Tag Archives humanitarian crises

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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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.

Image Source: Author

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.

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

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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Silence on the Afghan deportation drive from Pakistan reveals hypocrisy; the international community must honour its commitment to human rights

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With the Government of Pakistan’s announced deportation drive, the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan has taken a shocking turn. In this post, three women refugee researchers from Afghanistan, writing with ISS researchers Karin Astrid Siegmann and Saba Gul Khattak, state that the international community is looking on as Afghan refugees in Pakistan risk deportation to and persecution in Afghanistan. Rather than deporting them, these refugees, especially vulnerable groups, should be resettled to third countries or granted asylum in Pakistan. The international community has a duty to help them, they write.

Unloading Second Refugee Bus B by Gustavo Montes de Oca

The shadow of Israel’s bombings of Gaza makes other humanitarian crises invisible. While writing this post, as undocumented Afghan refugees in Pakistan, we are in danger of forced deportation to Afghanistan where persecution awaits us.

And we are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Pakistan face a similar threat. At least 1.3 million Afghan nationals live in Pakistan as refugees. In addition, more than 600,000 of us came after the Taliban took over the Afghan government in August 2021.

We see the Pakistan caretaker government’s recent announcement that it will deport all ‘illegal foreign nationals’ after 1 November 2023 as a form of collective punishment. The Pakistan government claims that this deportation is for national security, but it further destabilises our precarious situation.

 

Afghan refugees in Pakistan already face terrible conditions

As undocumented foreigners, securing our livelihood through employment in Pakistan is impossible. A general lack of proficiency in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, further weakens our bargaining power in our host society. Over and above this, those of us who belong to the ethnic and religious minority of Hazara Shias are easily identifiable among Pakistan’s different ethnic set-up. Our faces are our passport, so to speak. In Afghanistan, Hazara Shias face persecution which has caused hundreds of civilian casualties in unlawful targeted killings. In Pakistan, we and face similar discrimination on ethnic and religious grounds.

 

Deportation plan pits refugees against Pakistani people

The government of Pakistan’s announcement has aggravated this dire situation. While the Pakistani population has long hosted their Afghan neighbours in times of crises, the deportation plan cruelly pits the refugee population against Pakistani people. The government has announced strict legal action against any Pakistani citizen who, for instance, provides accommodation to ‘illegal aliens’. We see how Pakistanis have become even more hostile as a result.

Police harassment has become more pronounced, too. A year ago, the police would just knock at the door; now, they directly enter our homes. A recent fact-finding mission of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has found that several Afghan settlements in Islamabad have been demolished by the Capital Development Authority (CDA), ostensibly as part of an anti-encroachment drive. In fact, most residents are registered refugees and said they have been subjected to harassment, intimidation and extortion by the police following the government’s notification on foreigners.

 

In this crisis, we are asking: Where are the international champions of human rights?

The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, whose stated objective it is to “protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people”, has failed Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Following the Taliban takeover, the agency issued a non-refoulment (no forced return) advisory for Afghans outside of their home country. When, in early October, the government of Pakistan announced its plan to deport undocumented foreigners, UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) appealed to Pakistan “to continue its protection of all vulnerable Afghans who have sought safety in the country and could be at imminent risk if forced to return.”

Yet, the fact that the UNHCR has not registered a large portion of Afghan refugees in Pakistan has made them vulnerable in the first place. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans, especially women refugees, musicians, and social media activists living in Pakistan are now at risk because the registration of Afghan refugees has been stalled by this very UN agency. They now live in terror of deportation to a country that actively enforces gender apartheid and persecutes people based on their ethnicity, religion, and professional work. Instead of citing international customary law, and recent judgments from Pakistani courts that clearly state that Afghan asylum seekers have a right to asylum, UNHCR and IOM have adopted a stoic silence.

 

Western government’s calls to respect women’s rights are hollow

The protestations of western governments to ‘stand up for the rights of women in Afghanistan’ ring hollow in our ears. In 2001, the Taliban’s treatment of women provided the United States (US) with a justification for bombing Afghanistan (see also here). When the US signed the Doha Accord with the Taliban in February 2020 to bring an end to almost twenty years of war, this concern for women’s rights was forgotten, though. Meanwhile, our sisters in Afghanistan who have raised their voices against women’s systematic discrimination through laws and policies that have made women prisoners in their own country by the new Taliban government have been detained and subjected to threats, beatings and electric shocks by the Taliban authorities.

The countries that approved of the Doha Accord, a deal that excluded the Afghan government, share responsibility for the exit of Afghan nationals from their homes and their country. However, they turn a blind eye to the violations of human rights in Afghanistan as they do not wish to accept Afghan refugees.

 

The international community must break the silence — now

To address the ongoing humanitarian crisis that Afghan refugees in Pakistan face, the international community needs to break its silence and increase resettlement quotas immediately. Refugees who have been screened and identified as priority cases for resettlement need to be reassured that they will not be sent back to Afghanistan. The approximately 20,000–25,000 vulnerable Afghans identified by UNHCR need to be resettled abroad as soon as possible. We also call for the UNHCR definition of vulnerable Afghans to include those who worked for the civil bureaucracy, the military and police forces of Afghanistan during the time of the Ashraf Ghani government, but also single women and mothers.

Finally, the right to seek asylum is recognized as an international human right by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pakistan must be persuaded to grant asylum to Afghans in Pakistan rather than deporting us. We contribute to Pakistan’s society and economy in numerous ways. That contribution needs to be recognised.

Picture Credit: “Unloading Second Refugee Bus B” by Gustavo Montes de Oca is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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

About the authors:

Three women refugee researchers from Afghanistan have fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in August 2021 for fear of detention as human and women rights activists.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is an Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at ISS.

 

 

 

Saba Gul Khattak is a feminist researcher and expert in gender, conflict, and human security.

 

 

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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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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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Humanitarian implications of sanctions to end the war in Ukraine

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The sanctions package against Russia is expanding every day as the main strategy to end the invasion of Ukraine. While it is inevitable that ordinary Russians will suffer from these sanctions (as will people in the countries applying these sanctions), we must do everything in our ability to protect all civilians affected by this war, including people in Russia, from the impact of sanctions. This is not an easy task at all. On one hand, the sanctions might bring suffering to people in Russia (primarily for the most vulnerable ones), but on the other hand, they might lead to the end of the war, and, thereby, save many lives and reduce the extreme suffering of millions in Ukraine.

The great dilemma: using sanctions as a tool to end war

This great dilemma of how to stop the war while avoiding more suffering should not be taken lightly, and its impacts carefully assessed. On Tuesday evening, we listened to a conversation with two well-known military experts on the Dutch radio: Rob de Wijk and Arend Jan Boekestijn. After a while the conversation turned to the effects of the sanctions. Rob de Wijk stated, ‘‘We will smoke out the ’regime’.” He found it likely that the ruble would completely collapse, and hence destroy the Russian economy. Boekestijn went one step further. He praised that the Russians, as a result of the imposed sanctions, can no longer withdraw money from ATM machines. He continued, “when people get hungry, they will go out on the ’street’.” While the sanction seek to affect those in power, oligarchs, and the government itself, either of these two men did not seemed concerned about what their predictions would mean for the majority of people in Russia. On the contrary, they were impressed and fascinated by the sanctions, and almost jubilant about their possible effects.

The assumption, however, that hungry people will take to the streets to overthrow Putin is debatable. It ignores the fact that many Russians have already taken to the streets. In the early days of the war, an estimated 5,000 Russian civilians were arrested during widespread protests against the war. The effects of large-scale protests are also uncertain. Until now, we have never seen Putin care much about protests or act based on what people think.

The unsettling costs of sanctions: hurting the innocent and the most vulnerable

Provoking hunger is, unfortunately, a common weapon of war. Forcing the enemy to surrender through a siege that cuts off an area from food is a recurring theme in history. The creation myth of Carcassonne in France, in which Mrs. Carcass managed to deceive besiegers by throwing a well-fed pig over the city wall is just one of many examples. Emperor Charles V who besieged the castle did not realise it was the only pig left over in the desperately hungry city, and withdrew his troops when he concluded their siege was not successful. In the previous century, hunger has been used as a weapon of war in many conflicts — in China, Ethiopia, Biafra, Sudan, and so on. The Dutch hunger winter in the Second World War should not be missing from the long list as well, and nor should the so-called holodomor, in which Russia caused a dramatic famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, resulting in the death of more than 3 million people because of starvation.

Hunger often kills more civilians during wars than armed violence, and the long term effects of malnutrition are incalculable. The World Peace Foundation has listed 61 famines as part of conflicts that took place between 1870 and 2015. A conservative estimate of the number of victims came to 105 million deaths. To end hunger as a weapon of war, an international resolution was passed in 2018 condemning this. The resolution 2417 was an initiative of the Netherlands, and thanks to a great deal of diplomatic effort, it was adopted with unanimous support by the Security Council of the United Nations.

Making sanctions work without impacting civilians — is it possible? Sanctions are meant to end the invasion. Russia is targeting civilians with the bombing and seems to be rapidly accumulating war crimes. In the last 8 years, while war was ongoing in the separatist regions of Ukraine, humanitarian needs were immense. There were at least 850.000 people internally displaced, along with an acute need for socio-economic and psycho-social care. Aid providers shared with us about the difficulties they faced in the areas controlled by the Russian-backed separatists, ranging from concerns for the safety of aid providers to administrative hindrances (withholding permissions) in providing access. It will, therefore, be important to continue negotiating access to Ukraine, and enabling people to move freely in search for refuge, and most importantly seek an end to the invasion.

There is great optimism that the international solidarity and widely shared support for sanctions may facilitate the end of the war. It is inevitable that ordinary Russian civilians will bear some of the burden of the imposed sanctions. But we cannot let this become the goal. Instead, let us think about how to organise sanctions so that citizens are spared as much as possible, because the most vulnerable are, in every side of the conflict, the ones that usually pay the greatest costs.

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

About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst

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

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

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Rethinking Transactional Sex in Humanitarian Settings: Reflections for the way forward

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Transactional Sex (TS) is often used as an umbrella term to encompass a wide range of practices ranging from sex work to sexual exploitation and abuse. TS is typically framed in humanitarian settings through reductive lenses that portray the person engaged in them as without agency, forced into “negative coping strategies” by a larger crisis. Academics and practitioners have challenged these dominant framings in the Transactional Sex in Humanitarian Contexts panel as part of the 6th International Humanitarian Studies Conference. The presentations highlighted both the complexity and the nuanced nature of TS in different contexts, and common trends spanning a broad spectrum of humanitarian and displacement settings, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), France, Greece, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, and Turkey. The panel offered a reflection of the ideologies and frameworks implicit in humanitarian operations, which can blind us to the diverse needs and strategies of those engaged in transactional sex.

Transactional sex in humanitarian contexts: contemporary paradigms and interpretations

Transactional sex is the exchange of sex for cash, goods, services, commodities, or privileges. It is often framed by humanitarians as a form of violence in and of itself. Characterised by victim/saviour relationships and rescue narratives, these problematic and essentialising representations can have real world implications on policy and programming, along with unintended, often negative impacts on the lives of those engaged in them. To further complicate matters, there is a lack of conceptual clarity, and standardised and consistent use of terminology, such that what many describe as “transactional sex” is commonly conflated and used interchangeably with survival sex, sexual exploitation and abuse, sex work or sex trafficking.

Transactional sexual relationships exist on a spectrum encompassing various states of consent, power, emotional attachment, economic compensation, and social acceptability. All panelists highlighted that the lived experiences of those engaged in transactional sex do not align well with these monolithic representations, and are rather shaped by numerous structural factors, relating to historical pathways of patriarchy, conflict conditions, and other social, economic, and individual factors that often intersect with intimate consensual relationships. There is growing recognition that interpretations of transactional sexual relationships are culturally determined and constructed, and that this work involves complex negotiation of strategies of agency. Transactional sex occurs against a backdrop of gendered social norms, which are constantly shifting, and may vary between and within countries and communities.

Limitations and challenges of the current discourse

This is not to say that transactional sex is necessarily a safe or desirable livelihood strategy. Transactional sexual relationships are shaped by various structural drivers and conditions that are often created by migration, and aid policies and politics, among other inherent power disparities that entail risks of gender-based violence, and negative impacts on sexual and reproductive health. However, it is crucial to recognise that individuals weigh such risks in relation to their own lives and define what safety and protection means for them. This is further shaped by other factors relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, social and cultural factors, and disability, for example. Research and empirical insights from practitioners are increasingly challenging the erasures of non-heteronormative experiences of transactional sex and calling for more intersectional approaches in research and programming.

People engaging in transactional sex and civil society groups, including human rights defenders, health advocates, sex worker-led organisations, NGOs, and grassroots movements, have already provided rich empirical insights and recommendations across a wide-range contexts, which, however, have not been taken up meaningfully by the humanitarian community. For example, in the post-panel Q&A it was highlighted how the Women´s Refugee Commission (WRC) Working with Refugees Engaged in Sex Work: A Guidance Note for Humanitarians, issued in 2016, might have been overshadowed by the #Aidtoo movement in 2017, and how a moral panic seldom allows for nuance and complexity. Moreover, we may also need to recognise that not all those who engage in TS identify as sex workers, and humanitarian actors do not necessarily see TS as sex work, which may be why such guidance can be interpreted very narrowly.  More recently, UNHCR and UNFPA launched the operational guideline Responding to the health and protection needs of people selling or exchanging sex in humanitarian settings  (2021) which will hopefully provide a clearer framework going forward in this regard.

The way forward: Rethinking transactional sex policy and programmes.

It is crucial to examine whose knowledge, voice, and power drives policy – or lack of it – on issues around TS, and how people engaged in TS in humanitarian settings, including migrants and refugees, become problematised, supported, and intervened upon by institutions based on vulnerabilities associated with and/or biases regarding gender, sexual behaviour and orientation. It is worth reflecting on why some experiences are omitted or marginalised, and how conditions of vulnerabilities are created by these very same institutions.

Transactional sex will continue to be a coping strategy for many individuals who make complex decisions and tradeoffs in humanitarian and displacement settings. Sometimes it may be the least risky option compared to the available alternatives. Bringing in the perspectives from and lived experiences of people engaging in transactional sex offers a crucial step in understanding their lives, decision-making process, desires, needs, or wants, and understanding. This includes, for example, the structural conditions and policies imposed by governments and humanitarian institutions that drive people into this practice, as well as considerations about whether they want to continue to engage in transactional sex safely or find other strategies. Ensuring sustainable and inclusive programming, and refraining from causing harm by perpetuating stigma and exclusion, centres on this more holistic reimagining of the issue of transactional sex as a complex social phenomenon.

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

About the authors:

Clea Kahn has nearly 25 years of experience in the humanitarian sector in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. She holds an LL.M. in international human rights law, an MSc in psychology, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in counselling psychology. Clea focuses on protection of civilians, gender-based violence and migration/refugee issues, and is a member of the ListenH project: Livelihoods and transactional sex in Humanitarian Crises. She can be contacted at cleakahn@cleakahn.com.

Michelle Alm Engvall is a cultural anthropologist with a specialty in sex work and humanitarian action. Her research focuses on how framed understandings of transactional sex influence policy and programming and how this can lead to unintended consequences for affected populations. She can be contacted at michelle.a.engvall@gmail.com

Shirin Heidari is a senior researcher at the Global Health Centre, and research affiliate at the Gender Centre, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is the principal investigator of a multi-country multi-disciplinary research on transactional sex and health repercussions in forced displacement. She can be contacted at: shirin.heidari@graduateinstitute.ch

Megan Denise Smith is a humanitarian worker and gender-based violence specialist with ten years of experience working with migrants and refugees in Bangladesh, Egypt, Lebanon, Rwanda, and the UK. She is currently based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) where she has managed IOM´s GBV programming as part of the Rohingya refugee response since 2017. She can be contacted at megandenisesmith@gmail.com

Dorothea Hilhorst

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University. Her focus is on aid-society relations: studying how aid is embedded in the context. She coordinates the ListenH project: Livelihoods and transactional sex in Humanitarian Crises. Email: hilhorst@iss.nl Twitter: @hilhorst_thea

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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/136333

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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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.