World: How humanitarians understand, apply and negotiate humanitarian principles

Please refer to the attached file. Drawing on 34 semi-structured interviews with humanitarian staff across contexts, including Afghanistan, Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen, this research examines how humanitarian negotiators understand, apply, and communicate the four core principles – humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence – in practice, and how these principles are perceived by their counterparts. At the foundational level, the research reveals a gap between conceptual knowledge of principles and operational application. While some practitioners struggled to define principles accurately, particularly neutrality and impartiality, many demonstrated broadly principled behaviour in their negotiations, suggesting that real-world exposure matters at least as much as formal training. Principled pragmatism is widespread: compromises on impartiality, independence, and, occasionally, neutrality are frequently made to preserve access to communities in need and staff safety, in the name of humanity. Yet red lines – the thresholds negotiators refuse to cross – are rarely shared across organisations, and what constitutes an unacceptable compromise in one context may become a pragmatic necessity in another.

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