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Civil War in El Salvador and the origins of rights-based humanitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2020

Kevin O’Sullivan
Kevin O’Sullivan*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Tower 1 Arts Concourse, National University of Ireland Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: kevin.k.osullivan@nuigalway.ie
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Abstract

This article traces the global humanitarian sector’s late twentieth-century embrace of human rights to the brutal civil conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s. Drawing on evidence from NGOs in three Anglophone states (Britain, Canada, and Ireland), it examines the moral and political debates that accompanied the breakthrough for human rights activism in that period, and how they conditioned contemporaneous understandings of ‘aid’. From that foundation, the article makes two claims. First, it argues that the ‘triumph’ of human rights in the late twentieth century was the product of a complex set of diplomatic, intellectual, and ideological factors that were of global, rather than simply of Western, origin. Second, by tracing what could and could not be done in the name of humanitarianism, the article brings us closer to understanding how even the most outwardly progressive vision of intervention was produced within a very specific – hierarchical and paternalistic – imagining of the Global South.

Keywords

Cold WarEl Salvadorhumanitarianismhuman rightsnon-governmental organizations
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 2021 , pp. 246 - 265
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Anna Bocking-Welch, Maria Cullen, Matthew Hilton, Heidi Tworek, three anonymous reviewers, and participants at the European Social Science History Conference at Queen’s University, Belfast (April 2018) for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. All errors and omissions are, of course, my own.

References

1 Daniel Laqua, ‘Inside the Humanitarian Cloud: Causes and Motivations to Help Friends and Strangers’, Journal of Modern European History 12, no. 2 (2014): 175–85. See also Amalia Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism: The Politics of Anti-Slavery Activism, 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013); Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Keith David Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015).

2 Daniel Maul, ‘The Politics of Neutrality: The American Friends Service Committee and the Spanish Civil War’, European Review of History 23, no. 1–2 (2016): 82–100.

3 Michael Barnett, ‘Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Practices of Humanity’, International Theory 10, no. 3 (2018), 315.

4 For an introduction to MSF and ‘activist humanitarianism’, see Eleanor Davey, Idealism Beyond Borders: The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Michal Givoni, ‘Beyond the Humanitarian/Political Divide: Witnessing and the Making of Humanitarian Ethics’, Journal of Human Rights 10, no. 1 (2011): 55–75; Claire Magone, Michaël Neuman, and Fabrice Weissman, eds., Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed: The MSF Experience (London: Hurst & Company, 2011); and Bertrand Taithe, ‘Reinventing (French) Universalism: Religion, Humanitarianism and the “French Doctors”’, Modern & Contemporary France 12, no. 2 (2004): 147–58.

5 See Michael Barnett, ‘Humanitarianism Transformed’, Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 4 (2005): 723–40; David G. Chandler, ‘The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How Human Rights NGOs Shaped a New Humanitarian Agenda’, Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 3 (2001): 678–700; Fiona Fox, ‘New Humanitarianism: Does It Provide a Moral Banner for the 21st Century?’ Disasters 25, no. 4 (2001): 275–89; Stuart Gordon and Antonio Donini, ‘Romancing Principles and Human Rights: Are Humanitarian Principles Salvageable?’, International Review of the Red Cross 97, vol. 897–898 (2016): 77–109; and Bronwyn Leebaw, ‘The Politics of Impartial Activism: Humanitarianism and Human Rights’, Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 2 (2007): 223–39.

6 For an overview of this literature, see Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, ‘Human Rights and History’, Past & Present 232 (2016): 279–310; and Matthew Hilton, Emily Baughan, Eleanor Davey, Bronwen Everill, Kevin O’Sullivan, and Tehila Sasson, ‘History and Humanitarianism: A Conversation’, Past & Present 241 (2018): e1–e38.

7 See, for example, Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism, War, and Politics: Solferino to Syria and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

8 Steven L. B. Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 13. On this ‘global’ approach to the history of human rights, see also Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Patrick William Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies: Latin America and the Making of Global Human Rights Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Fabian Klose, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and Jessica Stites Mor, ed., Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

9 Hoffmann, ‘Human Rights and History’, 282. On the importance of the 1970s, see also Mark Philip Bradley, The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Jan Eckel, ‘The Rebirth of Politics from the Spirit of Morality: Explaining the Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s’, in The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, ed. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 226–59; Barbara J. Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Sarah B. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). On the post-Cold War approach, see Matthew Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs in Britain and Human Rights since 1945’, Humanity 3, no. 3 (2012): 449–72.

10 Meyer Brownstone, ‘1982: A Year of Discovery’, Inside Oxfam (Winter 1983).

11 Ibid .

12 Ibid .

13 For an overview, see Stites Mor, ed., Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity.

14 On the conflict in El Salvador, see Brian D’Haeseleer, The Salvadoran Crucible: The Failure of US Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979–1992 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2017); William LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).

15 Paul D. Almeida, Waves of Protest: Popular Struggle in El Salvador, 1925–2005 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 171.

16 Mitchell A. Seligson and Vincent McElhinny, ‘Low-Intensity Warfare, High-Intensity Death: The Demographic Impact of the Wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua’, Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 21, no. 42 (1996), 214.

17 ASESAH, ‘Global Programme of Community Humanitarian Aid in El Salvador: General Background, First Report, January 1st to May 31st, 1981’, Latin American Working Group archive, F463, 2004-016/009, file 63, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University, Toronto (hereafter cited as YUA LAWG).

18 Figure from an anonymous report titled ‘The Following Document was Prepared by Canadian Development Workers Who Recently Completed a Tour of Central America and Mexico’, April 1983, Canadian Council for International Cooperation archive, MG28, I367, vol. 71, file 19, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter cited as LAC CCIC).

19 For a view of these incidents from within the humanitarian sector, see Latin American Working Group, ‘Central American Refugees: The Crisis and the Context – A Report’, September 1982, YUA LAWG, F463, 2004-016/005, file 19.

20 See, for example, the claims in Oxfam-Canada, ‘Project Reports from Latin America: Salvadoran Refugees in Honduras’, no. 20, September 1981, LAC CCIC, MG28, I367, vol. 90, file 20; and C. J. Sharkey (British Embassy, Tegucigalpa) to M. Webb (FCO), 27 October 1981, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Overseas Development Department 28/452 (hereafter cited as TNA UK OD).

21 Joaquín M. Chavez, ‘AHR Roundtable: How Did the Civil War in El Salvador End?’, American Historical Review 125, no. 5 (2015), 1786.

22 For an introduction to liberation theology and its origins, see Lilian Calles Barger, The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Mark Engler, ‘Toward the “Rights of the Poor”: Human Rights in Liberation Theology’, Journal of Religious Ethics 28, no. 3 (2000): 339–65; Michael Löwy, The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America (London: Verso, 1996); Christopher Rowland, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Annegreth Schilling, ‘Between Context and Conflict: The “Boom” in Latin American Protestantism in the Ecumenical Movement (1955–75)’, Journal of Global History 12, no. 2 (2018): 274–93; and Christian Smith, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

23 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (London: SCM Press, 1988), 174.

24 Smith, Emergence of Liberation Theology, 227. On conscientization, see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Continuum, 1970).

25 On the broader Latin American context, see Alison J. Bruey, Bread, Justice, and Liberty: Grassroots Activism and Human Rights in Pinochet’s Chile (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2018); James N. Green, ‘Clerics, Exiles, and Academics: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1969–1974’, Latin American Politics and Society 45, no. 1 (2003): 87–117; Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies; Vania Markarian, ‘Uruguayan Exiles and Human Rights: From Transnational Activism to Transnational Politics, 1981–1984’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 64, no. 1 (2007): 111–40; and Jessica Stites Mor, ‘Introduction: Situating Transnational Solidarity Within Critical Human Rights Studies of Cold War Latin America’, in Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity, ed. Stites Mor, 3–20. On El Salvador, see Sharon Erickson Nepstad, ‘Creating Transnational Solidarity: The Use of Narrative in the US–Central America Peace Movement’, Mobilization: An International Journal 61 (2001): 21–36; Héctor Perla Jr, ‘Si Nicaragua venció, El Salvador vencerá: Central American Agency in the Creation of the US–Central American Peace and Solidarity Movement’, Latin American Research Review 43, no. 2 (2008): 136–58; and Héctor Perla and Susan Bibler Coutin, ‘Legacies and Origins of the 1980s US–Central American Sanctuary Movement’, Refuge 26, no. 1 (2009): 7–19.

26 ASESAH, ‘Global Programme of Community Humanitarian Aid in El Salvador’.

27 ‘Oxfam: Field Committee for Latin America – [meeting on] Friday, 27th April, 1979, at 11.00am’, Oxfam Archive, PRG/1/5/5, fol. 1, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (hereafter cited as Oxfam Archive).

28 Memo from Alonso Roberts to Kenneth Slack, ‘Possible DEC Appeal, El Salvador/Salvadoran Refugees’, 8 December 1981, Christian Aid Archive, CA4/G/4/1, Special Collections, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (hereafter cited as Christian Aid Archive).

29 J. B. (John) Ure (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), ‘Lord Hunt’s Enquiry on El Salvador’, 12 February 1982, TNA UK, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 99/1234 (hereafter cited as FCO).

30 Brian Maye, The Search for Justice: Trócaire, a History (Dublin: Veritas, 2010), 115.

31 Trócaire press release, 2 September 1981, National Archives of Ireland, Department of Foreign Affairs, 2011/39/1681 (hereafter cited as NAI DFA).

32 For a history of the North American sanctuary movement, see Susan Bibler Coutin, The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the US Sanctuary Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); Van Gosse, ‘“The North American Front”: Central American Solidarity in the Reagan Era’, in Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s, ed. Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker (London: Verso, 1988), 11–50; and Perla and Coutin, ‘Legacies and Origins’.

33 Robert Gardner (National Co-ordinator, Inter-Church Committee for World Development Education), circular letter to all Members of the Canadian Parliament, 27 October 1982, LAC CCIC, MG28, I367, vol. 71, file 19.

34 See Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Kevin O’Sullivan, Matthew Hilton, and Juliano Fiori, ‘Humanitarianisms in Context’, European Review of History 23, no. 1–2 (2016): 1–15; Johannes Paulmann, ‘Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid During the Twentieth Century’, Humanity 4, no. 2 (2013): 215–38; and Silvia Salvatici, A History of Humanitarianism, 1755–1989: In the Name of Others (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).

35 See, for example, Peter van Dam, ‘Moralizing Postcolonial Consumer Society: Fair Trade in the Netherlands, 1964–1997’, International Review of Social History 61, no. 2 (2017), 223–50; Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘The Search for Justice: NGOs in Britain and Ireland and the New International Economic Order, 1968–82’, Humanity 6, no. 1 (2015): 173–87; and Tehila Sasson, ‘Milking the Third World? Humanitarianism, Capitalism, and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott’, American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1196–1224.

36 See David P. Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

37 See Fabian Klose and Mijam Thulin, eds., Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); and Bruce Mazlish, The Idea of Humanity in a Global Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

38 Gerald Steinacher, Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11. On the relationship between humanitarianism and empire, see also Emily Baughan, ‘Rehabilitating an Empire: Humanitarian Collusion with the Colonial State During the Kenyan Emergency, ca. 1954–1960’, Journal of British Studies 59, no. 1 (2020): 57–79; Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism; Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines Across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Gregory Mann, From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Benedetta Rossi, From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, ‘Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research Agendas’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (2012): 729–47.

39 See Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Post-War Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Gill, Calculating Compassion; Jessica Reinisch, ed., ‘Relief in the Aftermath of War’, special issue of Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008): 371–551; and Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace.

40 See, for example, Stacey M. Robertson, ‘Marketing Social Justice: Lessons from Our Abolitionist Predecessors’, Moving the Social 57 (2017): 21–36.

41 On Romero, his career, and his death, see Matt Eisenbrandt, Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017).

42 Paul Reding, Catholic Bishop of Hamilton, Ontario, quoted in Jack Panozzo, ‘El Salvador: A Prophet Is Silenced but not His Witness to Justice’, Global Village Voice 4, no. 5 (May/June 1980).

43 Gutiérrez, Theology of Liberation, 173.

44 ‘Mindful of Our Absent Friends’, One World, July 1983.

45 David Joy, ‘Activities of British Charities in Central America’, 20 June 1985, TNA UK FCO, 99/2013.

46 See Peter Earnest Baltutis, ‘Forging the Link Between Faith and Development: The History of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, 1967–1982’ (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2012), chap. 4.

47 ‘Interview with Louise Casselman in Toronto by Janice Acton, June 29, 1993’, John Foster Papers, box 1, Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, York University, Toronto.

48 Luis Silva, ‘FENASTRAS [National Federation of Salvadoran Workers] Project’, May 1980, War on Want Papers, box 78, Special Collections, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

49 James Darcy, ‘Review of Oxfam’s Emergency and Conflict-Related Work in Mexico/Central America, 1979–1991’, Oxfam Archive, PRG/5/5/9, fol. 2.

50 Christian Aid, What a Year! Report on Financial Year 1st April 1979 to 31st March 1980 (London: Riverside Press, n.d. [1980?]), 9.

51 Moyn, Last Utopia, 145.

52 Bradley, World Reimagined; Dominique Clément, Human Rights in Canada: A History (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016); Eckel, ‘Rebirth of Politics’; Keys, Reclaiming American Virtue; Chris Moores, Civil Liberties and Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Moyn, Last Utopia.

53 John Witte Jr and Frank S. Alexander, eds., Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

54 Barnett, ‘Human Rights, Humanitarianism’, 318; Miriam Ticktin, ‘Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France’, American Ethnologist 33, no. 1 (2006), 39.

55 See Alison J. Bruey, ‘Transnational Concepts, Local Contexts: Solidarity at the Grassroots in Pinochet’s Chile’, in Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity, ed. Stites Mor, 120–42; Kim Christiaens, ‘Between Diplomacy and Solidarity: Western European Support Networks for Sandinista Nicaragua’, European Review of History 21, no. 4 (2014): 617–34; Green, ‘Clerics, Exiles, and Academics’; Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies; and Markarian, ‘Uruguayan Exiles and Human Rights’.

56 Vanessa Freije, ‘The “Emancipation of Media”: Latin American Advocacy for a New International Information Order in the 1970s’, Journal of Global History 14, no. 2 (2019): 301–20.

57 Perla, ‘Si Nicaragua venció, 142–3; and Héctor Perla Jr, ‘Central American Counterpublic Mobilization: Transnational Social Movement Opposition to Reagan’s Foreign Policy Toward Central America’, Latino Studies 11, no. 2 (2013), 184.

58 See YUA LAWG, F463, 2004-016/009, file 32.

59 Cynthia Thomson, ‘Trip Report: Toronto – June 25, 1981’, LAC CCIC, MG28, I367, vol. 78, file 17.

60 ‘Visit to Canada of Two Salvadorans with the Committee for Political Prisoners of El Salvador (COPPES), November 18 to 30 [1982]’, CCIC press release, LAC CCIC, MG28, I367, vol. 76, file 4.

61 See YUA LAWG F463, 2004-016/004, file 47.

62 Molly Todd, Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 116–17.

63 ‘Delegation to Honduras, January 18–24, 1982’, Oxfam-Canada press statement, Meyer Brownstone/Oxfam International Papers, box 3, file 9, Carleton University Special Collections, Ottawa.

64 Trócaire, ‘Report on Trócaire delegation visit to El Salvador’, undated (Aug. 1981), NAI DFA 2012/59/1312.

65 Ibid .

66 Hugo Slim, Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (London: Hurst & Company, 2015).

67 ‘Field Committee for Latin America, Charney Manor, Thursday, 7th July 1983, at 12.00 noon, to Friday, 8th July – Item 4, part v: Oxfam and human rights’, Oxfam Archive, PRG/1/5/7, fol. 1.

68 Daniel A. Bell and Joseph H. Carens, ‘The Ethical Dilemmas of International Human Rights and Humanitarian NGOs: Reflections on a Dialogue Between Practitioners and Theorists’, Human Rights Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2004), 319.

69 Bill Yates, ‘Central America Emergency’, memorandum to all Oxfam area directors, regional organizers, divisional heads, and departmental heads, 2 April 1982, Oxfam Archive, COM/2/5/11, fol. 3.

70 Letters to the Editor, Toronto Star, 18 March 1981.

71 See, for example, ‘The Reagan Visit’, Sunday Independent (Ireland), 27 May 1984.

72 Quoted in Paula Rodgers, The Charity Box Speaks Back: Profile of an Irish Aid Agency (Maynooth: Sociological Association of Ireland, 1996), 20.

73 Eckel, ‘Rebirth of Politics’, 258.

74 Tom Scott-Smith, ‘The Fetishism of Humanitarian Objects and the Management of Malnutrition in Emergencies’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 5 (2013), 914.

75 See, for example, the range of grievances listed in Rev. Philip Morgan (British Council of Churches) and Bishop James O’Brian (Catholic Commission for International Justice and Peace) to Lord Carrington (Foreign Secretary), 7 November 1980, Christian Aid Archive, CA3/LA/C/74.

76 ‘Project staff murdered’, Oxfam News, June–July 1981.

77 Clifford Bob, Rights as Weapons: Instruments of Conflict, Tools of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 3.

78 Paraphrased in ‘Call for NGO Aid to Refugees in Honduras’, The Newsletter (CCIC) 5, no. 5, January 1982. This recommendation was repeated in reports from the region: see, for example, ‘Report on Trip to Honduras by Suzanne Dudziak, May 3–May 20, 1982’, YUA LAWG, F463, 2004-016/005, file 17; ‘Central America Refugee Information Liaison Project’, n.d. [1982?], LAC CCIC, MG28, I367, vol. 71, file 19; and Oxfam press bulletin, February 1982, Oxfam Archive, CPN/4/4/2, fol. 3.

79 Bradley, World Reimagined, 145–8, 182–97. On the MSF principle of témoignage, see Davey, Idealism Beyond Borders. On MSF’s application of these ideals in Honduras, see Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 96-9; and the case study ‘Salvadoran Refugee Camps in Honduras 1988’, MSF Speaking Out, 1 April 2013, http://speakingout.msf.org/en/salvadoran-refugee-camps-in-honduras-1988.

80 ‘Minutes of the 380th Meeting of the Overseas Committee held on 11th February 1982 at 10.15 a.m.’, Save the Children Archive, SCF/A/4/1/2, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham (hereafter cited as Save the Children Archive).

81 ‘Minutes of the 339th Meeting of the Council held in Jebb House at 11.30 a.m. on Thursday, 4th March 1982’, Save the Children Archive, SCF/A/1/1/6.

82 ‘Minutes of the 371st Meeting of the Overseas Committee held on 14th May 1981, at 10.15 a.m.’, Save the Children Archive, SCF/A/4/11.

83 Darcy, ‘Review of Oxfam’s Emergency and Conflict-Related Work’, fol. 2.

84 ‘Field Committee for Latin America, Oxfam House, Thursday, 28th April, 1983, at 11.00am – Item 5: Report on the Field Staff Conference in Managua’, Oxfam Archive, PRG/1/5/7, fol. 1.

85 ‘Field Committee for Latin America, Charney Manor, Thursday, 7th July 1983, at 12.00 noon, to Friday, 8th July – Item 4, part v: Oxfam and Human Rights’, Oxfam Archive, PRG/1/5/7, fol. 1.

86 Maggie Black, A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam, the First 50 Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 247.

87 Oxfam/Pat Simmons, Words Into Action: Basic Rights and the Campaign Against World Poverty (Oxford: Oxfam, 1995).

88 Brownstone, ‘1982: A Year of Discovery’.

89 Fr Luis Hechanova (chairman of the Association of Major Religious Supervisors of Men in the Philippines), quoted in ‘Two Views on Life in Philippines, El Salvador’, Global Village Voice 8, no. 3 (Spring 1984).

90 ‘Question Six: What Can We Do to Help?’, Inside Oxfam, December 1985.

91 Quoted in ‘Irish Bishop to Probe Civil Rights in S.A.’, Irish Press, 24 February 1982.

92 Image available at http://www.pinterest.ie/pin/30047522486194050.

93 Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 3.

94 Chandler, ‘Road to Military Humanitarianism’, 693.

95 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 215–20.

96 Quoted in Oxfam press bulletin, February 1982, Oxfam Archive, CPN/4/4/2, fol. 3.

97 BiIl Yates, paraphrased in Oxfam letter to Members of the British House of Commons, 26 February 1982, Oxfam Archive, CPN/4/4/2, fol. 3.

98 Todd, Beyond Displacement, 114, 129–30. On the (mis)uses of the concept of victimhood, see also Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 215–20; and Slim, Humanitarian Ethics, 91.

99 Brownstone, ‘1982: A Year of Discovery’. On the concepts of empathy and solidarity, see also Sandra Lee Bartky, Sympathy and Solidarity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); Carol C. Gould, ‘Transnational Solidarities’, Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 1 (2007): 148–64; Hilary Sapire, ed., ‘Liberation Struggles, Exile and International Solidarity’, special issue of Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 2 (2009); and Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

100 Thörn, Anti-Apartheid, 208.

101 Brownstone, ‘1982: A Year of Discovery’.

102 Barnett, ‘Humanitarianism Transformed’, 733.

103 On the relationship between liberation theology and human rights, see Engler, ‘Toward the “Rights of the Poor”’.

104 On the link between neoliberalism and human rights, see Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (London: Verso, 2019); and Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).

105 Brownstone, ‘1982: A Year of Discovery’.

106 Tony Vaux, The Selfish Altruist: Relief Work in Famine and War (London: Earthscan Publications, 2001), 45.

107 Bruey, Bread, Justice, and Liberty; Burke, Decolonization; Green, ‘Clerics, Exiles, and Academics’; Jensen, Making of International Human Rights; Kelly, Sovereign Emergencies; Klose, Human Rights; Markarian, ‘Uruguayan Exiles and Human Rights’; Stites Mor, ed., Human Rights and Transnational Solidarity; and Perla, ‘Si Nicaragua venció’.