Read the room: legal and emotional literacy in frontline humanitarian negotiations

Sutton, R. (2023) Read the room: legal and emotional literacy in frontline humanitarian negotiations. In: Krieger, H., Kalmanovitz, P., Lieblich, E. and Mignot-Mahdavi, R. (eds.) Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, Volume 24 (2021). T.M.C. Asser Press: The Hague, pp. 103-139. ISBN 9789462655584 (doi: 10.1007/978-94-6265-559-1_4)

Abstract

This chapter engages with law and emotions in frontline humanitarian negotiations with armed groups, illustrating how international humanitarian law (IHL) functions in the hands of different actors. Drawing on fieldwork from the Central African Republic and Southeast Asia, as well as practitioner-oriented negotiations literature, the chapter explores the legal and emotional literacy of humanitarian negotiators. Showcasing (and critiquing) the objective/subjective divide that pervades the literature, the discussion takes law and emotions in turn. The first part establishes that law is treated mainly as a tool, yet few clues are given as to how and why law might be deployed. A tension also materialises around whether IHL is itself ‘negotiable’, leaving humanitarian negotiators to navigate this conundrum—and law’s indeterminacy more generally—with little guidance. The second part demonstrates that emotions are overlooked and misunderstood in the literature. Emotions are presented as reason’s opposite, making it easy to side-line them and to call for their suppression. The thin and largely ambivalent treatment of emotions is of little help to humanitarian negotiators who, in practice, must contend with emotions at every turn. The central claim advanced is that, even as the legal and affective dimensions of humanitarian negotiations remain undertheorised, a heavy burden is imposed on humanitarians to discern what each negotiation encounter demands of law and of human feelings. This matters for IHL and it also has material consequences: those humanitarian negotiators who are unable to ‘read the room’ may find their attempts to persuade armed groups thwarted.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sutton, Dr Rebecca
• Authors: Sutton, R.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Law
• Publisher: T.M.C. Asser Press
• ISSN: 1389-1359
• ISBN: 9789462655584
• Published Online: 01 January 2023