A McLeod Group Blog, April 22, 2016
by Ian Smillie
In May the United Nations will convene the first-ever ‘World Humanitarian Summit’ in Istanbul, bringing together world leaders, NGOs, the private sector and others—5000 people in all—to talk about the growing humanitarian challenges of our time. The objective is to ‘enable the world to better prepare for and respond to crises, and become more resilient to shocks.’ A ‘major shift’ in disaster prevention is foreseen.
Maybe.
For months, the humanitarian paper mill has churned in preparation for the event. A recent study comes from the influential Humanitarian Policy Group at London’s Overseas Development Institute: Time to Let Go: Remaking Humanitarian Action for the Modern Era.
Time to Let Go contains many useful observations about a humanitarian response system that fails to deal well or quickly enough to dire need: it is a Western system, rooted in Western ideas about humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. It is dominated by outsiders with little appreciation of local realities, outsiders whose ‘power dynamics, culture, financing and incentive structures’ are ‘closed and centralized and averse to innovation’ leading to a ‘persistent performance gap’.
There are other ways, the report says, of thinking about humanitarian assistance and of the roles that can be played by local organizations. And there are less competitive ways of approaching the world’s crises. It is time for the old, Western, hegemonic competitors to ‘let go’ and hand over some or a lot of what they do to people on the ground.
Many of the systemic pathologies in today’s humanitarian response are nicely exposed in Time to Let Go. Oddly, however, the 80-page report is completely gender neutral—one might say ‘gender blind’—at a time when there is increasing recognition that gender-based violence is both a symptom of weakening governance and a barrier to recovery. And there is something naïve in suggesting that the answer is for the organizations that plan and deliver today’s emergency assistance to simply ‘let go’. Building local preparedness and local capacities is certainly important. This has been promised for years by the large humanitarian organizations but, truth be told, they really aren’t much interested in that; they do have a vested interest in the status quo, as the report suggests.
But there is a very real trade-off between the dollars available for building local capacity, and the dollars available for responding to the results of a tsunami, or a bombing campaign, or an Ebola outbreak. Dollars, in fact, are hardly mentioned in this study, except in the context of a remark made by UN Under-Secretary-General Stephen O’Brien, who said that the system was ‘broke, not broken’.
There is much to criticize in the humanitarian system as it now operates; parts of it are indeed broken and in dire need of repair. But it is also broke. It is a safe bet that not a single combined UN emergency appeal in 2015 was fully funded. Few even reached the 60% mark. The appeal for Central African Republic was only 51.9% funded, Yemen, 55%, DRC 59%, Haiti 56%. It’s little wonder that the response on the ground looks haphazard and even chaotic when desperate people are living on half rations, and responders—both local and foreign—don’t have the resources they need. This is one of the reasons for competition among, within and between relief agencies: there isn’t enough money to go around.
When the UN creates a peacekeeping mission, a budget is established and member states are assessed for a compulsory contribution based on an agreed formula and timeline. In an emergency where there is no peace to keep, however, and where people are dying, no such system prevails. Appeals are made and governments—just like individuals considering a ten dollar donation—respond as the mood strikes them. Usually—not just often—the response is too little, too late.
This is not to deny many of the points in the ODI report. Relief agencies can and should open their systems to more and different people, more and different ideas. And something needs to be done to quell the competition. But the study’s call for a ‘diversity of donorship and predictable and flexible funds’ sounds like asking pigs to fly. A recommendation about ‘promoting humanitarian action as a universal endeavour [with] shared responsibility and impartial tool[s]’ is missing only a magic wand. And suggesting that it’s OK to ‘question or reject’, without serious discussion, the hard-won humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, is simply irresponsible.