Kunduz showed the dangers international aid organizations face to do their work, but the industry itself is often its own worst enemy.

Humanitarian aid organizations are experiencing a time of great change, and the great difficulty that comes along with that. The perceived slow pace of adaptation among humanitarian organizations, as well as governments who involve themselves in relief efforts, has led to a resulting decrease in confidence among the general public and, more importantly, aid recipients. As Barnett and Walker note in an issue of Foreign Affairs earlier this summer, “complex humanitarian emergencies, such as the war in Syria, have shown just how poorly the world is prepared to respond to human suffering on a large scale, despite considerable practice.”

The salient issue in the humanitarian enterprise is a prevailing belief that organizations are failing to meet the needs of those they claim to be helping. This is due to a number of issues that come together to hinder the ability of organizations to fulfill their stated purposes. Outside influences include climate change making natural disasters seemingly worse by the year and the fact that interstate conflicts are rare but replaced to a large extent by devastating internal conflicts that produce catastrophic humanitarian situations (see: Syria, South Sudan, and others). Factors within aid organizations include ways of working and, perhaps more importantly, thinking that are slow to change, if at all. David Miliband, former British Foreign Secretary and President of the International Rescue Committee, writes with Ravi Gurumurthy that “the [humanitarian aid] sector is struggling to cope with new realities, and there is a growing gulf between the needs of the people affected by crises and the help they are receiving.”

It does seem a bit like everything that can be going wrong for humanitarian aid organizations and efforts is going wrong as of late. The basic question of access, the most vital one that needs to be satisfied for aid to be delivered and any work to be done, is getting increasingly more difficult to obtain. As Pierre Krahenbuhl noted during his time with the ICRC, “the ‘classic’ security environment,” which he defines as the wrong place-wrong time problem, is changing due to the complicated nature of internal conflict situations.” It is not just a matter of working with a government and getting permission from this ministry or that; the view from the outside towards internal conflicts uncovers a byzantine system of local authorities that all need pleasing (or to be stayed away from completely).

“Complex crises of the kind roiling Syria,” Barnett and Walker say, “often require aid workers to plead with warlords, rebels, and guerrilla groups for the privilege of helping the vulnerable, only to be denied entry or forced at gunpoint to pay a heavy surcharge.” The price of access gets higher and higher, both figuratively and literally. For a group like the ICRC, sometimes the price is their silence, an abstention from openly advocating on behalf of those they want to work for. “In many cases,” Huguenin-Benjamin notes, “[local authorities] tolerate the presence of the ICRC delegates in the field, and especially in places of detention, only on the condition that the ICRC neither publicizes its findings not comments on the conduct of hostilities.

Once aid organizations get in, though, they need to then be able to work in safety. Unfortunately, as Syria and other conflicts repeatedly show, aid workers are not often accorded any special privileges. They are just as liable to become victims as the people they are supposed to be helping. Whether just being outright assaulted or killed, or taken hostage to be traded for large sums of money, aid workers are often being denied a safe space within which to work. It really may be the case that humanitarian space is shrinking to the extent that aid workers may not be able to implement their programs.

Outside of the area of operations, aid organizations have to deal with difficulty in executing their missions. Funding is becoming an acute problem. Aid organizations “must contend with powerful funders who would rather make feel-good pledges than actually pay up, with donors who expect relief work to serve their own interests above the local population.” Funding problems have encouraged aid organizations to be more focused on answering to donors than to the actual aid recipients.

Reforms related to transparency and financial accountability have been put in place to satisfy those giving money, but there has not been enough attention paid to effectiveness of aid. While there is of course concern over whether money and other resources are being delivered to the places where they are needed, there should be just as much, if not more concern on whether the money and resources are being used in the most efficient way. Is that dollar really being spent in the best way? Is there a better way of, say, conducting literacy efforts in a particular place?

The professionalism of the aid workers themselves is also frequently questioned. “Relief workers often rush in not knowing much about the lay of the land, local customs, and the cultural traits that might determine a community’s ability to adapt and survive,” Barnett and Walker state.” There is also the problem of “voluntourism,” where citizens from Western countries join aid efforts for as little as a few days or weeks, being as much a burden as anything else.

Challenges and changes can and should be expected. Likewise, the humanitarian enterprise must adapt to these challenges and changes. Organizations are going to have to learn how to better operate in internal conflict situations, which have become the norm when it comes to modern war. They will have to learn better business practices so that they can more effectively deliver aid. International organizations will have to learn how to better incorporate local aid organizations (and locals in general) into aid efforts. “Relief work,” Barnett and Walker note, “remains something done to others, not alongside them.

Reforms scare people. They scare those with vested interests in the status quo, in the institutions and practices as they are. However, they are necessary for the survival of the humanitarian enterprise. Miliband and Gurumurthy advocate for an ambitious leap forward, saying that “over the next decade, donors need to not just double the amount of aid directed to the places of greatest need but also undertake reforms that seek to double the productivity of aid spending.” Barnett and Walker argue to a large extent in a change in how aid is delivered, for the need to give local organizations a bigger share of responsibilities and a voice at the table when it comes to relief efforts. Calling these local organizations “the new humanitarians of the twenty-first century,” they note their qualities as their being “modest in size, agile, knowledgeable, and rooted in local contexts.” International organizations do not have to do all of the work, nor should they. Miliband and Gurumurthy advocate for organizations to “collaborate on areas of efficiency “such as procurement and other back-office functions) yet compete on quality,” constantly challenging themselves and each other to work smarter.

Far from being deaf to these calls, organizations are mobilizing together to undertake serious reforms. The UN-sponsored World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 is part of these efforts. It will be an often painful effort, dependent on humanitarian organizations being prepared to “cede power to those they claim to represent and whose lives are at risk.” With all of these challenges, the obvious question is, then, whether or not all the time, money, and effort are worth it. The answer is undoubtedly “yes.”

Empathy is not equivalent to naïveté. Nietzsche may consider compassion to be weakness, and pity a waste of energy, but empathy is an important part of being human. Ignatieff claims that the idea “that we owe an obligation to all human beings by simple virtue of the fact that they are a human is a modern conception.” He goes on to say that “it is simply unrealistic to expect that each of us should feel connection to every place in the world where victims are in danger.” Fair enough. The world is a big, complicated place with lots of places where horrible humanitarian situations are happening all of the time. It’s comforting for some to just throw up their hands, exclaim “it’s not worth it, there’s nothing we can do,” and complain that humanitarian aid doesn’t seem to be all that humanitarian or aid. That’s the easy way out, though, the Ayn Rand way.

Before giving money, donors want accountability and transparency, to know where and how money is being spent. This is reasonable. Some want to know that they are not fostering aid dependence. This is also reasonable. However, it is unreasonable to impose Western “instant gratification” consumer culture onto the humanitarian endeavor. The “promiscuous moral gaze,” as Ignatieff calls it, is an undue burden on aid organizations and worker. They would do well to heed Miliband and Gurumurthy, who rightly state that “the short-term timeline that often characterizes humanitarian projects…creates disincentives for the type of planning, implementation, and measurement necessary to offer lasting help to people,” going on to make note of the simple fact that “the humanitarian sector stanches the dying, but it takes states and politics to stop killing.”

Most importantly though, potential donors should remember that the priority is to deliver aid to those who need it and not to weigh down aid workers with heavy demands in regards to updates and reports on what is being done with the money. There has to be a certain amount of trust involved so that the focus can remain on the beneficiary and not on the donor. Transparency is one thing, micromanaging another.

For those not swayed by the empathy and “one world” arguments, there is the practical, political side of things. Humanitarian aid is good politics. Speaking as an American, it is a worthwhile effort to show the world that America can deliver more than bombs. Humanitarian aid is an integral part of American diplomacy and image-building. If it wasn’t, USAID wouldn’t exist, let alone have boxes with “From the American People” stamped on them. Far from being a vanity play, though, a simple attempt to curry favor, humanitarian aid is a necessary part of trying to make the world a bit safer and more secure.

Collapsing countries and societies do not make for a stable world order. Aid organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, play a part in trying to keep things together. The efforts to fight Ebola in West Africa are an example of this dynamic. Fighting Ebola there was both the right thing to do ethically and logically. Not only are locals assisted, but the disease is kept from spreading further.

Humanitarian aid works. It doesn’t always work well, and that’s why reform efforts are a must, but to just abandon the humanitarian endeavor is not just cruel to those who will be denied aid, but highly impractical and even counterproductive. Perhaps one day every government in the world will be running efficiently and effectively, providing for their citizens in line with basic humanitarian principles. Until that time, though, the need for the humanitarian enterprise to be kept alive is clear and abundantly justified.

Sources:

Barnett, M., & Walker, P. (2015). Regime Change for Humanitarian Aid: How to Make Relief More Accountable. Foreign Affairs, 130–141.

Donini, A., & Minear, L. (2005, December). International troops, aid workers, and local communities: Mapping the perceptions gap. Retrieved from Humanitarian Exchange Magazine: http://moodle.tau.ac.il/pluginfile.php/406320/mod_resource/content/1/humanitarianexchange032.pdf

Huguenin-Benjamin, R. (2005). Can public communication protect victims? International Review of the Red Cross, 661–672.

ICRC. (2004, March 31). Official Statement. Humanitarian Security: A matter of acceptance, perception, behavior… Retrieved from ICRC: http://moodle.tau.ac.il/pluginfile.php/406321/mod_resource/content/1/Humanitarian%20security_%20_a%20matter%20of%20acceptance%2C%20perception%2C%20behaviourpdf

Ignatieff, M. (1998). The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid. In J. Moore (Ed.), Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention (pp. 287–302). New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Miliband, D., & Gurumurthy, R. (2015). Improving Humanitarian Aid: How to Make Relief More Efficient and Effective. Foreign Affairs, 118–129.