The Ethical Witness: The International Committee of the Red Cross

Abstract

How are we to understand the ethics of humanitarian organizations as they act as witnesses to situations of armed conflict? How do the ethics of a humanitarian organization influence its silence or speech with regard to particular situations of armed conflict? How is this silence or speech interpreted as a moral failure or a moral success of a humanitarian organization? These questions are central to my concern with the ethics and politics of humanitarianism. These questions have relevance to undertakings of humanitarian organizations in a historical sense during the period of the Second World War to the present day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.