De-dehumanization: Practicing humanity

Abstract

The concept of humanity has been much discussed with respect to humanitarian work and international humanitarian law. There is today an idea of a single humanity, with each member equally valued beyond superficial differences in belief, nationality, ethnicity etc., and a global legal framework exists to prevent needless human suffering, including in war.

Dehumanization arises linguistically as the negation of a common, positive and mutually supportive humanity, though there is no single definition, and it certainly predates its opposite. Research indicates that dehumanization increases the risk of conflict/violence, increases the risk of abuses therein, and makes it harder to resolve conflict.

This paper gives an overview of how humanity is currently defined and used, notably by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as one Fundamental Principle of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and what dehumanization means especially in relation to conflict and violence. The paper then explores why and how dehumanization happens and the real-world harm that can result when it is espoused or tacitly condoned by those in positions of power. Finally, the paper examines how global legal frameworks and the principle of humanity, bolstered by impartiality, independence and neutrality, in particular as enacted by the ICRC, work to curb and push back against some of the worst harms that dehumanization can cause.

Introduction

Murder, enslavement, rape, torture, genocide: these are among the worst things that human beings do to other human beings. They are not new, as a long historical record from diverse peoples shows, and are frequently linked with war. They are more likely to go unchecked when perpetrated under the aegis of people in power. And they are often tied to an idea that the targets are not really human.

The concept of humanity has been much discussed with respect to humanitarian work and international humanitarian law (IHL). There is a powerful idea today of a global, common humanity, with each member of the species Homo sapiens being equally valued beyond differences like belief, nationality and ethnicity, and global legal frameworks do exist to prevent needless human suffering, including in armed conflict.

Dehumanization arises linguistically as the negation of such a common, mutually supportive and legally recognized humanity, though there is no single definition, and it certainly predates its opposite. Research indicates that dehumanization increases the risk of conflict and violence, increases the risk of abuses therein, and makes it harder to resolve conflict.

The first part of this paper gives an overview of how the concept of humanity is currently defined and used, notably by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as one Fundamental Principle of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement); what dehumanization means, especially in relation to conflict and violence; and the real-world harm that can result. The second part looks at why and how dehumanization happens, especially when overtly espoused or tacitly condoned by those in positions of power.¹ Finally, the third part examines how global legal frameworks, including IHL and the principles of humanity and impartiality, as enacted by the ICRC in particular as well as others in the Movement, curb and push back against some of the worst that dehumanization can do.

Understanding humanity and dehumanization

The human and humanity: A principle to practice

The idea of “humanity” is relatively new and has generated much discussion. With emerging philosophical ideas of a universal brotherhood (sic), and (perhaps ironically) a greater emphasis on the individual, ultimately came an idea of a single humankind – each member valued for their own intrinsic traits, but fundamentally one family.² In this paper, I suggest a practical concept of human/humanity; the principle of humanity then enjoins action to realize that concept and produce humane treatment. For the ICRC and the Movement, this practice of humanity is a Fundamental Principle.³ Though not adopted formally until 1965, it is at the root of the much older humanitarian movement and clearly calls for action to uphold the human being's fundamental worth. It is the driving force for everything that humanitarians in the Movement, and most of those outside it, do (see “Fundamental Principles” below).

In his seminal work Un souvenir de Solferino, Henry Dunant uses “humanity” (humanité) nine times, mainly in the last pages, which describe his idea to respond to the inhumanity he witnessed at Solferino in 1859.⁴ Recounting the horrors and butchery of the battle itself, Dunant tellingly describes men fighting as “ferocious beasts”,⁵ but he then details acts that affirm those creatures’ place in the human realm: working to preserve human life and recognizing the dignity of the humblest soldier suffering his wounds in silence; restoring the individual identities of the mass of men wounded and fallen on the battlefield; conveying messages to their loved ones far away and thus honouring and affirming their value within universal experiences of family and community.⁶

Dunant's “humanity” refers both to the group of all humans but also, more frequently, to the expectation, or even impulse, that calls humans to respond in the face of others’ pain. Some scholars break Dunant's dual meaning into human/humanity⁷ or humanity-humankind and humanity-sentiment.⁸ In each case, the latter meaning is key to understanding the principle of humanity; humanity-sentiment has also been termed “ethical behaviour”, the “kindness of humans”,⁹ which more clearly evokes action.

Humanity is also intrinsic to IHL¹⁰ and other widely accepted international norms: “As a principle, humanity implies an inherent worth and dignity of the person, and by extension, the right to life.” This, along with the “social and relational nature of human beings”,¹¹ informs the need for and fulfilment of the principle through IHL. As it prescribes the conduct of parties to conflict, IHL reflects a further understanding of humanity as “restraining the capacity for armed violence and limiting its effects on security and health”¹² (see “Legal Frameworks” below).

Another duality, placed already in the context of dehumanization, supports the influence of humanity elsewhere in international law. Alongside “a universal humanity” – effectively humanity-humankind – there is “a shared reciprocal humanness – … properties … such as rationality, morality, civility, etc. that characterize how humans are, and how they treat and should treat each other reciprocally in specifically human ways”. This entwined pair “has found public codification, most importantly in the various legal initiatives and declarations concerning human rights, crimes against humanity, etc.”¹³

From these discussions and further reflections below, I suggest that humanity in practice contains three elements, presented in Figure 1. The first “human being” element corresponds to humanity-humankind. The second element, which describes a unique and multifaceted individual with relationships to others, reflects humanity-sentiment and Pictet's “humanity” but is neutral in terms of behaviour: humans also do bad things to their fellow beings. Hence the need for the third element, which affirms a human's standing within the rules that divide acceptable from abhorrent actions and which a practice of humanity must also uphold.

Figure 1. Mapping the human – what humanity means in practice, including through the ICRC's work.

The boundaries of these elements are of course porous; each member of the species is also genetically unique, and there are traditions in family and community relationships that also confer functional recognition. Still, the three elements broadly reflect increasingly complex stages of human interaction: from simple physical existence (still requiring at least two other humans to be involved), to interactions with ever-wider social circles based on one's personality and abilities, to one's place in a larger, abstract structure built by and for humans but also distinct from any single person. The three elements comprise a single humanity as it should be practiced and as it can be reinforced, by humans toward other humans.¹⁴

Thinking big about the concept, it is easy to lose sight of the human bodies involved¹⁵ – which is all the more reason to address a very physical paradox. Maybe the bodies are so obvious that they can be taken for granted (or we think we have addressed them, including with rules for the dignified treatment of mortal remains), but having a human body, even one that eloquently expresses its personhood, may not be enough to be considered human today: many people are not treated as such if they cannot present an administrative form of identity.

Arendt saw that political entities confer the “right to have rights”,¹⁶ providing or endorsing an administrative identity. More recently, Phillips has stated that “[p]eople assert, rather than prove, their claims to be regarded as human”, elaborating on the evolution of “human” as a designation historically employed more to exclude than include, and which confers status.¹⁷ Furthermore, building on Arendt's work, “[t]hose who have lost their legal standing and political membership cannot make a claim to human rights based on their belonging to humanity only”.¹⁸

Identity documents of some kind have been used for millennia, though generally only to govern travel within or outside a government's domain.¹⁹ Today, however, they are indispensable to most people in daily life. To be recognized as human increasingly depends on a record external to the person seeking that recognition – a record that affirms or denies the person's right to have rights. Without it, the person's full humanity is suddenly suspect.

This is the case for many stateless people, for children and others whose birth was not registered or who lost papers in the chaos of conflict and flight, for people whose documentary identities are not or are no longer accepted by the authority at hand, and for families of missing people.²⁰ The ICRC meets such people regularly and sees the consequences. Without papers, it can be impossible to get an education, work, secure shelter, marry, demonstrate widowhood, claim inheritance, vote. Not being able to do such things – that is, not being fully recognized as a human being – endangers other aspects of identity, including just staying alive.

Lack or loss of civil documentation in Al-Hasakeh Governorate was reported as occurring in 100% of assessed communities (compared to 61% in 2020) and spread across all sub-districts to varying degrees.²¹

The increasing digitalization of birth registries, immigration records and identity documents themselves makes things even more complicated. Even if someone has physical documentation, it may be denied or its validity questioned if it doesn't match up with a digital database. Biometric IDs (while presenting other challenges) might solve that problem, linking administrative identity directly with a person's unique human body, but an authority still has to issue the document – to grant the status. Thus, again, we see the importance of action to make the concept of humanity a reality.

Approaching dehumanization

“Dehumanization” is, linguistically, a negative; perhaps because “humanity” also has many faces, there is no single understanding of the concept.²² My practical definition, relevant for the ICRC and the wider Movement, sees dehumanization as perceiving or acting as if someone is less than human, in violation of one or more elements of the model of humanity shown in Figure 1, and thereby causing or being more likely to inflict harm: see Figure 2.²³ This is informed by others’ approaches, which are worth a brief survey.

Figure 2. Dehumanization in a nutshell, with possible manifestations/indicators that the ICRC encounters in conflict.

One tension is between dehumanization as a psychological process (only) versus actions that are seen as dehumanizing and that cause or increase the risk of harm. Smith defines dehumanization precisely and uniquely as “conceiving of others as subhuman creatures” – attributing a “subhuman essence” to people.²⁴ This rigorously separates cause – dehumanizing belief – from harmful effects, whether words or other actions; this dehumanization is also distinct from other forms of derogation,²⁵ and more dangerous. Smith's theory is compelling but uniquely difficult to adopt in practice: how can we know what perceptions were at work when someone commits, encourages or tolerates specific harmful acts?²⁶ Nevertheless, the theory does resolve an important paradox: since dehumanized people remain, objectively, human at all times, is any “dehumanization” real? It is, in the mind of the perceiver: because human psychology is not logical, we can hold simultaneous, contradictory beliefs.²⁷

That people always remain objectively human is a central fact, and there are other common threads among varied conceptions. Dehumanization is generally agreed to be bad.²⁸ It is also seen as important because of the harm that it causes in the world,²⁹ so people's actions are key. It is associated with difference, with in-group versus out-group distinctions, and with divisions among or within communities, including based on political control, language, cultural practices, religion, and appearance (see Figure 4).

Out of many other concepts of dehumanization, three in particular mirror the elements of humanity outlined in Figure 1.³⁰ The first is dehumanization as “not recognizing the respective other as also human”,³¹ roughly corresponding to an exclusion from humankind while also touching on the need for others to acknowledge one's humanity. Seeing someone only as Jewish or Muslim, as during the Holocaust or the Bosnian War, drowns out their fundamental identity as a member of the same species and makes it easier to deny any ties or “recognitional attitudes (like solidarity, respect, and empathy)”.³²

The second is a “disregard for, and undermining of, the unique singularity of human persons”.³³ This can include aspects of individual identity such as one's name, personality and pursuits, and aspects of belonging such as a family name/lineage or role in the community. One's associations can overwhelm their fundamental individuality, though, and similarly prevent them from being seen as their own unique human – as is arguably the case with the detention in northeast Syria of children of people with (perceived) affiliation to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

The third is that “dehumanization consists … in having one's legitimate human interests actually violated”.³⁴ Such interests are codified in domestic and international legal frameworks, including international refugee law and IHL. Mikkola's conception reinforces the importance of those frameworks for trying to address dehumanization in practice, as they seek to prevent basic violations evoked by the other two bodies of law.

Approaching dehumanization as outlined in Figure 2 is a pragmatic choice suited to the situations of conflict and violence in which the ICRC works.³⁵ True to its linguistic roots, this understanding of dehumanization denies or attacks elements of humanity with which the ICRC is concerned, emphasizing real-world actions. While humanitarian work is not a laboratory, dehumanization as perception is nevertheless a real and measurable psychological phenomenon that can prompt action (see next section). Perception thus remains important, as does the adjective “less” in the phrase “less than human”, because the intent is ultimately to diminish.³⁶

Last but not least, the literature describes three ways in which dehumanized people are re-classified, roughly corresponding to animals, objects or machines, and the possible origins of each.³⁷ For our conflict-centred discussion we can treat these as subcategories, or even methods, of dehumanization, with the first two being most relevant for people being targeted for harm (see “Creating the Enemy” and “Language Matters” below).

Dehumanization causes real world harm

Working in the most desperate conflict environments in the world, the ICRC sees great suffering caused by some of the worst of human behaviour: in the ways conflict is waged and civilians are treated in life and upon death; in places of detention; or when certain people or groups are apparently not afforded the protections due under international law. Dehumanization lurks behind this suffering (see Figure 2).³⁸

The ICRC … has long been witness to the devastating killing of civilians leading to further spirals of violence and hatred.³⁹

Blatant dehumanization can be measured,⁴⁰ and perceiving other people as less than human is robustly associated with direct violence, increasing support for conflict, violence, torture or retribution, and less support for helping behaviours, inter-group forgiveness and reconciliation.⁴¹

Some scholars argue that dehumanization directly incites violence.⁴² This is not likely to be true in all cases, but dehumanization does increase the risk of violence and aggression in both conflict and non-conflict situations,⁴³ potentially inciting as well as facilitating harm (see Figure 3). Indeed, lowering or removing inhibitions that normally keep humans from harming each other can be considered a hallmark of dehumanization.⁴⁴ Human beings, as social animals, usually adopt moral standards and have an innate psychological mechanism for controlling human-on-human violence and aggression.⁴⁵ Breaking down inhibitions on aggression and our human preference to avoid violence takes effort (see “Overt Efforts, including Language” below).

Figure 3. A spectrum of negative consequences of dehumanization.

Source: adapted from Maria Kronfeldner, “Introduction”, in Maria Kronfeldner (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, 1st ed., Routledge, Abingdon, 2021, p. 12.

One or more avenues remove a person or group from moral consideration and may even make their mistreatment a moral duty.⁴⁶ Moreover, some moral principles, such as loyalty, begin to take priority over other norms, such as those around care. Empirical studies support this hypothesis in both non-conflict and conflict settings, showing that dehumanization is associated with, for example, less compassionate responses to injustice experienced by dehumanized minorities; aggressive attitudes and greater support for limiting immigration of certain groups; and support for aggressive “counterterrorism” policies – including a lack of concern for civilian casualties and a desire for vengeance.⁴⁷ Research on the 2014 Gaza War found that dehumanization predicted hostile outcomes such as collective aggression, refusal to engage in peaceful dialogue, and acceptance of significant civilian casualties.⁴⁸ Studies also reveal a correlation between dehumanization and diminished intention to respect IHL, increased support for a war, and opposition to a peace treaty.⁴⁹

Dehumanization: Mechanisms and responsibility

Dehumanization: Why and how

It can be difficult to distinguish the “why” and “how” of dehumanization, not least as the process may be iterative and can also extend across years if not centuries.⁵⁰ Dehumanization can both cause and result from harm; some people might exploit existing (even latent) dehumanizing perceptions for various ends, while others might try to dehumanize from scratch. In any event, it is particularly concerning when the authorities are involved.

As alluded to above, the question of moral standing is central to most examinations of dehumanization and informs both why it occurs and how it can be so powerful. Opotow cites dehumanization as an important “symptom” of moral exclusion, whereby “individuals or groups are perceived as outside the boundary in which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply”.⁵¹ This helps motivate violence. For Kelman, an early theorist who looked at cases of sanctioned massacres, dehumanization may be even better at enabling violence.⁵² Smith, much more recently, agrees, stating that “the aim of dehumanization is … to disactivate inhibitions against harming [people]”.⁵³

There is usually an element of advantage gained by the dehumanizer relative to the dehumanized. Dehumanizers generally construct and then perceive in the dehumanized a threat, which allows the dehumanizers to see themselves as the current or potential victims.⁵⁴ This can further justify a supposedly defensive action: those wielding power are the ones at risk, not the marginalized group. A desire for prediction and control are linked with tendencies to dehumanize.⁵⁵ The thread of fear running through these elements helps explain why dehumanizing narratives can be so powerful. If we are afraid for our well-being or way of life, or that of our family or community,⁵⁶ it becomes easier not to see the real or perceived source of the threat as another human being.

At the time, I easily convinced myself that this was a matter of survival and self-defence.⁵⁷

One can also promote dehumanization, implicitly or explicitly. Building on an internal analysis of dehumanizing language that the ICRC commissioned in 2020, Figure 4 organizes key external drivers that could be exploited by people in authority.⁵⁸ The grouping by power, emotion/threat and conflict is not rigid: more than one driver may well be at work.

Figure 4. Drivers of dehumanization, especially by those in power.

The “conflict” driver illustrates especially well the overlap between why and how dehumanization happens, as well as the links between drivers. Though conflict can start as a “simple” power play, it can also emerge based on a dehumanizing ideology, and further perpetuate that ideology (see “It Works Both Ways” below).

One of the similarities between the Lebanese experience and modern conflicts … is how easily the various sides managed to dehumanize their adversaries on ideological, political, ethnic and religious grounds …⁵⁹

Who is responsible, and to what degree

Any individual can come to perceive another individual or group as less than human, and they might cause harm by acting on that perception – but, because of their power and influence on systems and thinking, we must worry especially when authorities go down this path.⁶⁰ Authorities might pursue dehumanization overtly, as a strategy to counter political rivals or some (often imagined) enemy. There is also a middle ground of tacit encouragement or tolerance, where authorities fail to dispute or counter dehumanizing narratives or other actions by private individuals or groups, possibly because of a perceived alliance with their political goals. Finally, dehumanization might also arise more insidiously over time (including as a response to others’ dehumanization of oneself) in ways for which authorities are less directly responsible.⁶¹

Frick separates the “activity” of dehumanization into four categories,⁶² from thoughts about to treatment of the dehumanized, corresponding to varying degrees of harm and, implicitly, responsibility for that harm. For simplicity, words and treatment are all considered as actions; even an expression of thought, coming from an authority figure, carries weight and could injure someone who was otherwise unharmed (see “Language Matters” below). It is not necessarily harmless, either, “simply” to dehumanize others in thought: anyone with such conceptions is less likely to change established practices that insidiously or overtly dehumanize people and more prone to tacitly encouraging others’ dehumanizing words and deeds. Especially for those in power, inaction is also powerful.

It works both ways: Victims dehumanize aggressors⁶³

Actions by one group influence another. Victims of aggression, including civilians threatened in conflict, will almost certainly re-evaluate their perception of the moral standing of aggressors and anyone supporting them, possibly to the point of further dehumanization. Research carried out by the ICRC more than twenty years ago bears this out: “In Bosnia-Herzegovina, those who support a side in this conflict – 75 per cent – are much more likely than those who did not to accept attacks on non-combatants.”⁶⁴ And research in 2019 “showed that the terrorist threat against the ingroup raises the support for … retributive procedures through the dehumanization of the outgroup”.⁶⁵ Peacemaking just got harder.

Overt efforts, including language

There are far too many examples of overtly dehumanizing efforts by authorities. Genocides are an extreme case, seeking to end the human existence of entire groups.⁶⁶ While legally distinct from armed conflict, genocide and conflict are often linked, be it the case of Armenians during World War I, the Holocaust and extermination of other groups during World War II, the Cambodian genocide of 1975–79 during a civil war, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in the context of a civil war begun in 1990, the 1995 massacres of Bosnian Muslims during wars around the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, or the massacres of Yazidis and other ethnic minorities perpetrated by IS in Iraq within the 2013–17 armed conflict. Religion, ethnicity and power contributed variously as drivers, too.⁶⁷

Creating the enemy

Prior to genocides but also in other circumstances, people might be overtly dehumanized precisely to promote or facilitate violence. Humans have a deep-seated aversion to killing other humans which, if not addressed, can harm the killers’ mental health or ethical sense.⁶⁸ A common approach is to create distance between the aggressors and the future victims, either psychologically or physically or both.⁶⁹ Such efforts can self-perpetuate, with dehumanization of victims as “both the effect of and the justification for acts of humiliation, degradation and instrumentalization”.⁷⁰ Language and administrative and legal frameworks can also overtly contribute to creating psychological distance – vectors we will explore in their own right (see “Language Matters” and “Legal and Administrative Frameworks” below).

Psychological distance

Psychological distance is at work when ethnic identity or strong religious conviction drive dehumanization,⁷¹ but we can use a more prosaic example to illustrate its importance. Armed forces and groups are unusual in being given (in the case of States) or taking upon themselves the use of force. Military training teaches arms carriers to overcome their natural instincts: exhaustion, fear, hunger, cold or heat, but also their natural inhibition against killing.⁷² Training instils the discipline required to apply force selectively – even to kill the enemy, when ordered, in combat situations – and to stop such force when it is no longer required or no longer legal. Armed forces and groups also have an interest in the well-being of their personnel, who will be more effective if not disabled by moral injury through unlawful killing, or the “mere” prospect of killing.

Examples abound where military training or practices, particularly drills, seek to address these concerns⁷³ through the dehumanization of prospective targets. Even without employing any derogatory terminology, “the enemy” is already an abstract term far from any single person or even any group of recognizable humans; it is closer to an object. Target practice and other exercises that (generally) use objects instead of real people reinforce this idea.⁷⁴ To be clear, militaries are not bad per se because they drill troops to dehumanize targets, and individual soldiers should not be blamed for protecting themselves from moral injury. Any framework that permits killing, even of civilians, under certain conditions is morally complex to say the least.

Sometimes, however, this permissiveness is clearly taken too far. Japanese military training during the 1930s normalized violence against the less powerful; indoctrinated troops never to question orders, however awful; and reinforced prevailing attitudes: “On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans.”⁷⁵ US Vietnam War veterans reported being told in basic training to “‘Never call them Vietnamese ….’ Anything to take away their humanity, to dehumanize them and make it easy to see any Vietnamese – all Vietnamese – as the enemy.”⁷⁶ At least in 2022, Russian army conscripts reportedly watched “informational television programs” six days a week that dehumanized Ukrainians as “Nazis”.⁷⁷ IS fighters’ views of the Yazidi as “idolators” prepared the way for slavery, massacres and mass rapes.⁷⁸

I never felt guilty about killing people who deserved to die. In my eyes they deserve to die because they are the enemy. I am trained to think that way.⁷⁹

Physical distance

Long-range weapons also create distance, this time physical, that “shields the aggressor from the sights, sounds, and smells that would spark perpetrator abhorrence”⁸⁰ and reinforces the conception of “the enemy” as an object or otherwise not human. Long-range weapons have been used for centuries; the missiles and drones common today are just the latest versions.

Even at close range, it is possible to create a barrier that shields a key part of the enemy's persistent humanity and makes it easier to (continue to) reduce the person to a mere target, an object. Considering humans’ attraction to human faces, especially the eyes, doing harm can be made easier by hiding the victim's face, whether with a hood or blindfold, as has been the practice with many State-sanctioned executions, or inflicting harm from behind, with the victim's face turned away.⁸¹

Language matters

Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions.⁸²

Words are how ideas are often formed and certainly communicated, and they are powerful. They influence how we perceive and, ultimately, act towards people, as the examples above from military training show. Language equating human beings with objects that have no human worth, or, especially, with creatures that disgust or frighten, is present in all clear examples of dehumanization. While the causal caveat remains, such language is at least a warning of further harm to come, especially when the non-human object or creature is something to be fought and/or destroyed.

Examples are rife from across the globe. A medical professional and regional governor of Diyarbekir in 1915 said that “the Armenians had become dangerous microbes in the body of this country. And surely it is a doctor's duty to kill bacteria?”⁸³ Under the Nazi regime, Jews, Roma and others were depicted as “dangerous, disease-carrying rats” in propaganda and school education.⁸⁴ The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia depicted suspected or confirmed accomplices of the previous government as “worms” and “parasites”.⁸⁵ The Tutsi minority were infamously called “cockroaches” and “snakes” in the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide. Bosnian Muslims were seen as “genetically deformed material that embraced Islam”, and as traitors, filth and vermin that needed to be annihilated.⁸⁶ In the United States since the start of the so-called “war on terror”, and notably following the 2016 elections, Muslims have been called racist obscenities that further evoke the past dehumanization of enslaved people and persistent systemic racism.⁸⁷ Muslims from Rakhine have been called dogs, pigs and maggots.⁸⁸

Playing on people's fears, dehumanizing narratives are powerful and can thus be attractive to leaders seeking to promote support or dismiss opposition. This explains the seeming paradox of attributing extraordinary abilities to dehumanized people:⁸⁹ by doing so, “they are transformed into entities that are even more terrifying to their persecutors, who then implement more and more extreme methods against them in an ascending spiral of violence”.⁹⁰

The draw to dehumanize is even stronger in conflict, where there is necessarily an enemy and the threat stakes are even higher: “Heightened war rhetoric … leads to greater civilian suffering.”⁹¹

While the term “enemy” originally describes neither an animal nor an object, it becomes a shortcut for the objectified opponent in battle and carries those overtones into more common use. Similar terms like “infidel”, “illegal migrant” or more recently again “Nazi” and especially “terrorist” have come to signify beings who are automatically and necessarily excluded from the human family.

Propaganda and misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech

Propaganda has long accompanied armed conflict and violence, with “information operations” often being seen as an important complement to or even foundation for fighting in other arenas.⁹² The ICRC is explicitly concerned about misinformation, disinformation and hate speech (MDH) precisely because of how they risk undermining the humanity of people affected by conflict and violence.⁹³

Hate speech seems particularly likely to dehumanize by creating an enemy in everyday life, usually exploiting built-in or even long-dormant perceptions and biases in the cultural context and finding fertile ground in communities under stress.⁹⁴ The message will inevitably carry weight when coming from official channels, and more so if authorities exert control over communication to block alternate narratives, for example through internet shut-downs.

The examples cited above bear this out, preparing the ground for violence and often, at the same time or later, actually calling for it. During Argentina's “Dirty War”, leaders portrayed a range of political opponents as “subversives” and “enemies” whose elimination would resolve the country's “national security” concerns.⁹⁵ The Rwandan radio station RTLM, privately founded but dedicated to anti-Tutsi propaganda, urged listeners to “exterminate the cockroaches” and “cut down the tall trees” a month before the massacres started. Thirty-five years earlier, the leader of a Hutu political party called for doing away with Tutsi “vermin”; anti-Tutsi pogroms erupted the same year.⁹⁶

And again, the resulting dehumanizing perceptions make healing and recovery from conflict and violence far more challenging. While not always dehumanizing, populist narratives today create or reinforce divisions – against various minorities, political opponents, immigrants – and are worrying because of how quickly violence can flare up, even outside authorities’ control (see “Tacit Encouragement” below).

Digital communication platforms

With the rapid development of digital information and communication technologies, dehumanizing content is amplified, propagates more quickly, reaches a wider audience, encounters less resistance and is harder to trace than in the past.⁹⁷ The role of social media platforms in the amplification of and incitement to hatred and violence has been highlighted in contexts like Myanmar, Ethiopia and Ukraine.

People are also more likely to engage further when they feel more comfortable, which may be more likely in a “community” that shares and validates one's views. A 2020 case study of an Israeli Facebook page propagating hate speech highlighted the role of social media in delegitimizing and dehumanizing the out-group, as shown partly through epithets like “filthy dogs”, “leftist cockroaches” and “stinking worms”. The same users’ reactions to views different from their own align with a theory, put forward by various authors, of identity contributing to intractable conflict.⁹⁸

Legal and administrative frameworks

“[D]eliberately withholding or violating juridical personhood is a form of dehumanization”⁹⁹ – that is, not acknowledging that someone has rights or not agreeing that her rights must be respected. Dehumanization necessarily involves creating at least one division within the species Homo sapiens, and laws can be a good way to do this. South Africa's twentieth-century Apartheid regime is a clear example of a legislated classification system.¹⁰⁰ Whether you were white, “native” or “coloured” determined what legal protections you would enjoy – or effectively, to what levels of repression and violence you could legally be subjected.¹⁰¹

Arbitrary detention and collective punishment are similarly dehumanizing: they ground the deprivation of liberty or other retribution on someone's association with a group rather than her actions.¹⁰² Both can take place within a nominally functional legal and/or administrative system, and may even, within that system, follow some kind of procedure. But the system may not allow the person to dispute the detention or the punishment, since “there is simply no legal agent left who can be addressed by law”.¹⁰³

Dehumanizing legal frameworks carry over into administrative systems, as with segregated living arrangements and matters such as recognition of marriage, passing citizenship to children, or access to jobs. From the 1930s, Rwandans’ identity cards listed their assigned ethnic category; new rules around adoption, previously fluid with respect to ethnicity, helped cement the classifications.¹⁰⁴ Rules of any kind are useful in effecting dehumanization because people can be sanctioned or even criminally convicted for breaking them, thus raising the cost of resistance.

Deliberate (mis)interpretation of otherwise sound frameworks can also dehumanize people. Lawyers for the US Department of Justice notoriously argued that national security justified virtually any interrogation method, despite the explicit non-derogation clause in the Convention Against Torture.¹⁰⁵ Similarly, military frameworks may be deliberately exploited to justify IHL violations. Implying that they have been taught to see such behaviour as lawful, “[v]eterans often use techno-strategic language to describe torture during interrogations, corpse desecration, forced displacement and small-group civilian killings in free-fire zones”. When rules of engagement are interpreted in ways that at least blur combatant–civilian distinctions and justify acts that clearly violate IHL, “military policies can produce atrocities”.¹⁰⁶

Tacit encouragement

Even without acting in ways that dehumanize or overtly encourage others to do so, those in authority may allow dehumanization to persist, or even flourish, for various reasons. If leaders do not counter others’ dehumanizing efforts – whether because they underestimate the danger or because they perceive political risk in response or gain from inaction – they convey that those efforts are acceptable, even correct.

Firstly, again, words and systems matter. Authorities do not initiate alternative forms of MDH such as “ampliganda” (or “people-made algorithm-amplified propaganda”), but those forms tend to be stronger in places where internal political, religious or ethnic tensions are high. And everywhere, powerful and influential individuals play a critical role in spreading MDH: increasingly, bottom-up and top-down efforts meet and reinforce each other.

Authorities’ neglect of or deliberate indecision on what potentially criminal acts to legislate against and prosecute can have similarly significant consequences. Political considerations may influence nominally independent judicial systems. Even if there is no improper influence, prosecutors often have broad discretion over what to pursue, and judges over what sentences to hand down.

Secondly, authorities might distance themselves from responsibility by acting through proxies, in relationships that provide plausible deniability or at least more moral or legal ambiguity over the partner's actions.¹⁰⁷ The intent and framing of the relationship matter: what is not said can be as important as what is. Because of the actual and potential harm arising from this issue, some of it reflecting dehumanization, the ICRC has issued extensive guidance to States on how to undertake support relationships in armed conflict¹⁰⁸ and has responded in several contexts to the conduct of self-defence groups.

Thirdly, authorities may tacitly encourage dehumanization through “informal subcultures” in militaries that dehumanize the enemy to the point where IHL violations are tolerated or even encouraged (as alluded to above: see “Creating the Enemy” and “Legal and Administrative Frameworks”). Delving into the behaviour of Australian Special Air Service troops in Afghanistan revealed that informal subcultures were allowed to incubate and spread, resulting in a presumption that all Afghans were hostile – everyone was the enemy – and a general disbelief when faced with alleged abuses. Not only did clear violations go unpunished, but they become established practice. Known perpetrators were even rewarded for gallantry and valour.¹⁰⁹

Lastly, states of emergency and other heightened security measures may also support dehumanization: they encourage whole groups to be treated as threats and not as people, creating an enemy from society itself. This can cause direct harm, for example if law enforcement officers use unnecessary or excessive force in response to demonstrations.¹¹⁰ Civilians’ subsequent experience of fear, injury, detention or even death may in turn make an enemy of the State, raising the risk of violence in future.

Curbing dehumanization

Restating the obvious, “all forms of dehumanization involve either humanity or humanness [in this paper, an element of humanity] … being attributed or used in a differential manner with respect to different people”.¹¹¹ There is a good chance that this will hurt people, in particular by increasing the likelihood, severity and length of violence and armed conflict.

The solution is simple: treat people as people, heal their wounds and restore their dignity – in short, act as the principle of humanity enjoins. This is a long and hard but not hopeless task. Many harmful practices that were once widely accepted have lost favour: slavery, including as the fate of enemy captives, is now considered abhorrent, as is torture.¹¹² The law and the work of the ICRC and others in the Movement continue these efforts.

Legal frameworks

IHL exists to make the violence and horror of war less violent and horrible – to defuse the causal chains that dehumanization sets off and which can fuel it further.¹¹³ “Humanity” is clearly central to IHL – indeed, in its very name – while IHL is a bulwark of humanity. Humanity in IHL reflects reality, affirming our fundamental similarities and common interests. It also recognizes that we have not yet achieved our vision of and for humanity, and requires us to do better.

There is a historical dialectic, often slow but sometimes fast, between harm caused and the setting of norms and formal standards to restrain that harm and call violators to account. It is no accident that conflict has seen the fastest progress in this regard: in armed conflict, violence is explicit, at the behest of the authorities in charge, and human suffering proliferates in chilling diversity, much of it linked to dehumanization: thus, international humanitarian law.¹¹⁴

Long before today's universally adopted conventions, diverse cultures spanning millennia have promoted behaviours in war that uphold at least some aspects of humanity, as many including the ICRC have shown: see Figure 5.¹¹⁵ More recently, the Lieber Code of 1863 made explicit reference to “principles of justice, honor, and humanity” when carrying out martial law, and the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration cites the “laws of humanity” to restrict acceptable action.¹¹⁶

Figure 5. Non-Western examples of IHL-like precepts that reflect a concern for humanity and pre-date current codes (admittedly without the Americas). Source: author's elaboration based on ICRC, “African Values in War: A Tool on Traditional Customs and IHL”, 2021, available at: www.icrc.org/en/document/african-customs-tool-traditional-customs-and-ihl; ICRC, Under the Protection of the Palm: Wars of Dignity in the Pacific, Geneva, 2009, available at: www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/wars-of-dignity-pacific-2009.pdf; ICRC, “Islamic Law and International Humanitarian Law: Common Principles of the Two Legal Systems”, 2020, available at: www.icrc.org/en/document/islamic-law-international-humanitarian-law; Andrew Bartles-Smith et al., “Reducing Suffering during Conflict: The Interface between Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law”, Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 21, No. 1–2, 2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2021.1976016; Kjetil Mujezinović Larsen, Camilla Guldahl Cooper and Gro Nystuen, “Introduction by the Editors: Is there a ‘Principle of Humanity’ in International Humanitarian Law?”, in Kjetil Mujezinović Larsen, Camilla Guldahl Cooper and Gro Nystuen (eds), Searching for a “Principle of Humanity” in International Humanitarian Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, p. 3. Further, “[p]rinciples of a humanitarian character could also be found, e.g., in the Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon, the teachings of Sun Tzu, [and] the practices of the Roman Empire”.

At the turn of the twentieth century the Martens Clause appeared in Hague Conventions II and IV, outlining protections for civilians and combatants drawn “from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity, and the requirements of the public conscience”.¹¹⁷ The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 specifically reference “laws of humanity”,¹¹⁸ while the preamble to Additional Protocol II asserts that “the human person remains under the protection of the principles of humanity and the dictates of the public conscience”.¹¹⁹ Several other treaties also use variants of the Martens Clause.¹²⁰

Considerations of humanity in IHL motivate well-defined IHL principles such as distinction, proportionality and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. Those principles and other more specific protections describe how to avert many dehumanizing harms that conflict has thrown up – aligning with the first two elements in each of Figures 1 and 2. For example, the rules on treatment of prisoners of war address the dignity and respect due to the physical human being as well as the prisoner of war as a person with family ties.¹²¹

But the overarching references to humanity transcend those rules and make sure of the third aspect shown in Figure 1: reflecting the underlying spirit of the law, they affirm recognition of the human by default, closing off any loopholes for those who might wish to follow only its letter. This paper has already discussed how military training constructs a dehumanized enemy – but this does not fundamentally alter the humanity of the people fighting, or absolve individual fighters “from making … an assessment [of military necessity and humanity]” when they have to decide on the kind and degree of force to be used.¹²²

While some have disputed the existence or emergence of a “principle of humanity” within IHL,¹²³ it is alive and well throughout the project, delimiting action in conflict and giving the compass direction in case of doubt to counter dehumanization in war.

The Fundamental Principles

Humanity is at the core of the Movement's Fundamental Principles,¹²⁴ spurring action to realize the idea of intrinsically valuable, unique and formally recognized human beings. Closely linked¹²⁵ is impartiality, reinforcing that only suffering and need can possibly justify treating a person or group differently from any other. These two Fundamental Principles are given in Figure 6. From them, humane treatment will result – necessarily the opposite of dehumanization. While my focus will continue to be on conflict and thus on the ICRC's work under these principles, the discussion will briefly widen with respect to other Movement components.¹²⁶

Figure 6. The Fundamental Principles of humanity and impartiality. Source: ICRC, “The Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement”, 1986, available at: www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/red-cross-crescent-movement/fundamental-principles-movement-1986-10-31.htm.

The ICRC

The ICRC, with its conflict-oriented mandate and mission, enacts the principle of humanity in particular ways to counter dehumanization. First, the ICRC is an independent observer for the application of IHL, helping weapons bearers to understand it and checking whether it is being applied to every person who falls under its protections.

In case of violations, the ICRC approaches the authorities, who acted to establish the rules and are ultimately responsible for their enforcement, including accountability. Violations might be the result of an oversight, but if authorities have been tacitly complicit, the knowledge that someone is watching is hoped to induce better behaviour in future. Hardest to address, of course, are deliberate violations – this makes it all the more important to counter overtly dehumanizing tendencies early, or to make sure they don't go too far, for example by encouraging military training scenarios that also instil a radical change of mindset if an enemy is suddenly wounded or surrenders.

In its protection and assistance activities, the ICRC daily affirms humanity, treating individuals as whole people not defined by any one aspect of their complex identity.¹²⁷ The ICRC's core areas of work align with the first two elements of Figure 1, countering the corresponding violations shown in Figure 2. To name just a few, war surgeons and emergency field hospitals treat human bodies wounded in fighting; delegates visit prisoners of war, guarding against ill-treatment and arguing for dignity in daily life; and the Central Tracing Agency keeps family ties alive across front lines, guarding against people going missing or having their names lost in death.

Aligning with the third element of Figure 1, the ICRC has long seen the increasingly administrative aspect of humanity and has responded accordingly. Red Cross Messages can exchange identity documents alongside family news. The ICRC can also issue emergency travel documents for certain vulnerable people in very specific circumstances – for example, to help a refugee child return to her family – where the person can't otherwise prove her identity for travel. But throughout, nobody seeking the ICRC's help need prove their identity beyond that of a human being in need.

Finally, based on what it sees, the ICRC has encouraged and continues to encourage acts that go beyond the law if they will forestall (further) suffering and dehumanization. So it was with better protections for civilians after World War II; today the ICRC is still anticipating developments in conflict and pushing for regulations, for example on the development and use of autonomous weapons,¹²⁸ or new laws, like the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, that should safeguard humanity in the future.

Efforts elsewhere in the Movement

National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (National Societies) also play an important role in upholding humanity in conflict, especially when the violence is at their front door¹²⁹ but even if it only seems hypothetical.¹³⁰ Moreover, rooted in their local communities, National Societies – and their coordinating body, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) – also have the opportunity to use the principles of humanity and impartiality against insidious dehumanization that can occur “in the everyday structures of social, political and economic marginalization”.¹³¹ This recalls Figure 3 as well as Figure 4, with labour and gender as possible drivers of dehumanization.

Slavery is the quintessential example of dehumanization by treating people as economic commodities. It has been considered a grave offence for a century, though modern variants do exist, including human trafficking. In response, several National Societies, with support from the IFRC, have made it a priority to assist and support human beings who have been treated as goods.¹³²

Women and girls in many cultures and across millennia have been dehumanized in various ways, including being seen as underdeveloped or inherently imperfect human beings,¹³³ treated as sexual objects, and/or commodified more or less overtly¹³⁴ including through arranged marriages, dowry or bride price, and by undervaluing the “labour of caring” in the home. Men who associate women with animals or objects are more likely to sexually harass and commit violence against women.¹³⁵ Some National Societies have made countering such violence in their communities a priority and are responding to it in various ways.¹³⁶

Sexual and gender minorities face discrimination and have even been targeted for extermination.¹³⁷ Many face barriers to self-actualization, for example through laws that forbid certain sexual acts or access to family life, in societies that consider them as aberrant or even defective human beings. Many are targets of violence. The Movement's attention to preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence also reinforces these people's humanity.¹³⁸

People with disabilities, physical or intellectual, have been dehumanized in diverse ways, exhibited like animals in circuses, targeted for extermination by eugenicists,¹³⁹ seen as a burden on society and regularly excluded from public spaces that are not accessible. In addition to the ICRC's physical rehabilitation centres for people disabled through conflict, the Movement has called its components to action in this area, recognizing the potential affront to human dignity.¹⁴⁰

Last but certainly not least, systemic racism pervades history and society today, even if it is not called by that name. Being foreign,¹⁴¹ coming from a different religious community¹⁴² or having a certain arbitrarily defined appearance¹⁴³ have all contributed to some degree of dehumanization that millions have to live with on a daily basis – for example, in simply trying to stay healthy.¹⁴⁴ Migrants, including refugees, may be blamed for systemic local problems.¹⁴⁵ National Societies and the IFRC have deployed the principle of humanity on behalf of migrants, from actions in specific countries¹⁴⁶ to a coordinated Movement response.¹⁴⁷ “Illegal” migrants are not a “flood” or a “wave” – they are human beings.

Does dehumanization challenge the Fundamental Principles?

Dehumanization, so pervasive for so long, doesn't undermine humanity and impartiality as much as reinforce the need for them. Indeed, these principles challenge dehumanization, through law and the practice of humanitarian actors like the ICRC and the wider Movement.

That is not to say that it's easy. Working on behalf of people who others see as less than human, the ICRC may have to try harder and be more creative to get those people the care and attention they deserve. The initial objective may be something smaller and more attainable, such as issuing a single emergency travel document, restoring the mortal remains of a single person to her family or explaining patiently again to a distraught survivor why the ICRC also needs to keep talking with the authorities who destroyed his home. But the ICRC's job is precisely to work tirelessly for those people's humanity. Even if dehumanization temporarily limits what we are able to achieve, it doesn't censor what we say: on the contrary, some of the most powerful arguments are those that invoke a shared humanity and the possibility of relating to another human being's experience.

Yet dehumanization is a risk for humanitarians, too. Despite our best intentions, humanitarians may inadvertently act in ways that risk dehumanizing the very people whose suffering concerns us most. We all come from and work in societies with varying forms and degrees of insidious racism and sexism,¹⁴⁸ and it is easier to engage with the people already in power than to find, let alone listen to, the quieter voice in a community.¹⁴⁹

To prevent themselves from being overwhelmed by the depth and scale of suffering, or because security restricts access, humanitarians may also be psychologically or physically distanced from the people they serve. Round-number casualty figures may be more compelling when drawing attention to a crisis, and it is common to label people with administrative codes (even if the goal is to protect personal data in the digital age) or certain words: “female-headed household”, “victim”.¹⁵⁰

Indeed, Esmeir argues that the very project of humanitarian action risks perpetuating dehumanization. In a discussion about human rights recognition that could apply equally to IHL, especially if seen as directed more to the “people of the [global] south”, she notes that “[a] person [subject of rights] is … at once a human and a yet-to-be human, a member of universal humankind and its dehumanized figure”.¹⁵¹

Fassin raises further red flags. One danger is that of humanitarian response being further politicized and even co-opted, excising the humanity that must be at its core: witness the dangerous ambiguity of armed forces with “humanitarian” mandates, and the justification of decisions to limit or halt government support for basic needs on “humanitarian” grounds.¹⁵² Even closer to the present topic, Fassin presents humanitarian action as a “politics of life” involving power differentials and value judgements in the saving of lives – between humanitarians and “beneficiaries” and between international and local humanitarian workers – as well as the curation of life stories whose plight will most compellingly rouse public support for the action.¹⁵³

In addition to the real risk of insidious dehumanization, the spectre of dehumanization in humanitarian action lurks in the reduction of any person to only one part of their being or experience. It thus challenges humanitarians daily to review our actions, practicing the principle of humanity as far as possible, in all its facets, with each person we encounter.

We can do this in several ways (recall the various efforts, by all Movement components, discussed above), first by staunchly reaffirming that humanity can ever truly be taken away. Parts or all of it may be rejected or denied by some people, but each person remains human, always. The Fundamental Principle reasserts this on behalf of us all, and again, it enjoins us to see the entirety of someone's humanity: even if the work calls us to focus on one or another facet, we must constantly remind ourselves of the whole person behind that action – behind the label, number or screen.

We must also be attentive to the power we have when people trust us with their names, their stories, or even pieces of themselves. Power and value differentials will never disappear entirely from human interactions, so humanitarians must be vigilant, taking active steps to limit them and keep dehumanization from creeping in.¹⁵⁴

Humanitarian have always had to navigate external politics. Bolstering the fundamental principles of humanity and impartiality, those of independence and neutrality (see Figure 7) help maintain focus on the lives and well-being of people under threat.¹⁵⁵ Again, this is not easy, and the ethically fraught decisions that humanitarians must make might not always be the right ones in retrospect, but it helps to have such guiding principles. The ICRC's confidential approach also acts to shield people from becoming political bargaining chips in public discourse.

Figure 7. The Fundamental Principles of independence and neutrality. Source: ICRC, “The Fundamental Principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement”, 1986, available at: www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/red-cross-crescent-movement/fundamental-principles-movement-1986-10-31.htm.

Ultimately, we humanitarians are there and must remain there for the humans, in all their frequently frustrating complexity.

Conclusion

Dehumanization is ugly and easily normalized “in the undramatic episodes of the day-to-day”.¹⁵⁶ Gender and economic drivers of dehumanization, often at least tacitly supported by people in power and further influenced by race, are alive, well, and deeply intertwined.

The work of countering dehumanization has not got easier since the start of the twenty-first century. Outside of but also during crises, people often have no choice but to “pay” for life's essentials with very personal information.¹⁵⁷ Meanwhile, digital platforms magnify disinformation and hate speech to pandemic proportions¹⁵⁸ even as they cloud authorities’ responsibility; opaque and emotionally inert algorithms might decide who lives and dies. If dehumanization boils over into conflict, horrific suffering can echo through the generations: look no further than Israel and Palestine.

Yet all is not lost. Even if dehumanization sits within an evolved, innate mechanism in a person's brain, it does not inevitably break out into action. It is shaped by history, culture, social norms and psychology, making it changeable over time and in different locations.¹⁵⁹ People are resilient: as individuals and communities we can learn, reconcile and begin to heal, as did Germany after the Holocaust or South Africa after Apartheid. After a decade of conflict that has had at least its share of dehumanizing elements, the optimism of Syrian youth is striking, and heartening.¹⁶⁰ And we can all avert harm in the first place, if given the chance and encouraged by authority figures to take it.

Today's challenges don't mean that the principle of humanity is outdated or ineffective: on the contrary. Bolstered by impartiality, independence and neutrality, humanity guides the ICRC, the rest of the Movement, and other humanitarians in contesting and refuting dehumanization on many fronts. As always, the main responsibility lies with those in power – States, and armed actors in situations of conflict and violence – to “respect and ensure respect for” the international laws and standards they themselves have set. Authorities’ practice has already improved how human beings treat each other. Reinforcing that practice can keep dehumanization at bay: this is the true power of humanity.