International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (2000) / Chapter Skim
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New Challenges to Conflict Resolution: Humanitarian Nongovernmental Organizations in Complex Emergencies
New Challenges to Conflict Resolution: Humanitarian Nongovernmental Organizations in Complex Emergencies
Pages 383-419
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From page 383... ...
. Here I look at the challenges faced by those who are seeking to mitigate violence within the context of complex humanitarian emergencies.
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From page 384... ...
More importantly, states are increasingly less willing to run the risks created by strategies to mitigate violence. The humanitarian NGOs are at the forefront of those that confront most directly the consequences of great power disengagement and privatization in the complex humanitarian emergencies that are now considered legitimately as part of international conflict.
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From page 385... ...
The roots of the unanticipated and negative consequences of assistance are found in the attributes of complex humanitarian emergencies and in the global conditions that intensify the challenges created by these emergencies: the growing international security vacuum and the privatization of international assistance. Complex Humanitarian Emergencies I define a complex humanitarian emergency as a multidimensional humanitarian crisis created by interlinked political, military, and social factors most often arising from violent internal wars that in turn frequently are the result of state failures.
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From page 386... ...
Humanitarianism occurs when the political system is in crisis or has failed; humanitarians act to relieve the human suffering that is the consequence of political failure.6 The essence of humanitarianism has been its neutrality and universality, its refusal to choose one distress over another.7 Not only those NGOs that deliver relief assistance but also those working explicitly to facilitate conflict resolution seek to promote human welfare among distressed populations. The imperative is for action, to save lives.8 This categorical imperative creates the political legitimacy for action in humanitarian emergencies.9 Humanitarian action is designed for the short term, for limited groups, for limited objectives, until legitimately constituted authority can assume its obligations.
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From page 387... ...
Becoming part of the battle challenges all of the fundamental precepts of humanitarian action and creates qualitatively new challenges for conflict resolution. Disengagement by the Major Powers and the Consequent Security Vacuum The challenge to NGOs of engagement where civilians are deliberately targeted is made far more difficult by the repeated unwillingness or incapacity of the major powers to act through the UN Security Council, regional organizations, or through other appropriate instruments, to provide security first for endangered civilians and then for NGO personnel who are in the field offering protection.
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From page 388... ...
Their funding to NGOs has increased even as their spending on bilateral emergency assistance programs has diminished.~3 In 1996, for example, more aid to Africa was channeled through NGOs than through official development assistance programs. Of course, Western government aid agencies are still the largest source of resources, but in complex emergencies in particular NGOs are increasingly the principal conduit of assistance and so face an ever-larger share of the challenges that complex emergencies generate for humanitarians.~4 The major powers are increasingly privatizing their assistance programs.~5 They expect unrealistically that the community of NGOs can fill the security vacuum left by inaction on the part of states.
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From page 389... ...
Conflict prevention and resolution are now squarely on the NGO agenda. Here I focus on the role of the large humanitarian NGOs in the context of a complex humanitarian emergency that grows out of violent conflict, in order to examine some of the central challenges of contemporary conflict resolution.
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From page 390... ...
When Humanitarian Relief Fuels War and Conflict Through Asset Transfer23 The evidence is strong, though not determining, that in recent complex humanitarian emergencies the assistance that NGOs have provided
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From page 391... ...
Theft of those resources by militias was common. Equally significant was the ability of militias, in the absence of a security envelope for the local population and NGO personnel, to use force and the threat of force to compel NGOs to hire some of the same forces to guard relief supplies and convoys that were the source of the humanitarian crisis.26 In so doing, the NGOs legitimated those who were preying on local populations.27 In Sierra Leone and Liberia conflict analysts and medical NGOs learned that they could plan by following the pattern of UN food deliveries: when food was distributed to a village or displaced-persons camp, the militias would quickly attack to steal the relief supplies, killing dozens of villagers as they did so.
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From page 392... ...
A peace-building initiative sponsored by an NGO at the local level was successful because it drew on these customary Somali conflict management practices.3~ The relief effort, in contrast, helped to cripple the traditional systems because it did not channel assistance through traditional structures but strengthened the militia forces that relied on violence.32 NGO personnel certainly needed far greater knowledge of the local systems of conflict management and the importance of elders as authoritative voices in society. One experienced analyst is deeply pessimistic, however, that any strategy of conflict resolution could have succeeded in Somalia, given the structural constraints created by the collapse of the state and the complex emergency.33 The violence is perpetuated as well, critics continue, because humanitarian organizations have reluctantly acceded to the constraining conditions imposed by governments and militias to gain access to populations at risk.34 In complex humanitarian emergencies, NGOs indeed have experienced enormous difficulties in gaining access to populations vulnerable
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From page 393... ...
When Humanitarian Assistance Interferes with the Social Contract Critics level a deep structural challenge as well. They allege that political accountability, through contractual arrangements, is the critical constraint on government violence against civilians, an important component of complex humanitarian emergencies.
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From page 394... ...
Political contracts cannot provide a near-term solution to violent conflict and humanitarian emergencies. Until they do, if they do, the complex emergency continues and the third party and the local humanitarian challenges intensify.40 When Humanitarian NGOs Are Manipulated by States that Seek to Contain Violence Without Direct Engagement Critics insist that NGOs are being substituted for effective action by the major powers and exploited as a cover for their absence.4~ As I argued earlier, there is indeed a growing international indifference to humanitarian crises.
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From page 395... ...
This new model that blurs emergency assistance with postwar reconstruction also ignores the scope of the violence and the extent of the emergency that make an early return to "stability" extremely unlikely. In some cases Liberia and Somalia the emergency has continued for a decade or more.
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From page 396... ...
It is unreasonable to expect emergency assistance to achieve conflict resolution; indeed, such an expectation is virtually certain to be unmet and, when it is unmet, to lead to the inappropriate politicization of aid as publics and governments become cynical.5~ Cautious modesty far better reflects the available evidence and the political environment of complex humanitarian emergencies. When Humanitarian Aid Emphasizes Reconstruction at the Expense of Accountability When there is attention to reconstruction, it is largely focused on restoring services and rebuilding economies, not on the political accountability that is central to a reformed political system.
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The importance of relief is likely to vary by context: in eastern Zaire relief assistance was a critical resource to militia leaders, while in other cases the drug trade, smuggling, and thriving gray and black economies were far more important generators of resources to predators.
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From page 398... ...
First, complex humanitarian emergencies of the kind we have seen in the past decade in Africa are likely to continue, and not only in Africa, well into the future. Second, NGOs committed to humanitarian values will continue to engage on behalf of vulnerable populations.
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From page 399... ...
NGOs are also trying to increase the ratio of nonfood to food aid within the constraints imposed by a complex emergency. There is much greater emphasis on supporting sustainable livelihoods distribution of fishing nets where fish are available; vaccination programs against measles, a perennial killer of children in complex emergencies; and portable educational materials so that schools can continue even as populations are forced to move.
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From page 400... ...
Analysis of these cases suggests that the more complex the conflict, the more chaotic the security markets, and the more traumatized the social order, the more important an adequate security envelope is for effective delivery of humanitarian assistance. For humanitarians working in complex emergencies, painful choices will continue to arise as long as the UN or regional organizations are unable to provide security as a public good and the major powers continue to disengage and privatize assistance as a substitute for political action.
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From page 401... ...
First, humanitarians must acknowledge that their actions in a complex emergency can have profound political consequences. Even as they insist on the imperative of legitimate authorities assuming responsibility, they must explicitly analyze the political consequences of their strategies to mitigate violence relief delivery, refugee protection, election monitoring, postwar reconstruction, peace building and plan for those consequences.67 NGOs traditionally have insisted, and many still do, that only strict adherence to principles of neutrality and consent of the parties can insulate relief assistance from political and military agendas.68 Neutrality, it is argued, contributes to the amelioration of violence and conflict resolution by effectively inducing UN agencies and governments to provide assistance, by deterring violence through the capacity to witness by their presence on the ground and their access to the media, and by their capacity to mediate among the warring parties.69 I, and others, allege that the context of relief assistance has changed so radically that apolitical neutrality is a useful fiction but no longer a viable option.
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From page 402... ...
NGOs need as well to enhance the knowledge and skills required for effective negotiation with implementing partners, other NGOs in the regions in which they are working, and with potentially predatory forces so as to define appropriate conditions for engagement. It will also be important to develop a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of the humanitarian assistance "marketplace" in which NGOs are embedded if they hope to influence the critical set of contractual relationships with the UN and donor institutions that can severely constrain strategic choices.
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From page 403... ...
Yet the more traumatized the social order is, the more important is an adequate security envelope for effective delivery of humanitarian assistance.74 Complex emergencies feed on themselves, enfeebling and even wiping away legitimate security resources, spreading chaos and violence, and generating the need for even greater security resources from outside. The cycle can only be broken if security is again supplied as a public good, ideally by the major powers acting through international institutions or by members of regional organizations acting collectively.
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From page 404... ...
The major powers that are critical to authorization of a UN force are likely to consider most of the humanitarian emergencies as "discretionary" and, consequently, be unwilling to commit forces, directly or through the UN, to a crisis that humanitarians consider urgent. The falling budget for UN peacekeeping speaks loudly.
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From page 405... ...
When security is not being provided as a public good, as it frequently is not in a complex humanitarian emergency, NGOs should reluctantly consider urging the UN secretary-general to draw on private resources to provide security. The absence of international public security forces, and the lack of effective and legitimate alternatives, empowered the militias of Somalia, eastern Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia to terrible effect.
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From page 406... ...
When armed guards are necessary, the ICRC recommends that they be hired from "an established security firm or the police rather than the army."84 A report recently submitted to the European Commission proposed that donors could field security units to protect humanitarian work, either from national resources or "through funding specialist third parties."85 It is worth considering whether the hiring of security guards from specialized third parties is an appropriate strategy not only to combat crime but also to mitigate the violence that flows inadvertently from current policies. Private providers of security working under the authority of the UN may be the least harmful response to both the privatization of assistance and the absence of security as a public good.86 A third strategy to consider is that of conditionality and exit.
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From page 407... ...
In the past, humanitarians have withdrawn largely when their staff was harmed or at risk the ICRC from Burundi and Chechnya, Caritas from Burundi or when necessary infrastructure was destroyedCARE from Mogadishu. Withdrawal as a strategic choice is rare, but humanitarian NGOs have very occasionally made this choice.
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From page 408... ...
First, there must be coordination among the principal NGOs that are providing assistance to act in concert. This kind of decision will not be reached easily; many NGOs continue to believe that withdrawal violates the fundamental humanitarian ethic, that it is tantamount to abandoning the most vulnerable, that it will provoke looting and violence, that it furthers the lamentable processes of privatization of assistance and disengagement by major powers, and that the politics of withdrawal compromise humanitarian neutrality and impartiality.
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From page 409... ...
Only if withdrawal is coordinated and strategic, if the conditions NGOs set can be met by the targets, can concerted withdrawal have any impact whatsoever on the behavior of a predatory government or militia. Developing Diagnostics If humanitarian NGOs are to consider withdrawal as a strategy to influence warring parties and reluctant major powers and participate effectively at national and global policy tables, above all they need the analytical capacity to assess the severity of the negative consequences of their aid and a set of diagnostics they can collectively use to judge that they may be doing relatively more harm than good.
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From page 410... ...
If local authorities are willing to use force to monopolize control over a registration process, there is a very high likelihood that aid will subsequently become a resource for violent conflict. Third, negotiation of access to populations at risk often provides predatory governments and militias with the opportunity to impose inequitable political conditions, which privilege some vulnerable populations at the expense of others.
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From page 411... ...
In large part because of the failure of the wider international community to provide security as a public good, humanitarians increasingly find themselves confronting painful choices. In complex humanitarian emergencies, where security is absent, some of the assistance NGOs provide has gone to those who prey on the vulnerable and has prolonged and even fueled the cycle of violence.
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From page 412... ...
7Bernard Kouchner, Le malheur des autres (The Misfortunes of Others) (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1993~; Dylan Hendrickson, "Humanitarian Action in Protracted Crises: The New Relief Agenda and Its Limits," Network Paper, 25 (London: Overseas Development Institute Refugee Research Network, 1998~; and Philippe Delmas, The Rosy Future of War (New York: Free Press, 1997)
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From page 413... ...
11Mark Bradbury, "Complex Humanitarian Emergencies," working paper for CARE Canada, Ottawa, 1998. Duffield, "NGO Relief in War Zones." 13The United States, for example, spent $1.3 billion on development aid to Africa in 1994; in 1997 spending was reduced to $700 million.
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These figures do not include humanitarian personnel who were not on contract with one of the UN agencies. 21This research was done as part of a larger project of CARE Canada and the Program on Negotiation and Conflict Management at the University of Toronto on humanitarian NGOs in complex emergencies.
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30Peter Shiras, "Humanitarian Emergencies and the Role of NGOs," pp. 106-117 in After Rwanda: The Coordination of United Nations' Humanitarian Assistance, James Whitman and David Pocock, eds.
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9. This incapacity dictates a serious investment in capacity building even as it cautions against a rapid transfer of all responsibility for humanitarian assistance.
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105-127. 59There is a significant difference between evaluation of past experience and the development of proposals for improved performance, on the one hand, and the adoption of these practices by the UN and humanitarian NGOs.
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John Stremlau, People in Peril: Human Rights, Humanitarian Action, and Preventing Deadly Conflict (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1998~. 73There are some circumstances in which the monopolistic forces are less powerful.
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91Nicholas Stockton, "In Defence of Humanitarianism," paper presented to the Disasters Emergency Committee Seminar, London, 1998. 92Medecins sans Frontieres withdrew from Coma, objecting publicly to political conditions in the camps, but other humanitarian NGOs stayed to provide assistance.
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