Getting Humanitarian Aid Right

All too often those in the humanitarian world see the cut half empty. Maybe it is as a result of working in a business that is about constant problem-solving, crises and distress. So last week, at the prompting of some of our students, I asked eight experienced long-time humanitarian workers what they saw as the successes of the past generation. Their answers are compiled below and they make hopeful reading. The legal framework of humanitarian work has improved, the assertion and recognition of people’s rights have improved. Humanitarian space is being negotiated more robustly and there is a greater understanding of the global and local context of emergency operations. The norms of the endeavor, standards, codes etc have become more effective. And finally there are many individual relief operations over the past generation which have made a significant difference to people’s lives.

So, here is the good news:

Improved aid structures

• The establishment in 1948 and the sustaining down to the present of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides urgently needed assistance and protection to Palestinians in the region.

• A global system - we have in the last 50 years gone global and do now provide a safety net anywhere in the world. For example, between 1919-1921 the Turkish genocide against the Armenians drove millions of people from their homes and to their deaths from starvation and disease. In 2003-2008, a similar pattern of violence in Darfur drove hundreds of thousands from their homes but not to their deaths because they were met by an international humanitarian safety net which kept them alive even if it did not stop the violence or end their displacement. In 1919, this safety net was simply not there nor internationally mandated.

• The 'internationalisation' of humanitarian aid workers: it is very striking to me that international humanitarian aid workers are now drawn from every continent and many different developing countries ie no longer the domain of the white expat - and that is real progress compared with only about 10 or 15 years ago

The promotion of people’s rights

• The agreement of the Additional Protocols of 1977 went a long way to updating the 1949 Geneva Conventions, making them relevant to civil conflicts, to civilian protection and to modern international warfare. Not perfect, too many haven’t signed up (the US…) and of course observance is patchy, but it was a hell of an achievement even to get states to agree the texts.

• Other international legal advances (1989 Convention on Rights of Child etc) also very significant

• Deng’s IDP Guiding Principles - though arguably contributed to over-fixation on IDPs, certainly put IDP rights on the map

• There is a growing sense of "right to relief" that was not present even 25 years ago. This is not a perfect right, but the expectation is now that those who confront an "emergency" can expect some sort of international response.

The creation of humanitarian space

• Humanitarian advocacy - a part of this system has been the development of powerful advocacy which has become almost routine now. Again, in earlier wars and disasters the dramatic SCF adverts after WW1 and the Holocaust film footage of Fredrich Born of ICRC and Karl Luntz (Swiss Consul) in Hungary were the exception not the norm.

• Sensitizing other sectors - as humanitarians we have also sensitized the military, the corporate sector and, of course, governments to the humanitarian agenda and changed their attitudes and sense of obligation to the cause.

• The negotiation and implementation of Operation Lifeline Sudan in 1989. UNICEF executive director James P. Grant persuaded the Sudan government and the Sudanese insurgents to allow the delivery of emergency assistance. Successful at its start, the arrangements ceased to be effective after about a year.

• Res 46/182 was a breakthrough. But OCHA has struggled to fulfil its role, not always through its own fault. Better global and local contextual understanding

• There is growing attention to the "global dimensions" of problems (though not enough) - most evident in question of access to medicines and generics. • The political analysis and policy thinking in the humanitarian aid sector in the last 10 to 15 years is impressive. We are much better politically informed at that level, linked into other important disciplines such as international relations, and we constantly challenge ourselves. • Efforts early in the present decade, led by NGOs such as Partnership Africa Canada, to stem the flow of diamonds, proceeds from the sale of which had financed wars in West Africa, through international agreement on a licensing and monitoring process.

• The realization by people with dirty finger nails that they need to know more, much more, about the situation on the ground, the local scene, the pluses and minuses of various options (that is, if consequentialism is the dominant new SOP, and I think it is), then good intentions are clearly not enough. They never were, but now that realization is clearly stated.

Improved standards in the aid community

• The professionalisation of the sector - I know there are still loads of challenges here, but there has also been a lot of progress eg the number of humanitarian programmes, especially at university and Masters level; Sphere and the introduction of standards - I believe it has made a difference; I also believe that working in the humanitarian sector is now seen as more of a career option than ever before • Agreement in the 1980s on a code promoting breast-feeding and governing the manufacture, advertising, and provision of infant formula to pregnant and lactating mothers.

• The Code of Conduct and Sphere were pretty good. Jury perhaps still out on extent to which they have led to significantly better outcomes (as with all the normative stuff), but has sharpened thinking about good practice and to some extent accountability

• Significant improvement in famine early warning systems (FEWS etc) and things like cyclone tracking. We still aren’t really acting on the former nearly well enough.

• There is growing "accountability," and when done well it does mean that there is greater ability for those who are affected to have a voice. Not perfect. But better.

• A stream of emergency innovations - all these are good things which save lives today that did not exist 50 years ago: ORS, Cold chains and EPI, Emergency reproductive health packs, Emergency feeding (special foods, Oxfam biscuit, ration protocols etc), Emergency watsan, Emergency credit and grant-based microfinance, Gendered understandings of differentiated intervention in all of the above, Protection practice, still half-baked but emerging, Participation as a practice principle, Maybe, even the UN consolidated appeals....!

Specific operational successes

• The negotiation and conduct of emergency relief operations in Cambodia by the NGO Consortium for Cambodia at a time (1979 ff.) when, following the war in Vietnam, western governments sought to isolate the Phnom Penh authorities.

• Provision by the Reagan administration of food aid to Ethiopians starving under Mengistu regime during the famine of 1983-85. President Reagan reasoned that “A hungry child knows no politics.”

• Successful immunization by UNICEF during the period 1987-1990 of children in Lebanon during the country’s civil war. An education for peace program also connected Lebanese children with each other across the country’s many warring factions.

• The prompt and creative responses of local individual, civil society, and governmental groups to urgent humanitarian needs in Jordan in 1990-91 at the time of the exodus of Third Country nationals from Iraq following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1991. Local non-governmental groups, Red Cross societies, and the ICRC have also played a key role in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation.

• Selected aspects of the local and international response to the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis of December 2004.

• Averting major humanitarian crises. WFP has prevented at least 2 major famines in Darfur since the conflict began, and their ability to get huge amounts of food into such a difficult area relatively fast is an unsung success story.