People suspected of war crimes may preemptively target the perceived witnesses humanitarian workers. Information, opinion, condemnation on a given situation made at a faraway headquarters in Europe or North America can be relayed immediately and reacted to just as quickly, by combatants who often see field workers as spies. Humanitarian operations have become a key component of the international response to crises and even a substitute for political action. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said humanitarian involvement is too often a fig leaf, hiding a lack of political will to address the root causes of conflict. At times humanitarians work where governments consider it too risky to send better trained, better equipped and better protected peacekeepers.
Humanitarian action is frequently the lowest common denominator on which consensus can be reached.
But in such a situation, the growing risk of doing good threatens the very foundation of humanitarian work.