Tag Archives humanitarian aid

Politics of Food and Technology Series | When the System Says No: Digitalization and Accountability in Food Aid 

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This blog is part of a series on ‘the Politics of Food and Technology’, in collaboration with the SOAS Food Studies Centre. All of the blogs in this series are contributions made at the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference in Istanbul-Bergen, October 2025, to the panel with a similar title. To read the rest of the blogs in this series, please click here.

Digital tools promise efficiency and impartiality in humanitarian response. In food aid, biometric systems are meant to ensure that the ‘right’ people receive assistance. But when the verification of need depends on being readable by a machine, accountability shifts. Drawing on field experience in South Sudan, Hayley Umayam explores how exclusions come to look like a system error rather than a downstream effect of human decision-making.  

Needs-based programming is the organizing principle of most contemporary humanitarian action. In South Sudan, where millions require assistance each year, and resources are consistently insufficient to meet needs, organizations justify allocation choices through a ‘logic of impartiality’: aid should go to those most in need. This logic is increasingly operationalized through digital and technocratic systems designed to make suffering measurable, commensurable, quantifiable, and thus ‘governable’.  

Over the past decade, humanitarian agencies have turned to digital tools like fingerprint scanners and unique digital identifiers to manage service delivery. These tools promise accuracy and efficiency, an appeal that is easy to understand in a world of shrinking aid budgets and growing demand. They offer a way to demonstrate that limited resources are used responsibly and that assistance is delivered to the “right” people, thereby reinforcing claims of impartiality. There are plenty of technological evangelists, too, highlighting the potential use of Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning in ‘streamlining’ the aid process. 

Within this paradigm of impartiality-through-efficiency, accountability becomes largely procedural. It risks being defined less by relationships with affected communities than by the ability to show that needs-based logic has been correctly applied. If you can demonstrate that you followed needs-based logic using the right indicators, vulnerability criteria, and verification procedures with some level of “community buy-in”, you are seen as accountable. In other words, claiming that “the most in need” were reached is a way of demonstrating impartiality, and accountability is about legitimizing hard choices in contexts where almost everyone can qualify as in need. Strangely, humanitarian hyper-prioritization may actually lead to a reduction in the number of people who can access aid. 

South Sudan makes the limits of this approach especially visible. Routinely described as complex and protracted, it is a setting where identifying the “most in need” is not only contested but, in practice, impossible to do in any complete sense. Selection is less about discovering need in any comprehensive sense than about justifying exclusion in the most acceptable way under conditions of scarcity.  

When I reflect on the promises and risks of digitalization in these conditions, I return to a moment early in the rollout of biometric systems at food distributions I helped monitor. This encounter may seem mundane, but shows how core ideas of need, accountability, and responsibility are shifting as humanitarian action is increasingly digitally mediated.  

“Before the computer, we used to get food” 

At a food distribution site in Lakes State, a woman presses her finger onto a biometric scanner. The machine beeps, and the screen shows a red X: Not matched. She wipes her hand, prays, and tries again. After several attempts, the screen finally turns green. The next woman in line is less fortunate. Her fingerprints fail repeatedly. After trying multiple machines, she is sent home without food, her distress visible. 

“They have brought computers in and these useless cards that make some of us not get food,” she says. “Before, without the computer and with our previous cards, we used to get food.” 

During these early months of biometric rollout, moments like this were common. Fingerprint readers often struggled with calloused, dusty, or sooty hands. People waited anxiously to undergo a process they did not fully understand. Some prayed before placing their finger on the device, others cried with relief when the screen flashed green. And when it didn’t, there was little to be done but blame the computer.  

The long social and moral labor of being selected, being summoned for a distribution, queuing, and presenting oneself as deserving collapses into a single, opaque interaction between body and machine. At that moment, one’s neediness is technical, not social or relational.  

“It’s the System That Decides” 

Frontline staff experienced these moments of biometric failure with their own mix of frustration, sympathy, and resignation. They had been trained on the new equipment, but they could not control how the machines behaved. When the screens displayed error messages, there was often little they could do to fix the problem on the spot. They could not see inside the system or override its judgement. While they could log exclusions in hopes of a ‘catch-up’ distribution cycle, I seldom saw mention of this in upstream reporting. Concretely, a non-recognized fingerprint simply meant no food, while a distribution that adhered to its list of scannable beneficiaries checked the box of impartiality.  

Biometric systems were introduced into an already tense moral terrain. Even before digitalization, frontline staff were the face of decisions that they often had no control over. Caseload numbers were set elsewhere, and it was the unenviable task of field teams to turn those inevitably constrained numbers into a verified list of the “most in need.”  

In this context, some staff began to see digital tools as a buffer against the reactions of the affected-but-excluded. Instead of saying we cannot assist you, staff could say the system does not recognize you.  

Who is accountable for technical errors? 

Some of these early rollout issues have been partially mitigated over time. Nevertheless, the encounter at the scanner still matters because it offers a glimpse into how humanitarian need and accountability are being reconfigured, which will likely only continue with increased digital aid practices. 

Exclusion appears as a technical error rather than a consequence of prioritization and human decision-making. This sustains a humanitarian fantasy of impartial needs-based programming in which defaults to technical systems and procedures. By transforming moral and political decisions into technical ones, humanitarian organizations can maintain legitimacy amid chronic shortfalls, while displacing responsibility onto machines and caseloads. This procedurally legitimizes needs-based distributions while making certain bodies invisible, producing a formal sense of impartiality even as real-world access is uneven. Meanwhile, those with unrecognizable fingerprints have limited recourse to accountability.  

None of this means digital tools should be rejected outright. In many contexts, they can limit some forms of abuse and allow aid to reach people who might otherwise be excluded. But if we evaluate them only in terms of their supposed efficiency or as neutral tools of impartiality, we miss how they redistribute responsibility, normalize exclusion, and translate need into something that exists only when a system can verify it. 

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Hayley Umayam

Hayley Umayam is a PhD candidate at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the politics of knowledge and expertise in famine and mass starvation. She holds an MA in Peace and Justice Studies from the University of San Diego. 

 

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IHSA Conference Reflection: Recentering Protection for Civilians in a Fragmenting World Order 

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On 16 October 2025 academic and practice thought leaders came together to discuss Protecting civilians in a changing world order at the IHSA conference hosted by Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkiye. This blog, written by Amra Lee with other panelists, is a result of the panel discussions and intends to continue critical discussions on protecting civilians, with a view to establishing a Working Group in 2026. 

PhotoCredit: Human Rights Watch

The geopolitical dynamics driving changes to the current world order – including the resurgence of ‘might is right’ and decreasing respect for international law – have pushed the humanitarian system including the law, norms, institutions and funding that support it to its limits. Ongoing impunity and the growing normalisation of war without limits continue to increase threats to civilians, aid workers and principled humanitarian action. The impact of these threats have been compounded by seismic changes to the humanitarian donor landscape, particularly the withdrawal of major funds and funders. 

While protection for civilians in conflict has often been inconsistent and insufficient in practice, the nature and scale of the current threats and challenges require urgent action. Political and humanitarian actors, including parties to armed conflict, must acknowledge the gravity of the current moment and work to leverage a wider range of practices that can help prevent, mitigate and respond to civilian harm. 

The UN Secretary-General in annual Protection of Civilian reports and briefings to the Security Council has called for moving beyond the more traditional focus on compliance and accountability to explore a wider range of “effective, legal, policy and operational responses”. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has further been working with a diverse cross-regional range of member states to reinforce respect for international humanitarian law. And at the same time, the humanitarian sector has many lessons to inform the reset – that protection is central to humanitarian action, that proactive protection requires incentivisation and investment, and that, in practice, civilians are most often agents of their own protection.  

The panellists responded to the above context and calls, examining how a humanitarian reset and the UN80 reform discussions can better centre people and their protection in practice, and explored new pathways forward. The pathways included lessons on civilian harm, theorising humanitarian diplomacy, accountability as a fifth humanitarian principle, centering civilian safety and security, and critical lessons from the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP).  

Opening the Discussion 

Amra Lee from the Australian National University opened the panel, providing an overview of a changing world order and what decreasing respect for international law on the resort to and use of force means for civilians and the wider humanitarian system. This includes record aid worker and journalist deaths, the increasing challenge of countering mis-disinformation and hate speech, and the imposition of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation during an imminent risk of famine,  that saw 1373 Palestinians killed simply trying to access food to survive.   

Reorienting Focus to Proactive Protection 

Hannah Jordan from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NORCAP) presented on the joint NORCAP-Nonviolent Peaceforce-Alliance for Peacebuilding research that developed an analytical framework to reorient civilian protection practice to proactively respond to civilian safety and security in a context of escalating harm. This includes shifting the current focus on providing services to reducing risks, interrupting violence and supporting local solutions. The framework prioritises actions that are civilian-centered, systemic, cross-sectoral, cross-temporal, influential, specific and adaptive, providing key guiding questions to support such work.  

Building on this foundation, Gemma Davies presented the timely joint HPG-ODI-Nonviolent Peaceforce research that directly responds to the risk of deprioritising protection in ongoing Humanitarian Reset discussions with ‘back to basics‘ narratives, reinforcing the need to proactively (re)prioritise and refocus protection efforts to demonstrate how they reduce civilian harm and increase investment in civilian-centred protection. 

Humanitarian Diplomacy, Principles and Accountability 

Clothilde Facon-Salelles from the University of Antwerp presented on theorising humanitarian diplomacy, examining the power dynamics between international humanitarian actors and semi-authoritarian states in a way that does not presuppose the hegemony of liberal humanitarianism.  

Following this, Junli Lim from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, presented on ongoing challenges and threats to principled humanitarian action, including the role of private security contractors. This included proposing accountability as a fifth humanitarian principle, and discussing the ways in which emerging mutual aid networks and practices contribute to accountability with local trust that can increase the effectiveness of protection services. Mutual aid practices offer important insights into alternative systems for implementing humanitarian assistance and governance. 

Civilian Harm 

Marnie Lloydd from the Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington examined national inquiries that take place following action in conflict, highlighting deficiencies in militaries’ transparency and reporting mechanisms, as well as recommendations that emerged from these inquiries including New Zealand’s Defence Force Order 35 on Civilian Harm. Marnie discussed the urgency of integrating robust proactive preventive measures, civilian harm tracking, and transparent reporting frameworks from inception, reflecting on what the UN Secretary-General’s Protection of Civilians report for 2023 characterizes as a ‘broader approach…addressing the full range of civilian harm’, to move toward more comprehensive protective measures.  

Rise and Fall of RtoP 

Building on the themes of accountability and civilian-centered protection, Stefan Bakumenko concluded the panel with a discussion on the rise and fall of RtoP. Conceptualised in 2001 and formalised in 2005, the concept nominally promised communities at risk of atrocity crimes a combination of good governance, international cooperation and multilateral intervention. However, incentives to respect existing normative commitments were already fading in the face of global militarization, austerity, multipolarity, attacks on international law, and instrumentalisation of the concept, as seen in Libya, Ukraine, and Palestine. Today, protection will need to better understand and support grassroots mobilization, mutual aid, and accountability, instead of relying on the whims and shifting political interests of states. 

Moving Forward 

The geopolitical dynamics driving changes to the world order can be expected to continue, with far-reaching implications for civilians and principled humanitarian action. The need to refocus, adapt and expand approaches to meet the current moment is clear. While power shifts increase threats and risks for civilians, they also present an opportunity to challenge past problematic beliefs and forge new understandings on how to mobilise more effective civilian-centred and civilian-led action. The panel initiated a timely discussion on recentering protection in humanitarian action and discourse, reinforcing both the responsibilities of states at a time of existential threats to principled humanitarian action and the critical role that civilians will continue to play in their own protection.  

 

* The panellists intend to continue these discussions and plan to establish a dedicated working group on civilian protection within IHSA in 2026. Please reach out to Amra Lee amra.lee@anu.edu.au and Marnie Lloyd marnie.lloydd@vuw.ac.nz if you are interested to join. 

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Amra Lee

Amra Lee is a senior practitioner and PhD researcher whose research focuses on protecting civilians in a changing world order.

 

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Let UNRWA get back to work in Gaza

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In this blog, ISS Professor of Humanitarian Studies Thea Hilhorst highlights the banning of UNRWA by the Israeli government. UNRWA is not only an aid provider, within Gaza it provides many functions that the state might take care of in other countries, from medical provision to education. The Israeli government’s reasoning for banning UNRWA  are based on false pretenses, and providing the vitally needed humanitarian aid now that a ceasefire has been reached will only become more complex if UNRWA stops its vital work.

No longer than a week after a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, UNRWA was forced to stop its work in the territory. This is creating yet another complexity in the already difficult task of providing vital humanitarian assistance to Gazans. If Israel is serious about its promise to provide more humanitarian help to Gaza, its first and most important task should be to put off or cancel its plan to withhold cooperation, communication, and facilitation from UNRWA, including forcing its offices to close and staff to leave the country.

UNRWA, it should be remembered, it part of the UN, and has had the responsibility of providing assistance for Palestinians since 1949. Moreover, in Gaza the operation functions similarly to the state in other countries. Until the beginning of the most recent war, Israel controlled Gaza but did not govern it (aside from militarily). Hamas’ political wing took over the various institutions of state in Gaza (in 2006), but Israel and several large international donors and countries refused to work with it as they consider it a terrorist organization. UNRWA took responsibility for a large number of state services, including healthcare coordination, education, and infrastructure repair. Since the start of the recent war, UNRWA has been an essential keystone part in the coordination of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.

A majority of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted to ban UNRWA at the end of October 2024, deciding to remove UNRWA’s operating rights in Israel and Israeli-held territory – effectively meaning it can no longer operate at all. One of the arguments for the vote to ban UNRWA was its ties with Hamas, which do exist to the extent that Hamas is the most major political force in Gaza and so must be collaborated with to work in the territory. A well-publicised report stemming from research into UNRWA by the former French Minister for International Affairs, Tanya Colonna, added to several other reports confirming UNRWA’s overall neutrality.

When it was made known that some UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, the workers were immediately dismissed and UNRWA’s various regulations to ensure neutrality were further sharpened. Indeed, UNRWA couldn’t have predicted that its staff might take part in such attacks, not least because UNRWA staff are screened by the Israeli security services before they are allowed to begin their work.

From the proceedings of the debate in the Knesset, it would seem that lots of Israeli lawmakers take issue with UNRWA because it often speaks out over the right of return for Palestinians displaced in 1948-9, and therefore feeds the idea of Palestinian victimhood. The Israeli politicians also held that UNRWA registers the children of refugees as refugees, therefore systematically increasing the numbers of displaced people. In reality, this isn’t the decision of UNRWA: children of refugees that do not receive any nationality in their birth land are always registered as refugees, otherwise they would have no official identity. These rights (to identity) are codified in international law. Every organization that might replace UNRWA would have to do the same.

Following the ceasefire, humanitarian assistance should finally be delivered to Gaza. Medical services also need life support, and fast: the vast majority of hospitals across Gaza are now bombed out: part

of the over 70% of all buildings in Gaza that have been damaged by the war. Without UNRWA, this task becomes near-impossible, and whilst other organisations will fill the gap as best they can, they estimate that it will take up to 3 years to fulfil the now-empty space that UNRWA had.

In the previous decades, and during various wars in Gaza, UNRWA has organized and maintained education, medical services, and provisions for families in need. To pull the plug now flies in the face of the stated aim to ‘flood Gaza with aid’. It would, for Gazans, be incredibly helpful for Israel to put off or cancel the banning of UNRWA.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author:

Thea Hilhorst
Thea Hilhorst

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

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Humanitarian Action amid Prolonged Political Crisis and Conflict: Experiences of the Daughters of Charity Tigray

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In this blog, Sr. Medhin Tesfay, Director of Social and Development programmes at the Daughters of Charity Tigray (DoC-T), shares her experiences alongside that of her organization in providing solidarity-based locally embedded humanitarian assistance throughout the course of the most intense period of the conflict in Tigray from 2020-2022. During this period DoC-T had to adopt many of its approaches and services, providing programmes including emergency relief aid, psycho-social support for victims of gender-based violence in the conflict, and more besides. Sr. Tesfay is a member of the Humanitarian Observatory Ethiopia, which is hosted by the University of Addis Ababa in collaboration with ISS as part of the Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives (HUM-GOV) project.

Sr. Medhin Tesfay, helping elderly and disabled individuals reach the emergency cash distribution desk during the conflict.

Amidst the prolonged humanitarian crisis and huge internal displacement in Tigray, the DoC-T adopted a community-centered approach to humanitarian aid. With the solid believe that affected population needs both hardware (in terms of food and non-food provision of assistance) and software (in terms of empowerment) supports, DOC-T has been providing impactful and innovative mental health support to empower vulnerable communities to heal, rebuild, and claim their rights. This journey demonstrates the strength of resilience, dignity, and local leadership in overcoming adversity.

Since 1973, the DoC-T have been committed to supporting vulnerable communities, particularly during the catastrophic famine of 1984-1985 and the intense conflict between 2020 and 2022. Our focus has always been on delivering targeted assistance to women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Throughout these critical periods, the DoC-T have consistently provided essential services, especially during the two years of the conflict in Tigray. DoC-T has worked relentlessly to deliver emergency cash assistance, life-saving food, vital non-food items, and necessary psychosocial support to the traumatized individuals in our communities. We have done this with a strong sense of purpose, humility, love, and empathy. This blog underscores our significant contributions during these trying times and reaffirms our steadfast dedication to creating a lasting positive impact.

From 2020 to 2022, Tigray region faced significant consequences from a prolonged conflict, compounded by one of the longest humanitarian crisis in recorded history. During this tumultuous period, DoC-T played a crucial role in delivering life-saving assistance, especially in the early days of the crisis when Mekelle (the capital of Tigray) became a refuge for many internally displaced persons (IDPs). This demonstrate the resilience of locally rooted and embedded organizations to provide vital supports to the vulnerable segments of the society when the humanitarian space is filled with insecurities and uncertainties.

While other humanitarian organizations were still arriving, DoC-T provided daily emergency support across 27 IDP camps, feeding over 34,000 IDPs for nearly eight months, often risking the safety of its employees. The organization also helped in remote and hard-to-reach areas of Tigray inaccessible to major international humanitarian agencies. The organization confronted dire conditions caused by disruptions in essential services and identified public schools that had been converted into makeshift shelters, mobilizing resources to address critical shortages of food, water, and clothing effectively. All the while DOC-T was also stuck providing all what it could, which was not even close to how much was needed. At times when there was no food, sisters and staff even went on foot on journeys that took 4 hours daily (visiting two times a day) to just to be with the community and console them.

Despite the closure of borders amid a devastating two-year conflict, the DoC-T, led by Sister Medhin Tesfay, made the decision to remain in the region with the community. This religious order was believed to be the only one operating in the area during the early days of the war.

Moving from emergency relief to offering psychosocial support

In response to the difficulties faced by women during the conflict, the Daughters of Charity offered not only emergency food assistance but also psychosocial support for those traumatized by the conflict’s horrific consequences. This psychosocial support was delivered through Women-to-Women Listening Circles, which included a nurse, a social worker, a medical student, an aid worker, and a leader from the Daughters of Charity. We drew inspiration from the Helpful Active Listening (HAL) circles, a grassroots initiative that effectively supported survivors of the Rwandan genocide. This straightforward and cost-efficient approach trains resilient women within the community to provide basic psychosocial support to their peers, enabling quick outreach to those in need. The method has successfully empowered and healed hundreds while also addressing the stigma surrounding sexual violence and fostering solidarity among victims. This impact is captured in the phrase: “breaking down the stigma and taboo surrounding sexual violence and promoting the creation of new links of solidarity between victims.”

The service has enabled survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), who once experienced deep shame and found it difficult to communicate with their children, parents, or spouses, to overcome shame and become advocates for marginalized individuals facing stigma. In the Bora district, these survivors have formed their own group and gained recognition and vital support from the local authorities. Haftu Gebru, head of the Bora District Education and Health Office, emphasized their transformation from passive victims to proactive advocates tackling the root causes of GBV showcasing the agency of the victims to advocate for solutions.

In these difficult times, the DoC-T achieved remarkable progress, but we were not in this endeavor alone. We were fortunate to receive essential assistance from numerous donors, particularly CARITAS Germany, which has dedicated considerable resources to enhance the lives of individuals in Tigray, especially in the Abergele district, which has been severely impacted by conflict and disasters.

As a valued long-term partner, CARITAS Germany has played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of specific schools and health centers, as well as repair of water points severely damaged by conflict. These initiatives have significantly reduced student dropouts, improved access to education, and ensured the availability of clean water, thereby safeguarding the community against waterborne diseases.

Lessons Learned and the Necessity to Support Local and Contextualized Intervention

The biggest lesson we learned was that with a bit more effort, it is possible to create formidable advocates in every intervention effort that can help to ensure the sustainability of the intervention by creating lasting community ties that can pass down experiences and create a structure for others to follow.

The DoC-T have been aimed to be a symbol of hope in Tigray during challenging times. We hope that our initiatives in healthcare, food security, education, and community support have positively impacted lives and fostered resilience. However, the ongoing violence and the situation faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) have created a dire need for urgent, coordinated emergency and development responses. We urge a collaborative effort to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, leveraging our extensive experience in assisting marginalized communities in challenging circumstances.

The HUM-GOV Project is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant, under project number: 884139

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question

About the Author

Sr. Medhin Tesfay

Sr. Medhin Tesfay is a Director of Social and Development programmes of DoC Tigray, Ethiopia. She is committed to empowering marginalized communitiess by improving access to essential services and fostering sustainable development which earned her the 2023 Romero International Award offered by Trocaire during their 50th anniversary for her courageous advocacy for justice.

Contact email; medhintesfay@yahoo.com

 

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IHSA Annual Lecture Reflection: Reconsidering ‘humanitarian values’, shifting the power, and who’s knowledge matters

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In this blog, IHSA Board Member and Humanitarian Practitioner (CARE) Carla Vitantonio considers the role of decoloniality, power structures, and humanitarian values. In order to truly affect a ‘decolonial turn’ within the humanitarian sector, it is necessary to first reconsider humanitarian principles, who’s knowledge matters, and the need to transform the discussion into a pluralist discourse. This contribution was given as a reflection upon the first Annual IHSA Lecture that took place in Bergen, Norway, in May 2024, and is part of a series around the theme ‘War and Humanity’.

Source: Lane Hartwell ,Wikimedia Commons 

“War and humanity”. Before attending the first IHSA annual lecture I interrogated myself on how I could contribute to this debate. I am a humanitarian professional, and in the past years I have been increasingly engaged in the debate around the decolonization of our sector. The focus is usually especially on resources: the colonial matrix of power has not changed, and resources are still placed in the hands of the so called global north, and we need a shift to a more equitable system. We praise the various attempts to achieve this. The most famous is perhaps the Pledge for Change, led by Adesso and joined by some of the biggest Northern INGOs. But at the same time, I, and many like me, are asking ourselves: is it possible to shift the power and the resources, without changing the full structure? It is the same question that some decolonial movements asked their own governments: are we decolonizing, or are we simply de-westernizing our structure? Are we not keeping the system as it is, by simply choosing a different elite to govern us?

And so, while many are rightly working on a shift of power and resources, some ask: what about the principles, the theory behind the full humanitarian structure? What about the knowledge that informs our sector?

Reconsidering humanitarian values: decoloniality, independence, and universality

My personal belief is that to ignite a decolonial turn in humanitarian action we also need to look at our principles. My generation of humanitarian professionals grew with the assumptions that the humanitarian principles were the unconfutable base of our job: all our action needs to be based on humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.

The only accepted debate was around the principle of independence, increasingly questioned by those NGOs that rejected some important funding or pulled out of an emergency response in the name of their independence. The NGO MSF did it twice: pulling out of North Korea in 1998 and renouncing its EU funding in 2016 due to EU interference in the Syrian migration crisis. But otherwise, humanitarian principles were considered universal.

The problem when concepts are considered universal lays often in ‘the who’. Who considers them universal? Usually in our case, a full class of humanitarian professionals and scholars, all educated in institutions located in the Global North, or located in the South but replicating the North’s structures.

The “universalization” of certain knowledge is one form of coloniality of knowledge. It is one of the outcomes of the oppression perpetrated through colonization. The knowledge imposed as universal was in reality created by the dominant European Culture, with other forms of knowledge subjugated.

This assumption shaped a fictitious epistemological hierarchy, and affected all realms of life, from education to governance. Humanitarianism as we know it today was shaped by and in the Global North, and as such it was proposed/imposed as a universal solution to certain problems in the world. This Global North is composed of the same countries that colonized, oppressed, and often contributed to create the issues that humanitarian actors are trying to alleviate.

The limits of humanitarian principles: staying neutral in the face of atrocity

We see the limits of the humanitarian principles in the application of some of them in certain contexts. In 2017/2018, when the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar started, I was the country director for an INGO involved in humanitarian response. I participated into all relevant meetings, especially to those extraordinary meetings organized in the first month after the genocide started.

While hundreds of thousands of people were obliged to flee, many of them dying during the night because of assaults on their houses, and others dying on their way to Bangladesh, many of us were meeting and honestly concerned by the impossibility of providing humanitarian assistance while staying “neutral”.

The flag of humanitarian principles and their “universality” creates an illusion of being neutral. This neutrality is a mirage of coloniality. Neutrality entails the assumption that we, the humanitarian workers, are able to extract ourselves from the context, that we look at the world on fire from somewhere above. This is a manifestation of the Eurocentric belief that we don’t belong here, that we belong somewhere better. This ‘somewhere better’ is sometimes physically embodied by the places where we meet and debate. But as soon as we step into the context we are the context, we have an impact on the context, we change the context. And here we have the great support of all the decolonial and feminist scholarship that drive us to understand that we need to find a solution to the illusion of neutrality, because our locus of enunciation matters.

Could we find solutions to this?  If we want to approach this issue from a decolonial perspective, we should not only tell the story in a different way, but we should start telling a different story. In other words, perhaps shifting power and resources within the actors of a structure that remains unchanged is not enough.

A new pluralist discourse

Today the humanitarian discourse is still highly controlled by the hegemonic narrative of certain Global North actors and organisations. As it has been said by many, we need to transform the humanitarian discourse into a pluralist discourse. What does it mean? It is not easily done but I have two suggestions: the first is to look at the deep implications of the Do No Harm approach (DNH), which is at the core of humanitarian action and acknowledges the agency of those we are going to support. Looking at DNH from this perspective and not from a purely procedural and bureaucratic one (accountability) is already a step forward, because it helps reflexivity (reflecting on our own positionality).

A second suggestion is that we open spaces where we talk about the consequences of this assumption of universality, linked to the supposed neutrality of humanitarian action. Spaces within our own organizations, spaces that we can consider safe. We need to talk about this, among practitioners, but I dare saying, above all among donors.

 

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author

Carla Vitantonio

Carla Vitantonio has worked in the humanitarian sector in multiple positions for over 20 years, including as a country director and subject expert for organisations like Handicap International, CARE and OI. Carla has coordinated humanitarian responses and programmes in Cuba, North Korea and Myanmar, and has researched alongside universities including the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the European University Institute. She is the author of “Living decoloniality” a podcast focused on practices of decoloniality in the NGO sector. She was elected as an IHSA Board Member in 2022.

 

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“The principle of humanity in war’’: a reflection on the IHSA Annual Lecture 2024

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Image by Pixabay

In this blog, Andrew Cunningham (Independent Humanitarian Practitioner and Board Member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association, IHSA) considers the principle of ‘humanity’ during conflict, and its interaction with other key humanitarian principles including neutrality, impartiality, and independence. He also looks at how humanitarians can integrate dignity into their work, and how these principles may develop in highly politicised and fast-moving times. This blog summarises a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture and is part of a series of blogs produced following the Lecture, which took place in Bergen in May 2024 under the theme of “War and Humanity”.

The principle of humanity is often overlooked when we talk about the humanitarian principles. Focus is normally placed on the ‘big three’ principles – impartiality, independence, and neutrality. The most important of these is impartiality, which is the promise of non-discrimination and lack of bias in aid provision. The idea is to help those most in need regardless of who they are. Impartiality is a central and required aspect of humanitarian’s identity.

Independence, which allows aid organisations to make their own choices outside political interference, is also a foundational principle and facilitates the adherence to impartiality. The promise made by independent humanitarian aid organisations to host governments and non-state actors is that they make their own decisions and are not political tools of foreign governments.

More problematic, and much debated, is the principle of neutrality, which at its core demands that aid organisations do not become involved in political controversies. But some organisations (for example MSF) view it as a limitation on witnessing, speaking-out, and public communications. Do aid organisation have the right, or even obligation, to affect the political situations which lead to humanitarian crises?

But at the top of the list is the principle of humanity. Humanity is the collection of humans, some have the ability to help others, and some are in need of help. For, humanitarian action is simply humans helping other humans in need. Humanity is also a term which denotes a set of characteristics which must be preserved, such as the dignity of the person and a whole set of ‘human’ rights. This may all seem self-evident, yet it is worth reflecting on this lest we stop grounding what we do in the basics.

Humanity, dignity, and solidarity

Dignity is a consequence of attending to the humanity of those caught in a crisis. We all want to be treated with dignity at all times, of course. But those caught up in conflict are even more starved of dignity as their isolation, sense of abandonment, and fear of violence grows.

Humanitarian action doesn’t always do the best job at attending to the dignity of the individual, as so often masses of people are affected by war and are engaged with by organisation as populations. One way in which people in danger can be afforded dignity is the proximity of aid workers to those being assisted. No one wants to ‘feel like a number’ and be just a recipient of material aid or a beneficiary.

A feeling of human solidarity is also important, as this example of my work in Chechnya shows: After several years working in Chechnya during the last war, I was checking-in with the staff at a hospital we had long been supporting. We had been providing a lot of medical supplies and I was asking about its usefulness. But the chief doctor stopped me at a certain point and said that yes, the material aid had been needed, and appreciated. But that was not the most crucial factor. In turns out that not being forgotten, being treated with dignity by people who cared, was the most important aspects of our intervention. Solidarity can be seen as a mix of caring enough to help and being willing to share a moral, if not always a physical, space, with those caught-up in a crisis.

Does digitalisation lack humanity?

One way in which humanitarian aid may be diverting from this idea is through the ‘digitalisation’ of aid delivery. No one wants to only deal with an app on their smart phone or be forever linked to a set of biometrics which defines one’s aid category. There is more to aid than this transactional way of providing it. Proximity to human aid workers is vital to reinforce a person’s sense of dignity. In the search for efficiency and greater outputs (as opposed to outcomes), have we gone too far? Is there still room for the proximity of humans helping other humans? And where is the locus of dignity in this version of aid?

Wars provide a difficult terrain to navigate. The threat of violence to aid actors as well as those living in the crisis makes being proximate hard. The chief doctor I mentioned above had not been visited for quite some time by anyone form my organisation due to the violence in the area. But yet he knew we were sill ‘there’.

Conclusion

Let us return to the principle of humanity which is the highest order principle from which everything else is derived. Impartiality helps guide our operational choices – who we help and why. And independence and neutrality are ways of working which help provide the space to work. Together these all help make state and non-state actors comfortable with our motivations.

At its essence, we should never forget that humanitarian aid is humans helping humans, which requires proximity, dignity and solidarity. We should all remind ourselves periodically of the importance of the principle of humanity as the foundational humanitarian principle.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew has thirty years’ experience in the humanitarian sector, twenty-five years of which with MSF. Andrew has worked in a wide variety of contexts and geographical locations in Africa, the Former Soviet Union, and Asia. He has a PhD in War Studies from King’s College and has published a professional book in the Routledge Humanitarian Studies series on the topic of INGO-State relations. Andrew has served as a member of the Board of MSF International and is currently a board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. Andrew works as a researcher, strategic and operational evaluator, and governance advisor for various humanitarian organisations.

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Israel Needs Critical Friends

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On Tuesday 8th October 2024, Dutch Scholars for Palestine (DSP) staged a walk-out across various academic institutions in the Netherlands. Participating in the walk-out in solidarity with the Palestinian people provided a profound opportunity to reflect on Alain Verheij’s discourse on critical friendship. This act of protest was not merely a statement of dissent; it was a collective rejection of the blatant complicity of our institutions in the ongoing slow genocide against the Palestinian people.

In this opinion piece, Irene van Staveren provides a slightly edited translation of Alain Verheij’s article where he reflects on the complex and often polarized discourse surrounding Israel and Palestine, particularly in the wake of the tragic events of October 7th. Drawing from both personal experiences and theological insights, the author advocates for a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—one that emphasizes critical friendship and prophetic critique. By engaging with the rich traditions of both Judaism and Christianity, the author seeks to encourage readers to confront uncomfortable truths, challenge blind support or condemnation, and foster a deeper understanding of the humanitarian crises affecting both Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel finds itself at the center of a polarized global discourse, especially following the tragic events of October 7th. While some Christians offer unconditional support, others provide unconditional criticism. This opinion article calls for a more balanced approach—one that offers critical friendship rooted in the prophetic traditions of both Judaism and Christianity.

On October 6, it was ‘Israel Sunday’ in Protestant churches across the Netherlands. The theme, as always, was to “give shape to the indelible bond with the people of Israel.” But in a year marked by heightened conflict, navigating this bond is more complex than ever. The leadership of the churches recognizes the sensitivity of this issue, publishing carefully worded statements that avoid offending anyone. Yet, this approach leaves us wondering: is the Protestant Church Netherlands (PKN) more concerned with maintaining neutrality than with standing up for justice?

A Personal Confession

Before diving deeper into this topic, let me offer a personal confession: in some ways, I might be called a Zionist (which is a highly contested term). I deeply understand the Jewish desire for a homeland, a response to centuries of persecution, culminating in the atrocities of the Holocaust. The persistent fear of antisemitism that haunts Israel is not misplaced; it’s a reality ingrained in the Jewish psyche, and rightfully so.

My respect for the Jewish tradition runs deep. The Old Testament, is a cornerstone of my faith. I often find myself more drawn to its stories and lessons than to the New Testament. Jesus and Paul didn’t appear in a vacuum—they emerged from the rich religious and cultural context of Judaism, a tradition that continues to inspire and teach.

The Role of Prophetic Criticism

One of the remarkable elements of both Jewish and Christian scriptures is the role of the prophets. In many ancient societies, rulers were seen as divine or infallible. Not so in biblical Israel. There, kings were subject to the will of God, and when they strayed from this, the prophets were quick to call them out. No leader was above criticism; no action was beyond reproach.

This tradition of prophetic critique is one that modern Christians should embrace, especially when it comes to Israel. While Israel is often referred to as “the only democracy in the Middle East,”  it is worth noting that it still lacks a formal constitution. And while its military is often described as “the most moral army in the world,” but its actions, particularly in Gaza, raise significant moral questions.

Unconditional Support and Unconditional Hatred

Among Christians, you’ll find both extremes: some offer unwavering support for Israel, while others offer unwavering condemnation. The former group, often philosemites, blow shofars, wave the Star of David, and shout ‘shalom,’ while applauding every military strike. The latter group denounces Israel at every turn, seeing only injustice in its actions. Both positions, however, are flawed.

When we place Israel on a pedestal, either to worship or vilify, we strip its people of their humanity. Israelis are not mythical beings; they are human. They are people with fears, traumas, and hopes—people protesting against Netanyahu’s government, grieving for Gaza, or worrying for children who have been kidnapped or conscripted.

What Israel needs, particularly from its allies in the West, is not blind supporters or harsh critics. Instead, it needs critical friends—those who, like the prophets of old, are willing to speak uncomfortable truths out of a place of deep care. Unconditional support does nothing to advance peace, just as unconditional hatred only fuels further polarization.

The tragic events of October 7th, where countless lives were lost in attacks by Hamas, are a reminder of the spiral of violence that plagues the region. Yet, Israel’s large-scale retaliatory actions, which risk dragging multiple nations into conflict, demand scrutiny. If Western nations, including the Netherlands, continue to support Israel without question, they contribute to the cycle of violence rather than its resolution.

Conclusion

As we reflect on Israel Sunday, I hope that more of us will take up the mantle of critical friendship. Just as the biblical prophets held their leaders accountable, we too must be willing to offer constructive criticism to Israel, encouraging it to pursue peace and justice. Only then can we honor the shared traditions of Judaism and Christianity and contribute to a more just and peaceful world.

The original version of this opinion piece in Dutch can be found here.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors

Alain Verheij

Alain Verheij studied theology in Amersfoort (2012) and did a Research Master Hebrew Bible Studies at the University of Leiden (2014). His work involves storytelling based on the bible for groups, the media and churches.  He is a critical thinker and invited speaker. He writes a column for newspaper Trouw, and is author of several books (in Dutch), including books about God and Money, God and Me, and an Ode to the Loser.

Irene van Staveren is Professor of Pluralist Development Economics at the ISS. Professor Van Staveren’s field of research included feminist economics, heterodox economics, pluralist economics and social economics. Specifically, her fields of expertise lie in ethics and economic philosophy.

Gaza is now threatened by acute famine — we need to keep calling for a ceasefire and food aid concessions

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The number of people unable to access food in Gaza continues to grow despite urgent calls for a ceasefire and the opening of borders to humanitarian aid organizations. In this blog article, Dorothea Hilhorst highlights the social and societal consequences of famine, showing why it is imperative to act immediately and concertedly. As people grow more desperate, social and societal order begins to break down — something that must urgently be acknowledged and prevented through an immediate ceasefire and the unrestricted opening of Gaza’s borders to aid. If we don’t, Gaza can shortly face acute famine, she writes.

 

Palestinian crowds struggle to buy bread from a bakery in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

 

The United Nations has declared that the north of Gaza is at immediate risk of famine. Vice-President of the European Commission Joseph Borrell along with many others holds Israel responsible for this development. Israel, meanwhile, has referred to the ‘chaotic’ scenes that surrounded previous aid deliveries as the cause of growing hunger. A more realistic reading of the situation is that the chaos is not a cause of acute hunger, but a direct consequence of it. We can all use our own imagination of what famine means for the health of people that experience it, yet famine is a multi-sided phenomenon that has both social and societal consequences. Understanding these consequences should only increase calls for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s borders to humanitarian aid organizations.

One step away from acute famine

Malnutrition and hunger is classified by the UN in five ‘phases’— with the first phase representing complete food security, and the second and third phases representing growing malnutrition. The fourth phase, which was declared in Gaza several weeks ago, is referred to as a ‘nutritional catastrophe’. The fifth phase is acute famine, whereby more than 20% of the general population are affected by acute hunger and/or 30% of children suffer the same, and/or two in 10.000 die every day as a direct result of hunger.

The phases are paired with social and societal symptoms. Usual social order is seen to continue in the second and third phases, where people generally still feel like they have a part to play in a society and feel part of a community. In this phase, a family might be prepared to share the contents of their food aid package with a vulnerable neighbour. Local government continues to function and can make sure that food is distributed effectively.

Social cohesion breaks down when food scarcity persists

The fourth phase changes all of this: when there is catastrophic food scarcity, people tend to narrow their social gaze and everything in their lives revolves around their own family, and especially their children. This effect of this is logical and rational: if a food aid truck comes to where you live (or are sheltering), you’ll try to do anything to access some of the limited supplies available. Whether it’s by pushing, shoving, or indeed fighting, people will do anything to make sure that their children can eat. In this situation, people might steal food from their neighbours rather than share it. Local government officials are also caught up in this need —if police officers for example need to feed their families, they will prioritize that over maintaining social order.

Indeed, we have witnessed these symptoms in Gaza too in the last weeks. When aid deliveries do make it through the border, they become scenes of chaos and fighting.  At the societal level, the situation is exacerbated because fewer and fewer Gazan police officers are able to work due to the war. They are at high risk of being shot because whoever wears an official uniform in Gaza runs the risk of being identified as a Hamas militant. Several police officers have been shot dead due to this.

A lack of food aid will lead to more chaos, not less

A reaction to the chaos and fighting during aid deliveries has been to strangle off the amount of food aid that is allowed into Gaza and to seal shut the borders of the territory. In the last month, there have been even fewer (not more!) deliveries of food aid through the border despite the clear call by the International Court of Justice to admit more aid. This is exactly the wrong policy response: the fighting and chaos at distribution points is not a specific characteristic of Gazans but a logical consequence of the fourth phase of a food crisis — one where everyone is desperately focused on the immediate needs of their own family and children. Both you and I would likely react in the same way in similar circumstances. The only way to remedy this situation is to immediately distribute more food in order to move the food crisis back to a less dangerous phase.

This is not happening. What we’re seeing now is a move further away from this because Gaza is being further sealed off by Israel. The territory is sliding towards phase five — acute famine. From a societal angle, this will be paired with full social disruption and breakdown. I can already foresee comments of Gaza having become completely ‘uncontrollable’, as if this is some innate quality of the Gazans. In reality, though, this will be an unavoidable consequence of famine. The only effective strategy left to help Gazan people is an immediate ceasefire and the opening of borders to humanitarian aid.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

What can be done to address healthcare violations in Gaza?

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On 29 February 2024, I presented in a panel at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam on “The right to healthcare under fire”. The event was organised by Artsen Voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza) a Dutch group of physicians, medical students and medical researchers. Alongside compelling presentations from Dr. Loes de Kleijn, Dr. Kamal El Mokayad and Haya Al Farra, I spoke of the legal context of the ongoing, genocidal violence in Gaza and more importantly what can be done.

CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The War in Gaza has a context

Since the attacks in Southern Israel and Israel’s operation in Gaza called “Iron Swords” from October 2023, Israel has destroyed the majority of Gaza’s infrastructure, including its medical infrastructure. As I wrote already on 12 October 2023, the war in Gaza has an important context. Unfortunately, as the Israeli Professor of History Ilan Pappe has observed, there is an active effort to de-historicize the conflict, which serves as a backing to Israel in its genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza.

Despite Israel’s withdrawal of settlements and redeployment of forces in 2005, Israel has continued to occupy the 365 km2 territory of Gaza, including mounting a siege that has severely restricted basic needs. The majority of Gazans are under the age of 20 and have never left the territory. Most are refugees (and their descendants), forcibly displaced from their homes in 1948, which are maintained by what a Palestinian Professor of History, Nur Masalha describes as a politics of denial.

From a humanitarian angle, most Gazans have been largely dependent on direct United Nations assistance ever since the ‘Nakba’ in 1948, and in particular the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This makes it all the more concerning that states have been seeking to defund UNRWA, following (as yet unfounded) Israeli allegations that its staff were complicit in the October attacks, a move described as “reckless” by a senior, Washington-based analyst.

 

“I am so scared”

So often we hear Palestinians referred to as statistics. While this potentially enables people to process the horrors of what is happening, as the poet and commentator Ramsey Nasr reminds us, those who have been killed had names, and we must remember them.

Two names and stories of two Gazans among the more than 30.000 (at the time of writing) who have been killed since October 2023 were recalled during the Event at Erasmus Medical Centre. One who was remembered was Hind Rajab. She was 5 or 6 years old when her family car came under fire by Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on 29 January 2024, she made a phone call to the Palestinian Red Crescent. “I am so scared,” she said. “Call someone to come get me, please.” Sadly, after more than two weeks of frantic efforts to reach her, Hind’s body was recovered a few days later on 3 February, along with those of relatives and two Red Crescent rescue workers that had been sent to find her. Their family car was riddled with bullets.

Another Gazan who was remembered was Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian Professor, poet and activist from Gaza who taught English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

 

The Functions of International Law in relation to Atrocity Crimes

The case brought by South Africa against Israel on genocide charges has raised the prospect of international law, and international legal institutions, finally serving to help end the bloodshed and longstanding impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. In this context, it is worthwhile to understand the functions of international law in seeking to prevent, protect against and seek accountability for atrocity crimes.

First, in its regulatory function, international law sets limits on military conduct, in particular to prevent the commission of atrocity crimes, including the crime of apartheid and the crime of genocide. Secondly, in its protection function, international law aims to protect civilians and humanitarian workers (and civilian and humanitarian infrastructure). Finally, and perhaps most importantly in the present context, international law has an accountability function; this comprises a collective obligation to investigate and prosecute individual violators, including war crimes directed against civilian medical personnel and the crime of genocide.

Accordingly, various, specific measures protect medical personnel and infrastructure, including Article 19 of the Geneva Conventions that they “may in no circumstances be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict”. Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that individuals who are found to have been “intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material, medical units and transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions in conformity with international law” have committed war crimes.

 

Preliminary Measures by the International Court of Justice

After two days of oral hearings on 11 and 12 January 2024 from legal teams representing South Africa and Israel, the ICJ came back on 26 January with a set of Provisional Measures, as requested by South Africa. Each of the Provisional Measures were separately voted upon, all of which received an overwhelming majority, including the following:

“The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

In justifying these measures, the Court “took note” of several statements by United Nations officials, including a statement made by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr Martin Griffiths, on 5 January 2024:

“Gaza has become a place of death and despair… Medical facilities are under relentless attack. The few hospitals that are partially functional are overwhelmed with trauma cases, critically short of all supplies, and inundated by desperate people seeking safety.  A public health disaster is unfolding. Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos… “the health-care system in Gaza is collapsing”.

 

So, what can be done, beyond the Courts?

It’s hard not to feel sceptical about the potential of the Courts to change Israel’s behaviour. Israel’s responses since the 26 January 2024 Preliminary Measures were issued suggest that the ICJ has little to no deterrent effect. In fact, Israel not only failed to comply with these preliminary measures, it actually stepped up its military campaign. 5-year old Hind died a mere 3 days after the ICJ issued its judgement.

But international law has relevance beyond the courts. As legal mobilization researchers argue, international law can be seen as not only an imperial project, as Erakat eloquently explains, but also as a legitimate source of disruption, resistance and liberation.

For example, international law represents a legitimate basis for boycotting corporations that are complicit in atrocity crimes, such as Israeli Universities and McDonalds, just as was done during the South African anti-apartheid movement.

Another form of legal mobilization, as Dr. Claudia Saba has argued, is the delivery of humanitarian aid, as the “Free Gaza” movement have been doing, using small civilian boats to try and alleviate the desperate circumstances caused by Israel’s decades-long siege of Gaza.

Further forms of legal mobilization are protests and sit-ins, as the Public Interest Litigation Project has been preoccupied with, and what Doctors for Gaza in The Netherlandshave been engaged with since October 2024.

In other words, addressing violations of the right to health care through legal mobilization involves more than just “winning” in court. It takes on many different forms. These different forms of legal mobilization serves to galvanise social justice struggles.

What legal mobilization will not do is bring back the hundreds of health workers who have been killed in Gaza, let alone Hind Rajab or Refaat Alareer. However, it may serve to hold those responsible for killing them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr. Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology, based at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

 

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Give Israel an ultimatum: “A ceasefire, and open the borders for aid, or else”

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In this blog, Professor of Humanitarian Studies Dorothea Hilhorst assesses the situation in Gaza and the lack of humanitarian aid entering the territory. With various countries, including the US, now launching campaigns of air-dropping food aid, Hilhorst looks to the only durable solution to avert further loss of life: an immediate ceasefire. With Israel still enjoying the support of many Western countries, she calls for pressure to be put on by the Netherlands, telling Israel to lift its blockade or lose aid and support.

Image by Palestinian Red Crescent

Gaza is hungry and needs assistance. People are surviving by eating cattle feed or grass, children are starving to death and searches for food often end in injury or death through Israeli shelling. The international community is looking for complicated solutions to get food into the country: using aircraft to drop pallets of aid, or building an emergency port for the supply of ships that can bring food to Gaza. These are bogus solutions, and it is time to go for the real solution: a ceasefire and the opening of the borders for unhindered access of aid-delivery by the hundreds of trucks waiting in Rafah.

Food-drops are expensive, dangerous and make little difference. The amount of food is far too small and the first accident has already happened. People died as a result of a drop that crashed when the parachute did not open. Building an emergency port also costs time and money, and there is no guarantee that any food brought in would reach people unhindered (food from an emergency port would need trucks to distribute it). Air drops and a maritime route are false solutions that distract attention from the real problem: namely that Israel is not being held responsible for the hunger that the country causes among two million men, women, children and elderly Gaza people.

 

International Pressure is Needed

We are being told every day by Israel-friendly countries such as the Netherlands, the EU and the United States that are putting pressure on Israel to call a ceasefire and to open its borders for aid trucks. This is apparently not enough pressure, because Israel continuously refuses and is allowed to come up with new excuses every time. There has been a ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel must facilitate humanitarian aid. Israel did not comply. Since that ruling, the number of trucks allowed to bring aid to Gaza has actually decreased, not increased.

Israel’s defence for the closure of the borders is that this is necessary for Israel’s security. Israel first did not want weapons to be smuggled into Gaza for use by Hamas – which is extremely unlikely as the control of aid supplies is by the United Nations and other organizations. Israel is now shifting the goals: no food is allowed to go to Hamas. It is pointing at the chaos surrounding the distribution of food, glossing over its own role in that chaos. Firstly, Gazan police cannot maintain order because Israeli troops fire on everybody with a uniform and secondly, the chaos results from the fact that people are hungry because the borders are closed. Most importantly, it is not allowed by international law, nor by any moral standard, to starve an entire population to withhold food from a limited number of enemy troops.

The basic principle of International Humanitarian Law is that warring parties must spare civilian lives. This refers to acts of war as much as to acts of commission or omission that result in the blocking of access to food or medical care. While this is the basic principle, Resolution 2417, unanimously adopted in 2018 explicitly forbids using hunger as a weapon of war. Israel’s responsibilities to protect civilians furthermore stem from its role as the occupying force in the Palestine Occupied Territories, putting the onus on the country to care for the occupied population.

The pattern I see is that the international community continually lets Israel get away with dodging these responsibilities. Israel keeps the border closed, and as a response the international community jumps to make every effort to reach the population. It is the international community that is dreaming up (impossible) solutions like air drops and an emergency harbour and is also picking up the bills for these efforts. In the first weeks of the war, Israel destroyed the port in Gaza. The Netherlands contributed 83 million Euros towards constructing that port in the past. Instead of sending an invoice to Israel in the framework of reparation of war-related destruction, the Netherlands has offered to help pay again for an emergency port that would not even be needed if Israel would open its borders for aid.

My conclusion is that the international community must break this pattern and stop finding bogus solutions. The time to politely request Israel to call a cease fire and to open its borders for aid is over. It is time for Israel to take responsibility as an occupier of Gaza and a warring party and pay the price. Israel is completely stuck in war rhetoric. Little can be expected from the United States in this election year. Therefore, the key lies with Europe and especially with the Netherlands, which claims to be one of the best friends of Israel. Issue an ultimatum: “A ceasefire and unhindered aid by tomorrow, and otherwise all ties will be cut: no trade, no weapons and no diplomatic support for a country that is willing to starve 2 million people for its war targets”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

 

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How, when, and with whom can Humanitarians create power in their negotiations? Lessons from a 3-day workshop at the Centre for Strategic Negotiations

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In this blog, Paul Alexander, the founder of the Centre for Strategic Negotiations, dives into the various modes, contexts, and techniques that Humanitarian Actors can use in the course of their work. This blog has been written following a 3-day workshop where the Centre for Strategic Negotiations partners with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

Photo by huettenhoelscher

Frontline humanitarians often literally negotiate down the barrel of a gun, one with militaries, militias or proxies behind it. It’s a clear example of asymmetric negotiations – where one party appears to hold most power. An extreme, and often extremely high stakes, negotiation.

Such extreme examples were important to consider when designing course material for delivery at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. ‘What power do humanitarians really have, and can power be created?’ Not only passing AK47 checkpoints, but for complex multiple engagements.

 

Asymmetrical negotiations and power dynamics

Such was the case here: the Donbas, Ukraine, just prior to February 2022. Locked in a conflict since 2014 that affected over a million people, particularly vulnerable children and pensioners. Humanitarians were negotiating with senior commanders’ or their civilian proxies.

This was a problem: the counterpart was sophisticated, and likely to know their power. It was also an opportunity to speak to decision makers and to, over time, improve conditions. An opening to build a relationship, some understanding and possibly some leverage too.

When observing previous humanitarian negotiation training, there seemed an almost visceral resistance to fully engage with models that seek to explore counterparty’s interests. This was understandable. Who wants to deeply understand minds so often seemingly ruthless and self-serving?

I informed Harvard that the plan was to explore this gap, at the end of the first day, which might make them upset. Understandably they questioned why – “you do know that their job makes them upset anyway, without your help? Maybe give them a break.”

The course material was over three days, enough time to structure participants through a 3-stage process. One that can move from concept to application. Practice ingrains learning, but so too does evoking emotional experiences; the idea was to make it experiential.

 

Day 1: Power and ‘The Gap’

The starting point for humanitarians is often a moral case, caring for innocent people. If their counterparty doesn’t care, and sees no other interest from assistance, what then? In this context we explored power, and interest, and their complex inter-relatedness.

Each participant then picked a live negotiation to work on. They completed an exercise on their negotiation goals, explored if the order was right, and whether any goals had been collapsed with the means to achieve them. They then did the same for their counterparty. The contrast was stark.

Participants had little to say on their counterparty’s interests. Silence, then emotion, followed as they reflected on the cost – for past negotiations as well as present. It became a brief, collective, grieving process. A potential pivot point, often seen when turning around teams.

 

Day 2: Interests and Narratives

They returned ready to engage newly with interests. We started with deeper conceptual work on interests. Then applied it to live negotiations. One participant, ‘Anna’, faced a commander refusing to approve even a toilet for a basement bomb shelter used by a hundred children.

She repeatedly told him that every child has a right to a normal childhood. It was both her opinion and an emotional lever to move him – unsuccessfully. ‘Anna’ was rage-filled. Despite years of experience, she couldn’t comprehend such disinterest and callousness.

‘Anna’ had, during her unsuccessful attempts, observed him enough to note that he cared about one thing: losing his job. The greatest risk to that was bad publicity, so problems that escalate to being media news. We explored alternatives to ‘normal childhood’, ones fitting this concern.

‘Anna’ started with ‘normal conditions’ and the ‘safety of children’, moving on to ‘breathe normally’. All were powerful but still lacked that specific punch. She tried ‘potable water’ but that was too specific and lacking the emotive quality for a good headline.

She then arrived at ‘basic needs met’ – a narrative but also that unfavourable headline: children’s basic needs not met. It was still framed as a low level of ask, so both a low risk to permit and a big risk to deny. Yet still vague enough for ‘Anna’ to determine what it meant.

She replaced emotion not just with logic, but with the commander’s logic. However self-interested, depraved or even illogical. A key lesson for participants: ‘Listen for what they really care about; if it isn’t much that might even help. Engage to fulfil, influence, reshape their logic.’

Being external to a conflict, offering professional skills and crisis experience can all create leverage. However, interventions still need not to framed as not contrary to, or even supporting, commanders’ interests. Whilst avoiding further legitimising these commanders.

 

Day 3 Mandates as Narratives

Humanitarians often start with their mandate: their purpose and justification for being there. This can create both leverage, or resistance, if heard as Western interference. They also start by outlining their principles, or ways of working: neutrality, impartiality, independence.

On the surface they are similar but can mean different things dependent on the context. Could they be used more? Beyond descriptions of method, rather as narratives tailored for specific situations and interests? As ways to both counter any mandate resistance and create leverage.

We explored different ways to express these principles, focusing on the subtle but important difference between neutrality, impartiality and independence. The group were in less of a mood to consider principles as hallowed, and more interested in how they delivered leverage.

‘Erika’ saw that her default principle, neutrality, kept failing because it wasn’t believed. She came from one side of the conflict. How could she possibly be neutral? It would be more plausible, and useful, to say independent. If not neutral, you can still choose independence.

‘Anita’ saw how each principle can create different stories of their role. These stories might communicate differently to each listener and can be adjusted as the engagement develops. Impartiality was useful to hold back in case they found themselves as mediator in a dispute.

They were building negotiation strategies. Each tailored for a new situation, counterparty and stage. Their principles became strategic narratives, nuanced to fit the context and interests. Creating, and selecting, these narratives could convert others’ interests into your power.

This helped reframe their understanding of power, and negotiation power, through its association with interests. In asymmetric negotiations, faced with hard power, the soft power of narratives and process can create leverage. An opening to trade, both ethically and silently.

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Photo by huettenhoelscher  — HANNOVER / GERMANY – JUNE 24, 2020: Paramedic of the German army with an emergency backpack stands at a military ambulance.

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About the author:

Paul Alexander is founder of the Centre for Strategic Negotiations (CSN). CSN specialises in maximising the value of high stakes negotiations. It operates across the commercial, government and NGO sectors. http://www.centrefsn.com @centrefsn

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Glocalization: a possible key to decoloniality in the aid sector?

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As global as needed, as local as possible: glocal is a buzzword both in the humanitarian and development fields. According to many, acting glocal is a possible response to the long debate on coloniality in aid, and the key for a new generation of international practices that are more aware, more equal, and more balanced. But recent practices show how also glocalization can be steeped into coloniality: who is deciding what is possible and what is needed? And which voices, among the many that are composing the so-called Global South are being heard?

Image by Author

Coloniality and the aid sector

The Peruvian Sociologist Anibal Quijano used the word Coloniality to identify patterns, structures, norms, customs and beliefs, based on the generally white, Christian and Eurocentric vision of the world, formerly directly imposed on colonized countries, that remained there even after the colonization ended.

Coloniality expresses itself in 4 realms: Coloniality of power – how power is shared and used in a way that resembles the old models of former colonizing states, Coloniality of being– how human beings are classified in a hierarchical fashion according to  if they belong to the dominant group (or not), usually composed of white, European, Christian men, Coloniality of knowledge -how knowledge is categorized according to a Eurocentric perspective that juxtaposes the alleged “rationality” and “universality” of European knowledge, to any other kind of knowledge produced in other contexts, and Coloniality of gender, to refer to the imposition of European gender structures and categories over non European gender cultures and traditions.

The aid sector is directly linked to colonial history and it has been identified as  embodying several forms of neocolonialism. Critics focus mainly on three factors:

  1. Providing assistance is often a way to keep influencing the agenda of a self-governing entity, its decision making processes and allocation and use of resources located in former colonies;
  2. The sector lives on the assumption that knowledge is produced in the “Global North” and magnanimously brought to the “South”, that civilization, wellbeing and individual rights as they are conceived in the “North” are concepts that need to be introduced into a generally primitive and otherwise wild “South”
  3. In the mainstream narrative of the aid relation, the main character, the hero, the agent, is the person from the “North”, who is usually depicted as a white non-disabled man, while those who participate into actions and projects in the South are reduced to passive objects in need of help, often called “beneficiaries”.

There are several signs of momentum for decoloniality in the sector, and different initiatives have arisen to question the colonial foundations of the aid industry. Such initiatives look at narratives, logistics, human resources, visual communication, project cycle management and funding mechanisms. The most recent and visible move in this direction is the Pledge for Change, initiated by Degan Ali, Executive Director of the African non-governmental organization (NGO) Adeso, with support from the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership. Originally signed by five major NGOs, the pledge today has over twice that number of signatories. It identifies three streams of change: equitable partnership, authentic storytelling, and influencing wider change

In this landscape, one of the most vivid debates is around the role, space, position and power that communities, groups and organizations rooted in countries traditionally receiving aid have in shaping the relation with programs. Too often they are still considered passive beneficiaries of programs designed without their involvement, who should be grateful from whatever arrives from the white savior, even though what arrives is not adequate to the context and does not address needs and priorities.

Glocalization in aid

The concept of Glocalization was borrowed from marketing and introduced into the sector straight after the launch of the Agenda for Sustainable Development, as a key methodology for successful implementation of the agenda.

The meaning of the word Glocalization is usually summarized into “think global, act local”. It recognizes the need for a coexistence between global trends and dynamics and specific needs, priorities, knowledge, customs, and cultures.

From a decolonial perspective, the concept of Glocalization appears interesting at least for two reasons:

  • Values, knowledge, and epistemology: traditionally the whole aid industry assumes that valuable skills and knowledge arrive from former colonial powers. Aid workers bring “capacities” to those who allegedly don’t have any. A huge collection of local, indigenous, and traditional knowledge on which local systems are based is ignored, dismissed, and historically sidelines, or often intentionally destroyed. Glocalization encourages learning from the local and using local knowledge when it is the best fit to reach the intended outcome, without importing and imposing knowledge and practices from other contexts.
  • Agenda setting: who participates in decision making processes, who decides that something represents a problem, and that this needs to be urgently sorted with international support. The concept of glocalization includes and encourages agency from local actors and recognizes their power to shape global trends, while asking international actors to place themselves in a position of openness and active listening.

However, the use and ownership of the word “glocalization” has mirrored a still-very-unbalanced North-South relation. The first use can be seen in allegedly glocal actions and programs (including manuals that should support the practical implementation of glocalization), while the second simply accepted the term as a new buzzword that needs to be mentioned in project proposals in order to receive funds.

Looking at the use and application of allegedly glocal approaches, we are called to ask a difficult question: Who is deciding when local is possible and when global is needed? In other words, who has the power? Glocalization practices need to start at decision making level: no real glocalization can be possible if the agency of communities, civil societies and other actors located in countries traditionally receiving aid is not recognized and given space.

If we return to the concept of coloniality, we soon realize that for true glocalization, this practice needs to be deeply connected to a decolonial process. On the contrary, we are too often witnessing a sort of “glocal-washing”, where those who traditionally held power and resources keep doing so, through a seemingly different process. If existing power relations are not challenged, and if the process of knowledge production does not change, the usual suspects will decide how and when to ‘go glocal’.

 

Having difficult conversations

The word glocalization by itself suggests that there is no one-fits-all solution, and that every context needs to be interpreted, explored and listened to, in order to find adequate and unique solutions.
Each context requires a different balance between global and local, and this balance can emerge only if power relations are questioned, and if glocalization is approached from a decolonial perspective.
The first step are not the manuals produced in the so-called Global North. The first step is finding the way to have difficult conversations on power, knowledge, and resources, with the communities that will participate into aid programs.

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About the author:

Carla Vitantonio is a Humanitarian and development professional, author, researcher. She is a member of the board of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. In 2022, she was awarded the honor of Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia by the President of the Republic of Italy, for her activity as a humanitarian and as an author.

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How was life in Gaza before October 7th?

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The war between Israel and Palestine has saturated the media with many views on the resulting effects. What about the state of things in Gaza prior to this violent conflict? In this blog, Irene Van Staveren — a professor of pluralist development economics at the International Institute of Social Studies — tickles our imagination to consider the complexities of social problems evident in Gaza prior to October 7, 2023 when the war broke out.

Image Source: Natalia Cieslik/World Bank, 2010.

Imagine you were a 13-year-old girl growing up in the Gaza Strip under ‘normal’ circumstances until a few weeks ago. Statistically, you would have made up over 40% of the total population along with all the other children up to the age of 14. You had three siblings. The likelihood of living below the poverty line was 53%. Just last year, hundreds of buildings were hit by rockets, including the power plant. Over the past years, you had experienced various bombings in and around Gaza City. As a result, like all the other children in your neighbo, you had an 87% chance of developing post-traumatic stress disorder according to the latest Human Development Report (p.89). There haven’t been any elections in 16 years, and your parents feel powerless.

You often didn’t have enough to eat because your parents had a high risk of unemployment (40% for men, 64% for women). One of your uncles had a fairly well-paying job outside of Gaza, which put him in the one percent who managed that. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to keep much of his salary as an UNCTAD report (p. 6) suggests that 30% of the earnings for such work go into the pockets of labour brokers. Your grandfather had a small olive grove and could sell some olive oil to foreign markets. However, he was increasingly stopped when trying to reach his grove. According to the same UNCTAD report (p.8), olive production had dropped by 60%.

So, you most likely shared a small living space with many people. This was quite challenging when you had to do your homework, especially because there was only electricity available half of the time. Often, there was no light in the evenings. Learning was a struggle, and the destruction of several schools led to the surviving children being divided among the remaining schools, making your class overcrowded.

The only escape from this situation might have been marriage. According to the Palestinian Authority’s statistical bureau, one in five girls gets married before their 18th birthday. You knew some of these girls – they dropped out of school early and became mothers at a young age. Finding a job was out of the question for them. Not that you would have had it much better. More than half of the youth in Gaza can’t find a job.

In the past, there used to be international aid to rely on. However, over the past ten years, it has plummeted from 18% of Gaza’s income to 2%, according to the World Bank (figure 2). Fortunately, most schools and many hospitals are run by the UN and aid organizations. But they face significant shortages of medicine and parts for medical equipment like X-ray machines. The WHO calculated that almost 70% of permit requests for importing these medical goods are denied. When your grandmother needed surgery at a hospital outside of Gaza, her doctor’s request wasn’t processed on time, putting her at a high risk of passing away. Thankfully, she survived. But you didn’t. Fourty percent of the victims of the current bombings in Gaza are children.

This column appeared in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, on 31 October 2023.

Image Credit: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

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About the author:

Irene van Staveren is a professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor van Staveren’s theoretical interest is in feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics. Her key research interest is at the meso level of the economy with topics such as social cohesion, social exclusion, inequality and discrimination, as well as ethics and values in the economy and in economics.

 

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International Humanitarian Studies Association conference roundtable and North South University statement on Gaza: “As scholars and practitioners of Humanitarian Studies, we strongly condemn acts of widescale and indiscriminate violence against civilian populations”

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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]This blog is part of a series about the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In this piece, Dorothea Hilhorst (Professor of Humanitarian Studies at ISS, outgoing IHSA President) and Sk. Tawfique M Haque (Professor and Chair of Political Science and Sociology, North South University) present a statement made by participants of a roundtable held at the conference to take stock of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”25834″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]At the IHSA biennial conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a roundtable took place on the ongoing violence and humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine. The roundtable included contributions from Professor Dorothea Hilhorst (outgoing IHSA President), Research Professor Antonio De Lauri (incoming IHSA President), Professor Sk. Tawfique M. Haque (North South University), Professor Shahidul Haque (North South University), Professor Mohamed Nuruzzaman (North South University), and Dr Kaira Zoe Canete (International Institute of Social Studies).

During the roundtable, several aspects of the ongoing humanitarian situation were discussed, including access for humanitarian aid, the interests and positions of stakeholders in the conflict more generally, ways to counter the situation being used to further polarize society, and what the role of Humanitarian Scholars is in the face of the situation.

The International Humanitarian Studies Association and Center for Peace Studies (CPS) at North South University would like to share this statement, following the roundtable:

We extend our solidarity and sorrow towards those grieving loved ones in Palestine and Israel, and deplore violence carried out during this conflict. As scholars and practitioners of Humanitarian Studies, we strongly condemn acts of widescale and indiscriminate violence against civilian populations. This extends not only to ongoing military violence, but the blocking of humanitarian aid and assistance.

These actions by the Israeli state and military amount to multiple breaches of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), including the 1949 Geneva Convention that was signed by Israel. We condemn the collective punishment of over two million people in Gaza, of which more than half are children.

We also highlight UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2417, which condemns the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and confirms that any blocking of humanitarian aid breaks IHL. Further, we draw attention to Israel’s role as an occupying power in the Palestinian Territories, and its commitments to maintain medical services and infrastructure under IHL.

We call for respect for and adherence to IHL, International Criminal Law (ICL) and UNSC 2417 to prevent starvation (due to blocking access to food, water, electricity, health care and other items essential to survival) and death of civilians. This means allowing immediate access to aid for those who need it and protecting civilians.

Humanitarian Studies scholars need to use their knowledge and evidence to speak truth to power and counter any silencing mechanism that jeopardizes academic freedom and the freedom of expression. One of the challenges of wide-scale violence, wherever it happens, is that it makes us question the value of humanity. We need all voices in this discussion to maintain dignity and respect, and we condemn the use of antisemitic and Islamophobic language, as well as narratives of dehumanization and polarization especially when they come from powerful institutions, political leaders, and states.

For more information about the IHSA Conference, check out their website.

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1699612513242{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

 

 

Professor Sk. Tawfique M. Haque is the Director, Center for Peace Studies (CPS), South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG), North South University.

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Israel’s blocking of humanitarian assistance breaches international humanitarian law

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Gaza is under constant blockade and subject to multiple airstrikes every day — with little regard for avoiding civilian harm. This is a breach of international humanitarian law, which places specific legal imperatives on combatants not only during war but also as occupying forces after war. In this article, Professor of Humanitarian Studies Dorothea Hilhorst critically discusses Israel’s responsibilities in its role as a combatant, as an occupying force, and as a neighbouring country.

Image by Palestinian Red Crescent

International humanitarian law (IHL) has suddenly become a very popular phrase in political discourse. The Dutch government, in its support of Israel, notes that it expects the country to uphold ‘international humanitarian law’ (sometimes referred to as ‘the law of international war’). These conventions and laws cover various aspects of how a country can act during combat, for example around questions of whether Israel can target civilian infrastructure if it is located above a Hamas tunnel. More specifically, though, IHL relates to strengthening and maintaining humanitarian help for civilians.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Within the space of just a few days, around one million elderly people, men, women, and children have been driven from their homes. Around half of these people have sought shelter in a UN building, for example a UNWRA school, which are now so overcrowded that most people sleep outside on the street. There is less and less food, and water has had to be limited to under one liter per person per day — for those that are lucky to get anything at all. Operations and medical treatments are no longer being carried out, or if they are it is without anesthetic.

At the same time, there is a huge queue of trucks waiting at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. These are full of humanitarian aid supplies: medicines, fuel, and food. At the time of writing, 20 trucks have been allowed in Gaza, but that is far short of the minimum of 100 trucks needed on a daily basis. Other than that, the border between this convoy and the people of Gaza remains closed, with the WHO saying that the supplies could help doctors at medical institutions operate on 1,500 people daily — if they reach the people of Gaza in time. It is Israel that holds the key to unlocking this aid, with the border deemed unsafe (and so kept closed) due to rocket attacks and air strikes. Last week dozens of people were killed in such strikes at the border.

It is usual to speak of and work towards ‘humanitarian corridors’ during conflicts, i.e. specific routes that are safe for people to evacuate through, or for aid to travel via. Under IHL, combatants in war are required to work towards creating and maintaining these corridors. This, and much of IHL, is based on the principle that citizens are innocent during conflicts and that civilian deaths should be avoided at all costs. This principle applies both to minimizing civilian death from combat and also maximizing access for life-saving humanitarian aid. Israel has stated it maintains Gaza under siege to avoid aid being captured by Hamas. However, this fear cannot be a reason to abandon Gazanian civilians and let them perish. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffith commented on Wednesday that humanitarian access and help have become a question of life and death, that withholding help can cost countless innocent lives.

Israel has various legal responsibilities both as a combatant and as an occupying force (both Gaza and the West Bank are occupied territories and have been since 1967). Marco Sassoli, an internationally renowned expert in IHL at the University of Geneva, has made it clear that Israel’s blocking and cutting off of electricity, water, aid, and food from Gaza since October 9 is in clear breach of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which Israel has signed. The 1949 Convention makes clear that an occupying force cannot collectively punish civilians, whilst it also specifically requires an occupying force to maintain medical systems such as hospitals. Then, we must look at Israel’s role as a neighbour — with a moral imperative to allow access and open borders to humanitarian assistance — whilst the border between Israel and Gaza remains hermetically sealed.

It is not clear how much pressure various countries are putting on Israel behind the scenes to open the Rafah border crossing (and other borders), but it is time for this pressure to be reflected in public statements that condemn the withholding of humanitarian aid and directly state that preventing humanitarian help breaches international humanitarian law.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | Humanitarian observatories – seeking change from below

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In the past few months, several humanitarian observatories have been set up in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia as part of a project on humanitarian governance and advocacy. These observatories review humanitarian action in the countries they’re located in and aim to contribute to humanitarian reform from below. In this post, Dorothea Hilhorst introduces this exciting new development and the Bliss blog series that will show what’s happening at the different observatories.
Launch DRC observatory 30 October 2022
Humanitarian governance is associated with many challenges related to the effectiveness of aid, accountability and trust, and the huge power imbalance between large humanitarian agencies and national aid providers, for example. Questions abound. How is the effectiveness of aid perceived by affected communities? How are funds allocated? Who are the people most in need? What is the role of the state in service provision? How is aid politicized, and whose interests are at stake? What is the role of national NGOs and civil society, and how are their voices heard? Whereas many of these questions are addressed in international policies and debates, the influence of actors from the countries that are mostly affected by crisis – recipients of aid, national aid providers and others – on these policies and debates is wanting. As part of a humanitarian governance project hosted at the ISS, we have launched a series of humanitarian observatories for such actors to help monitor humanitarian governance processes in locales of humanitarian aid interventions with the aim of improving effectiveness and accountability. The project is briefly introduced below.   Creating networks, enhancing dialogue and collaboration In an era of growing humanitarian needs, international advocacy has been focused on improving the effectiveness of aid, accountability, and the role of national actors. But these initiatives usually take place at the global level. We want to turn this around and reform humanitarianism by creating spaces for actors affected by aid interventions to monitor these in the places where they are enacted. The project ‘Humanitarian governance. Accountability, advocacy, alternatives’ that seeks to do this is a five-year programme funded by the European Research Council. The programme is hosted at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague and is organized as a network with the following partners: the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and KUTAFITI and the CREGED in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a culmination of aspirations and activities of my previous work where I have always aimed to enhance dialogue and create networks of people across different parts of the humanitarian field, especially with people living through and working on humanitarian crises in their own setting. The project hopes to create a space where people from those countries can meet and reflect on the challenges facing humanitarian governance in their country. For this reason, and following several exploratory discussions in the team, our partners have set up humanitarian observatories, which can be broadly defined as networks of a variety of actors that observe trends and processes in humanitarian governance and propose changes when needed. They can be imagined as spaces in which these actors keep an eye on how the humanitarian aid system functions in a specific context, providing an impression of the overall functioning of the system while also functioning amid all the humanitarian activities taking place. The observatories include representatives of affected communities, civil servants, members of civil society, and researchers from within and outside of academia. Why focus on national or regional contexts? There are several reasons why it is important to focus observatories on national or regional contexts:
  • National or regional observatories help observe humanitarian governance in its context. Due to reforms in the humanitarian sector, its organization is moving away from being centred on international actors and toward becoming more embedded in the countries of implementation. It is therefore important to observe humanitarian governance in its context, as it is affected by contextual issues such as the histories of governance development in a country, the relative strength of state and non-state institutions, and the level of economic development.
  • National or regional observatories amplify the voices of a variety of actors. International policy fora typically include voices of actors from different countries, but these are usually the same handful of humanitarian actors. By organizing the observatories locally, a larger range of actors can be involved and can make themselves heard, including actors from affected communities, researchers, and journalists.
  • National or regional observatories can become effective vehicles for promoting change on humanitarian governance in their context. Humanitarian advocacy can be defined as the activities of affected communities and their advocates to articulate, advance, and protect their rights (i.e. entitlements to assistance and citizenship rights more broadly), needs, views, and interests. This can be advocacy targeted at different actors and levels, including the humanitarian community. This works best when advocacy messages are context-specific, concrete, and implementable.
  Spaces for learning and dialoguing The observatories have further added value beyond monitoring the state of the humanitarian aid sector. For the members, they are a space for learning. Interestingly, the desire is also to learn beyond the context. The South Asia observatory, for example, is currently organizing a session about the situation in Sudan. The observatories are a space for exchange. In meetings of the observatory, members can exchange their experiences and insights and can learn from each other. This was for example paramount in the sessions held in the DRC about sexual abuse in the sector – participants shared their personal observations and ideas. The observatories can also be a space for strategic thinking to consider what the changes are that people wish to see in humanitarian governance. With this purpose in mind, the Ethiopian observatory has had several sessions to review a new piece of legislation on internally displaced persons and make recommendations on how this can include more accountability to affected people. And, finally, the observatories can be a space for action and influence. To some extent, this is built into the observatory, as participants can take the recommendations back to their own organizations. And the observatory meetings usually end in agreeing on points of action, such as entering into conversation with authorities on a certain topic or seeking exposure by writing a blog post.   From conceptualization to implementation There are currently four observatories: in the DRC, Ethiopia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. A fifth observatory will be launched in The Philippines coming September. Each of the current observatories has held initial meetings. The agenda of the meetings is determined by the participants; hence, they all have a different agenda that is relevant to the context. In the DRC, the observatory is currently dealing with the role of the state and the issue of sexual abuse in the humanitarian sector. In Latin America, the focus is on the role of civil society and affected communities, in Ethiopia on accountability towards Internally Displaced Persons, and in South Asia on heatwaves. While activities are planned in the context, insights will also be shared internationally. They will, amongst others, be discussed at conferences and events of the International Humanitarian Studies Association, and they will be shared in this series of blog posts. The series will consist of blogs of members of the observatories about the issues of their concern and the reforms they wish to see. The observatories are a young initiative, and their development is open-ended. So far, the experiences have been very promising, and I very much look forward to seeing how the observatories evolve and what we will learn from them through the future contributions to BLISS.
The Humanitarian Governance project has received funding from the European Research council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 884139).   Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.  

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This blog is part of the  Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139

Dilemmas for aid agencies working in Afghanistan under Taliban’s gender apartheid rule.

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In late December 2022, the Taliban announced that aid organizations would no longer be allowed to employ women. It was the next step in a series of measures that make it increasingly impossible for Afghan women to study, live or think independently. In response, many aid organizations have stopped their work, others are continuing. What will be the effect of all this and where are the boundaries for continuing assistance?

The consequences of the ban are disastrous. After the takeover of power by the Taliban in 2021, the economy of Afghanistan collapsed, the government currently hardly functions and health services have disappeared except for aid-managed programmes. Drought, floods and last summer’s big earthquake all made matters worse. Current estimates are that 20 million people depend on humanitarian assistance and the ban on women’s employment will certainly cost lives. In addition, jobs are very rare in today’s Afghanistan. Many women who work for aid organizations are the sole breadwinner in their family. These families will face poverty if these women resign from their jobs.

UN diplomats and aid organizations are on high alert and they are feverishly meeting to seek strategies that enable them to stand up for human rights and yet maintain aid  as much as possible. The UN Security Council, as well as many countries, has also condemned the ban. Global humanitarian aid coordinator, Martin Griffiths, will be travelling to Afghanistan in the coming weeks in an attempt to persuade the government to change its mind. For the time being, however, the Taliban do not seem sensitive to outside pressure.

There are currently about a hundred aid organizations that have stopped their work. Some agencies take a principled approach: they condemn excluding female employees as a gross violation of human rights and are reluctant to strike deals with the Taliban about the provision of aid. Other organizations emphasize the logistical implications of the ban: aid is not possible in Afghanistan without women, because only women can reach the vulnerable women and children who need it most.

There are some organizations that can continue their work without disruption, including Médecins sans Frontières (MSF). Their employees are not yet affected by the new measure. The Taliban appear to be divided over the matter. The ban was issued by the Afghan Ministry of Economic Affairs, which is under the influence of the hardliner Taliban. Most national aid organizations are registered under this ministry. This implies that the ban also affects the programmes of foreign aid organizations that work through local partners. On the other hand, foreign organizations that implement their own programmes, such as MSF, fall under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has not adopted the measure. The Ministry of Health is also holding off the ban for the time being.

There are voices advocating that the aid organizations should draw a line and stop talking to the Taliban. However, many organizations will continue to look for a humanitarian space to uphold assistance in order not to let the population down. They are prepared to negotiate at a local level, where it is expected that some rulers may apply the ban more leniently. This is a common humanitarian strategy: negotiate where necessary and continue to look for ways to continue to provide aid. A disadvantage of this strategy may be that the Taliban can play off aid organizations against each other.

The ban is still fresh and evolving – new announcements are  expected soon. As far as I am concerned, there is one red line: organizations cannot agree to provide assistance when women are excluded from their services. Aid agencies, the UN and international governments should convey a common message: Aid that is reserved for men only is a no-go as this would contribute to the system of gender apartheid that prevails under the Taliban.

This blog is based on research that was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 programme [Advance grant number 884139].

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

 

 

 

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How combatting illicit financial flows can prevent remittances from helping people during humanitarian crises: a closer look at Afghanistan

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Remittances are a lifeline for many people in low- and middle-income countries, playing a particularly important role during conflict-related humanitarian crises by helping those affected by conflict stay on their feet. However, laws countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism during such crises can prevent remittances from reaching those that need them. Using the case of Afghanistan, Mohamed Muse and Rodrigo Mena in this article discuss the links between remittances and such laws and propose a critical research agenda focused on remittances as an important part of humanitarian crisis responses.

Source: centralbanking.com

Humanitarian crises affect people’s lives in many ways, often leading to abrupt change that can shatter lives and livelihoods due to increased economic disruption, poverty, unemployment, and the reduced provision of services by the state resulting from them (see here, here, and here). In such situations, humanitarian aid is essential for supporting affected people. The assistance of relatives and friends is vital, especially when support networks and humanitarian agencies are not present in those places affected or where their support is limited in terms of coverage, access, or funds.

During crises, it is common to see diaspora mobilising to provide assistance to people living in crises by means of remittances – the transfer of money and other valuable resources to family or friends in crisis-affected contexts. However, laws that prevent money laundering and terrorism financing can prevent remittances from being used effectively as a response mechanism, particularly by forcing banks and other financial entities to stop money transfers to conflict-affected places.

Remittances are an important income for many. When viewing remittances as single transfers made from person to person, they might not seem to have much impact. By considering remittances in their totality, however, a completely different picture emerges. To begin with, they are an important financial inflow in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), second only to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).[1] According to the World Bank, total remittances to LMICs in 2021 surpassed USD 600 billion and the forecasted figure for 2023 is even higher. What’s more, these figures only reflect money sent through ‘formally’ regulated systems such as Western Union and MoneyGram. In fact, most remittances travel through informal and group-specific remittance systems such as Hawala,[2] the most known and researched informal remittance system used by Middle Eastern and African communities.

Remittances make a big difference. Remittance-based financial flows contribute to multiple social and economic practices, from national to household levels and processes. For example, through remittances, Somali diaspora have contributed to the “peace reconciliation process” in Somalia by financially supporting conflict resolution processes, for example peace dialogues among the conflicting parties. Remittances also help sustain the livelihoods of recipients in conflict- and crisis-affected regions and can positively improve health, education, and the housing situation of poor people who receive them. They also help “boost the economy” after periods of crisis.

Remittances play an important role before, during, and after humanitarian crises. Importantly, remittances play a crucial role in supporting responses to humanitarian crises in general, including pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster recovery efforts. Yet despite their importance, multiple regulations and policies limit, constrain, and shape the extent to which remittances can be resorted to during crises.

Laws combatting money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CTF) are meant to protect illicit financial flows. According to the Financial Action Task Force (FAFT),[3] countries and their financial entities are required to implement and strictly follow AML/CTF regulations. ‘Know your customer’ (KYC) and de-risking practices are two such regulations that directly impact diaspora and their remittances. KYC requires banks and other financial entities to know about their customers before engaging in any financial transactions with them.

De-risking is another approach that banks have to comply with as part of AML/CTF regulations. De-risking requires banks and other financial entities to not engage with ‘high risk and sanctioned destinations’. The former refers to places in which terrorist groups operate, the latter to  entities that are subjected to sanctions mostly by the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).[4]

Such regulations are curtailing remittances to Afghanistan. Here, they have created extra layers of challenges for Afghan diaspora and international humanitarian organizations. After the Taliban assumed power in Afghanistan in August 2021, it tumbled deeper into a financial and humanitarian crisis. With the ‘Fall of Kabul’, the country, which had already suffered a range of blows due to the conflict, poverty, and the COVID-19 pandemic, saw its reserves worth USD 7 billion being frozen by OFAC. Similarly, USD 400 million in Afghanistan emergency funds were blocked by the International Monetary Fund, which claimed that it could end up in the hands of Taliban.

Diaspora and their remittances came under global scrutiny as well. With an estimated number of 5.8 million Afghans living abroad, residents of the country received USD 788.9 million in remittances in 2020. This amount only accounts for money transferred via formally recorded channels like Western Union and excludes remittances sent to people in Afghanistan via trust-based channels like Hawala. After the Taliban takeover, many institutions followed a de-risking principle and AML/CTF policies, as a result of which both Western Union and MoneyGram suspended their operations in the country, which made remittances to Afghanistan through formal channels almost impossible. Thus, the trust-based Hawala system, already popular in the country before the current crisis, was increasingly used.[5]

However, Hawala and similar systems have been criticized and are feared to facilitate illicit streams of money, mostly because the transactions cannot be traced, and accountability practices are difficulty to have when the actors involved in the transactions cannot always be identified. Therefore, the enforcement of these global regulatory and supervisory frameworks seeks to protect such systems from harm. Because Afghanistan is on OFAC’s sanctioned countries list, remittances and other financial inflows have become impossible after the ‘Fall of Kabul’ because both humanitarian organizations and financial entities needed to adhere to AML/CTF regulations.

However, to limit and perhaps avoid any further catastrophic humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, OFAC started issuing General Licenses (GL). These licenses made possible humanitarian assistance (GL14) and inflows of personal remittances (GL 16). In this way, innocent Afghans have been able to get much-needed support from their family and friends abroad, as well as from international humanitarian organizations.

There is a need for a critical research agenda on remittances during humanitarian crises. As the case of Afghanistan shows, beyond the well-studied socio-economic role of remittances (see here, here, and here) and their (claimed) use for terrorism and crime, contribution to development, or as an obstacle to integration, they can also play an important role in responding to unfolding humanitarian crises. However, several important knowledge puzzles remain unaddressed and invite the development of a research agenda that can shed light on them, with possible research foci including:

 

  1. The role and integration of remittances in formal humanitarian responses.
  2. The impact of sanctions on societies affected by humanitarian crises and the challenges that these measures can create.
  3. How remittances link with inequality, either reducing them, considering that not everyone has equal access to remittances or networks of people that has migrate and can send money, or their impact in local economies, from inflation or foster businesses.
  4. How international humanitarian organizations navigate or address AML/CTF regulations when responding to different humanitarian crises.
  5. How remittances are linked to or use cryptocurrencies or blockchain technology, and the implication of this, for example, in terms of the traceability of remittances, speed of the transfers.

[1] All LMICs including China. When excluding China, remittances form the highest financial inflow to LMICs.

[2] Hawala is an informal value transfer system that is commonly used in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. This transfer system operates outside or in parallel with traditional banking systems and is based on “trust” between those who move value (hawaladars), since no money is involved. Simply put, the sender contacts the hawala agent or hawaladar (Hawaladar A); then, Hawaladar A contacts a local hawaladar agent at the location where the money is to be sent (Hawaladar B) and asks him/her to deliver money to the final recipient. Hawaladar A and B then settle their accounts.

[3] FAFT is inter-governmental agency established in 1898 by group of G7 countries that fights money laundering and terrorism financing through the creation of regulations.

[4] OFAC is part of Treasury Department of US Government. OFAC administers economic sanctions to entities and individuals that are seen to be national security threats.

[5] A report by think tank Samuel Hall for example quips, “Afghan diaspora has been using Hawala extensively for remittances since the first waves of immigration, as most Afghan migrants in Iran and Pakistan did not have access to the banking system”.

This blog post and research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 programme [Advance grant number 884139].

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Rodrigo Mena is an Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies. He has studied and worked in humanitarian assistance/aid, disaster governance, and environmental sociology for almost twenty years, especially in conflict-affected and vulnerable settings. He lectures on humanitarian action, disaster risk reduction, methodology, and safety and security for in-situ/fieldwork research.

 

Mohamed Abdiaziz Muse is PhD Researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. Mohamed’s research focuses on global remittance regulations and state-diaspora politics in Sub Sahara Africa. Mohamed’s other areas of focus include international humanitarian aid, diaspora humanitarianism and economic development in Middle East and Africa. Email: musegeelle@yahoo.com twitter: @musegeellejr

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How Europe’s (anti-)migration policies are fuelling a humanitarian crisis

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When some one million people crossed the Mediterranean in the course of 2015 to seek refuge, European countries called it a crisis. Yet the real crisis was created by European immigration and asylum policies and by the challenges they posed for aid providers. We discussed these issues at the  conference of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) in August 2018 that was held at the ISS in The Hague. In this blog we highlight some of the key issues from our just-published conference special issue and show how the issues raised back then are still of concern today.  The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the violence experienced by people seeking safety in countries such as Italy, Greece, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and the UK.

Photo: European Commission DG ECHO. Available at: https://euobserver.com/opinion/13633

Back in 2018, the humanitarian consequences of Europe’s migration policies were a key theme at the IHSA conference. We’ve just published some of the conference contributions in a special issue of International Migration entitled ‘Politics, humanitarianism and migration to Europe’. The issue seeks to unpack how European governments and the EU are creating a policy-induced humanitarian crisis, how this works in the micro-practices of migration politics, and what this means for humanitarian and political action. This blog article provides a brief overview of the key themes in the special issue.

Crisis-creating policy developments

In the issue, we observe many policy developments that are of humanitarian concern. European governments view migration as economically driven or as a threat to their national security. As such, migration has been criminalised for years. Policies such as strengthening border controls, the externalisation of borders, and a focus on smuggling and trafficking rather than on the causes of forced migration all result in humanitarian crisis. In addition, the EU or its member states (and the UK) have made agreements with Libya, Turkey, and Sudan to contain those seeking protection, which risks violating the human rights of those who flee. Support for Libyan coastguards or for Sudanese paramilitary border forces leaves migrants stuck in conflict- and crisis-ridden countries and/or in appalling conditions in migrant detention centres. The UK’s externalised border in France leaves those seeking asylum in the UK stuck in France without basic assistance and vulnerable to police violence. Border restrictions on the Italy-France border have a similar effect. And the closure of legal routes means migrants have to take more dangerous routes and use smugglers or traffickers. Preventing people from leaving or from coming to Europe amounts to a policy of letting die.

Micro-practices and the politics of exhaustion

Border restrictions, mass detention, and forced returns are complemented by a number of less visible deterrence tactics and strategies. The humanitarian crisis in Europe is characterised by these regimes of micro-practices, which include 1) migrants sleeping rough or in makeshift camps with little or no shelter, food and health care, 2) regular police violence, confiscation of possessions, and evictions, and 3) slow, confusing, and inconsistent asylum procedures. The latter make it difficult or undesirable to claim asylum. Migrants who are ‘illegalised’ in this way can be exposed to more violence and can be deported.

Combined with constant uncertainty, these regimes of micro-practices lead to a politics of exhaustion aimed at influencing people’s resolve to claim asylum or to make them leave. Camps and migrants stuck on borders in desperate conditions itself also acts as a deterrent and at the same time highlights action to defend national security for domestic audiences.  Another advantage is that regimes of less visible forms of violence make it difficult to identify intent or overtly illegal practices.

The restriction of humanitarian response and a shift to political action

In terms of humanitarian response, we identify a number of issues, including the criminalisation of assistance provision and the constraints faced by traditional organisations in Europe, as well as the rise in resistance and activism by newly created volunteer groups.

Here’s what been happening in the European countries covered in the special issue: In Italy, accusations by far-right organisations that NGOs are assisting in trafficking made it possible to develop legislation against the docking of ships carrying migrants and to restrict their protection once they have reached land. In Calais, France, local authorities have repeatedly tried to restrict assistance to refugees. In both the Italy and the France cases, providing assistance is deemed illegal and showing solidarity with refugees has become a crime. Examples can be found in many other European countries. As a result, new volunteer groups quickly became politically engaged – not only through assistance as a political act, but also by providing legal assistance, preventing police raids (for example in Belgium), gathering information, and lobbying politicians.

The politicisation of humanitarian action has complicated the role of more established organisations, who are bound by principles of neutrality and impartiality. In Germany, for example, room for manoeuvre for traditional state and non-state actors was legally restricted, but different political narratives enabled some flexibility. In Norway, some volunteer groups shifted to political action and others found ways of working with more established organisations. The greatest frictions between established agencies and volunteer activist groups are often found in humanitarian advocacy. An examination of the activities of these groups in Greece, Turkey and Libya, however, shows that complementarity between negotiating and confrontational strategies is required.

More unwelcome than ever

In the Europe we are living in today, security and political concerns continue to override obligations to respect human rights and to address humanitarian concerns. Crises among migrants and asylum seekers in Europe continue to unfold as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the new EU Migration and Asylum pact. Covid-19 is by now known to have a disproportionate impact on displaced people. Even in Europe, many migrants live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, in informal camps, on the streets, or in detention and asylum centres where the health risks are acute and conditions abysmal.  But besides the exacerbation of the appalling living conditions a number of other pandemic-related measures make the current asylum procedure more alienating than ever. These include:

Can the trend be reversed? We hope so. As Europe’s humanitarian crisis continues and worsens, the political nature of humanitarian action is becoming ever more apparent. It will require a concerted effort by all concerned actors to monitor, research, advocate, and resist crisis-inducing policies, and to demand that states uphold international human rights and humanitarian laws.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:

Dr Susanne Jaspars is an independent researcher and a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London.  She has researched the social and political dynamics of famine, conflict and humanitarian crises for over thirty years, focussing particularly on issues of food security, livelihoods, and forced migration.

Dorothea HilhorstDorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

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When the storm subsides: what happened to grassroots initiatives assisting refugees?

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Back in 2015, cardboard placards bearing the words ‘Refugees Welcome’ that were shown in public spaces became an important way for ordinary European citizens to demonstrate solidarity with refugees and other migrants arriving en masse in Europe at the time. Citizen-led initiatives staffed by volunteers mushroomed, providing crucial assistance to refugees when humanitarian organisations were surprised and overwhelmed. But has something changed over the years as the amount of refugees entering Europe became smaller? What happened to these smaller grassroots initiatives as state and professional humanitarian actors gradually took over?

The arrival of migrants to Europe during the summer of 2015 and in the succeeding months saw massive political attention and media coverage at the time due to the sheer scale of the influx. Also remarkable was the widespread mobilisation of volunteers who helped refugees during and after their arduous journeys. Besides those initiatives led by civil society networks, many of the volunteers were ordinary citizens who had never or rarely been involved in volunteer initiatives before. They mobilised across Europe to provide basic assistance to refugees traversing Europe in a number of ways, for example in the form of food, shelter, clothes, access to Wi-Fi, and access to electrical outlets for charging mobile phones.

As the number of people wanting to help grew rapidly, it became necessary to organise volunteers and create structures. And so a flurry of new organisations arose in 2015 in Greece, the north of France around Calais, as well as in Paris – and basically in most of the European countries receiving an increased number of refugees between 2015 and 2016. Yet, as government policies on migration became increasingly strict and as fewer refugees arrived – at least to other European countries than Greece, where those who’ve made it there have mostly been stuck – what has become of these initiatives?

Following two of the main Norwegian volunteer initiatives created in 2015 can give us an insight into different paths some of these organisations have taken. Refugees Welcome Norway (RWN) and A Drop in the Ocean (Dråpen i Havet – DiH ) are two initiatives who took quite different paths, with one assisting refugees arriving in Norway and the other one organising volunteers to go help in Greece. Refugees Welcome Norway became the umbrella organisation for most of the spontaneous volunteer efforts that popped up, first in Oslo, and then across several other cities in Norway. It took its name from other similar organisations that were being formed in Germany and most other European countries at the time.

A Drop in the Ocean was created by a Norwegian woman with personal connections to Greece and who had jumped on the first possible plane to Athens in late August 2015 after having grown increasingly frustrated following radio debates on exactly what number of refugees Norway might take in. She saw many others wanting to follow suit. The initiative quickly started attracting many more volunteers, first from Norway, and then from a range of other countries as well, who wanted to go to Greece and “do something” to help the refugees arriving there. Over the years, it has become a rather well-respected NGO among those organisations doing humanitarian work on the Greek mainland and islands.

Fewer refugees arriving and other actors taking over

The context in which the two initiatives emerged changed over the next year – albeit in different ways. In Norway, fewer refugees arrived from 2016 onwards, primarily due to reinforced border controls, the returning of asylum seekers to Russia (who had crossed over to Norway at its northern border with Russia), and increased restrictions on family reunification. While RWN for a couple of weeks in August and September 2015 was busy providing basic assistance to those waiting in front of the police registration office, itself unprepared for these new arrivals, a new reception and registration office established by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration by mid-October meant that immediate assistance became the responsibility of the state in collaboration with the Norwegian Red Cross.

In Greece, the situation changed in a different way: fewer refugees and other migrants arrived from March 2016 onwards following the entering into force of the EU-Turkey agreement – yet some boats still arrived in varying numbers in the subsequent years. More importantly, Greece’s border to Europe was sealed off, and those having arrived on the islands were prevented from moving further. For the volunteers in place, the work shifted from reception on the beaches to working in the various ‘camps’ that had been established on the islands. While many more established humanitarian organisations by then had set up their own operations, DiH felt its support was still needed.

Two paths: a preparedness structure in case of a “next refugee crisis” and a professionalising humanitarian organisation

The two organisations developed in different ways over the years, both adapting to changing needs, as well as to varying levels of volunteer ‘supply’, yet both continuing to be characterised by volunteering, either as a political force for change or as individuals contributing to benevolent acts at different levels. As fewer migrants actually reached Norway, the then-leaders of RWN shifted their attention to political lobbying – notably against the government’s forced returns of migrants to Russia. Others involved in RWN in 2015 and 2016 in the meantime launched other local initiatives, which can be read as direct spin-offs from the activities of RWN in the early days: from neighbourhood integration projects (offering the possibility to act as contact points for newly arrived refugees in volunteers’ neighbourhoods) to a second-hand shop handing out clothes to those in need. Several key leaders of RWN also drew on the structure that had been established earlier, with local chapters emerging in multiple cities and common systems made ready to organise, recruit, and deploy volunteers should the number refugees and other migrants rise again.

DiH developed in a different way: it sought to develop itself into a professional humanitarian organisation, all the while not replicating the undesirable sides of the sector. The organisation in many ways sees itself as a reaction to these, i.e. to the formalised structures and bureaucracy plaguing professional humanitarian organisations. When I visited their facilities on the outskirts of Athens a few years ago, they would stress how DiH volunteers were directly interacting with the refugees, getting to know them, as opposed to officials of international organisations who were too busy with paperwork inside their bunker offices. DiH has also become more involved in political lobbying in recent years, in particular towards the Norwegian government and decision-makers, for example by organising awareness campaigns to draw attention to the dire conditions of refugees in the Moria camp and other similar places, or by pressuring Norway to accept more refugees from Greece.

What both organisations have had in common is a strong emphasis on their origins as “popular movements”, based on a multitude of spontaneous desires to “do something” to help out. While formalising their structures, professionalising and adapting to changing needs, they continue to stress that it “should be easy to help”. Both of them have also over these years developed new volunteer recruitment strategies designed precisely to continue to “make it easy”, and to attract new volunteers when these were no longer coming in in large numbers.

Challenging humanitarian practices?

These benevolent acts can be understood both as emerging out of a desire or “need” to help fellow human beings in vulnerable situations (as such identifying primarily as humanitarian acts), as well as acts meant to protest against the non-action or insufficient response by the state and professional humanitarian organisations (as such self-defining as part of a broader social or political movement). Many initiatives started as the former, and evolved into the latter – with many of these volunteers arguing about the impossibility of remaining neutral and apolitical in the face of the injustices lived by the migrants. The intersection between humanitarian needs and protection needs, as well acts of helping out amidst state-led efforts to keep migrants away, makes this an interesting microcosm – also to study what is required for humanitarian aid to be precisely that – a humanitarianism based on humanity and impartiality. While most of the volunteer-based responses to the situation arising in 2015 have evolved into socially and politically engaged initiatives and have defined their actions as “humanitarian” to varying degrees, they nevertheless continue to challenge how humanitarian responses should be understood and practiced in highly politicised contexts.

This blog post is based on an article titled ‘Making It “Easy to Help”: The Evolution of Norwegian Volunteer Initiatives for Refugees’ that was published in International Migration. The article can be accessed freely here.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert is a Senior Researcher and Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and co-Director of the Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies (NCHS). She holds a PhD in International Relations and Political Science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (SciencesPo) in Paris. Maria’s research focuses on humanitarian and security interfaces in the European borderlands, and how they mutually influence each other: from European migration and border management policies to humanitarian responses to the reception crises in countries like Greece, France and Norway. She has also worked extensively on the role of border surveillance technologies and Search and rescue efforts at sea.

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Perpetuating data colonialism through digital humanitarian technologies by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik

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Refugee Registration in Lebanon

In recent years, humanitarian spaces have become technologized as aid agencies have turned to digital technologies to improve aid allocation. Wearables and other forms of digital humanitarian artifacts can foster improved surveillance of aid beneficiaries, their needs, and aid distribution, but raise serious ethical concerns. Through tracking devices, aid beneficiaries risk becoming the producers of commercial data extracted from emergency settings under the pretext of a reciprocal ‘gifting’ relationship between benefactor and beneficiary, writes Kristin Bergtora Sandvik.

Operating at the interface of bio and sensor technology, wearables such as activity trackers and smartwatches facilitate the measurement, selection, screening, legibility, calculability and visibility of data associated with human bodies. Tracking operates through and upon multiple layers: general biodata, such as height, weight, gender, age and race; bodily fluids, including blood, sweat, sperm and tears; and the capture of individual characteristics, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, and voice and face recognition. These are conceptualized as smart devices that can be placed on or inside human bodies for many purposes, including tracking and improving health, safety, and nutrition.

Wearables for tracking and protecting health, safety and nutrition offer interesting possibilities for the humanitarian aid sector due to their ability to monitor the needs and movements of aid beneficiaries that can improve the efficiency and timeliness of aid allocation. By tracking aid beneficiaries, aid agencies are able to deliver or monitor reproductive health services, strengthen security and accountability through more efficient registration of wearers, or ensure adequate nutrition to those who need it.

However, while the sociological literature on tracking devices focusing on individual self-tracing and consumer behaviour is large and growing, little critical scholarly attention has been paid to the use of tracking devices in the Global South, and none at all to their use in the humanitarian context. The deployment of wearables in emergencies entails deployment in contexts where there are deep, extra-democratic power differences between beneficiaries and structurally unaccountable humanitarian actors, donors and private sector actors—something that requires urgent attention.

Worryingly, increased surveillance of human bodies through human wearables and other digital humanitarian artifacts points to the commodification of the human body. While digital humanitarian goods such as human wearables are hailed by private sector actors and humanitarians as ‘game changers’, their use is not only leading to improved aid allocation. The game is changing in a different way: beneficiaries wearing tracking devices are becoming data producers.

The postcolonial past still shapes and limits what a wearable can be and do. The humanitarian sector has long used wristbands to control and care for beneficiaries. In the past, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has tried to avoid multiple registrations by using stamps, wristbands, photographs, fingerprints, or biometrics. The historical use of wristbands raises questions about potentially repressive aspects of contemporary humanitarian use of wearables. According to the UNHCR, wristbands identify each individual claiming to be a refugee, limit the recycling of the refugee population, serve as distribution ‘cards’, and give everyone better access to food and other assistance. At the same time, wristbands are also commonly used in extreme registration contexts, such as those involving enclosure systems—the herding of people into a confined space for registration. These types of uses indicate that complicated historical baggage calls into question the idea of humanitarian wearables as a uniquely benevolent technology.

Moreover, wearables are part of a process of miniaturization of the communicative architecture of aid:  As observed by Collier et al. (2017), the grand aid schemes of yesterday are today found as gadgets. Small technologies of government now permeate the field of international aid.  Wearables are part of a general trend in aid, whereby “tremendous intellectual and moral energy, as well as the financial and organizational resources, is being devoted to inventing and disseminating … micro-endeavors”. However, the literature on humanitarian goods has so far given little attention to how the incorporation of international aid into the global data economy, dominated by tech giants in the global East and the Global North, changes this equation. No attention has been paid so far to the ‘gift’ element of data production and its implications for how we think about the nature of aid.

Data extraction through aid: beneficiaries as data producers

In The Gift, Marel Mauss explores how reciprocal exchanges of objects between groups—gifting—build relationships between humans. The obligation is articulated as a moral contract to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. A significant body of literature has explored aid as ‘gift exchanges’, focusing on aid as a form of symbolic violence or a source of asymmetric power differences in which gifting is seemingly based on reciprocal, equal relationships, but in reality is not (here, here, here and here).

In the humanitarian aid sector, gifting, at least by donors and humanitarian actors, is presented as a one-directional activity premised on notions of charity and financial generosity. With the rise of wearables, this relationship is turned on its head if we recognize the central premise of the global data economy: that beneficiary data is the product, not the tracking device, and that human bodies become data-producing units—aid beneficiaries become data subjects.

The prevailing attitude among proponents of digital humanitarian technologies seem to be that this is neither an extractive relationship nor an inverted one: beneficiary data logically constitute a reciprocal gesture in return for humanitarian aid, ‘the original gift’. But data of commercial value produced through the bodies of aid beneficiaries is not a gift, and will likely not be seen as such. However, given the continuing failure to characterize data transfer properly, it is useful to hold on to the gift concept as an analytical device for developing critiques of digital humanitarian goods in the age of data colonialism. This entails considering what kind of gifts data represent, the relationships ‘data gifts’ emanate from and create, and the costs and types of revenue generated, how and for whom.

References
Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. “Wearables for something good: aid, dataveillance and the production of children’s digital bodies.” Information, Communication & Society (2020): 1-16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1753797
Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. “Digital Dead Body Management (DDBM): Time to Think it Through.” Journal of Human Rights Practice (2020). https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jhuman/huaa002/5822573
Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. “Making wearables in aid: Digital bodies, data and gifts.” Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 1.3 (2019): 33-41. https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/journals/jha/1/3/article-p33.xml

Kristin SandvikKristin Bergtora Sandvik, SJD Harvard Law School, is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and a Professor of Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo.  Sandvik teaches robot regulations, legal technology and AI, legal sociology and ethics. Her widely published socio-legal research focuses on criminalization, technology and the struggle for accountability in humanitarian action. Most recently, she has published on humanitarian wearables and digital dead body management.

 

 

Title Image Credit: World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr

COVID-19 | Rethinking how to respond to COVID-19 in places where humanitarian crises intersect by Rodrigo Mena

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It is widely known that COVID-19 will disproportionately affect developing countries and impoverished peoples. Many of these countries are already affected by conflict and disasters including humanitarian crises, making the contexts even more fragile and complex and the threat of COVID-19 even more serious. Some approaches to fighting the coronavirus pandemic might not be feasible in these contexts where multiple crises intersect, argues Rodrigo Mena. The responses implemented in many countries are not sufficient to minimize impacts that include the potential loss of thousands of lives in vulnerable contexts; prevention and context-specific solutions that also address the root causes of humanitarian crises are needed now more than ever.

While many are waiting for the crisis to pass, we need to remember that hazards such as conflicts, earthquakes, or droughts do not take holidays during pandemic times. When they set in, governments will have to decide where to allocate the limited funds they have. Whereas many countries already have to make hard choices, hovering between strategies to prevent an economic recession and the prevention of the spread of the virus, countries with several pre-existing and ongoing crises, particularly those dependent on humanitarian aid, have even harder choices to make. When a disaster occurs together with COVID-19, will efforts be directed toward rebuilding the country or stopping the spread of the virus? And how will these countries deal with ongoing issues such as underdevelopment in general?

After four years researching disaster responses and humanitarian aid in conflict-affected places, I summarise here some considerations to take into account on why the general approach to COVID-19 might not be viable in many situations. Most recommendations can make things worse in traditional humanitarian crisis scenarios or places where the poorest and most vulnerable live. The places I studied faced disasters, conflict, and were generally underdeveloped, making them particularly vulnerable to any shock, including pandemics such as the COVID-19, and rendering governments incapable of responding effectively.

Refugee Camp, Bangladesh - COVID19

Refugee Camp in Bangladesh. Photo: Rod Mena

Additional issues are multiple. Here are a few:

  1. Lack of access to water. With about 780 million people in the world without access to clean water (780 million!) and in places facing conflict, ‘access to safe water is often compromised; infrastructure is damaged or goes into decline, pipelines are in disrepair, and water collection is dangerous’, as presented by UNICEF. The advice to wash your hands regularly or use disinfectant might certainly not be feasible for many. In fact, aid actors are already struggling to deliver water in many places and an extra demand for it can exacerbate or be the source of new conflicts.
  2. Lack of space. As many have indicated, COVID-19 will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in the world, including those depending on humanitarian aid to survive. Social distancing might be impossible for the close to 30% of the world urban population living in slums, or for the close to 7 million living in refugee camps. And with more than 6% of the world’s employed population in the informal economy, the option to stay at home or quarantine looks unfeasible for many, let alone for those whose homes have been destroyed or left behind when they had to move because of disasters and conflict.
  3. Greater humanitarian need. In addition, less-developed countries and populations not being aided at the moment might also start needing support. For example, despite multiple difficulties in many refugee camps and crisis-affected areas, there is a system in place to support people in need, but people living out of those spaces might struggle as much or more with this pandemic. The humanitarian aid sector, thus, will face a greater number of people depending on external aid. How and whether the aid sector should assist people affected directly or indirectly by the coronavirus is still an open debate, not only in terms of the real capacities to do it beyond the funding, but also in terms of capacities to do it adequately and safely[1].
  4. Challenges to apply response strategies. A number of challenges can also impede the World Health Organization’s Test, Treat, Track strategy in places under high levels of conflict or facing humanitarian crises[2]:

Testing. If there is zero or reduced access to testing kits (and laboratories or medical personnel to run the tests), accurate figures on the number of deaths or infected people are obscured, making it difficult to plan how to provide relief.

Treating. When it comes to treating the most severely affected by COVID-19, the main procedure is connecting them to ventilators. A global shortage of ventilators is already apparent, and in least-developed countries, we need to add reduced access to reliable sources of electricity. In fact, close 20% of the world populations do not have access to electricity, and in low-income countries that can reach up to 60% —and yes, this includes hospitals that only have electricity via petrol or diesel generators.

Tracking. Then, when it comes to tracking the virus, we know that in places affected by conflict and disasters, many people are displaced or constantly on the move (there are 70.8 million displaced people worldwide, ranging from internally displaced persons to refugees and asylum seekers). Also, the demographics or databases of these places are not always reliable. This makes tracking very cumbersome or even impossible.

  1. Finally, the option to close borders or declare lockdowns might be detrimental in places affected by war or conflict, where many flee to safety or do not have access to goods and services to support their lives.

Vulnerability is created

These are far from all the concerns, but they are enough to show what is well known in disaster studies: that disasters are not natural but socially constructed, including the COVID-19 crisis, as a blog post from Ilan Kelman clearly shows. The pandemic that we have is much more the consequence of social and politically wrong decisions and lack of preparedness than the spreading rate or lethality of the virus. Particularly, a lack of preparedness or decision not to act based on the knowledge that we had (because multiple official reports indicated the probabilities of a pandemic like this and how to prevent it or mitigate its impacts), has greatly contributed to the severity of the crisis[3].

If we do not start thinking about how to prepare to COVID-19 in less-developed places with context-specific solutions, we will be repeating the story; we will keep choosing not to be prepared, which will keep on resulting in catastrophic impacts. If there is something that we have learnt from disasters in the past, it is that prevention is almost always better than responding. Not doing so, or expecting that measures as these reviewed above will work in the most vulnerable places, is to turn a blind eye and hope for the best.

[1] But now with a global economic recession and an aid system already with a 40% shortfall on the funds needed to assist everyone in need, as presented in the 2019 ‘Global Humanitarian Assistance Report’.
[2] And in many cases not even feasible in western countries like France or the United States.
[3] For instance, the ‘National Risk Profile 2016’ of the Netherlands indicated that ‘due to the possible destabilising impact, the main focus of the NRP [National Risk Profile] is on the risks of a large-scale outbreak of an infectious disease, such as a flu pandemic’. Similarly, in 2006, the United States developed the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza based on the risk of this event to occur (with the following update in 2017). Also, astonishingly, a report on global preparedness for health emergencies dated September 2019, issued by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, co-convened by World Health Organization and the World Bank, that ‘explores and identifies the most urgent needs and actions required to accelerate preparedness for health emergencies, focusing in particular on biological risks manifesting as epidemics and pandemics’, concludes that a global pandemic ‘would be catastrophic, creating widespread havoc, instability and insecurity. The world is not prepared’.

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.

R. Mena (2019)About the author:

Rodrigo (Rod) Mena is a socio-environmental researcher and AiO-PhD at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His current research project focuses on disaster response and humanitarian aid governance in complex and high-intensity conflict-affected scenarios, with South Sudan, Afghanistan and Yemen as main cases. He has experience conducting fieldwork and researching in conflict and disaster zones from in Africa, Latin America, Europe, Oceania and Asia.

Image Credits: Rod Mena

Donor-driven agendas and the need to move beyond a capacity building focus in Myanmar’s research ecosystem by Jana Rué Glutting and Anders Lee

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Localization has become a buzzword among promoters of development aid following a recent shift in focus to the sustainability of development projects after the withdrawal of donors from contexts where projects have been initiated. But why don’t aid interventions also focus on the localization of research? This blog post intends to stress the importance of critically assessing the localization strategies of the international community in the research space in Myanmar, requiring an honest introspection in how social science research is being conducted and funded, and who are the actors at play and its implications.

The localization of aid has gained considerable attention in both the humanitarian and development spaces over the last few years (Kumar 2015). The conventional definition has been criticized for being too narrow, centred on channelling more aid directly to local state and non-state actors without a focus on supporting their capacity to effectively absorb and manage more aid. While donor and UN agencies have been pursuing greater localization of their funding, in practice, it has merely been operationalized as a set of best practices for them to better engage with local stakeholders.

With the renewed engagement of the international community since its 2010 democratic transition, Myanmar research actors have been catering to the rising demand for donor-driven knowledge production. Recently, we completed a study with the Global Development Network, funded by the International Development Research Centre, to assess the social science research ecosystem in Myanmar. The study found that the vast majority of donor-funded research places little decision-making power in the hands of local research actors, where local researchers are often relegated to liaisons or assistant roles in research projects. It is mainly justified on the grounds of allocating roles based on current levels of expertise, and few Myanmar researchers have experience to match the required level of expertise or experience.

The need to critically assess localization efforts in the development industry is important and urgent. Similar to the debate within humanitarian aid, more direct funding from donors into local research systems can contribute to increased capacity, promote independent research that produces longer-term research studies, and shape ‘big ideas’ of the country. At present, the research ecosystem in Myanmar can only be optimistically described as nascent. Its current state is the result of deliberate actions undertaken by the successive socialist government and military rule (following the 1988 Uprising, initiated by university students) to dismantle the higher education system.

Universities today are severely under-resourced – teaching is based on top-down rote learning, while professors are poorly paid and have little financial support or incentives to undertake independent and high-quality research. What further compounds the issue is ‘anade’, a sociocultural value still prevalent in Myanmar that prevents students from speaking out or raising questions to their professors in fear of offending them. These factors severely limit the development of analytical and critical thinking skills among young graduates.

The gap left by universities in research production is then filled by international NGOs, think tanks, development consultancies, and market research firms, which are largely funded by donors. In fact, donors have been very successful in controlling the ‘value chain’, guiding what is problematized and which research is commodified in the marketplace of ideas (McCombs & Shaw 1993). While the abovementioned dynamics could be considered successful localization practices, understood in the conventional sense as practices to channel direct aid to local actors and a focus on capacity building, this reality also shines light on the complexity of these collaborations.

In Myanmar, we have found that funding is often concentrated on specific areas that are in line with the priority areas that donors deem important for the country’s development. During our in-depth interviews, local researchers frequently complained about the lack of power in deciding the research topic and research design. They stressed that they were often relegated to positions of boots-on-the-ground or local partners, typically as data collectors, translators, or liaison officers. On the other hand, analytical tasks and report writing were assigned to bigger international NGOs or international consultants.

Amid the lack of supply of experienced researchers in Myanmar[1], donors have focused on building capacity to meet the standards required for the localization of aid, mainly by adding short-term capacity building workshops in their projects. However, such an approach is myopic because it merely focuses on enhancing research skills sufficient to contribute to their commissioned studies. Moreover, power dynamics inherent in the aid-donor relations accord considerable leverage for the uptake of these donor-driven research studies, which can reduce the space for local researchers to explore thematic and methodological options in their pursuit of their research endeavours. Instead, local researchers are constrained in providing single-minded policy responses to overstretched policymakers. As aid practitioners, we have to critically assess these approaches and ask, how “local” is “the local”?

At present,  social science research continues to be driven by the international community who sets its own agenda, with localization merely a tick on the checklist to ensure that the local context and participation are acknowledged. Such research is not co-developed or nationally owned, nor does it incentivize the government to pursue a longer-term strategy to build up the research system.

The discussion presented here does not suggest that donor-funded research cannot contribute to the development of a stronger research and policy-making environment. Rather, we argue that the narrow definition and application of the localization principle when it comes to pursuing research agendas is overly focused on achieving targeted narrow programmatic outcomes. This has been justified through partnerships with and training of local researchers to contribute to the strengthening of overall research capacities of Myanmar.

[1] According to UNESCO UIS, Myanmar had 29.07 full-time equivalent researchers (per million inhabitants) in 2017 (UNESCO UIS n.d.)

References
Capie, D. (2012). The Responsibility to Protect Norm in Southeast Asia: Framing, Resistance and the Localization Myth. The Pacific Review, 25(1), 75–93.
Kumar, R. (2015). What’s new with localization. [online] Devex. Available at: https://www.devex.com/news/what-s-new-with-localization-86094 [Accessed 17 Jan. 2020].
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1993). The evolution of agenda-setting research: Twenty-five years in the marketplace of ideas. Journal of communication, 43(2), 58-67.
UNESCO UIS. (n.d.). Data for Sustainable Development Goals – Myanmar. Available at: http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/mm?theme=science-technology-and-innovation [Accessed 16 Mar. 2020].

 

About the authors:

JanaJana-Chin Rué Glutting is a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic and Social Development. She is an MA graduate in Economics of Development Studies at The Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University. She is interested in industry policy research in Myanmar, and currently engaged in various projects related to the garment sector, trade and macroeconomic research, and social research systems.

Anders

 

Anders Lee is a researcher at the Centre for Economic and Social Development, and Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. He is currently working on research projects looking at political violence in China and Hong Kong, and internal and international migration in Myanmar. He holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

 

Counter-terrorist legislation is threatening independent humanitarian relief, and is set to get worse today by Dorothea Hilhorst and Isabelle Desportes

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Camps Humanitarian Aid

The Netherlands has recently joined a handful of other Western countries in developing counter-terrorism legislation with the hope of stifling terrorist activity and threats. The new legislation on counter-terrorism recently passed by the Dutch Parliament (Tweede Kamer) will be discussed in the Senate (Eerste Kamer) today. Thea Hilhorst and Isabelle Desportes warn that the effects of such legislation should be examined critically, in particular implications for humanitarian actors whose work risks to be criminalized when they operate in areas with high levels of terrorist activity.

The formulation of counter-terrorist regulations has proliferated ever since the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York that served as a major wakeup call on the potential impact of terrorism. Aiming to prevent terrorists’ mobilization of new members and resources, such regulations forbid any form of direct or indirect support to armed groups designated as terrorist organizations. Although legitimate in themselves, the regulations can come with negative political and human rights implications, in particular for humanitarian aid.

A key historical example there is the worst drought in decades that hit the Horn of Africa in 2011. In Ethiopia and Kenya, state, non-state and international actors managed to respond in time to prevent mass casualties resulting from a lack of water and food security. In Somalia, however, the drought resulted in an estimated 260.000 deaths. This was partly down on the long-time conflict that rendered Somalians extremely vulnerable to drought, and the ongoing operations of Al Shabaab, that restricted people’s mobility to migrate to safer areas. However, it is now becoming apparent that the death toll was also exacerbated by donor counterterrorist measures, especially from the United States. Fearing that aid would fall into the hands of terrorist organizations, restrictions were put on international agencies that wanted to come to the rescue of Somalians in need, leading to lower humanitarian financing, non-access to people in need, aid delays, suffering, and death. Similar developments are now happening in Yemen.

Both counter-terrorism legislation and International Humanitarian Law are aimed at protecting people, especially civilians. Yet, counter-terrorism legislation, as well as accompanying donor requirements, can stand in the way of impartial life-saving humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian action should always be needs-based and non-discriminatory. A humanitarian doctor’s first question to a patient should be “Where does it hurt?”, not “What group are you from?”. Counter-terrorism laws can shift the focus in the humanitarian sector to the labelled identity of those in need, resulting in the refusal to help victims who are extremely vulnerable and whose survival is dependent on humanitarian assistance based on their (religious) identity and the fear of ‘supporting terrorist organizations’.

A 2018 survey of aid agencies conducted by the Norwegian Refugee Council identified numerous problems resulting from counter-terrorism legislation. This includes difficulties in channelling funds to areas requiring humanitarian assistance because banks fear being seen as supporting terrorist organizations. In addition, humanitarian actors feel restricted because negotiating with terrorist organizations controlling specific regions could be viewed as an act of support. Last, international agencies find themselves cut off from local implementing partners because of the possibility that they might have been in contact with terrorist organizations, whether knowingly or unknowingly. The ultimate consequences are that humanitarian actors risk being detained and held personally liable for doing their job, and that impartial care for people in need gets blocked.

Blanket bans on presence in entire geographical areas

Most recently, we are seeing a new wave of legislation that steps away from only branding organizations as terrorist and criminalizing support to these groups. Instead, new counter-terrorism laws are applied to entire geographical areas. Such bills, covering humanitarian action as well as independent journalism and academic research, have been passed in 2018 in countries including Australia and Denmark.

The new legislation is an answer to the situation of people who travelled to Syria to join IS. But experience in Syria also shows how assistance is affected by these types of measures. The Assad government has been criminalizing aid since 2012, and aid workers report in the above-mentioned Norwegian report that this meant, for example, that banks were not allowed to transfer their money and that they sometimes had to travel with more than half a million Euros in cash through difficult areas, which was of course much more risky than wiring the money.

Yet, another route can be taken. An EU package of measures that proposed restrictions for travelling to designated terrorist-dominated areas adopted in 2017 therefore made an exemption for humanitarian action. Following advocacy efforts of INGOs amongst others, similar exemptions were made in the UK’s Counter Terrorism and Border Security Bill in January 2019.

Dutch legislation needs to exempt independent humanitarian action

Today (12th November), the Dutch Senate will discuss a law already passed in Parliament that does not make exemptions for independent humanitarian action, apart from the Red Cross. Its proponents argue that exemptions would be too complicated, not least because wannabe terrorists often pose as humanitarians. However, it would be possible to incorporate more nuance and make sure that exemptions are extended to humanitarian agencies who operate following International Humanitarian Law and humanitarian principles, as done by the EU and argued by international law specialist Piet Hein van Kempen. As academics working on humanitarian issues, we call for a more engaged and thorough discussions between policy-makers, practitioners and scientific experts from the fields of both counter-terrorism and humanitarian aid. We call for counter-terrorist measures to ensure that they avoid hurting some of the world’s most vulnerable people, thereby creating further grievances in areas already under the influence of terrorism.

This post was simultaneously published at From Poverty to Power.

Image Credit: European Union 2018 (photo by: Peter Biro). The image was cropped.

TheaAbout the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here. isa

Isabelle Desportes is a PhD candidate working on the governance of disaster response, in particular the interplay between humanitarian and local actors.

 

Questioning the ‘local’ in ‘localisation’: A multi-local reply by Samantha Melis

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The localisation agenda, which aims to localise funds and responsibilities to local actors in humanitarian responses, retains an ambiguous concept of ‘the local’. The inclusion of power relations at multiple local governance levels in the localisation debate is needed for a more realistic approach to locally led responses to disasters, argues Samantha Melis.

The localisation debate in humanitarian aid is not new, but it has regained momentum after the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and the thereupon following Grand Bargain, where the commitment to direct more resources and responsibilities to local actors was a key element. However, both ‘the local’ and the action of localisation are more complex than what the policies might suggest. It is important to better understand who the local actors are and how a more locally led response is negotiated by all actors involved.

Horizontal and vertical perspectives of the local  

While the localisation agenda focuses mainly on the direction of funds and the building of local capacity, others have also emphasised the need to shift power to local actors. Granted, all these are important for changes to a system that is still mostly top-down and often excludes the voices of the local actors. However, for a more realistic view of the complexities that underly the localisation debate, the perspective of the local and the definition of what localisation means in practice needs to be further researched and contextualised.

The definition of ‘the local’ remains obscure and needs to go beyond local NGO partners. After a disaster, many different types of local responders are involved. Some might have a presence before, but others will be new and temporary, such as certain public and private sector groups, religious institutions, and other individual philanthropists. Also, in each case, civil society, and their role, will be different. Therefore, ‘the local’ varies depending on the context. Within a particular setting, these can be defined as the horizontal locals.

Localisation is usually discussed from a top-down, outsider perspective, with international actors focusing on the locality of the actors that are closer to the disaster and yet not integrated (sufficiently) of the ‘insider group’ of the international community. From a bottom-up perspective, some actors that would be considered local by the international community, such as the national government, are not always considered local by the communities. This often depends on whether they are seen as ‘part of’ or ‘outside’ their group boundaries. These are the top-down and bottom-up vertical locals.

Not one localised response, but multi-local governance

In my research on disaster response in post-conflict countries, this has direct implications for localisation. Localisation is, to a large extent, about resources and power relations, not only between the international and national, but also between different local actors on multiple levels of local governance. If the local governance levels are disconnected, or tensions exist between the horizontal and vertical locals, then localisation becomes even more challenging. These are obstacles that can only be overcome when horizontal and vertical locals are included in the debate and the relations between multiple local governance levels are better understood.

Opening up the conversation

The debate on localisation will benefit from a more layered approach, wherein the local is not only seen as one entity or as detached from the local and international perspective. Studying practical examples of locally led responses will contribute to more realistic and context-appropriate changes in current top-down humanitarian approaches. The concept of ‘the local’ and ‘localisation’ are not as clear cut as they seem to be, and adding depth to the debate opens up more questions that need answers, and continues the conversation in a more inclusive manner.

About the authors:

samanthaSamantha Melis (The Netherlands) is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, of Erasmus University (EUR). She is currently involved in the project “When disasters meet conflict”, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Within this project, she focuses on the response to disasters in post-conflict scenarios.

 

 

IHSA Conference 2018 | How to defend a common humanity? by Khaled Mansour

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In a gripping account of his witnessing of the gross human rights violations inflicted on others, Khaled Mansour asks why aid workers are becoming apathetic toward the crimes against humanity that are still occurring today. He shows how genuine change is made possible by a group of aid workers that are countering worrying trends in the humanitarian sector by means of a global movement called United Against InHumanity. This post is based on his keynote address for the 5th conference of the International Humanitarian Studies Association that took place at the ISS on 27 August 2018.

Fifteen years ago, I survived the attack against the UN headquarters in Iraq, but the explosion killed 22 of my colleagues, also demolishing a personal barrier that I have had for years. This barrier ostensibly had helped me to cope with the scenes of abject poverty and degradation; violent deaths and inexplicable violence; and the looming menace that I have had to live close to for years.

For months, I stood at the brink of an abyss of dark and bloody recollections. Memories came flooding back: a flattened refugee camp in Jenin; small tombs for children that had died of malnourishment in Hirat; stories of torture inflicted on political prisoners or suspects from Syria to Pakistan, to name but a few.

I no longer try to forget these scenes. The barrier that I had erected between myself and even harsher and more frequent atrocities in areas of conflict is gone. And for that I am grateful. Like many people who engage in humanitarian aid and the defense of human rights in situations of conflict, I have had to grapple with occasional attacks of depression and waves of sadness, but I see them as signs of a shared humanity and a healthy vulnerability.

They are also a call for resistance through writing, teaching, volunteering and, most important, working with others to defend the dignity and rights of people in conflict. It is a call for action to build and rebuild what our common humanity means and how we can work together to protect it.

The growing apathy of aid workers

However, there is a dominant sense among critics of the humanitarian aid system that the old has disintegrated while the new is not yet born, as Grasmsci said almost a century ago.

There is also a shocking indifference in global and regional centers of power as to the fate of hundreds of millions of people whose lives and livelihoods are decimated in conflicts. Over the past few years, millions have been killed, maimed or forced to flee their homes because of such horrific violence. Civilians are suffering in what has become normalised military operations in Syria, Yemen, the Gaza Strip and many other places. The Assad forces have used indiscriminate barrel bombs and chemical weapons against civilians, while the Israeli and the Saudi forces simply disregard the concept of military advantage as they bomb densely populated areas or vital infrastructure installations, killing and harming far more civilians than members of the Houthi or Hamas militias. Armed non-state actors, ISIS for example, have also committed their share of spectacular atrocities.

Compliance with the laws of war and holding violators to account are becoming increasingly difficult tasks. The refugee law is not faring much better. The EU deterrence measures against possible refugees are an abomination that resulted in thousands of people seeking asylum drowning at sea.

This is fueling cynicism among aid workers as well as recipients. Aid agencies are reportedly jockeying for a bigger slice of the USD930 million promised by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the gigantic aid operation in Yemen. These two countries have led a merciless war against Yemeni Houthi militias, killing as many as 20,000 civilians. Starvation and blocking essential humanitarian supplies as a war tactic has been regularly used in Syria since 2012, predominantly by the regime, while aid agencies simply acquiesced as the authorities rejected one request after another to access besieged areas. And now, we face the criminalisation of both asylum seekers and those who help them in western countries.

These are disturbing trends.

What is more disturbing is how human empathy is eroding. With an unprecedented rise in populism, rights (legal and otherwise) are increasingly limited to citizens and then not even to all of them. Within societies from the US to India, more demagogue chauvinists advocate that all humans were not equal and that not all cultures can peacefully co-exist. They are not the majority yet, but their influence is mushrooming.

A need for greater political will

There is a glaring absence of political will at the state and intrastate levels. The cosmopolitan values that are at the root of much of the humanitarian and human rights movements seem to be in retreat. This absence of political will was very evident in the ICRC’s failure to introduce a new mechanism for compliance with the Geneva conventions in 2015, or in the miniscule outcome of the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, or the failure of the Refugee Summit in New York after two years of work to produce any real change to the grim reality.

So, to quote another Marxist, who was maybe luckier than Gramsci, what is to be done?

There is a large body of literature and policy studies that deconstruct the current aid system. There is a ton of policy papers and many think tanks that have ideas to reform/fix or change the humanitarian enterprise.

But what seems to be missing is sustained popular pressure to force a genuine change or quicken the pace of reform. There is a clear need for a movement of people to struggle alongside those who are affected in conflicts in order to ensure their rights to protection and basic needs.

United Against InHumanity: reason for optimism?

This is why a group of former and current aid workers, researchers, and activists have come together last year and started working to build such a global movement to produce action-oriented knowledge, engage in policy advocacy and, most important, organise and play an active political role against atrocities and the rising inhumanity in conflicts around the world.

United Against InHumanity (UAI) is still emerging, propelled by the outcome of extensive consultations with diverse groups and potential stakeholders in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia and Europe since late 2017 to turn a common feeling of indignation into a repertoire of impactful actions.

The overall purpose of UAI is to initiate and facilitate joint action by civil society at global, regional and national levels to challenge warring parties, their sponsors, governments and relevant international organisations in order to reverse the normalisation of indiscriminate warfare and the erosion of the right to asylum.

This is a tall order! But it is probably our only way to effectively stand against unbridled and murderous acts of inhumanity in conflicts instead of building barriers that we falsely think could save us.  

KhaledAbout the author: 

Khaled Mansour is a member of the emerging movement United against Inhumanity. He is a senior fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative. For the past 30 years he has been a writer in addition to working in aid, peacekeeping and human rights organisations around the world.

IHSA Conference 2018 | Aid behind walls? A spatial view of humanitarian security by Janine Bressmer

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The humanitarian aid community in reaction to security risks facing its staff is slowly but surely building a Fort Knox around itself. This article details only some of the risks associated with the building of physical and psychological walls, showing that ultimately, this act negatively influences the relationship between humanitarian staff and local populations. Humanitarian aid workers and scholars must actively investigate how they manage the security of humanitarian staff to prevent this from happening.

Ahead of 2018 World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, organisations are again pushing for recognition of the safety of their staff and operations in countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, Syria and the DRC. In 2017, 313 aid workers were victims of major attacks, of which over 90% were national staff.[1] The perception of this type of violence is hugely influential for how the humanitarian community engages with and responds to the environment where aid work aims to alleviate suffering.

The discourse on violence in humanitarian work, and specifically that of severe violence, has helped exaggerate existential threats and foster a climate of heightened fear.[2] It is in this context that humanitarian risk management found significant traction.[3] Although the delivery of aid has always been in areas experiencing severe violence and suffering from natural disasters or conflict for example, humanitarian security is increasingly seen as a vital part of protecting both the concept and practice of aid.

The need for ways to assess humanitarian security risks

However, there exists no common framework for assessing and responding to risks for humanitarian programming and staff. Ideally, such frameworks are used to identify harm, the probability and severity of the impact, and the development of an appropriate response by the organisation.[4] However, the widespread use of “standard” risk management approaches in humanitarian work represents an increased reliance on standardised assessments and “expert” opinion. The knowledge of staff on the ground, whether in senior management positions or not, arguably no longer feeds into the creation and implementation of security protocols and manuals.

Blanket approaches to the management of security, including both operational and staff security, may mean that stringent restrictions on the movement and visibility of aid workers results in their distancing from those they aim to help. Building concrete walls, setting up barbed wire fences, and posting a security guard in front of the main gate may be a way to deter violence, yet this approach to security can do more harm than good in the long run.

Humanitarian organisations must do more

Presently, the international community approaches security from a reactive stance, often putting in place measures only after major incidences have occurred and without institutionalising dedicated security advisor roles. Yet, and indeed, while aid will never be delivered in entirely “peaceful” spaces, humanitarian organisations must do more to approach their security in ways that neither threaten their own existence, nor that of their staff and the local population.

The current environment of risk management does not allow for the consideration of individual decisions based on available information.[5] This “new” risk management approach is, arguably, institutionalised in aid organisations and erodes individual and local autonomy in favour of distant security experts.[6] Further, the use of security protocols and fortification procedures, in combination with continuous attacks against aid workers, continues to push organisations to react by putting up walls, setting up perimeter lining of their buildings, and reducing the movement and visibility of staff.

This discourse of fear poses significant problems for the future of humanitarian action:

“Risk” leading to invisibility, separation, or absence: Approaching risks in humanitarian programming from a reactive stance can result in the visible separation of aid workers from the local population through their withdrawal into fortified aid compounds. Beyond the visible separation, security protocols can generate a discourse of fear of the “Other”, and can even lead to the absence of humanitarian aid programmes or a transfer of risk to local partner organisations without an accompanying transfer of capacities.

Top-down and divisive approaches to security: Not only does a blanket approach to security fail to consider local information and experiences, but it also can significantly hinder the communication between HQ and the field, as well as between the senior positions on the ground and the national staff. This divide can lead to a loss of trust between the two, resulting in a stop of reporting on security incidences to protect jobs and the program as a whole.[7] The stark divide between both the number of national versus international staff affected by violence, as well as the different security procedures for each, significantly contributes to this.

Materiality of reactive security management and its impact on everyday life inside and outside the compound: The materiality of the actual fortification can serve to enable and hinder, shape and change the way in which aid workers inhabit the space inside the compound. Daily routines of requiring permission to exit the compound, using armored vehicles when doing so, and physically and visually reducing ‘seeing’ the beneficiary are results of existing security measures. This can not only have implications for how aid workers act inside the compound, but also for how they perceive their own security, positionality in the local context, and their relationships with other organisations and actors in the space. The compound’s spatial manifestation itself can also influence the local economy. Building materials required for fortification (or even the building of an office space) can impact and alter demand, potentially resulting in price inflation, a reduction of available goods, and an undermining of both local building practices and businesses.

The translation of security protocols and manuals into the everyday: Whereas the generation and implementation of security manuals and protocols is most likely not going to be phased out anytime soon, the way in which aid workers interact with these structures and guidelines every day can greatly improve or undermine how humanitarian aid is carried out and perceived on the ground. Protocols become operationalised through their interpretation, use and adaptation in the context in which they are employed. Restrictions on movements and strict reporting chains can lead to aid workers not only experiencing the local environment in very “securitised” ways, but can also visibly signal to the local population that the organisation sees their space as insecure outside the walls of their own “safe” compound.

Rather than ignoring some of these issues, the humanitarian community must actively investigate its own security management and understand how their actions, materiality and visibility can contribute to safely delivering the assistance they are set up to do. This involves recognising their complicity, through their own discourse and everyday actions, in generating an environment that would rather build walls than find ways to safely integrate themselves in the local society they aim to serve.

[1] Humanitarian Outcomes, “Aid Worker Security Report: Figures at a Glance” (London: Humanitarian Outcomes, 2018), https://aidworkersecurity.org/sites/default/files/AWSR%20Figures%202018.pdf.
[2] Larissa Fast, Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 51.
[3] Important to note here that there is a distinction between risk and security management of aid organizations. Risk management encompasses, as one of its dimensions, the management of security.
[4] Victoria Metcalfe, Ellen Martin, and Sara Pantuliano, “Risk in Humanitarian Action: Towards a Common Approach?,” Policy Brief, HPG Commissioned Paper (London: Overseas Development Institute: Humanitarian Policy Group, 2011), 2.
[5] Mark Duffield, “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 4, no. 4 (2010): 463, https://doi.org/10.1080/17502971003700993.
[6] Duffield, 463.
[7] Ashley Jackson and Steven A. Zyck, “Presence and Proximity: To Stay and Deliver, Five Years On” (Geneva: Norwegian Refugee Council; UNOCHA; Jindal School of International Affairs, 2017), 41, https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/reports/presence-and-proximity_to-stay-and-deliver—five-years-on_final_2017-web-version.pdf.
References
Duffield, Mark. “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 4, no. 4 (2010): 453–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502971003700993.
Fast, Larissa. Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
Humanitarian Outcomes. “Aid Worker Security Report: Figures at a Glance.” London: Humanitarian Outcomes, 2018. https://aidworkersecurity.org/sites/default/files/AWSR%20Figures%202018.pdf.
Jackson, Ashley, and Steven A. Zyck. “Presence and Proximity: To Stay and Deliver, Five Years On.” Geneva: Norwegian Refugee Council; UNOCHA; Jindal School of International Affairs, 2017. https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/reports/presence-and-proximity_to-stay-and-deliver—five-years-on_final_2017-web-version.pdf.
Metcalfe, Victoria, Ellen Martin, and Sara Pantuliano. “Risk in Humanitarian Action: Towards a Common Approach?” Policy Brief. HPG Commissioned Paper. London: Overseas Development Institute: Humanitarian Policy Group, 2011.

Bressmer_photoAbout the author: 

Janine Bressmer is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her research examines how humanitarian organizations approach the security of their operations and staff, the spatial manifestations of security in terms of fortified aid compounds, and the implications for the practice and concept of humanitarian action. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

IHSA Conference 2018 | (Re-)Shaping Boundaries in Crisis and Crisis Response: introducing the 2018 International Humanitarian Studies Association Conference by Dorothea Hilhorst

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Today, in a rapidly changing world, humanitarian crisis response and humanitarianism is increasingly confronted with boundaries that are dissolving, displaced, or resurrecting. The bi-annual International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) Conference taking place this week at the ISS seeks to unpack the way in which boundaries related to crisis and humanitarianism are shaped. IHSA President Dorothea Hilhorst in this article reflects on the importance of the conference in an era where governments are increasingly alienated from the vulnerable people that they have the duty to protect.

This week, the world has bereaved Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. I have admired Annan as one of the most remarkable global leaders that during his time at the United Nations and thereafter tirelessly devoted himself to the promotion of democracy and the protection of vulnerable people. His death appeared in comments as the end of an era—a marker of the demise of value-driven internationalism.

Indeed, the prospects for crisis-affected people to secure protection, survival and refuge seem increasingly subject to the vagaries of geo-politics. Few governments remain that respect their duties to protect vulnerable people, and we see increasing polarisation between policies based on populist resentments against refugees and civic initiatives of solidarity to welcome people that are seeking for refuge.

It is in light of such events that ISS this week hosts the 5th bi-annual conference of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA). In more than 50 panels, academics, researchers and practitioners will discuss the state of affairs and emerging trends in humanitarian crises in the world today, involving refugees and displacement, conflict, disasters triggered by natural hazards, and protracted emergencies.

The conference reflects the broad concern of humanitarian studies, focusing on crisis and crisis responses and addressing these in relation to changing realities in world politics, welfare regimes, migration movements and concerns over the long-term effects of climate change and other ecological trends.

The cradles of many UN and humanitarian agencies, the USA and Europe, are seen to let politics of fear and security prevail over solidarity and international commitments. Countries close their borders or even seek to extra-territorialize their border control. The keynote of David Keen, professor of conflict studies at the London School of Economics, and several of the panels, will address the European politics towards refugees. The inhumane treatment of crisis-affected populations has now triggered a worldwide initiative, United Against Inhumanity, and we look forward to hear more about this initiative from Khaled Mansour during the opening of the conference.

Interestingly, while united international action at times seems increasingly elusive, this year has also seen the unanimous adoption of a landmark UN resolution that supports political action to address food crises related to conflict. Starvation as a weapon of war has been common in history, yet has not been recognised in international humanitarian law. It is only now, in this new resolution, 2417, that the starving of civilians or unlawfully denying them humanitarian access is recognised and condemned as warfare tactics. We are very pleased that the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Sigrid Kaag, as well as Alex de Waal, will speak about the relevance of the resolution during the opening of the conference.

The IHSA conference is a timely event to reflect on the profound changes happening in humanitarianism. The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) of 2016 called for the rethinking of crisis response, bridging the domains of humanitarianism and development and increasingly localizing responses. The evolving Global Compact on Refugees compounds the trend to make humanitarian response subject to localized arrangements. The trend in humanitarian aid to build on people’s resilience had become mainstream and merits serious discussion on how these trends affect the possibilities for people and communities affected by crises to be assured of basic protection.

If we want to understand these shifts in humanitarianism, we have to delve deeply into the nuts and bolts of how they change practice on the ground. And this is exactly what the conference will do. The range of panels is impressive, enabling us to unravel how humanitarian practices are evolving. To name a few of the issues that come by in the panels: the link between humanitarian aid and national governments, issues of participation and accountability, the role of innovation in aid, and the role of debt in the ways that people can cope with crises.

Finally, I am excited to continue the discussion on the ethics of humanitarian studies. During the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, scholars agreed on ethical commitments for humanitarian studies. These commitments concern collaboration and inclusion in humanitarian research; the study of the impact of the WHS; the further development of evidence-based approaches; the localization of humanitarian research and education; the impact and increase of the use of humanitarian research; and the protection of academic freedom and scientific ethics. While we observe, analyse and seek evidence to expand our understanding of crises and crisis response, I hope that humanitarian scholars will also use the conference to reflect on how our research can be made more relevant for crisis-affected communities.

TheaAbout the author: 

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of humanitarian aid and reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Technological solutions for socio-political problems: revisiting an open humanitarian debate by Rodrigo Mena

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The use of technology in the humanitarian aid sector is showing a steady increase based on a sense of hope that technology could help to improve the delivery of aid and solve multiple systemic problems. Technological solutions alone, however, cannot properly address such complex problems. This blog engages in an ongoing debate among development scholars on some of the hopes and concerns related to the use of digital and web-based technology in this sector. The main conclusion: we need more case research on the use of technology and, in the meantime, the careful use of technology is invited.

The application of technology is gaining popularity in the humanitarian sector due to the series of perceived benefits and ‘solutions’ that it seems to provide. Increasingly, development scholars are warning of the unintended consequences that such technological ‘solutions’ can produce—some of them negative. Dr. Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB, in one of his blog posts, cautions us about the limits of technological solutions, saying that ‘just because technologies can allow us to collect, store, analyse and communicate data and ideas in unprecedented ways should not lull us to think they can address old, entrenched problems in unprecedented ways. The primary constraints for human action are non-technological in nature.’

Long-term research on the topic by Dr. Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Dr. Katja Lindskov Jacobsen, and Sean Martin McDonald, from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), reminds us of how technology shapes humanitarian action; they also write in a blog post that technology is implemented in the humanitarian sector without adequate legal, ethical and methodological frameworks. Another warning comes from Dr. Emre Eren Korkmaz, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, who in a recent blog post shows how the use of blockchain technologies[i] by aid agencies to support people in need, especially refugees, is embraced with great hopes, but also brings along deep concerns. He highlights the complexity of certain socio-environmental problems that are unlikely to be sufficiently addressed by technological solutions alone. Sandvik, Jacobson and Korkmaz in deepening the debate then call for more research on specific cases of the applications of digital and web-based technology in the humanitarian aid sector.

The utility of technological ‘solutions’

Is the use of more technology really making humanitarian aid and disaster responses better, faster or more efficient? Even though it is difficult to find a single answer to this question, the reality is that many believe that technology can fulfil this ideal. Let’s consider a few examples:

Satellite images are being used for data collection and project monitoring with the hope that this technology will obtain more accurate information, more quickly. Iris and fingerprint scanning for the registration of the recipients of aid bring the hope of reducing duplications on the delivery of aid and more focused assistance. The use of Skype, email, and cloud systems are essential for the day-to-day management of humanitarian aid, but the hope remains that they will also improve the coordination of disaster responses and humanitarian aid provision within and among organisations and agencies.

Technology, it is said, will also reduce excessive bureaucratic bottlenecks and could provide a solution to problems of access and increased insecurity in the field. The use of digital payment systems, e-transfers or “mobile money” revolutionised the ways of delivering economic aid, promising more flexible, faster and safer economic assistance as compared to moving and distributing cash. Finally, there is hope that the use of technology will help to avoid problems of corruption, power struggles, or inequality. It is believed that using technology is politically neutral, but this belief has proven to in fact be far from reality.

A panacea for deeper problems?

Despite the benefits that these technologies can bring, they cannot be used naïvely, as the use of any technology (and the use of the information obtained along with it) involves multiple political and social variables. New technologies interplay with the realities of the places where they are implemented, and in places requiring humanitarian aid, with the existing and emerging needs of people.

We must question how these technologies interact with the inequalities of these places or their political regimes. As Korkmaz warns in his blog, there is also risk of abuse —institutions can use digital identities ‘to track people’s choices and desires’, which could lead to increased surveillance and the use of information against refugees.

Technology is also subject to instrumentalisation and can be used for purposes quite the opposite of those humanitarian purposes it is intended to serve. The way in which information is collected, analysed and presented, can also be motivated by other, non-humanitarian objectives. In other words, the use of technology is never politically neutral— it affects and is affected by actors and processes, in ways not always fully understood. Reflecting on this is as important as thinking about the benefits of using new data-collection technologies. And we must also identify when, how and which technology to use.

The need for more case studies

The expansion[ii] and international call[iii] for the use of technology need to go hand-in-hand with greater reflection and deeper knowledge of the real impact, benefits and consequences of technology’s use. As McDonald, Sandvik, and Jacobsen argue in their blog post, ‘humanitarians need both an ethical and evidence-driven human experimentation framework for new technologies.’

As the discussion on the need for awareness about the use of technology is already ongoing, it is important to start gathering information on specific cases showing how which technology is used in reality. Afghanistan presents a good case for examining the application of aid technology, as its use has increased here over the last decade4–6.

Ongoing research I’m carrying out as Visiting Scholar of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) on the (political) use and the introduction of data-collection technology in Afghanistan seeks to map this technology, also reflecting on who uses it, who can get access to the collected information, and how and for which purposes it is used. The research importantly also asks: does technology really fulfil the promises it carries?

The promotion of technology is still alive in Afghanistan and globally, as multiple new forms of technology are being implemented by the humanitarian sector, like bitcoin or blockchain technology9,10. However, the applicants of technology in the humanitarian sector should not be blind to its potential negative effects. Technology can be tremendously helpful, but must also pass the ‘do no harm’ test11,12 and should be applied in a reflective manner. In the meantime, the thoughtful use of technology and more research on the topic are invited.

[i] Blockchain technologies refers to a distributed and decentralized database of continuously growing records of digital information, ordered, linked and secured using cryptography.
[ii] The use technology in the humanitarian sector, if far from new, is a growing phenomenon since the late 20th Century1–3. The difference nowadays lies in its expansion and penetration at all levels of the humanitarian aid system.
[iii] There has been an international call to innovate and introduce more technology. For instance, two reports from 2013 reinforced the use of multiple communications and data collection technologies in the humanitarian system: the World Disaster Report from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), and the document Humanitarian in a Network Age from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
References:
  1. Stephenson, R. and P.S. Anderson (1997) ‘Disasters and the information technology revolution’, Disasters 21, 305–334.
  2. Sandvik, K. B., M. Gabrielsen Jumbert, J. Karlsrud and M. Kaufmann (2014) ‘Humanitarian technology: a critical research agenda’, Int. Rev. Red Cross 96, 219–242.
  3. Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (2011) ‘Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies‘. UN Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership.
  4. IRIN (2013) ‘Innovative ICT helps aid workers in Afghanistan’. Available at: http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/05/02/innovative-ict-helps-aid-workers-afghanistan.
  5. Boone, J. US army amasses biometric data in Afghanistan. The Guardian (2010). Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/27/us-army-biometric-data-afghanistan.
  6. Zax, D. In Afghanistan, Cash Has Become The Most Effective Form Of Aid. Fast Company (2016). Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3065011/in-afghanistan-cash-has-become-the-most-effective-form-of-aid.
  7. Jacobsen, K. L. Experimentation in humanitarian locations: UNHCR and biometric registration of Afghan refugees. Secure. Dialogue 46, 144–164 (2015).
  8. Jacobsen, K. L. Humanitarian biometrics. In The Politics of Humanitarian Technology: Good intentions, unintended consequences and insecurity. 57–87 (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2017).
  9. DH Network. Blockchain for the Humanitarian Sector: Future opportunities. Digital Humanitarian Network (2016). Available at: http://digitalhumanitarians.com/resource/blockchain-humanitarian-sector-future-opportunities.
  10. Bello Perez, Y. Can Bitcoin Make a Difference in the Global Aid Sector? CoinDesk (2015). Available at: https://www.coindesk.com/can-bitcoin-make-a-difference-in-the-global-aid-sector/.
  11. Jacobsen, K. L. Humanitarian technology: revisiting the ‘do no harm’ debate. ODI HPN (2015). Available at: https://odihpn.org/blog/humanitarian-technology-revisiting-the-%c2%91do-no-harm%c2%92-debate/.
  12. The Sphere Handbook. Protection Principle 1: Avoid exposing people to further harm as a result of your actions. The Sphere Project Available at: http://www.spherehandbook.org/en/protection-principle-1-avoid-exposing-people-to-further-harm-as-a-result-of-your-actions/. (Accessed: 5th January 2018)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAbout the author: 

Rodrigo (Rod) Mena is a socio-environmental AiO-PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His current research project focuses on disaster response and humanitarian aid in complex and high-intensity conflict-affected scenarios.

(How) should scholars say what humanitarians can’t? by Roanne van Voorst and Isabelle Desportes

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In January this year, a long day of interviewing aid workers involved in the Myanmar Rohingya crisis revealed that these aid workers often refrain from talking about the human rights violations in Myanmar. Out of fear to be forced to cease operations or to get fired, they keep silent and carry on. This raises the question: should the scholars engaging with them speak up in their stead? This blog provides a reflection of whether and how scholars can get involved in the entanglements of humanitarianism and conflict. It also provides insights into the ethical and practical reasons why both aid workers and scholars sometimes hesitate to become more engaged.

The time we were doing fieldwork relating to the governance and the accountability of aid in Myanmar coincided with a massive exodus of the Rohingya Muslim minority fleeing persecution and the destruction of their homes in the northwestern Rakhine province. Yet, as we asked broader questions relating to the accountability of aid, the stories of humanitarian aid workers resounded with us. Stories of frustration and powerlessness, as they felt barriers were posed to their work not only by authorities, but also by their own organisations. As scholars, we felt determined that we wanted to ‘do something’. But along with this urge to act came insecurities and concerns.

Providing aid in restrictive settings

Local and international relief agencies that work in restrictive conflict settings are doing something that is intrinsically difficult. Often perceived as a threat by authorities involved in violence, agencies need to make sure they remain tolerated and even supported by these same authorities in order to operate effectively and deliver aid to those in need. In practice in Myanmar, aid agencies are stuck in the middle of two discourses: that of the United Nations that from afar qualifies the military offensive in Rakhine as a « textbook example of ethnic cleansing », and that of Myanmar authorities, who claim they were fighting Rohingya militias only and deny targeting civilians.

Faced with the overwhelming need for support to continue operating in the field, most humanitarian agencies refrain from being overtly critical of human rights violations and prefer to assert their position as impartial and neutral aid providers. Only very few are allowed by the government to work in Rakhine, and those who may, generally keep silent about what they observe. No wonder: when in 2014 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said that it was deeply concerned about the tens of thousands of people it was treating, the government forced it to cease operations in Myanmar. In order to avoid that for their own organisations, most aid agencies active on the ground thus strictly do and say what they’ve agreed to in (obligated) memoranda of understanding with the government—even if that does not match needs on the ground.

The personal dilemmas of humanitarians

These strategic decisions, however understandable, can have major consequences for the people whom agencies come to assist, but also have psychological implications for relief workers. Many suffer from what Hugo Slim has termed ‘bystander anxiety’. And this was also evident during our interviews: many of those we talked to in Yangon felt anxious and frustrated by the violence they observed in the field and the self-censorship they observed within their own organisations.

One field officer of a large international organisation felt that his agency was « sacrifying its principles and moral authority » in exchange for Rakhine field access and status, which was not even alleviating suffering on the ground because the government forbade actual activities. After he anonymously spoke to journalists, the whole team received a serious warning never to speak to the press again. He lamented the complete lack of internal discussions on these dilemmas, even as many of the staff, including Rohingya, « begged the organisation to speak out ».

We heard many similar stories from humanitarians working for INGOs or the UN. They could not openly discuss, let alone act upon, what they observed in the field. Particularly in meetings attended by the government, they knew « not to be critical ».

Here is where the scholars could come in, but often don’t do so.

Four broad arguments can motivate scholars to engage in the humanitarianism-conflict debate. First, as independent researchers in the field, scholars have more freedom to speak up. Second, many will argue that ‘speaking the truth’ is a scholarly duty. Third, scholars’ voice might carry differently than that of human rights organisations or journalists, as scholars are supposed to adhere to rigorous scientific and ethical standards that grant their research some credibility. Last, academics increasingly vary their channels to seek ‘societal impact’. Newspaper articles, debate evenings, social media and blogs such as this one can help convey to a wider audience what would otherwise remain obscured.

But this freedom comes with responsibilities. Scholars, somewhat like humanitarians, tread a fine line between engaging in effective action and making their own work—or worse, that of relief agencies or local research partners—harder or even impossible to carry out. Discussions about the role of researchers are by no means new. Take the discussions on scholar activism and action research (combing research and social change work), or the divide in the field of anthropology, amongst others, between those who believe they should retain distance in the field and those who support local activism or other types of involvement.

Ethics aren’t the only reason scholars often don’t speak up. Many of the issues that came up during our Myanmar discussions were practical, concerning safety, future access to visas and research permits, academic integrity, and access to non-academic channels, both in terms of networks and skills. Myanmar is a complex setting to work in, not only for humanitarians. Scholars and journalists also face difficulties in accessing the field, while some have been deported or arrested.

Moreover, the ‘hard evidence’ was thin. There would not be enough informants allowing for the rigorous cross-validation of statements. Interviews could not always be recorded and informants insisted that they, their agency and the locality where they operated should remain confidential to avoid raising colleagues’ or authorities’ suspicions. Were these stories even convincing enough for people who hadn’t been here, let alone fulfilling academic standards? Wouldn’t journalists after all be a better fit to relay them?

The answers might differ for each scholar, for each person. We share them to stir up a conversation and to share our doubts with researchers and (inter)national practitioners alike. Even with intentions to change local realities for the better, it’s not easy to take the leap from scholar to messenger. Yet, who else would fulfil that role?

This blog is a first attempt to support humanitarians who can’t speak up.

chantal-ariens-portret-high-res.jpgAbout the authors:

Roanne van Voorst is a postdoctoral researcher involved in the research projectisa”When disaster meets conflict. Disaster response of humanitarian aid and local state and non-state institutions in different conflict scenarios” at the ISS.

Isabelle Desportes is a PhD candidate working on the governance of disaster response, in particular the interplay between humanitarian and local actors.

 

Women’s Week | Challenging humanitarianism beyond gender as women and women as victims by Dorothea Hilhorst, Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon

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Problematic assumptions related to women’s position and role in humanitarian crises are unpacked in a special issue of the journal Disasters on gender, sexuality and violence. The main lesson drawn from the special issue is that aid actors should tread carefully and seriously invest in their capacity to carefully monitor the intended and unintended effects of programming on gender relations.

At the United Nations (UN) World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in May 2016, ‘achieving greater gender equality and greater inclusivity’ was identified as one of the five key areas of humanitarian action. The WHS wanted this to be a watershed moment that would spark a shift toward systematically meeting the needs of women and girls and promoting their role as active decision-makers and leaders.

After more than four decades of discourses on ‘gender in development’ and a substantive history of evolving international law and practice on women, peace, and security, the WHS marked an important declaration that the humanitarian aid field takes gender seriously. ‘Gender’ too often has been understood as synonymous with ‘women and girls,’ neglecting questions of agency, vulnerability, and the dynamic and changing realities of gendered power relations.

The focus on sexual violence has brought significant attention to some of the challenges that many women face, but has also reproduced a generalised image of women as victims. That idea was already well-embedded in classic views of conflict that see men as aggressors and combatants and women as non-combatant victims. While this depiction is grounded in sad empirical realities, it leads to a kind of tunnel vision that only centres on the suffering of women, viewing them as the primary victims and primarily as victims. The victim discourse furnishes a rationale for providing women with direly needed assistance, and in fact, women themselves are often keen to play the role of victim to become eligible for aid, backgrounding other aspects of their identity, including their (political) agency. Nonetheless, this focus is problematic in obscuring other realities in which men and women assume different and more complex roles.

Humanitarian programmes often seek the participation of women because they (we) are considered the more caring gender. Women are often targeted for aid as a proven means to improve the wellbeing of children, foster more peaceful conditions, and prevent the misdirection of resources. In the process, international aid often aims to also structurally improve the position of women. This is why UNICEF considers engaging women in service delivery as a positive step towards promoting women’s rights, and describes it as the ‘double dividend of gender equality’.

While well-intentioned, all of these assumptions pertaining to women’s position and role in humanitarian responses have problematic aspects. These dimensions are what we aimed to unearth and explore in our new special issue of the journal Disasters on gender, sexuality and violence in humanitarian crises.[1]

What about men?

The attention on women as aid recipients drowns out the voices that are asking: ‘What about men?’ (not to mention other marginalised gender categories like LGBT communities). Men also cope with specific vulnerabilities, often related to their gender. They are much more often at the receiving end of lethal violence than women, and are frequently victims of sexual violence. When aid is channelled through women, it can lead to a situation where men’s vulnerability is forgotten, or where men feel emasculated or disenfranchised from their traditional social roles (see, for example, the contribution by Holly Ritchie to the special issue).  Such situations can have a variety of consequences, ranging from mental health problems among men to the (violent) re-assertion of men and masculinities.

Gender as relations of power

The articles in the special issue bring another layer to this discussion that all too often boxes men and women into stagnant categories. By prioritising these categorical issues that ascribe and assume particular traits as specific to men and women, debates may miss the mark regarding gender as relations of power that, like everything else, are cast into disarray during humanitarian crises. It is well-established that gender roles are interwoven with other social identity markers, and that these intersectional gender relations are, moreover, deeply ingrained in and reproduced by the working of all institutions in society, ranging from the personal between men and women to the working of cultural values, geopolitics, governance practices, and religion. In creating the special issue, we asked: how do humanitarian responses interact with these myriad aspects of gender and other interrelated social identities? And how do humanitarian responses thus affect gender relations?

Persistence and change

The special issue testifies both to the persistence of gender relations as well as their propensity to change. Julian Hopwood, Holly Porter, and Nangiro Saum found a drastic reported change in everyday gender relations in Karamoja, Northern Uganda, especially where women’s material resource bases were enhanced, but they raise questions about whether such change is enduring. The economic empowerment of women may spill over positively into other domains of life, or contrarily may undermine goodwill towards women’s positions and bring about a violent backlash against them (and against humanitarians)—or both. Likewise, well-meaning interventions can have adverse effects, as Luedke and Logan found in South Sudan, where a narrow focus on conflict-related sexual violence and recycled (although well-intentioned) responses thereto by international organisations were not only unhelpful, but also ran counter to and undermined local norms that might have protected women.

The instrumentalisation of gender

A final layer that complicates the analysis of and interventions in gender relations is that gender as an issue is often instrumentalised for different purposes. Gender has firmly become part of the high politics of international relations. More locally, an interest in the position of women can, for example, obscure attempts of a government to firm up its grip over local authorities, as Rebecca Tapscott found in another contribution to the special issue on Northern Uganda. Likewise, Hilhorst and Douma found that the responses to sexual violence in the DRC were instrumentalised for various purposes by a large range of actors.

Treading carefully

What do these different layers mean for humanitarian action, apart from standing as a reminder that paying attention to women should not result in turning a blind eye to vulnerability and agency of other gender categories? The special issue highlights the dynamic and entangled nature of gender relations, and how humanitarian and political attention to gender adds additional layers to the complexities of gender relations in crisis environments. Aid can often do lots of harm. This does not mean that gender objectives should be abandoned, but that aid actors need to tread carefully and seriously invest in their capacity to carefully monitor the intended and unintended effects of programming on gender relations.

[1] The issue is open access for the duration of 2018.

Picture credit: Kate Holt/Africa Practice

Thea

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the ISS. Her blog article ‘Emergency sexwork: should NGOs recognise transactional sex as livelihood strategy?‘ further touches on the topics discussed in this article.

Holly head shot 2

Holly Porter is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of Development Policy and Management (University of Antwerp) and Conflict Research Group (Ghent University). She is also Research Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

RG4

 

Rachel Gordon is an independent research consultant on gender and humanitarian aid, and was formerly an SLRC Researcher and the SLRC Gender Team Leader, Feinstein International Center (Tufts University)/Overseas Development Institute.

 

Aid agencies can’t police themselves. It’s time for a change by Dorothea Hilhorst

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The spreading “Oxfam scandal” will affect the entire humanitarian sector painfully. It brings into plain sight what observers of the internal workings of NGOs have known for a long time: NGOs have an organisational reflex of banning outsiders from their kitchen, and keeping their potentially dangerous secrets hidden.

Abuses of power are common in any situation where vulnerable people depend on powerful service providers. But the key question that still haunts this sector is how organisations should deal with the rotten apples – the abusers of power. Even though Oxfam has taken earlier abuses and misconduct seriously, the organisation has acted alone and resorted to internal measures in dealing with the problem.

The case of the Oxfam country director hosting sex parties in the staff house in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake – perhaps it is only the tip of a rapidly expanding iceberg.

What matters is how organisations respond to such incidents. Have trespassers been sanctioned, and was the harm done redressed? Were the disciplinary procedures transparent, and have efforts been made to avoid the repetition of these events?

Read the full article on Irin News

Picture credit: Zephyris

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Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her blog article ‘Emergency sexwork: should NGOs recognise transactional sex as livelihood strategy?‘ further touches on the topics discussed in this article.

Eight years after Haiti shook: where has all the money gone? by Avagay Simpson

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UntitledAbout the author:

Avagay Simpson is a recent graduate of the International institute of Social Studies with a Master’s degree in Development Studies specialising in Governance and Development Policy. Prior to studying at the ISS, she worked with Office of the Contractor-General, one of Jamaica’s key anti-corruption organisations. She also worked for several years in project implementation focusing on enhancing governance locally and nationally in Jamaica and the Caribbean. She also holds a graduate degree in International Relations.

Eight years after the earthquake that in 2010 crippled the small country of Haiti, scores of Haitians still have not been able to rebuild their lives despite billions of dollars pledged in the form of humanitarian aid. Recent research on the dynamics of the Dutch partnership SHO for humanitarian assistance in post-disaster Haiti shows that an overreliance on trust within partnerships decreases operational effectiveness and transparency, and that more checks and balances are needed to ensure that financial aid reaches those Haitians still in need.

The struggle continues

Eight years have come and gone since an earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter scale on 12 January 2010 devastated Haiti and ripped apart its community. The earthquake caused the displacement of millions of Haitians and the death of over 300,000 people, although this number remains inconclusive. It was labelled as the first major urban disaster in recent history, leading to humanitarian aid pledges totalling over US$13 billion.

While eight years have passed since this tragic event, the United Nations reported that by 2017, many Haitians were still residing in camps and more than 2 million people were still in need of humanitarian assistance. Given the disjuncture between the total amount of aid pledged and those Haitians still requiring help, a burning question that scholars, journalists, and humanitarian practitioners have sought to answer is: “Where has all the money gone?”

Partnerships: Too untransparent?

Multiple explanations have arisen for why responses to the Haitian disaster were ineffective and produced a chaotic post-disaster environment. One of the many views is that the coordination of international relief efforts posed a major challenge to relief efforts, in addition to the lack of accountability in the disbursement of received donations. Partnerships forged between NGOs and international organisations have become commonplace particularly in the humanitarian relief sector due to the belief that such partnerships could maximise economic benefits for partners and strengthen organisations’ individual efforts through collaboration.

However, a number of scholars, such as David Lewis in his book Non-Governmental Organisations, Management and Development, have suggested that civil society partnerships receive less respect than intended due to the degradation of the term ‘partnership’ following extensive scrutiny over the past years. Considering this tainted image of partnerships, Lewis argues that the management of NGOs and the inter-agency partnerships they create need to be reviewed.

With this in mind, my recent research* attempted to provide some answers to questions pertaining to this ‘black hole’ of humanitarian aid in Haiti by reviewing partnerships among civil society NGOs and organisations, with particular attention paid to partnership dynamics such as transparency and accountability. It comprised an analysis of the Dutch NGO emergency relief efforts in Haiti during 2010 by exploring the collaborative processes of Dutch NGOs through the Stichting Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties (SHO) partnership. Network governance theory allowed for a closer look at the governance of this network and the effect of governance dynamics on upward transparency and accountability.

The SHO: Too large to handle?

The SHO is a Dutch platform comprising nine development organisations such as Oxfam Novib, UNICEF and Save the Children that calls for and manages public donations for humanitarian aid following disasters. Following the Haitian earthquake, the SHO raised €112 million through public donations following extensive media campaigns. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs donated approximately €41 million, or one-third of the total, to the SHO for disaster relief efforts.

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However, the Dutch public and government, like the international community, questioned the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of donated money for the benefit of disaster-affected Haitians. The Netherlands Court of Audit (Algemene Rekenkamer) with its mandate of checking the efficient and effective spending of public funding in its 2010 expenditure report found that “the funding flows in Haiti are not sufficiently clear and it cannot be determined what part of the aid funds is received by which international umbrella organisations, fellow aid organisations and the organisations’ own field offices” (Court of Audit 2011: 5). This report, alongside the IOB Evaluation Assisting Earthquake Victims: Evaluation of Dutch Cooperating Aid Agencies (SHO) Support to Haiti in 2010 by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB – Inspectie Ontwikkelingssamewerking en Beleidsevaluatie) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were the key foci of this study.

The research found that the SHO in its relief efforts in Haiti made use of a network of 36 organisations that excluded local Haitian civil society organisations, NGOs and government organisations. The member organisations operated in five different modalities. This resulted in a number of issues related to the coordination and implementation of programmes and relief efforts, including: extensive management chains; increased transaction costs; the duplication of activities; value clashes resulting in operational challenges; and multiple accountability disorder due to the presence of multiple principals and agents. This made it difficult to trace the funds and to assess whether they were effectively and efficiently expended.

Overreliance on trust

The SHO network and the independent functioning of each participating organisation in implementing their activities created a complex system that resulted in major challenges related to oversight and a lack of transparency regarding the spending of public funding.

The SHO and its member organisations relied on trust in each other to ensure that each activity was implemented in accordance with the principles of transparency and accountability and to the standards governing emergency humanitarian aid. This strong level of trust ignored the fact that individuals are rational beings that in group settings will not necessarily act in the common interest of the group, but may pursue certain objectives based on self-interest.

The study found that the interests of not only individual actors is of concern, but also those of the individual organisations in the extended network, as their interests may differ from that of the SHO and its members. The lack of strong oversight mechanisms by the SHO to determine if there was a breach and its inability to hold actors accountable or apply sanctions weakened the veracity of the reports and work done, resulting in the questions of transparency and accountability of the aid given in Haiti.

Conclusion

MILITARY RELIEF EFFORTS IN HAITI

The SHO’s example shows that heavy reliance on trust is a major issue requiring a thorough review by all organisations working in the humanitarian aid sector. The recent disclosure in October 2017 by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) of instances of fraud by officials involved in combating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014-2016 amounting to €5.2 million heightens the need for NGOs as well as international organisations to review their approaches and to recognise the need for adequate checks and balances.

In an emergency humanitarian relief context that is complex, uncertain, and often political in nature, sound policies and transparent processes contribute to sound governance. Such measures also control unintended meanings and consequences while simultaneously acting as barriers against the purposeful exploitation of resources that ultimately prevents aid from reaching those in need.

Picture credit: RIBI Image Library

*In partial fulfilment of a recently attained MA degree in Development Studies at the ISS.
REFERENCES
Dutch Court of Audit (2011) ‘Accounting for Haiti Aid Funds 2010’, November 2011, The Hague: Netherlands.

Localization – according to whom? by Roanne van Voorst

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About the author:
marijnzonderglimRoanne van Voorst is a postdoctoral researcher of humanitarian aid and disaster, at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. On 30 November 2017, she is participating in a IFRC-hosted workshop in Geneva, organized in the context of the Grand Bargain Localization Workstream.

The Grand Bargain aims to make aid more effective and efficient through a series of changes in the working practices of donors and aid organizations – localization is one of the most important themes. Evaluations should pay particular attention to experiences from Southern aid actors, as a recent study shows that they differ consistently from their Northern colleagues – and are not always taken into account.

‘Localization’ seems to have been a buzzword in the humanitarian aid-world for such a long time, that one could be tempted to think it would have become old news by now. Unfortunately, the opposite seems true: localization continues to draw consistent attention from policy makers and aid practitioners alike, because the humanitarian aid world is still considered unequal, with a small group of INGOs holding by far most of the means and power in the aid and development world.

The 2015/6-Grand Bargain commitments aim to change that. Signatories to the Grand Bargain have expressed that localization is crucial to make aid more effective and efficient. They committed to increase investment in the capacities and operations of national and local responders and to construct more equal partnerships between international and local actors. While similar ambitions have been voiced in the past, a number of barriers have stood in the way and best practice have not always been apparent. Both in the lead up to the Grand Bargain and particularly after its signature, a number of organizations have begun or planned research projects to fully investigate these barriers and opportunities and provide an evidence base for real change in the sector.

I urge these organizations to pay particular attention to the voices and experiences from Southern aid actors, as a recent study that I undertook with Dorothea Hilhorst indicates that there exists a huge, consistent difference in the ways Northern, larger INGO employees and practitioners working for Southern, local NGOs regard the status quo in the sector. Although this ‘gap’ is by no means a new topic, a relevant contribution to this debate is the consistent difference in perceptions that we found between aid actors working for larger INGOs and local NGOs working in areas characterized by conflict and disaster. This differentiated experience pertained especially to the ways in which the localization agenda is working in practice, particularly with regard to the issues of subcontracting versus partnerships, and the extent to which local practitioners trust the outcomes of international policy meetings.

The study we conducted is part of a large research project on humanitarian aid in settings of conflict and disaster. It included multiple rounds of in-depth interviews with an expert panel, in which 30 key humanitarian actors with great experience in the field participated. Participants remained anonymous – only the researchers knew who were interviewed. 10 out of 30 participants originated from the South and worked for a local aid organization. Another three panelists also have a Southern background yet work for an INGO. All 13 strongly differed in opinion with panelists with a Northern background on the following themes: the extent to which the localization agenda is being implemented, particularly with respect to equality in cooperation; trust in international policy processes; and the extent to which further integration between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ aid actors (new donor governments and the private sector) should be an objective. Of course, the relatively low number of participants in this study makes it impossible to draw broad conclusions on any of these themes. Nevertheless, our finding tentatively suggests that research or policy decisions in which only ‘Northern’ voices are heard tell a limited part of the story – and this could give evaluations of localization practices, a skewed outcome.

Some brief examples of North/South differences can help to give an impression: According to the majority of panelists with a Northern background, localization has been a struggle so far, but there is already more and more cooperation between local NGOs and INGOs and partnerships are slowly but gradually becoming the norm. However, panelists with a Southern background say that while there exists a lot of new types of cooperation between their agencies and Northern NGOs, these are hardly ever equal partnerships. From Lebanon to Afghanistan to Liberia to South Sudan, we heard of case studies where local NGOs are being subcontracted by INGOs to carry out projects for them, but don’t get ownership of these projects. They find they have little to say in these projects and therefore there is hardly room for local innovation.

Similarly, practitioners with a Southern background pointed out that the concept ‘humanitarian aid’ itself is a Northern concept, which they often only use in communication with international ‘partners’, as this is the only way to get subcontracts or funding. In their daily work and in communication with local aid actors, they prefer to avoid the term and instead speak of partnerships and development, as these concepts resonate more in the local context.

Finally, while Northern practitioners almost always sounded optimistic when they spoke about policy agreements such as the Grand Bargain, Southern practitioners seemed to have lost trust in these and other policy outcomes. Because of the disappointment with outcomes of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) and other commitments, local Southern NGOs are currently establishing and working through interest groups and consortia to pursue their own agenda. In some cases, these prove successful in pulling more power and funding opportunities towards local aid organizations.

These examples suggest that any research about localization that does not pay particular attention to the experiences of Southern aid actors, runs the risk of sketching an image of localization that is much more optimistic than real. If we ever want to turn the buzzword of localization, into actual practice – Southern voices will have to receive much more attention in research efforts.

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