In this report, Southern Responses to Displacement PI, Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, offers a critical reflection on humanitarianism under siege, in which the framing of “siege” is not treated as a temporary condition or even a military tactic, but rather as a governance model. This framing prompts a shift from the narrative of “how to deliver aid in siege conditions” to “how siege has become the architecture of political order” within which responses take place or are blocked.
Throughout the policy roundtable that this report draws and builds upon – convened by Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh in Doha (Qatar) at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, where she is CHS Senior Advisor and Non-Resident Fellow -, participants emphasised that delivering a response under siege will always fall short because siege is designed to create scarcity. In such a context, bureaucracy (permits, checkpoints, coordination procedures) can be recognised as serving as a weapon rather than just being an element of hindrance. In essence, as the participants and the broader literature attest, bureaucracy is a deliberate instrument of punishment and discipline.
The politicisation of aid takes place, amongst other things, through state regulation and internal compliance systems. Participants highlighted the paradox whereby the same administrative frameworks designed to ensure neutrality and accountability often reproduce the coercive logic of the systems they oppose. Non-governmental organisations (NGO) registration requirements by state parties to conflict, for example, frequently place staff at risk, forcing organisations to choose between compliance with registration requirements, and protection.
In turn, participants reflected that siege first and foremost affects residents of the territory under siege, but also humanitarian actors themselves, as they too are trapped within the same system of coercion and fear. As one participant explained, “In Yemen, political and rhetorical pressures by authorities created a situation where aid workers were effectively besieged: restricted, intimidated, and even arrested.”
Across contexts, humanitarian workers spoke of a life lived under continuous constraint where professional mandates are reshaped by security classifications, personal risk and psychological exhaustion. The humanitarian sector, it was argued, now lives under the same siege it aims to alleviate.
The protection needs of the residents of these territories must remain at the forefront and yet intersecting processes of besiegement, affecting residents and humanitarians alike, have led to the humanitarian system normalising and internalising siege conditions, to the extent that minimal access is celebrated and seen as a success, and mandates are adjusted to political rather than ethical red lines.
While reaffirming deep respect for humanitarian workers, the participants warned that debates in the system have been reduced to negotiating the logistics of aid delivery rather than addressing the political and legal structures enabling mass suffering. Setting the terms of negotiation, in essence by creating conditions under which “everyone becomes a logistician”, has led to “the absolute absence of discussion of the political creation of conditions to kill, including while accessing food.”
Indeed, the “crisis of expectation” risks eroding accountability, allowing states and donors alike to treat obstruction as a manageable constraint rather than a violation. Throughout the roundtable, the erosion of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the silence of enforcement mechanisms were identified as major enablers of this pattern. In such contexts, another participant noted, humanitarian agencies’ programmatic ambitions have been “humbled,” becoming not only minimal but “illusional” because they do not actually respond or provide protection to people living under siege. Indeed, the focus on operational metrics (e.g., numbers of aid trucks) risks obscuring the deeper political dynamics that underpin access, protection and humanitarian outcomes.
- This report thus takes as its starting point the politics of responding to displacement under siege, including: the politics of labelling, or avoiding public or official assertions of, warfare as siege, as well as
- the silencing of humanitarian actors as an explicit or implicit condition of being permitted access to besieged people.
These processes of labelling and silencing risk rendering humanitarian actors complicit with perpetrators on diverse levels.
In spite of a widespread sense that IHL and traditional moral hierarchies have lost their binding power in such contexts, roundtable participants shared a commitment to seeking avenues to hold states accountable to existing legal frameworks and to ensure that humanitarian responses uphold, rather than sacrifice, moral and ethical principles for the sake of access alone. This is urgent because, as one contributor argued, “The provision of humanitarian aid is not, and should not be, the end goal.”
On the one hand, violations are no longer perceived as exceptions but rather as expected features of conflict. As such, it was recognised that “protection frameworks are descriptive, not preventative,” in the words of one participant.
On the other hand, the expectation of the violation of international law and human rights must not lead either to a normalisation of violation, or to an abrogation of the responsibility to seek accountability, protection and justice.
Rather, it requires an enhanced commitment to hold perpetrators to account through diverse means and by diverse actors: from survivors to humanitarian practitioners, researchers and journalists, non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, as well as states and both regional and transregional organisations and networks.
In situations where people are subjected to siege and siege-like conditions, it is essential to develop a multi-scalar and truly multi-party approach to accountability: this is particularly essential when states have abdicated responsibility for prevention, protection or punishment, including, most notably, when they have failed to hold other states (as well as non-state actors) to account for perpetrating genocide and crimes against humanity. In this regard, one contributor maintained that: “We cannot simply think about improving access in isolation; we need mechanisms that enforce accountability to ensure parties respect their obligations.”…
Read the report here.
Southern Responses to Displacement 
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