Humanity: it involves treating individuals in a way that respects human dignity, with the aim of alleviating the suffering caused by conflicts and disasters.

 

Neutrality: it means refraining from any act which, in any conflictive situation, can be interpreted as favourable for one of the parties involved or detrimental to the other. According to Macrae, it means not taking part in hostilities and not making commitments to political, racial, religious or ideological controversies; it entails -Macrae qualifies- being neutral not towards suffering, but towards the source of that suffering. In other words, it does not involve indifference on the part of humanitarian organisations (that would contradict their ethical principles); it is, rather, an operating strategy, a way to fulfil the humanitarian objective of helping and supporting the victims.

 

Impartiality: it means that humanitarian aid must be given to the victims according to their needs, not according to any other criteria which entails discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or political ideology. However, from the practical point of view, impartiality does not entail that aid must be provided to the whole of a population or without any conditions. Humanitarian aid can concentrate on one of the parties or on a certain group if there is evidence that that party or group is more vulnerable.

 

Independence: it means that humanitarian organisations carry out their duties on the basis of their own decisions, regardless of political influences in their countries of origin or in those where they work. Nevertheless, as in the case of the other classic principles, this independence is often questioned in practice due to several factors.

 

Universality: it involves that any victim of a natural or human disaster must be aided, regardless of political, ethnic or any other kind of differences. The implementation of this principle is, however, almost impossible in real life.