Online Exchange

A greater understanding of why civilians are targeted in conflict is vital to protecting them argues Hugo Slim

2007-10-10T08:23:00Z

Last year, I found myself watching an early round of the African football cup finals on the television at the Acholi Inn in Gulu, Northern Uganda. Next to me was a former senior leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army who had said he might give me an interview about civilian protection after the match.

The game was extremely “physical” and the LRA man was getting quite heated about the conduct on the pitch. Eventually, one deeply cynical tackle was too much for him. He leapt from his chair, shouting at the referee:

“Hey, that’s unfair, that’s terrible, send him off!”

I was gob smacked. Here was a man who had been the official spokesman for one of the most vicious armed groups in the world (whose troops think nothing of the murder and mutilation of unarmed civilians) bitterly complaining about a tackle that went for the man rather than the ball. But he was genuinely outraged. I had obviously got him wrong. After the match, he turned to me and said:

“Why do you want to talk to me about civilians?”

“Because your organization has killed and terrified so many of them and I want to understand why.”

Accusing him of a foul so soon after the match was not a good idea. He grew angry.

“You want to write a book about our war” he said “but you and all the other white people have only just turned up. We have been fighting this war for years but only now are you interested. You talk about civilians. But what is a civilian? Go around this area for a bit and then, if you can tell me what a civilian is, I will talk to you about it.”

We humanitarians often react to wars as this LRA man reacted to a football match. And, as he suggested, we also talk about civilians without understanding what the idea really means to people at war. We chant, outraged, from the touchlines in support of “innocent civilians” and call upon a host of referees whom we think should sort out the offenders. But they seldom do and we are left to fume on the terraces or rush on with oranges, water and encouragement at half-time. It is good that we do but I think we might be more effective if we do not just chant as loyal fans of civilians and, rather, become more subtle in our understanding of what people inside a war really think about civilians and why they decide to kill them.

People have strong reasons for killing civilians and always have. Often they just totally reject the civilian idea, thinking it foolish to differentiate among their enemy. They see every enemy whether young, old, male or female as a threat which should be utterly destroyed or hurt into obedience. Hitler and the Janjaweet represent these positions.

Others agree that there are such things as civilians but that the cause for which their group fights is so important that it trumps the ethic of civilian protection. Much as they might like to protect ordinary people, they must abandon the idea in this war and hurt civilians in order to win. Churchill and Hamas share this view.

Many other killers of civilians regard civilian identity as just too slippery and ambiguous. They see most people in their war as more complicated than mere civilians. The farmer, the female newspaper editor, the member of another clan, the teacher, the policeman’s girlfriend are “not just” civilians but are also involved in the war in some way whether they like it or not. So they too can and must be targeted to make a point or eradicate opposition. FARC and Bin Laden reason thus.

Then there is the simple fury of revenge in which massacres are done to pay back pain. Vicious Liberian factions often thought like this.

Finally, of course, there are those who want to hold dearly to the civilian ethic. They try not to kill them and regret it when they inevitably do so. American, British and Israeli forces seem to think like this.

So, there is a spectrum of anti-civilian thinking that ranges from rejection, exception, ambiguity and regret. We must understand this better, gauging exactly what ideology civilians are up against in a given war. Besides R2P, we should understand the R2K – reasons to kill. Getting inside the anti-civilian mindset of our opponents, we might find ways to destroy their reasoning and so A2P – argue to protect – a little better.

We should never just chant but also start exposing anti-civilian thinking in more detail so that civilians around the world can argue against it more precisely, particularly the civilian communities concerned. Only they can forge a new ethical consensus and new political contracts around violence in their societies. Because, sadly, despite what they tell you in Geneva and New York, there is no referee.

Hugo Slim’s new book, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, is published by Hurst and Co.

Yet another arrogant move? MSF’s stance on its relationship with the rest of the international aid system

2007-09-03T08:04:00Z

In a recent position paper MSF posed itself the question “…. what will better serve the populations in need: will MSF’s independent approach be beneficial to the most vulnerable at the end of the line? Or on the contrary, …is it indeed the collective effort, which will better serve the vulnerable?”

We came to the conclusion that the best service for populations in need will come as a result of independence of action rather than participation in an integrated effort. Hence our decision in the past years to decline the invitation to join the IASC both at headquarters and field level, to withdraw from SCHR and not to join clusters, meanwhile keeping an open and bilateral channel of communication with all major aid actors. Just one more example of MSF isolationism and arrogance, or is this the only way of ensuring impartial provision of humanitarian assistance to populations at risk?

Many actors doing different things…

Over recent years we have witnessed a huge proliferation of organisations involved in crisis response that has eroded the capacity for efficient coordination, and further challenges an idealistic view of a homogeneous aid system.

Amongst this plethora of actors on the ground, there are many who believe that humanitarian action should go well beyond the basic humanitarian imperative of saving lives and operate on the basis that humanitarian action must take place as part of a larger framework for peace and development. In addition, many NGOs depend heavily upon institutional funds and are acting as service providers for donors, increasing the politicization of relief.

This has led to a dangerous confusion between political and humanitarian agendas especially in conflict situations.

Donors agendas not always compatible with humanitarian imperatives

Donors and multilateral institutions have attempted to improve the functioning, coordination, accountability and efficiency of the aid system, presenting increased coherence as the solution. This resulted in the integration of political, military, civil affairs and humanitarian agendas as the best option around a common and effective response.

A further step taken in this direction is the recent emergence of multilateral platforms where the UN, national governments, NGOs and RCRC movement gather under the leadership role of the Emergency Relief Coordinator and, at country level, under the Humanitarian Coordinator.

Beyond the UN, the model of integration seems to be the central doctrine for crisis management prevailing among the main donors and powerful states. It is now driving the international agenda.

The experiences of Sierra Leone in the 1990s, with the tacit abandonment of civilians living under RUF control, or more recently Darfur and Lebanon show the danger of working within a coordinated and politically-led governance system. This dynamic on the ground distracts the humanitarian actors and obliges them to look into what seems to be the wrong direction: a distanced view from simple and impartial operational priorities such as delivering care, digging latrines, and providing relief goods…

These experiences have demonstrated to MSF that, while the UN believes that the political and humanitarian agendas should sit as equal partners in the decision-making process, in practice this has led to the subordination of the humanitarian imperative. While efforts towards building states, peace and justice are laudable, they clearly do not always equate to an effective response to immediate needs. The natural tension which exists between short-term, life-saving activities and longer-term objectives of achieving peace and state-building, is jeopardized by efforts to integrate. Ironically this tension is at the essence of the humanitarian act.

Independence of action to safeguard humanitarian response

This assessment underlies MSF’s decision to withdraw from collective efforts in order to best serve populations in need according to humanitarian principles. Of course, there are challenges attached to this decision. A primary challenge is to avoid being misunderstood by the rest of the “humanitarian community” and thus perpetuating a stereotype of arrogance.

But more importantly, the main challenge is to not to confuse independence with isolation. There is still a desire to share and exchange, sometimes through attending platforms of coordination but also through bilateral relationships. And isolation contradicts the very essence of MSF, where “temoignage” remains a fundamental element of our daily work. A suivre..!

The frustrations of CERF. Toby Porter on how predictable financing has turned into less predictable funds for agencies on the ground.

2007-01-18T17:23:00Z

A new round of pledges to the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) this December is an encouraging sign of donor commitment to providing greater and more predictable financing for humanitarian assistance. However, all changes are best judged on the evidence of how they play out in practice, and not just on the theory.

From my perspective as operational Emergencies Director of one of the largest international NGOs, the increasingly predictable thing about each new emergency in 2006 was that each time it became harder for us to obtain the swift and concrete donor support that we have counted on routinely in the past to mount effective first-phase responses.

In rapid-onset disasters such as Lebanon and the recent flooding in northern Kenya, the most important donors have made little or no immediate funding available to international NGOs, even though we have been there and ready to respond. Only the policy of funds being channelled through the UN has slowed us down.

In chronic emergencies, something similar is happening. UN agencies’ share of total financial resources has more than doubled in the DRC and Sudan because of the use of common or pooled funding instruments, which the UN administer on behalf of donors. In the two countries, 83% and 85% of common fund money* has been granted to UN agencies, with 17% and 15% going to NGOs.

A recent independent evaluation of the use of common funds in Sudan and the DRC notes in the Executive Summary**:

Problems identified in the allocation process include apparent conflict of interests issues, and difficulties faced by NGOs in access and participation. Moreover, some UN agencies that are not traditionally major players in humanitarian action seem to have benefited disproportionately from the mechanism in financial and visibility terms, showing huge jumps in funding from past years. This has raised questions as to whether the increased flows are being directed to the most capable actors, even if they do target priority areas.

As per any policy shift in an aid environment with so many different donors, the impact will be felt unevenly by NGOs, particularly at first. The importance of ECHO and its Primary Emergency funding mechanism to European NGOs will increase. North American NGOs will be more insulated, given the scepticism towards the UN in many parts of Washington. UK NGOs, conversely, are likely to be particularly vulnerable, given DfID’s leading role in driving forward these changes. By way of illustration, Save the Children UK this year has received direct funding from the Canadian Government both for our work in Lebanon and our current flood response in Kenya, but none from the UK, who pointed us instead in the direction of the UN agency they are supporting.

What is frustrating about this trend it seems to fly in the face of all available evidence as to the agencies best placed to provide fast, quality and cost-effective response. No donor or UN official has ever made or even attempted to make an intellectually satisfying argument as to why, all of a sudden, NGOs cannot access the rapid response mechanism in which donors are increasingly investing.

Instead, there are two reasons trotted out why NGOs do not have access to CERF. First, because of administrative rules and restrictions within the UN secretariat, which restrict recipients to UN entities, and secondly because of the suspicion of some General Assembly members have about NGOs in general, usually related to the internal political dynamics of the states in question.

Neither argument is convincing. The first runs counter to the very notion of reform, by sticking with rather than fixing or even replacing a system with such obvious flaws as the formal exclusion of the NGO pillar. As for the second, its probably best to leave it with the observation that the states most worried about the NGO sector in their own countries may not necessarily be those most seized with the plight of victims of conflict and natural disasters in someone else’s.

There are, I think, three main points that donor’s questions need to consider before they accelerate further down this track.

Firstly, what is the evidence base for making the UN the de facto administrative channel for NGOs? One could make a list of a hundred different things to admire about almost any UN agency, but surely nobody would include efficient and quick internal administration among them. To make immediate humanitarian response in so many contexts increasingly dependent on fast turnaround of proposals and sub-grant agreements by UN agencies with near dysfunctional administrative systems is an extravagant gamble, in humanitarian terms.

Second, donors need to be very careful that they do not undermine concrete recent progress towards a more even and mutually respectful partnership between NGOs and the UN, by inserting an increasing funding dependency into the relationship. Is it realistic, for example, to expect senior in-country NGO officials from agencies participating in cluster co-ordination arrangements to be holding a UN agency head to account for their performance and co-ordination one day, and return the next to enquire about the progress of a funding application? Donors should be the first to realise that funding relationships alter power dynamics, and this will be no different.

Finally, and most importantly, does the new system pass a simple humanitarian test? If it was your children, or the children of friends of yours, struck out there in a remote village flattened by an earthquake or newly displaced on the outskirts of a small town in Sudan, who would you want to receive the first money, to give you and your family the best chance of seeing those funds quickly translated into concrete humanitarian services? Chances are that it would still be an NGO. And how would you feel if the only thing that prevented the NGO from helping them was the inefficiencies and delays surrounding a sub-granting process that is completely unnecessary, in programmatic terms? For a rapid response mechanism, this is both illogical, and wrong.

*Data correct as of October 2006

**Common Funds for Humanitarian Action in Sudan and the DRC: Monitoring and Evaluation Study, December 2006 (www.cic.nyu.edu/internationalsecurity/humanitarian)

Coopted by the UN? Time for NGOs to take up the challenge, argues Eva von Oelreich

2006-12-02T16:46:00Z

Disparate NGOs or Co-opted by UN - Where is the debate?

In a recent paper on the Future of Humanitarian Action Peter Walker from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University claims that “the present ‘international humanitarian community’ is an unplanned agglomeration of disparate parts evolving out of the post-WWII consensus”. He says it is time to move on, time for a greater diversity of humanitarian actors to act with more coherence and “for individual agencies to trump agency growth with contribution to the common good”.

Meanwhile, at the 4th Autumn School of Humanitarian Aid of URD in Provence in late September, a group of humanitarian practitioners and researchers, including from NATO, discussed if humanitarian space is in jeopardy and also looked at possible threats of becoming part of one big UN humanitarian machinery with risks of being instrumentalized, causing loss of identity and independence.

Are NGOs disparate parts of an unplanned agglomeration or climbing to sit on the UN lap?   What lies between the extremes? Probably a huge area waiting for initiative. A lot of analysis is going on right now in the hundreds and hundreds of humanitarian organisations, which make up the exponentially growing non-UN humanitarian sector. Some of these organisations are larger than UN agencies and are continuing to grow? What are the issues? What factors are decisive for NGO decisions for the future? Where is the debate?

Most of the open debate has so far been about how to relate to three UN humanitarian reform pillars: Clusters, CERF and Humanitarian Coordination. ERC, Jan Egeland, added a fourth informal pillar about partnerships with NGOs, when it became obvious that the reform was seen as UN-centric and that the invitation to non-UN actors was felt as conditioned.

It is high time for NGOs to take up the challenge and more clearly articulate their position:   how to relate to other humanitarian actors, the UN as well as fellow NGOs and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. “What does the UN want from NGOs with the clusters?” was a question often repeated this spring. Time to turn the question around and look at what NGOs see as essential for global humanitarian response to be as good as it gets. NGOs, large and small, northern and southern, need to take a hard look at where they want to be in the coming years, and what type of relationships they need to contribute to humanitarian response optimally.

Are “implementing agency” and “service-provider” becoming obsolete? Are we not hearing about being equal partners…?

Maybe the first important relationship to consider is increased dialogue and interaction between non-governmental humanitarian actors themselves? In the URD Autumn School the researcher Xavier Zeebroek from GRIP in Brussels put forward the idea of creating and reinforcing networks of humanitarian NGOs “on the ground” to lobby together and put pressure for change in countries, when and where integrated missions override humanitarian needs. NGO national fora may be an essential starting point for other reasons too – to get greater diversity by including national NGOs in the discussion, to link NGO and INGO discussion, to initiate relevant partnerships on an equal footing with the UN and to test them on operational realities.

This will take place as a follow up to the NGO, UN and Red Cross dialogue 12-13 July 2006. The so-called Global Humanitarian Platform will look at principles and realities of cooperation in operational countries as well as in its platform meeting next July.

But surely it is not only about global platforms. It is time to think of flexible, “light-footed” mechanisms that work for a specific situation. IWG, the Interagency Working Group of seven large NGOs working together on an Emergency Capacity Building initiative, may be an example of such an “energy grouping”. Time to show more clearly what diverse and complementary action means in practice for NGOs. Time to show what is missing on the UN agenda. And time to fill more capacity gaps? Food security and livelihoods are continuously mentioned as gap areas. The cross-cutting issues (gender, environment, human rights, HIV/AIDS) continue to fall through the cracks. And yet there is NGO expertise in these areas, ready to be identified.

And finally how can the huge area around quality, standards and accountability to the affected and assisted population be brought back as centre-piece in the discussion?

So where is the reflection and debate among ourselves to sharpen views and come forward with solutions between the extremes? The analysis is there in individual organisations - now share it.

Time to have the NGO side of things.

Eva von Oelreich

SCHR - Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response

The views expressed do no necessarily represent those of SCHR

Footnotes :

URD – Urgence, Réhabilitation Développement, Plaisians, France

GRIP – Groupe de recherche et d’information sur la paix et la sécurité, Brussels, Belgium