HUMILIATED POPULATIONS IN CRISIS ZONES:
ISSUES FOR HUMANITARIAN ACTION
There has recently been a surge of interest in the role of
humiliation
and its impact in terms of violence and low
collective self-esteem
amongst populations in
conflict zones.
Humanitarian workers are becoming increasingly aware of these issues as they encounter growing resistance and rejection, misunderstanding and hostility at a time when rampant ‘anti-Western’ feeling is being re-kindled. This lack of communication can lead to aggressive behaviour towards humanitarian organisations, perceived as agents of the social crisis and therefore reinforcing the local populations’ sense of humiliation.
A conference organised in November 2007 by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN-RUIG) brought together the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the University of Geneva (Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science) and the Graduate Institute of International Studies. The debates defined the conditions in which feelings of humiliation are likely to occur in crisis zones.
The conference focused on the following questions:
- How can humanitarian workers manage collective feelings of hostility without exacerbating them and without becoming targets of the ambient hostility?
- How does humiliation manifest itself, and when does it lead to collective violence?
The findings were subsequently researched in further depth and published in a book under the direction of Philippe Cotter, expert on the sociology of violence, and Gilbert Holleufer, who analysed at Harvard the results of the ICRC’s survey People on War which first highlighted the issue of humiliated populations in conflict zones (translation in progress) 1.
1 COTTER Philippe et HOLLEUFER Gilbert, La vengeance des humiliés. Les révoltes du 21e siècle, Genève, Eclectica, 2008 (translation in progress); see also COTTER Philippe, Nazism, Terrorism and Serial Killers. Evil Unmasked, Geneva, 2007; www.eclectica.ch.
