They must be aware of both the background of the crisis and the factors that prevent its resolution. It should be the responsibility of each aid agency to encourage reflection, debate and vigilance among its field volunteers. Without this vigilance, they risk being drawn into ethical dilemmas of three major types. The first ethical dilemma is the humanitarian alibi. Aid can be a fig leaf for States lacking the political will to address the root causes of an emergency.
Relief is highly visible, low risk, and, compared with military intervention, cheap.
Aid workers may be used as tokens in games they only vaguely apprehend, and it takes courage to resist such manipulation. The dilemma lies in deciding whether to risk perpetuating an untenable situation, or to refuse to collaborate and risk losing access to a population in dire need. A recent example of this alibi phenomenon occurred in Bosnia. For the first two years of the conflict the Blue Helmets of the United Nations were mandated to protect aid convoys but not the civilian populations of threatened enclaves. A second example was the Rwandan crisis of 1994.