Do no harm – that idea is broadly derived from medical contexts, where it first was phrased like this in the 16th century and was used to make medics aware of the possible dangers any treatment could contain and compare those dangers to the dangers and benefits of instead not intervening (A bit more here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First,_do_no_harm).
For volunteers and professionals in any kind of helping situation, this was and still is a hard learned lesson.

 

Just ‘helping’ by giving food to starving people can create a backslash on local food economy and thus create future dependencies for foreign food supplies. It can also lead to people getting used to the taste of non-local food and changing their taste-preferences, again hurting local sustainable food economy.

For this very reason and to prevent problems like these, the European Commission created a Code of Conduct for food aid donors and organisations.

 

Of course, Do no harm is as important with any kind of intervention military, as well as nonviolent intervention (though doing a military intervention without doing harm seems virtually impossible, also to the soldiers themselves; see this article). Thankfully, there exists a freely downloadable ‘Do no harm-handbook’, created by the “Do no harm project”, a project within Collaborative Learning Projects, an NGO supporting aid organisations in doing effective and sustainable work.

 

Doing no harm is something that requires research, preparation and constant evaluation of goals and achievements. The handbook outlines steps to get closer to this, although it is by no means a simple guide it still gives inspiration and ideas to go into a harmless and by that effectively doing good direction. Any serious approach into aiding others should nowadays include an analysis like this. One example I like very much is Nonviolent Peaceforce, since even when being founded they already had analyzed whether and how they could work as intended and keep their peaceworkers as safe as possible within conflict areas and still do good nonviolent work – you can find the feasibility study here.

 

Okay, so I hope that it is a bit clearer, what ‘Do no harm‘ means, what is the second part of the title? “The art of non-cooperation” relates to India’s fight for freedom from the British Empire in the last century. A wonderful article about it can be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-cooperation_movement.

 

How is this important here? If you really do not want to do harm but are for example ordered to do so, e.g. as a soldier, but actually as any kind of employee (and may even sometime belief it is for the ‘greater good’ or necessary for reaching a good and more important goal), it is important to keep in mind your self-responsibility for your own actions.

You can always decide not to cooperate (and of course, as is the nature of this world) have to suffer the consequence. But this is at the root of Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence, taking the suffering onto yourself instead of giving it to others!

 

If non-cooperation and doing no harm is combined, we come to the current political struggles in Libya and the example two military pilots set, when they defied their orders to fly attacks on Libyan people and instead deserted to Malta (source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133940091).

 

Acts of noncooperation like these are essential for finding ways into a nonviolent future. And noncooperation by this does NOT mean passively sitting about and not doing anything – it means actively doing something good and removing oneself from the cycle of violence.

 

For ending this article and not writing too much again – here a finishing quote by Gandhi on the notion that ends would justify the means. Or more precisely, peaceful ends may justify violent means:

“The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.”

(Source: M.K. Gandhi quoted at http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap45.htm)

« »