. Especially countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq where have been struggled with the conflict for several years, keeping humanitarian space has not been so successful. In this essay, it will be argued that why humanitarian organisation must to be faced to the risk of terror and what makes so difficult to keep the humanitarian space under on-going conflict. Despite the fact that humanitarian workers see that keeping humanitarian space in the war-ongoing place is difficult, it does not necessarily mean that they should stop their aid. They sometimes face the dilemma of making assistance along with military forces but it is unavoidable in such dangerous situation. I would like to argue that flexibility and taking balance of such dilemma are important for them to continue their humanitarian activities.

First of all, it is crucial to understand what exactly ‘Humanitarian space’ is, before discussing how...

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...n space. Approach for humanitarian space has been changed since the attack on 9.11 in the US, which was the trigger that the boundary of military force and NGOs to became obscured. Under such circumstance, NGOs have become to face the risk of terrorism. On the other hand, it is unavoidable NGOs to spread their activities without military forces in dangerous places, thus this dilemma causes vicious circle. Although terrorism prevents spreading humanitarian space, terrorism could be caused by several reasons such as misunderstanding of NGO activities, or bad national mood for particular nations where military/NGO workers comes from. It is still argumentative that whether humanitarian space is collapsed or not, however at very least the notion humanitarian space had changed after global war, and also the risk of terrorism can affect the activity of NGOs in micro level.

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