Who draws the line?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter demonstrates that international humanitarian actors take it upon themselves to assert distinction, in contexts in which international actors are encouraged to demolish boundaries and work together. Empirical findings from South Sudan reveal that safeguarding distinction involves managing the perceptions of an amorphous onlooker: the ‘phantom local’. This imagined local audience—which comprises armed actors, authorities, and beneficiaries—ultimately decides who is who amongst international actors. In the civil–military training spaces, humanitarian actors again emphasize the role of perceptions, and here they also extol the importance of IHL. Across these global sites, power struggles ensue as other international actors contest the vision of distinction that humanitarians promulgate. The exploration of the Intellectual realm focuses squarely on the figure of the humanitarian actor in IHL, examining the historical evolution of this figure and its treatment in the First Additional Protocol (AP I). It is argued that IHL projects a Red Cross fantasy, such that protections for humanitarian actors are grounded in a very particular vision of ‘humanitarianness’. This leaves other humanitarians with status anxiety, yet their efforts to emulate this vision serve to further entrench the Red Cross actor’s paradigmatic status.