ODI/HPG’s 2017 Constructive Deconstruction efforts helped produce my think piece The New Humanitarian Basics – an alternative humanitarian action “that is responsive, ethical and attainable” and also “less paternalistic, bureaucratic and expansive in its ambitions.”  I’ll try blogging a few of the paper’s central themes, because it works better as a discussion piece than as a blueprint. In this blog I pick up the gauntlet thrown by one humanitarian who (managed to) read it. Here is what ‘Archie’ writes:

How does that work when the government is a belligerent with a legitimate interest in winning a war yet a less-than-moral (or worse) approach to the means necessary to attain that end which is an invariable / depressing reality of violent conflict.

He’s referring to two intertwined pillars of the vision: (1) an immediate shift to the primacy of the state (national authorities) in delivering/coordinating response to crisis (a rather simple and long-agreed concept); and (2) actual ‘localization’ (i.e., not the corrupted version that Christina Bennett concludes “reinforce[s] the very dynamics they are meant to be changing.”).

I see Archie’s question as two-fold: (a) an emerging world order’s challenge to hegemonic international humanitarian intervention, and (b) the challenge to the well-protected image of the organization (i.e., its projection of moral purity that is such a key to fundraising, public support and esprit de corps). This blog deals with the former.

A New World Order

Trending up: the primacy of the state, the longstanding call for national authorities to take up their responsibility, the imperative of localization.  This fast-evolving relationship of aid agencies to the national and local challenges power dynamics and challenges the effectiveness of current humanitarian praxis, especially in a conflict setting.  Partly this is a challenge to action – is the agency able to ensure that aid reaches those most in need (impartiality)?  Partly a challenge to perceptions, and hence to agency trust, access and local reputation.  And, as Archie writes, it is partly the challenge posed by a twisted world: by rooting the response in the national authorities the result (e.g., in South Sudan) might be “to put money into the hands of the 5^th brigade in Western Upper Nile whose intent [is] to massacre and chase away the Dok Nuer”. Not pretty.

My instinct is to be evasive.  The problem is a thorny one, even if too narrowly framed.  But let’s not debate the framing of the question. In fact, let’s not debate.

Archie is right. I have spelled out a humanitarian action that is far less within the control of the international humanitarian system. That does not create a new problem. Humanitarian agencies work within the boundaries imposed by governments all the time.  This is where they most loudly decry the lack of ‘humanitarian space’ (even though they work in somebody else’s house). Still, humanitarian programs often deliver. By way of extreme example, look at the national Red Cross Societies, who comprise actual auxiliaries of the state.  So not new, but this ‘vision’ certainly exacerbates existing challenges.

Negotiated access will become more necessary and more difficult in a response governed by the host state, especially where that host acts with what humanitarians perceive as bad intent. Impartiality, independence and neutrality provide guidance, but actual control by national authorities will in some contexts alter the nature of assistance and protection. As the paper anticipates, perhaps there will be contexts where agencies provide relief tout court (much-valued relief!) because they are too compromised to be considered humanitarian in their actions (in that context). In other words, there will be places where aid agencies transparently choose not to act under the humanitarian label, in order to avoid further undermining the meaning of that specific designation (see here for more on this). (Hopefully, they will also be strategizing on how to better implement the principles and hence become humanitarian with time).  And perhaps there are places where agencies will have to say no, taking a principled stand in the face of unacceptable compromises. That is a freedom and a responsibility they possess (one not available to the RC Societies).

Unlike impartiality, I note that the principles of independence and neutrality are not absolutes but guideposts that are regularly (always?) forcibly compromised by the context of humanitarian action. They are also a means to the ends of access and impartiality, hence wrongly viewed in puritanical terms, where the perfection of the principle acts as a barrier to access and delivery. Don’t get me wrong, adherence to the principles “helps build the trust and acceptance that is critical to (though no guarantee of) access to people in crisis” (p. 12); but changing power dynamics necessitate rethinking how they are or are not operationalized.

Moreover, any apparent agreement with Archie is oversimplified. A call for more robust negotiated access leaves too much systemic baggage in place. Humanitarians must not simply and grudgingly accept that the ‘golden age’ of unfettered access to people in crisis is trending towards extinction, they must understand that this is a good thing, even though it will have negative consequences in certain contexts.  To begin with, the obvious: nowhere in the West can you find foreign powers with unfettered access, implementing locally unaccountable programming.

Hence, as the paper argues, humanitarians must interrogate and move beyond “the facile conclusion that the humanitarian principles are best preserved by state-avoiding methodologies.” (p. 27). Underpinning the sector’s state-avoidance lies a host of powerful assumptions, including a false binary between visions of a monolithic bad/evil/corrupt state and a saviorist/moral humanitarianism.  It would help to recognize that many elements within any state have an interest in responding to the needs of people in crisis.  Further, as Andrew Cunningham astutely concludes, INGOs should recognize the degree to which they need states.  In other words, humanitarians need to change the way they think.

More importantly, though, is the degree to which Archie’s challenge masks a sector that is full of itself, deeply presumptive of its moral authority and of the effectiveness of its actions. There is a fundamental flaw in this practice of a highly self-interested, Western, unaccountable sector passing judgment on a state’s right to govern.  This is not about principles. This is about power. That is for my next blog post.