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The civil-military relationship in peace operations, involving military, humanitarian and development personnel, has been premised on the idea of separate roles and a sequenced interaction. Military forces provide security following a peace agreement and, consequently, create a sufficiently secure environment for relief and development actors to provide the aid. Recent operations in Liberia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, however, illustrate overlap; the military is increasingly engaging in humanitarian activity and the humanitarian community is increasingly using security and logistics assistance from the military. Two clear trends have emerged in humanitarian operations in fragile contexts:

• Multifunctional approaches, seeking to coordinate or integrate the activities of military, humanitarian and development actors into coherent operations with a common strategic purpose.
• An increasing military involvement in humanitarian activities based on the assumption that within the operational context of global surveillance, conducting so called ‘hearts and minds’ operations may have a positive strategic impact.

Despite the fact that both trends are often seen as necessary developments for increased effectiveness in complex peace support operations, there are a number of issues to be considered when employing such strategies. With increased integration, humanitarian principles can be watered down and the humanitarian activities risk being eroded. Moreover, armed forces, while being expensive to train and deploy, have little humanitarian expertise and commitment. There are limits to the number of tasks soldiers can be trained to perform effectively. While the humanitarian impact of military involvement in such activities is often limited at best, the unintended effects may be serious if the activities are ‘misunderstood’, or if an alternative narrative is presented by insurgents.  

The negative consequences of civil-military integration mean that such approaches should not be seen as a silver bullet in the struggle for global peace and security. Rather, the humanitarian space should be preserved based on the impartiality, neutrality and independence of humanitarian organisations. While communication and cooperation (driven by humanitarian principles) will be necessary, a division between humanitarian and political activities in the field should be maintained.

• The demarcation line should not be between military and civilian actors, but between those who operate according to humanitarian principles and those who are part of a political operation – involving both development and security policy.
• The theoretically weak assumption of increased effectiveness from civil-military integration should be studied further—one step would be to highlight the outcome-based thinking of multifunctional approaches.
• Further structural, cultural and doctrinal adjustment of the armed forces is necessary regarding traditionally non-military tasks if effectiveness is to be increased. However, a delimitation regarding the tasks that should be asked of the military is equally important.
• The use of armed forces for humanitarian activities needs to be reconsidered—the assumption that such activities will lead to increased support from the local population is an oversimplification.
• The current development of integrated and comprehensive approaches to operations contain a ‘can do’ mentality that disregards the current evidence that interventions in armed conflicts are always highly problematic and may not have a positive effect.