Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in the Rohingya Humanitarian Response: Between Humanitarian Principles and Operational Realities

Sammanfattning

Despite the centrality of ethics to humanitarian identity and practice, there remains insufficient empirical research on how humanitarian workers operating in Bangladesh recognise and navigate ethical tensions in their daily work. This study addresses this gap by examining how aid workers in the Rohingya response experience and navigate ethical dilemmas arising from tensions between humanitarian principles and operational realities in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eight humanitarian practitioners selected through purposive and snowball sampling, the study generates rich empirical insights of aid workers operating within one of the world’s largest and protracted refugee responses. Participants worked across diverse organisations and roles ranging from field-level to programme management. The findings reveal that ethical dilemmas are not exceptional occurrences but routine and structurally embedded features of the operational environment. Aid workers navigate a complex landscape in which state authorities hold the power to grant or withdraw operational approval, majhis (camp leaders) influence aid distribution, organisations operate according to their own mandates and values, and donors prioritise specific programmes. These dynamics intersect simultaneously, generating competing obligations that cannot all be fulfilled at once. Prioritising one need inevitably means neglecting another. Rather than applying humanitarian principles in a straightforward way, practitioners rely on practical wisdom, experience, and situated moral judgement to manage dilemmas that institutional frameworks alone cannot resolve. The study makes several contributions to the humanitarian field. It extends Slim’s framework on ethical dilemmas by demonstrating empirically that such dilemmas are structurally produced rather than individually generated. It expands the concept of ‘do no harm’ beyond designated beneficiaries to include host communities who may also experience unintended consequences of categorization and prioritization; and identifies consultation with supervisor and colleagues as a significant yet institutionally underrecognised ethical strategy. The study demonstrates that humanitarian principles are not simply applied in practice but are continuously negotiated.