Humanitarian disaster
The phrase humanitarian catastrophe has been recorded in German since 1999. It describes disasters that destroy or endanger the lives of many people.
The phrase came up in German to justify German participation in the Kosovo war in 1999. Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping used it in a speech on February 6, 1999. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder took it up on March 24, 1999 and explained that with the participation of the German Air Force, “ wanting to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo ”(cf.“ Germany in the Kosovo War ”). The choice of this designation was part of the linguistically dramatizing endeavors of the Federal Government to explain to the German public, in particular the supporters of the Red-Green coalition , the first-time participation of German soldiers in combat operations after the Second World War . Federal Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer argued , primarily addressed to his party Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen : “We have always said: 'Never again war!' But we also always said: 'Never again Auschwitz!' "
The name probably comes from a literal translation of the "humanitarian catastrophe" previously used in English for such contexts. In German it is a hypal situation because the word humanitarian is regularly understood as being human in the charitable sense, but here it is a disaster in humanitarian terms .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Speech by the German Defense Minister, Rudolf Scharping, on February 6, 1999 at the 'Conference for Security Policy' in Munich Text version online
- ↑ Fischer's speech on April 7, 1999, quoted from SZ on January 25, 2005
- ↑ See, for example, UN Resolution 1199 (1998) text version online