HPG Working Paper The new humanitarian basics Marc DuBois May 2018 HPG Humanitarian Policy Group About the author Marc DuBois works as an independent humanitarian analyst and consultant based in London. He previously spent 15 years in various roles with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), most recently as the Executive Director of MSF-UK. This Working Paper is part of the HPG series ‘Constructive Deconstruction: Imagining Alternative Humanitarian Action’. Humanitarian Policy Group Overseas Development Institute 203 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8NJ United Kingdom Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.odi.org/hpg © Overseas Development Institute, 2018 Readers are encouraged to quote or reproduce materials from this publication but, as copyright holders, ODI requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication. This and other HPG Reports are available from www. odi.org.uk/hpg. Contents 1 Introduction: prototyping a new humanitarian action 1 2 Setting the stage 3 2.1 What do we mean by ‘humanitarian action’? 3 2.2 Neither a fire department nor a rescue team 3 3 Rescoping crisis response 5 3.1 ‘Seeing’ less humanitarian crisis: rescoping the basis for intervention 5 3.2 Fitting the means to the end: identifying the limits of the humanitarian role 7 4 Towards a humanity-centred humanitarian action 9 4.1 A new humanitarian connectivity: rescoping humanitarian productivity 9 4.2 Going local 10 4.3 The principles of humanitarian action 11 4.4 Reorienting humanitarian protection 13 5 The architecture and mechanics of a new crisis response 17 5.1 The whole-of-problem approach – a half-step in the right direction 17 5.2 Architecture and coordination 18 5.3 The whole-of-society approach 19 5.4 Funding 20 6 Concluding analysis 23 6.1 What do the new humanitarian basics look like? 23 6.2 Deconstruction and the new humanitarian basics 25 Bibliography 29 Humanitarian Policy Group i ii The new humanitarian basics 1 Introduction: prototyping a new humanitarian action Critical analysis of the international humanitarian aid section and then drawn more fully in Sections 3 and 4. system has arrived at the conclusion that it is time These components address four fundamental flaws in to let go of power; it is time to rethink humanitarian the current humanitarian system: crisis response and allow a transformation it has simultaneously coveted and stifled. But if not the present 1. The humanitarianisation of a range of crises and system, then what? And how do we get from here to problems which are not humanitarian in nature, often there? This paper confronts these questions as part of resulting in the biased, inappropriate and expansive HPG’s research project on ‘Constructive Deconstruction: management of crisis effects rather than causes. Rethinking the Humanitarian Architecture’.1 2. Overly siloed rather than whole-of-problem interventions, with an increasingly prominent That analytical process opened with the inconvenient mismatch between the needs of people in truth that the ‘shortcomings of the humanitarian crisis and the assumptions, approaches and sector are well-rehearsed’ (Collinson, 2016: 1). If skills of humanitarians. those shortcomings seem familiar, then the proffered 3. A disconnect or separation between the sector’s solutions should be notorious, a litany of reforms that enormous effort and its actual impact in saving lives have ultimately served the status quo, as reformist and alleviating suffering. This stems primarily from energy and intentions have been channelled into the weight and influence of institutions upon strategic doomed attacks on ‘the symptoms of dysfunction, plans and operational choices, over operational with little progress made over the years to properly weight and a direct connection to human need. In understand the underlying causes of this dysfunction’ consequence, there is a disconnect from crisis-affected (ibid.). Hence the need to dig deeper – to deconstruct. populations and a yawning accountability gap. 4. A deep Western bias in the interpretation of the core This paper envisions a future humanitarianism that principles (humanity, impartiality, neutrality and is responsive, ethical and attainable. Compared independence). In particular, there is a failure to to the present system, it is also less paternalistic, ensure the transformative promise of humanity by bureaucratic and expansive in its ambitions. It is more placing human beings and human communities at the local and more basic, even if there can be no going centre of crisis response, instead of defining people by back to the basics, no return to a historical golden age their victimhood, their poverty or their helplessness. of humanitarian action. Rather, we suggest a break from the past, and a reckoning for a sector steeped This proposal offers no silver bullet. From clusters in its neo-colonial origins. Equally, we do not aim to to accountability mechanisms to an emphasis on describe a humanitarianism-lite; the paper suggests complementarity, ‘fixing’ humanitarian action has long how we might develop a scaled-down and rescoped trafficked in new initiatives, roles and responsibilities. alternative to humanitarianism’s dysfunctional exercise To move forward, proposals for changing the in interventionist, international charity. It seeks to symptoms and surface must simultaneously address overcome the conundrum of humanitarian action that underlying assumptions, incentives and structures. For is at once both unsustainable and self-sustaining. humanitarian action to be transformed, we need a more sustained focus on the relationship(s) of power This proposal for moving forward comprises four and legitimacy to the international system, the system interlinked components, sketched out in the next of states, civil society and, ultimately, individual human beings. As such, the paper concludes with 1 See https://www.odi.org/publications/10503-constructive- suggestions on how to address the causes and power deconstruction-making-sense-international-humanitarian-system dynamics of current dysfunction. Humanitarian Policy Group 1 2 The new humanitarian basics 2 Setting the stage 2.1 What do we mean by This definition does not exclude the many views of humanitarianism circulating beyond the sector, ‘humanitarian action’? including labels that embrace any act of kindness or the crisis relief efforts of states, corporations, armed The first step is to recognise the heterogeneity of actors and everyday citizens. The world will have humanitarianism. The term itself has no agreed definition, to live with the many faces of humanitarianism. and there is no shortage of interpretations that place the The point of our definition is to forge a shared interpreter at the centre. So powerful is the label that it understanding within the formal system. We now (rather incredibly) defines a subset of international recognise that this is not an unproblematic warfare. For our purposes, humanitarianism is at the proposition. As a step towards agreement, in this same time the global embodiment of an ideology of proposal humanitarian action neither invalidates human compassion, and of the hegemonic operations of a nor outranks broad and inclusive conceptualisations Western-oriented crisis relief system. of disaster relief assistance, nor is it more legitimate than disaster relief work aimed at solidarist and As for the former, Albert Schweitzer offers perhaps the developmental objectives. It is simply distinct from most eloquently brief definition of humanitarianism them (see Section 4.3). writ large: ‘Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose’.2 It is from this moral legitimacy or authorising environment, this 2.2 Neither a fire department nor beautiful ideal of human compassion and integrity, that the formal system deploys, replete with blankets, a rescue team food, doctors and no small amount of soft power, saviourism and institutional self-interest. Tellingly, ‘the Defining a limited vision of humanitarianism is term humanitarianism is perceived by southern states confounded by our own mistaken self-conception. to be moral cover for northern states and humanitarian Practitioners and policy-makers alike use similar agencies to secure their political and organisational metaphors: core humanitarian action as an emergency interests’ (Jindal School, 2014: 4). room, an ambulance service or a fire department. The value in deconstruction, in pulling humanitarian This paper applies a limited construction of action apart, comes in realising that these metaphors humanitarianism to define the work of the formal (often employed by this author as well) are not simply sector. This conceptualisation views humanitarian incorrect, but that their inaccuracy is a product of the action as the delivery of emergency relief/assistance power of our own false truths. and protection in times of crisis. Further modalities of humanitarian action, differentiating it from other These metaphors have two things in common. First, relief actors, aid providers and the broad global welfare they conjure up images of rescue, of direct action, of of Schweitzer, include a commitment to the four saving lives in a modern-day version of Henri Dunant, core principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality or Florence Nightingale ministering to wounded and independence, a set of short-term programme soldiers. In contemporary humanitarian crises, however, methodologies and an operational objective to meet the such directness of intervention