Neutrality imperils aid organisations

Earlier this week, Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying it will comply with Israel’s requirements to share details of its Palestinian and international staff, “subject to clear parameters with staff safety at its core”.

In its statement, the humanitarian organisation noted that it was doing so, knowing that such information was being shared “in a context where 1,700 health staff have been killed, including 15 MSF workers, since October 2023.” The choice was between allowing Israel access to personal information regarding its staff, or cease operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.  Either option spells death. Should MSF risk its staff, or risk the lives of Palestinians in dire need of medical aid? The question points to the concept of neutrality, rather than choice. Humanitarian organisations are being forced to operate in colonial and genocidal realities, and expected to remain neutral in the process.

There is, however, no neutrality in coerced neutrality. A colonial entity committing genocide, and which has for decades been responsible for the deterioration of Palestinians’ basic human needs, cannot be trusted with shared personal information. Israel’s reasons are not neutral, yet it expects neutral compliance for humanitarian organisations. MSF’s choice – a coerced neutral stance in a genocidal context can only reap further repercussions on its staff, especially the Palestinians.

Neutrality for humanitarian organisations is not protecting the mission or the staff. MSF said it will continue “to seek dialogue with the Israeli authorities”, but did Israel dialogue before killing 1,700 humanitarian workers during the genocide? Seeking dialogue with Israel is a euphemism for accepting future collateral damage. MSF and other humanitarian organisations risk being perceived as accommodating the dictates of colonialism, as at some point collaboration, even if coerced, becomes inevitable.

The question is bigger than MSF’s acquiescence to Israeli demands, however. World leaders have been allowed to politicise humanitarian aid through their refusal of the neutrality they enforced upon humanitarian organisations. Donors have politicised aid, withholding funds depending upon political allegiances. Humanitarian aid has principally become a means of accommodating Israeli colonialism, and only secondary to that is actual humanitarian assistance made possible. Humanitarian organisations are not allowed a stance unless it is purportedly neutral; that is, falling in line with normalised colonial demands.

Humanitarian organisations are not just delivering aid; they have been forced to operate within colonial settings and adhere to colonial demands. As much as such organisations perform indispensable work, the neutrality clause forces a degree of complicity. There is no humanitarian aid without violence, and humanitarian organisations are not in a position to negotiate rights and conditions – funding, permission to operate and neutrality are restrictions that cannot be worked around.

Humanitarian organisations are not just grappling with restrictions placed upon their operations; they are operating in the same violent environment as their recipients. Israel’s genocide in Gaza explicitly made no distinction in its kill toll. Beneath the bombs, everyone was a target. Left without protection, is it not time that aid organisations abandon the neutrality clause in exchange for their own political realities?

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260127-neutrality-imperils-aid-organisations/