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ISBN : 978-2-37 586-110-3

© 2021, Éditions Parole

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Pierre Micheletti

0.03%!

Let’s transform the international
humanitarian movement

Translated from the French by

AbleWord

“History is the art of reminding men and women of their ability to have an impact on society”1

1. Patrick Boucheron, professor at the “Collège de France”, chair in History of Western European Powers (13th-16th centuries).

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to all those who agreed to take part in the first proofreading of this book. Manuel Carrard, Didier and Martine Celle, Thierry Constans, Antonio Lopez, Nicolas Tariel and, of course, my favourite psychiatrist.

Capestere is not so far away, and Belle-Île is already in sight…

July 2020

Preface

By Ashwini Kakkar, chairman of Action Against Hunger-India and the AAH-network International Chairpersons’ Committee (ICC)

Even at great personal peril, Pierre has devoted the best part of his life to endeavours that uplift humankind in body and in spirit. He has generously shared these priceless learnings with his students at Grenoble and has effortlessly done so with the board and his colleagues at AAH/ACF in France and across the world.

In this fifth book, he has brought together humanitarian, social, economic, religious and political perspectives, in the current climate of growing inequalities and brought forth to the readers the distillation of his reflections on the path to transformation. Drawing lessons from the historic evolution of this sector, from the Red Cross, the UN, to the Geneva Convention, etc, the book takes us through movements born out of citizens’ counter-intuitive like Care, Save the Children and Oxfam, and complements the insight with real life examples like the unending war in Afghanistan, security issues in Nigeria, disease outbreaks in Guinea and Haiti, refugees’ issues in Syria, the Covid pandemic, etc. Based on the belief that victims are not good or bad, they are just victims, serious and at times counter-intuitive effort needs to be made to bring succour to the millions who depend on aid for their basic needs, indeed for their very survival: for water, food, shelter, clothing, medicine, education, etc., even more so in today’s conflict and Covid-affected times. In an interesting yet well considered proposition, Pierre makes the case that under the aegis of a neutral body like the UN, every country whose per-capita GDP exceeds US$12,000 per annum should contribute just 0.03% of its GDP to NGO causes. This would enable the neediest parts of the world’s population to improve their lives, making the entire world a much better place.

This may well be an idea whose time has come, as almost concurrently, the Indian government has introduced a CSR law ensuring that every company above a threshold level of profitability, should contribute 2.5% of its annual profit towards any cause of their choosing, out of a long list of causes. At the national level, this scheme envisages a similar level of contribution to the above proposal and seems to be working very well. Of course, the regular philanthropic endeavours of individuals, families, corporations, NGOs and others continue unabated alongside this Government effort.

While being critical of the role played by the global proliferation and sales of arms, we are encouraged to question why and when it became okay to kill innocent people and women and children, and now even humanitarians.

Another valuable line of enquiry is that in view of declining humanitarian immunity, exacerbated by the perception of the West, there may be a need for clear dissociation between governmental and NGO actors.

Equally, consideration should be given to exempting NGOs from counter-terrorism laws in order to promote neutrality. The stipulations of the 2013 Doctrine for Ransom as they apply to courageous NGO warriors and the ethical and judicial considerations applicable to refugees may also need to be revisited.

The bridge of trust as regards NGOs as both giver and receiver can only be strengthened by eliminating asymmetric manipulation and by ethically and sensitively delivering speedy, low-cost, high quality care. What is proposed is the use of the best available technological tools and techniques and best practice sharing, across the board. NGOs need to balance their independence with the regrouping of NGOs towards common goals.

The author’s insight, gathered over many years, across regions, from high-level strategy at Médecins du Monde (MDM) and Action Against Hunger (AAH), down to focussed execution at ground level, has given rise to unique and at times radical ideas for dealing with novel situations in our fast-changing world suffering from war, famine, terrorism, disease and the unfortunately inevitable Black Swan events.

What we used to be taught in our younger days, that “the world has enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed” is more relevant today, than ever before.

Ashwini Kakkar

Preamble

I am honoured that Ashwini Kakkar has agreed to write the preface to this book.

Apart from being proof of our strong friendship, this contribution underlines the importance of the alliances that exist between the organisations that make up the international network of Action Against Hunger, of which Ashwini has recently become the new president.

This preface, signed by the man who also heads an Indian NGO, bears witness above all to a major change that has taken place since the Second World War and to the birth of humanitarianism: undeniable political rebalancing and changing international relations. In this shifting world, the humanitarian movement cannot remain indifferent to the new realities. Economic and financial power, innovation, expertise, deployment capability and international solidarity are now more widely shared dynamics over which the OECD member states no longer have a monopoly.

These changes are at the heart of the analysis and proposals developed in this book. And as soon as we turn the first pages, Ashwini Kakkar’s words set the tone for us to explore the mutating international balance.

Pierre Micheletti

May 2021

Introduction

There is an intimate, historical and complex link between humanitarians and war. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was set up in the aftermath of the battle of Solferino in Europe, in 1859, and was closely followed by the entire Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

The Second World War led to the creation of the United Nations and, with it, the specialised agencies that today play a major role in crisis management.

In 1967, a powerful network of French International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) emerged, from its birthplace in Biafra, Nigeria and its laboratory and then nursery, in Afghanistan, after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

This link between humanitarians and war has evolved over the years, as have borders, affected by decolonization or new armaments technology. The reasons for conflicts have changed too, as political, social, identity or religious demands have emerged along with the aspirations of peoples who feel they have been left behind in a globalised world.

Nation-states and their armed forces are no longer the only entities behind these demands, and the inherent violence. New combatants have emerged: freedom fighters, rebels and terrorists (depending on who is describing them...). When these new actors confront each other, humanitarian organisations have to keep adapting, as do the tools of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which must constantly set effective limits on the way war is waged.

As with any historical process, these incessant changes bring tension, manipulation, resistance to humanitarian organisations and/or engender diverging interpretation and ambiguity. This ambiguity is rooted in how and why each type of humanitarian organisation was created, for example the Biafra war for the French NGOs.

Humanitarians thus evolve in a changing environment: they are mere components in an equation with multiple variables, and they find themselves facing a wide range of other pressures including those from political and military leaders, official economic stakeholders or those involved in organised crime.

One of these evolving factors is particularly important: the way “the Other” views them. The Other is the 27 million people who, in 2018, fearing for their lives, fled their homes and left their country to seek refuge in a third country.

It is the Congolese, Afghan or Somali migrants, asylum seekers, who are now being treated at the borders of Europe as if their respective homelands were now at peace.

The Other is the populations affected by the Ebola virus, for example in Guinea, West Africa, whose essential local customs, such as funeral rituals, are not always being respected.

The Other is the Haitian population from whom the foreign origins of the cholera epidemic were initially concealed, which made the consequences of the 2010 earthquake even more dramatic.

The Other is armed groups who might view the foreigners providing humanitarian aid in conflict situations as the hidden faces of their enemies, the “new crusaders” or precious goods whose price they will negotiate after kidnapping them.

The Other are Venezuelans who, as their country collapses, notice that their political leaders, including opposition politicians, are using humanitarian aid as a propaganda tool to strengthen their power.

But the Other is also, in Europe, governments that have lost faith in the law and now expect humanitarians to fall into line.

It is the French Minister of the Interior who lectures NGOs involved in helping migrants. It is the Italian government that refuses to give migrants rescued in the Mediterranean access to its ports. It is a part of the British political class that uses a sex scandal to weaken Oxfam.

So, despite their apparent solidarity, governments seem to wish to control the actions of NGOs, under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

And humanitarian leaders are trapped awkwardly between efficiency, independence, security and ethics.

To comprehend the context, it is important to know that there are different kinds of conflict, each with specific human, environmental and infrastructural consequences.

The Heidelberg Institute, one of the leading authorities in the field, describes conflicts from three perspectives: Which actors are involved in the conflict? What are the causes of and motives for the clashes? How do the warring parties behave and what impact does this have? The University of Uppsala (Sweden) has established a way of classifying armed conflicts according to death toll. It describes major armed conflicts as those in which the death toll exceeds 1,000 over a 12-month period, in a conflict in which at least one of the actors is a government.

Not every conflict can be called a war. A dispute between different parties might be worsened by economic pressure, threats of armed violence, sporadic incidents or even open armed conflict. A conflict is therefore a crisis in which violence is expressed. Peace does not, however, entail that all forms of conflict are excluded, and can be defined as: “a situation in which conflicts are played out without the direct use of weapons”2. For the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, “peace is not merely the absence of war, but a dynamic process of collaboration between states and peoples based on freedom, independence, national sovereignty, equality, respect for human rights, and a fair and equitable distribution of resources to meet the populations’ needs”3.

The following descriptions and analysis focus on humanitarian action by ordinary people who have decided to get involved in INGOs. This broad family, with its many distinctive features, is a humanitarian movement which is referred to as a “civil society”. However, INGOs operate in conflict areas alongside the various specialised UN agencies, the other major players, each with a specific area of expertise. Finally, NGOs work alongside a third category of stakeholder, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. During a crisis, these different actors, each with its own logic, mandate, legal framework, financial resources and relationship to national and international political powers, constantly interact with each other.

Whatever the conflict, these different types of actor – the International Red Cross, UN agencies and international NGOs – base their legitimacy on a set of principles that they declare they share, and which guarantee that they intervene in conflicts without ideological, political or economic bias. They claim that they are able to work with the victims of violence in any circumstances, in the name of shared humanism, and remain strictly neutral towards opposing factions, without any form of distinction between victims and completely independent from the political or financial powers that may wish to influence them.

The ICRC is nearly 150 years old, the UN 75 and the main French humanitarian NGOs are between 40 and 50 years old, while the most active British charities (Care, Oxfam, Save the Children...) were set up between the First and Second World Wars.

So, what has become of their original aspirations? The founding desire, supported by committed citizens, to be able to provide assistance in any circumstances? In a completely independent manner? Is this really possible?

Simply asking these questions sows doubt in our minds.

This book examines the humanitarian movement, its history, its actors, the difficulties that are part and parcel of its deployment in complex environments, as well as the international relations in which it is the “David” alongside the “Goliath” states facing it. The author aims to analyse how the nature of today’s wars and the actors in them differ from those seen by Henry Dunant, founder of the International Red Cross, and from those that prevailed in 1945 when the United Nations was created. Once the challenges impeding the major NGOs’ ability to intervene in armed conflict zones have been highlighted, this book will suggest ways the situation might be transformed so that the main pitfalls can be avoided, and humanitarians can continue their crucial work in a safe and ethical manner.

2. Philippe MOREAU DEFRAGES: Les relations internationales, Seuil, Paris, 1993, 95 p.

3. Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, n° 750, Nov./Dec. 1984.

Part I
The humanitarian constellation

Three categories of international organisation are involved in providing relief in conflict zones, and reinforcing the local solidarity that is characteristic of all human communities. It is essential to accurately describe and analyse the different types of organisation in order to clarify the notion of “humanitarian action”, which is often unclear to the public.

NGOs are private organisations such as associations, charities, federations, unions, institutes and other groups. They are not set up by governments, or established by government agreements. NGOs can play a role at an international level, but they do not necessarily have a formal international status or mandate upon which their existence or activities are based. An “intergovernmental organisation” on the other hand, is constituted on the basis of a treaty, by governments with common objectives, which have their own bodies each with specific functions. In addition to rules that define the structure of the organisation, IOs’ aims along with their members’ rights and duties, are clearly set out. An intergovernmental organisation may be universal in scope (such as the United Nations or the International Organisation for Migration) or regional (such as the Organisation of American States, the African Union or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Unlike NGOs, intergovernmental organisations by definition have a governmental mandate that specifies their purpose and activities. In addition, they enjoy what are known in diplomatic language as “privileges and immunities”.

The ICRC is hybrid in nature4. As a private charity, constituted under the Swiss Civil Code, its existence is not in itself based on a government mandate. However, its functions and activities, which aim to provide protection and assistance to victims of armed conflict, are mandated by the international community of States and based on international law, in particular the Geneva Conventions, which are among the most widely ratified treaties in the world. As a result, the ICRC, like any intergovernmental organisation, is recognised as having an “international legal personality” or status of its own. It benefits from privileges and immunities comparable to those of the United Nations, its agencies and other intergovernmental organisations, including exemption from tax and customs duties, inviolability of premises and documents, and immunity from jurisdiction.

Each category of humanitarian actor is itself composite and three types are active in the field, all driven by the same desire to prevent the most dramatic effects of war, to reduce damage to civilian populations, and to support the recovery and reconstruction that will inevitably be required in the aftermath of conflict.

Three different dynamics, three converging hopes: the International Red Cross hopes to humanise war by setting rules for and limits on the use of violence, the United Nations hopes to preserve peace and security by maintaining its capacity to negotiate between countries, and finally, non-governmental organisations hope to get citizens involved in concrete ways, providing relief through their commitment. Beyond their different legal status, their specific mandates, the types of skills they utilise and the financial resources they each have, these three families maintain close links with each other, which is essential for operational coordination and the need to obtain and manage, in a concerted manner, the funding required to respond to international crises. The three types of stakeholder also abide by a shared set of legal texts and fundamental principles. The ICRC has spearheaded these ties for the last 150 years.

4. Le statut du CICR: dans une catégorie à part 17-02-2004 by Gabor RONA. URL: https://www.icrc.org/fr/doc/resources/documents/misc/5wwhdp.htm. Consulted on May 11 2020.

1.
Humanising war: The International Red Cross

A composite movement

Behind the Red Cross banner lie several different entities: the national Red Cross or Red Crescent societies; the ICRC, a supranational entity with a monopoly on enacting international law; and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), a conglomeration of national Red Cross societies. Combined, the ICRC, national societies and the IFRC form the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Certain crises have generated tension between the ICRC, which resolutely refuses to bow to any political pressure, and the national Red Cross societies, which are often accused of colluding with their respective governments. The position of the German Red Cross during the Second World War or that of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent more recently, are examples of major failures by national societies to respect the fundamental principles of the movement. The 1997 Seville conference decided to split the fields of intervention between the Federation (IFRC), which now deals with post-crisis situations and natural disasters, and the ICRC, which deals with all areas of conflict because of its specific mandate to guarantee that the laws of war are respected.

Dunant at Solferino: how today’s IHL was founded

In the mid 19th century, a Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, who in no way seemed destined for such a future, ended up raising people’s awareness of the horrors of war. In 1859, he witnessed the bloody battle of Solferino, which pitted the French and Sardinian armies against the Austrian forces, during the Italian campaign led by Napoleon III, and realised just how appalling a soldier’s fate was. He then set in motion a whole movement and the necessary organisational procedures required based on five ideas aimed at “humanising war”.

These ideas became the foundations of the newly formed Red Cross movement:

– The victims of both sides of the conflict must receive medical treatment, without distinguishing between the combatants.

– Equal treatment is justified by the necessary neutrality of the rescuer.

– In each country, the support of civil society should be sought to put pressure on governments to push for the implementation of such systems.

– This should result in the establishment of local “relief societies”, which can be quickly mobilised: these would become the “national societies” of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

– An internationalist and universal vision should be sought “to not deprive ourselves of the support of those with another faith or philosophy”.

In 1875, Dunant’s determination and his decisive meeting with Moynier, a jurist, and Dufour, a former military officer, led to the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and with it the fundamental precept that war should be governed by the universal rule of law. This was to be the advent of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which was then developed in successive layers, alongside the armed conflicts and technological developments of the time and the sheer genius of the human race in inventing new forms of violence and targets for it.

International humanitarian law is defined as the set of rules that aim to limit violence and protect fundamental human rights in times of armed conflict. “The law of war can only be a law of compromise between military necessity and humanitarian requirements.”5 Its objective is twofold: to limit the targets and forms of armed violence and to guarantee relief to the populations affected by conflict. Humanitarian law therefore essentially has a practical purpose in that it organises the two pillars of humanitarian action, assistance and protection.6

IHL’s scope of application is limited; it applies in times of international and non-international armed conflict alongside national law. Where there is a conflict between humanitarian law and national law, humanitarian law prevails.

The fundamental principle of humanitarian law is to limit the methods used in warfare. This limitation comes from a “principle of distinction” between, on the one hand, the legitimate objectives for attacking and, on the other, the property and persons that are protected from the effects of violence. This principle of distinction is combined with the principle of military necessity and proportionality to assess the legality of damage to persons and property.

Persons not directly participating in hostilities such as civilians, the wounded and prisoners, must be respected and may not be targeted or used in combat. Goods and services essential to the survival of the population (water, food, medical supplies, energy resources, etc.) must not be destroyed and when there is a shortage of supplies, those provided by impartial humanitarian organisations must not be withheld by the parties to the conflict.

International humanitarian law is therefore a set of norms aimed at regulating the use of force in armed conflict. Also known as the law of armed conflict, it was initially concerned with military matters. However, it has undergone several developments that have made it a branch of international public law. For a long time, it was limited to the “Geneva law” (law aimed at protecting people who were not or were no longer fighting) and the “Hague law” (law aimed at protecting combatants). Thanks to post-World War Two United Nations negotiations, it is now enriched with a “New York law”, which aims to provide a framework for the law of humanitarian action and to lay down the legal pillars and procedures in the event of non-compliance. The mechanisms for applying sanctions on those who hinder humanitarian intervention or commit war crimes, which had long been ineffective, have been considerably strengthened by the appearance of new international criminal courts. IHL rules are binding on all parties to the conflict even if they have not signed the conventions, whether they are states or non-state actors.

Putting the legal framework to the test: access challenges for humanitarians

The aforementioned operational legal framework is the result of 150 years of normative achievements which have, in stages, produced an evolving body of law.

On August 12, 1949, an improved version of IHL was passed when the horrors of the Second World War proved that the four Geneva Conventions produced since the ICRC was founded were insufficient. The first three of these conventions bring together the Geneva and Hague Conventions (dealing with the codification of military techniques), and the fourth addresses the crucial issue of protecting civilian victims of conflict. The two 1977 additional protocols filled the loopholes left by the four conventions, by examining the question of civilian victims without mentioning the enemy’s nationality. The issue of non-international conflicts was thus addressed for the first time. These texts establish the right to relief for different categories of civilian populations, through the intervention of impartial humanitarian organisations, and include criminal sanctions in the event that non-combatants are attacked or relief efforts obstructed. The emergence of these new rights inevitably led to the misuse by warring factions or governments of terms such as “restoring law and order”, or “deploying counter-terrorism”, to conceal the existence of armed conflict and thus avoid the application of humanitarian law. In particular, Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, sets out a minimum framework applicable to conflicts that are not recognised as international. In particular, it refers to the right of the ICRC and other impartial humanitarian organisations to offer relief without this being considered as interference.

From 1977 onwards, following the publication of the two Additional Protocols and based on an analysis of the practices of state and relief actors, the ICRC launched a major project to codify customary humanitarian law. In 2005, it published 161 rules of customary humanitarian law applicable to situations involving international and non-international armed conflict. This work was followed by the drafting of reference documents which were presented at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in 2011.7 Minimum humanitarian standards, referred to in common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, cover the following principles: the wounded and sick shall be gathered and cared for, impartial humanitarian organisations may offer their services to alleviate suffering without this being considered as interference, and certain acts against protected persons are prohibited at any time or place. These acts include murder, mutilation, cruelty, torture, etc., hostage-taking, humiliating and degrading treatment, as well as arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial execution.

Under international law, states have primary responsibility for meeting the basic needs of affected populations, based on the principle of sovereignty.8

According to IHL, if the population continues to be in need of support, humanitarian organisations may try to provide for them if the state is unwilling or unable to fully meet its responsibility. The provision of relief cannot then be considered as foreign interference in the internal affairs of the state, as long as the principles of humanity, impartiality and non-discrimination are respected. Humanitarian actors may therefore offer their services, but they are not obliged to do so.

In terms of the issue of prior consent, there are three distinct scenarios: international armed conflicts, non-international armed conflicts and situations involving occupation by a third state.9

The consequences of violating the legal framework

A state is responsible for violations of international law concerning humanitarian access in situations of armed conflict, where such violations are attributable to it. In addition, international criminal law prohibits certain acts and makes individuals who violate the rules liable for their behaviour. Denial of humanitarian access and assistance may, under certain conditions, constitute a war crime. Attacking personnel or property employed in the provision of humanitarian assistance, as long as they are not directly contributing to the hostilities, is a war crime under the Rome Statute, whether the conflict is international or not. States have committed themselves to holding perpetrators of attacks on humanitarian staff accountable for their actions, by encouraging disciplinary measures and individual criminal prosecutions.

Denial of humanitarian access and assistance may constitute a crime against humanity when it is part of a widespread and systematic attack against any civilian population, when the assailant knows about the attack. Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, torture, persecution and other inhumane acts10.

As texts relating to IHL were developed, the ICRC formalised a certain number of fundamental principles which were then adopted by other actors. It has been this combination of IHL and compliance with its principles that has provided the legitimacy for intervention by the various types of humanitarian organisation.

The fundamental principles of the Red Cross11

The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross are the result of a century of experience. They were first declared in Vienna in 1965 at the 20th International Red Cross Conference and provide cohesion for the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and ensure the movement, its humanitarian action and values remain strong.

Humanity

Stemming from a desire to provide relief without discrimination to the wounded on the battlefield, nationally and internationally, the Red Cross strives to prevent and alleviate human suffering in all circumstances. It seeks to protect life and health and to ensure respect for human beings. It promotes mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and lasting peace.

Impartiality

It makes no distinction of any kind based on nationality, race, religion, social condition or political affiliation and is only concerned with providing relief according to level of suffering and giving priority to the most urgent needs.

Neutrality

In order to maintain trust, it refrains from taking part in hostilities or taking position on political, racial, religious or philosophical issues.

Independence

The Red Cross is independent. As auxiliaries to the public authorities in their humanitarian activities and subject to the laws governing their respective countries, the National Societies must nevertheless maintain a certain degree of independence, which enables them to act in accordance with the principles of the Red Cross.

These principles have progressively been adopted by all other humanitarian actors, and have become the benchmarks for NGOs and UN agencies, governing their action in all circumstances, and in accordance with Dunant’s wishes.

The four principles were adopted (resolution 46/182) by the United Nations through two resolutions voted by the General Assembly, in 1991 in respect of the principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality, and in 2003 in respect of the principle of independence (resolution 58/114).

In the aftermath of World War Two and the barbarity of Nazi Germany and some of its allies, the legal corpus of IHL underwent necessary changes, particularly with regard to the rights of refugees. At the same time, new humanitarian actors emerged: the specialised agencies of the recently created United Nations (UN) and civil society involvement increased in certain countries, in which citizens wished to be involved in international solidarity and humanitarian aid. Non-governmental organisations therefore entered the landscape of international relations, replacing the term “international solidarity organisations” that had previously been employed for this type of citizen-based organisation.

5. Maurice TORELLI, Le droit international humanitaire, PUF, Paris, 1985, 12 p.

6. MSF Droit humanitaire (1/5): définitions, principes et enjeux.
URL: https://www.msf.fr/droit-humanitaire-15-definitions-principes-et-enjeux. Consulted on May 11 2020.

7. F. SCHWENDIMAN, “The legal framework of humanitarian access in armed conflict”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 93, 2011, n° 884, p. 993-1008.

8. F. BOUCHER-SAULNIER, “Cent cinquante ans de réalisations normatives”, Questions internationales, 2012, n° 56, p. 28-36.

9. Rome Statute, article 7 (1).

10. Rome Statute, article 7 (1).

11. CICR, Les Principes fondamentaux de la Croix-Rouge: commentaire 01-01-1979. URL: https://www.icrc.org/fr/doc/resources/documents/misc/fundamental-principles-commentary-010179.htm. Consulted May 11 2020.

2.
A multifaceted civil society: NGOs

To shed light on the relationship between NGOs and war, we need to define what non-governmental organisations are, to distinguish between those that work nationally and those that work internationally, and identify a sort of typology to describe them within what could be described as a heterogeneous constellation.

Several criteria help to establish these distinctions. One such criteria is their involvement with the mechanisms of war examined through the prism of the role they might play in conflict prevention, in post-conflict situations –in restoration, disarmament, peacekeeping or reconstruction, and their role in helping a population to face the consequences of a conflict. NGOs can perform different operational roles, for example, helping to defuse inter-community conflict between herders and farmers by working on agricultural models, providing emergency medical assistance for the wounded or people exposed to an epidemic, or organising demining operations.

An analysis of the annual funding for all of the crises currently occurring shows that the proportion of international humanitarian aid dedicated to conflict zones has increased since the beginning of the decade12. Violence now plays a predominant role in crisis situations, and NGOs now play a crucial role in dealing with them.

The intervention of international charitable organisations in conflicts dates back to the 19th century

When we examine the history of the NGO movement, there seems to be a French “humanitarian mythology”. Yet, even before the idea of NGOs appeared, Great Britain was one of the crucibles for the mobilization of international “civil society” humanitarian organisations. They mainly emerged during the First and Second World Wars, and tended to disagree with the positions defended by the British government. From the 18th and 19th centuries, British society generated a certain number of reformist or philanthropic organisations, supported by a section of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Public health and the abolition of slavery were among the first areas to be mobilized and this led to a law known as the Charity Law, which provided a framework for relations between charities and public authorities. It was clear from the outset how important this movement was, as it formed a democratic bulwark against the elected government, and weighed on public policy-making. Citizens grouped together in various types of organisation to monitor national and foreign policy, and even influence governmental positions. Britain’s and France’s colonial heritage also played an important role in encouraging some of these charities to give themselves an international dimension. Save the Children was founded in 1919, and worked tirelessly to correct the catastrophic effects of the Allied blockade on children in Germany and Austria. During the Second World War, against Churchill’s wishes, Oxfam was set up and provided aid to countries blockaded by Great Britain because they were occupied by Nazi troops. At the end of World War II, Christian Aid, the International Rescue Committee, Catholic Relief Services, and Care (in the US) were founded. World Vision International was founded in 1950 and Amnesty International in 1961.

In France, the inter-war period saw the creation of Secours Rouge, which later became Secours Populaire, and Secours Catholique. In 1968, a number of young French doctors were involved in providing care during the civil war in Biafra, Nigeria, which led to the creation of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) in 1971. The founders of MSF have made media relations part of their strategy, alongside the medical care they provide worldwide. They broke with the International Committee of the Red Cross’ principle of neutrality and criticised its failure to denounce the concentration camps during the Second World War. In 1994, Comelio Sommaruga, then president of the ICRC, described this position as the “moral failure” of the organisation.

Action contre la Faim was set up in 1979, while Médecins du Monde and Handicap International appeared – following a split from MSF – in the early 1980s. In 1984 in Birmingham, an Islamic charity was set up to fight hunger in Africa, Islamic Relief Worldwide.

A recent, multifaceted concept, dominated by Western organisations

In 1945, in the United Nations Charter, it was the series of provisions related to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the UN’s governing bodies, that the new concept was first mentioned. Its Article 71 states that “the Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organisations concerned with matters within its competence. These provisions may apply to international organisations [...]”.

Worldwide, international charitable organisations, which are themselves an extension of the ideas of authors such as A. de Tocqueville (19th century), and E. Mounier, H. Arendt, and J. Habermas (20th century), inherited this new charter. These intellectuals believed that associative activism is a necessary ingredient in the balance of power in a democratic society, to enlighten and influence the decision-making of states whose legitimacy is based on the electoral process and the “tyranny of the majority”. In both France and Great Britain, this activism was first structured around political, union or religious elements, and deployed its concrete initiatives nationally. So, this “social object with a high media profile”, the non-governmental organisation, appeared for the first time after the Second World War. The use of the acronym NGO became commonplace in the 1990s.

It seems that part of today’s controversy over the international NGO sector is indeed linked to the drafting of Article 71 in 1945. Some authors felt that the term NGO was added in extremis during the drafting of the United Nations Charter.13 They thought that it was due to the pressure of lobbies, which had been admitted by the American delegation, that the term was coined. This delegation included in its ranks a considerable number of professional and charitable organisations, although this was not officially recorded. These organisations had been closely associated with the war effort, both with Americans and Allies, within the framework of the Victory Program, and expected that peacetime would reward their efforts and their role in international relations. So, the “International Chamber of Commerce” and the “International Association of Bars and Refreshment Stores” were among the first in the United States to be granted consultative status, as defined in 1945 by the Economic and Social Council of the UN. So the term “non-governmental organisations” was designed from the outset to encompass all such organisations, without distinguishing between the interests they represent or the link that each of them has with states. The logic behind their emergence, in both Great Britain and France, still has no universal dimension. And the great diversity in the sociology of the numerous existing organisations, as well as the multiple purposes of the institutions that made up the NGO family from the start, contribute to the difficult and messy relationship they have with political powers and the protagonists in the wars they are involved in.

A hotch potch mix

The purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive classification of the hundreds of NGOs active in conflict areas, but to highlight the main distinctive criteria, in particular those likely, due to the confusion they may cause, to jeopardize humanitarian organisations’ overall capacity for action.

So, the NGO family includes a large number of non-state organisations and actors that has grown rapidly over the years. Around forty organisations were recognized in 1946. Today, there are thousands of such organisations.

In the literature, there is a very wide range of definitions that originate from different disciplinary fields, integrating the perspective of lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, economists and anthropologists.

Five characteristic elements emerge:14

– A particular legal form, most often expressed through the terms of association, charity or non-profit organisation, in accordance with national laws.

– A particular relationship with public and private powers, at both national and international levels, with the aim of instituting an independent decision-making arena, but one that still maintains links with other organisations.

– A reference to values and to a freely consented commitment that is freely given, combined with the declared desire to give a democratic dimension to the work undertaken.

– The transnational character of its activity, through project management or the alliances formed in other countries other than those of the headquarters of the NGO.

Even within Western countries, the term NGO may have various definitions, especially from one continent to another, where the perimeter and the definition of the term can diverge considerably. By 1945, 51 countries had signed the United Nations Charter, and today they number 193. Among these new States, the perception, definitions and role of NGOs vary, as they are not necessarily part of the same history and political sociology as those of the countries associated with the drafting of article 71.

Consequently, the family of NGOs is a rather hotch-potch mix, whose social purpose, reasons for intervention, types of funding, relationship with states, national or international character, and denominational or non-denominational dimension, could all be criteria for classification.

The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations now qualifies an international NGO as an organisation that works in at least three different countries. According to this criterion, and to the London School of Economics, there are now 59,000 international NGOs worldwide15. Nearly 2,000 of them are now accredited by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, compared to only 45 in 1945.16

But if we count the number of organisations that send expatriates to countries in crisis, then the number of international NGOs shrinks considerably. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), whose role is detailed in the next chapter, the number of NGOs active in the field at significant levels of action was around 260 in the early 2000s.

In 2010, again according to OCHA, the largest humanitarian NGOs (in terms of finances and number of staff) all had their headquarters in Western countries, apart from the Red Cross movement (International Committee of the Red Cross, International Federation of the Red Cross and National Societies), which claims a separate legal status from that of NGO. The most important NGOs, in terms of funding, are Catholic Relief Service, American Red Cross, Save the Children, MSF, Oxfam, Care International, Action contre la Faim and World Vision.

NGOs have proliferated in a polymorphous manner in accordance with the civil society dynamics of their home states and though they can be classified according to different disciplinary fields, no definition is fully exhaustive.

Since 1945, in response to the international events of the period, NGOs have undergone two main changes: they have taken an increasing role in humanitarian responses in areas of international conflict and have gradually become involved in non-international conflicts.

The ability of NGOs to do their work is increasingly linked to how they are perceived: whether or not they are neutral, impartial and independent organisations, three of the ICRC’s fundamental principles of action outlined in the previous chapter, which are now of crucial importance to warring factions. In international conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and non-international conflicts (Syria, Central African Republic, Somalia, South Sudan, etc.), the protagonists are keeping a close eye on whether NGOs maintain a neutral stance towards the entities at war.

Consequently, among the criteria for classifying international NGOs, the question of whether they have links with the governments and foreign policy of the countries they come from, is of prime importance.

This book does not intend to go into the developments that appear in the reference works cited17 18, but to point out the impact of the different INGO families’ cohabitation in conflict areas.

The potential paralysis of Western NGOs, which continue to dominate foreign organisations present in conflict areas, is therefore one of the important issues for the future, but it is not the only one.

Individual commitment versus the complexity of international relations

Humanitarian commitment has a strong symbolic power that inspires generosity in idealized young adventurers. The giving of oneself may sometimes be linked to religious beliefs.19 The desire to contribute might also stem from social or political activism, or from the intuitive reasoning that international solidarity leads to encounters, a discovery of the world and of other peoples, an opportunity that only humanitarian fraternity can provide.

In France, these ideas arose together with the highly publicised deployment of emergency medical devices, when the Samu (urgent medical aid services) was first set up. This gave an enormous boost to the image of these young healthcare professionals, whose ambition was to go to the heart of the disasters that were shaking the planet.

Today, even if these values remain strong, the perception of the humanitarian adventure, and of those who embody it, is no longer 100% positive. Those who have witnessed humanitarian operations seem to be discerning their more ambiguous aspects. These witnesses are themselves multifaceted: the populations faced with a crisis, political leaders, combatants, donors. All of these witnesses, in various ways, are observing what happens and asking questions.

What kind of people get involved in NGOs? Where do they come from? Why do they sometimes travel to such dangerous areas? Who authorises them? Who finances them? Are they effective? Are they trying to convert people? Are they honest? Are they, themselves, stakeholders in the conflict that is unfolding, hiding behind a humanitarian mask?

The reasons might appear unclear to outsiders. A commitment that was initially perceived as altruistic and spontaneous, might seem to have ulterior motives. Its objectives and results become ambiguous. The expected admiration, approval and recognition are no longer self-evident.

These difficulties, which might end up compromising the safety of those who sincerely want to contribute their skills to help people in situations of extreme poverty, have multiple roots. They are fundamentally the result of blurred boundaries between NGO volunteers and the political and military powers in conflict areas, whose interpretation of these relationships is complicated by the fact that not all NGOs have the same “culture” (in terms of political sociology) and history, based on their countries of origin and modes of governance. This lack of clarity is worsened by the fact that NGOs work alongside two other major actors: the aforementioned Red Cross movement and the United Nations agencies, whose history has always placed it close to political decision-making. The following chapter is devoted to these agencies.

12. International humanitarian assistance received by conflict-affected states, 2000-2011, Global Humanitarian Assistance, report 2013, 79 p.

13. “ONG: une catégorie juridique introuvable, une définition utilitaire. Réflexions sur une définition en droit des ONG”, in Johanna SIMEANT, Pascal DAUVIN (dir.), ONG et humanitaire, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2004, p. 139-160.

14. P. RYFMAN, Les ONG, Paris, La Découverte, “Repères”, 2009.

15 2012 data.

16. Samy COHEN, Revue française de science politique, vol. 54, n° 3, June 2004, p. 379-397.

17. M. DOUCIN, Les ONG: le contre-pouvoir?, Paris, Éditions Toogezer, 2007.

18. F. BLOCH-LAINÉ (Dir), Faire société: les associations au cœur du social, Paris, La Découverte & Syros, “Alternatives sociales”, 1999.

19. Johanna SIMÉANT, “Socialisation catholique et biens de salut dans quatre ONG humanitaires françaises”, Le Mouvement social, n°227, 2009/2.

3.
The UN: a calming influence on international relations

The United Nations (UN) is an international organisation which was founded by 51 member states in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, to solve international problems. It succeeded the League of Nations (League) created in 1919, after World War 1. The headquarters of the League was symbolically located in Geneva, in a country with a long tradition of neutrality. The failure of the League to prevent a second world war led to a desire to give preventive diplomacy a whole new impetus and to create a different body. As a sign of the new world that resulted from the Second World War, the headquarters of the UN was set up in New York. Today, it has 193 member states.

Under the UN Charter, the organisation strives to achieve three objectives: “to maintain peace and security in the world, to develop friendly relations among nations, and to achieve international cooperation in all matters where it can be useful.”

The main decision-making bodies of the UN, established at the time of its creation, are: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council – whose article 71 mentioned for the first time the fairly new notion of “non-governmental organisations” – the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice and the Secretariat.

One of the purposes of the United Nations, as stated in its Charter, is to achieve “the realization of international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character.”

The difficult balance between preventive diplomacy and humanitarian aid

The UN’s humanitarian action began in the aftermath of the Second World War in a devastated Europe, which it helped to rebuild. Today, the “international community” relies on the Organisation to respond to natural or manmade disasters that a country, reduced to its own resources, could not face alone.20

In fact, the United Nations’ action in the field of humanitarianism follows two main paths. On the one hand, its specialized agencies, which form the “United Nations system”, in cooperation with the Red Cross and NGOs, play an important role in the coordination and deployment of humanitarian assistance. This tends to be carried out through the grouping of actors into sectoral clusters, whose workings are discussed below. On the other hand, the intervention of the Security Council, when political circumstances permit, can vote for a military-humanitarian operation to put an end to particularly serious and massive violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. Since the UN was set up, this dual political and compassionate remit has been the source of considerable tension and delays in decision-making. The political logic and balance of power between states limits how comprehensively aid is provided, and whether responsibility is attributed unambiguously, including responsibility for failing. However, the UN now plays a crucial role in the management and financing of humanitarian action, which includes all stakeholders.

Political bodies initially very hesitant on humanitarian issues

While the United Nations system very early on intervened on a concrete humanitarian level in situations of armed conflict, this was not the case for the Organisation’s political bodies. It was not until 1968, at the International Conference on Human Rights in Tehran, that the UN began to get involved in the development of International Humanitarian Law.21 Previously, the UN had considered that this law, which by definition is “the law of war”, should be excluded from its field of intervention, since it was a peacekeeping organisation. From the Tehran conference onwards, its interventions in this field gradually multiplied and took on a new dimension, both through the involvement of the Security Council and through the Organisation’s desire to coordinate not only the work of the ICRC, but also the work of the various NGOs, with its own.

During conflicts, this initial hesitation about whether to focus on the humanitarian mandate of specialized agencies or the political dimension of the UN, shown by the hesitations and blockages of the Security Council, sowed the seeds of tension that would be expressed over time. The UN’s politico-humanitarian approach can lead to paralysis or jeopardize the respect of humanitarian principles, to the benefit of political realism and power relations between states. Afghanistan in the early 2000s, and Syria and Libya more recently, illustrate the difficulty of effectively managing, for the benefit of the affected populations, the dual concern of relief and political resolution of crises, particularly when foreign powers are involved in a conflict.

A threefold role, crucial for the humanitarian movement as a whole

Although the UN is not formally bound by the Geneva Conventions and the other principal instruments of international humanitarian law, it remains subject to the “intransgressible principles of customary international law”, among which are, without question, the obligation to “ensure respect” for international humanitarian law and to itself “respect”, through its specialized agencies, all of its norms.

The involvement of the UN in responses to humanitarian crises makes it a key player today. This involvement has three different aspects: a role as a direct actor in providing aid in the field of conflict and environmental disasters, through its specialized agencies; a role in coordinating the various actors, since the creation of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the establishment of clusters; and a central role in funding aid, through “annual coordinated appeals” to governments and emergency appeals at times of crisis.

The main UN entities responsible for providing humanitarian assistance

Six UN entities, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Office for Migration (IOM) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) are the main agencies involved in humanitarian assistance. Each of these agencies has a specific area of expertise and mandate. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is more specifically responsible for operational activities in natural disaster prevention and local capacity building.22 These different agencies therefore have complementary perimeters and objectives, summarised below in a very schematic way. Depending on the realities of the crisis and the field in question, the scope of intervention may go beyond the strict framework described here.

Helping refugees

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) was created in the aftermath of World War II to help Europeans displaced by the conflict. The agency leads and coordinates international efforts to protect refugees around the world. The General Assembly created a specific entity, which is still in operation, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to provide assistance to the approximately 750,000 Palestine refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.

UNHCR still plays a crucial role today, given the very large number of people forced to flee their homes throughout the world. In 2019, more than 20 million people were forced to cross a border to seek refuge in a third country. UNHCR works on these issues alongside other UN agencies, in particular with the International Office for Migration (IOM). This agency plans its interventions according to texts of international law, drafted to draw lessons from the dramatic experiences of certain populations during the Second World War. This formalisation resulted in the 1951 Geneva Convention, a key text which aims to define the rules of law, applicable in all circumstances, for the benefit of populations driven to exodus by violence and fear for their lives and safety. According to this convention, every country must provide assistance and refuge to people who have crossed a border from their homeland.

The UNHCR bases its action on the following text, the Convention of July 28, 1951, which defines, among other things, the concept of refugee.

Article 1 of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951

“Any person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.“

Helping Children

Since its creation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has worked to help as many children as possible using effective, low-cost solutions. UNICEF also regularly calls on governments and parties in conflict to better protect children.

Feeding the hungry

The World Food Programme (WFP) provides assistance to millions of people affected by disasters. It is responsible for mobilizing food assistance and funding for transportation of all large-scale refugee operations managed by UNHCR. With regard to food security risks, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is also called upon to help farmers produce food again following floods, livestock epidemics or other crises.

Helping migrants

“Migrants” are people who move within their country or across a border (“cross-border migrants”), but whose movement is not necessarily generated by fear of persecution, as the term “refugee” suggests. Nearly one billion people fall under this definition each year worldwide, and 250 million will change their place of residence by crossing a border for a number of different reasons.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) works to help ensure the humane and orderly management of migration and to promote international cooperation. It helps find practical solutions to migration problems and provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced persons.

Keeping people healthy

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is responsible for directing global health initiatives, defining health research agendas, setting norms and standards, presenting evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries, and monitoring and assessing public health trends. Although it does not operate directly in the field, it coordinates the international response to health emergencies, particularly in the fight against epidemic infectious diseases.

The UN’s coordinating role, through OCHA

The Department of Humanitarian Affairs, created in 1992, was reorganised in 1998 to become the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a transformation aimed at making humanitarian action more coherent and effective. To this end, the Office was given a broader mandate, including the coordination of humanitarian responses, policy development and advocacy. Within the UN Secretariat, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is responsible for the coordination of humanitarian action. It works through the “Inter-Agency Standing Committee”, a unique inter-agency forum, bringing together the main UN humanitarian partners for coordination, policy development and decision-making. The premise is that a coordinated approach is essential to the delivery of timely and effective assistance. OCHA is, in particular, the part of the UN Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies.23

OCHA’s mandate derives from General Assembly (GA) resolution 46/182 of December 1991, which states: “The leadership role of the Secretary-General is essential and must be strengthened to ensure better preparedness and a timely and coherent response to natural disasters and other emergencies”. This resolution gives a clear leadership and coordination role to the “Emergency Relief Coordinator”, designated by OCHA in each crisis location, to respond to the needs of affected people. This mandate extends to internally displaced persons. It is clear that the positioning of this body in the field of conflict, its respect for humanitarian principles, its “reasonable distance” from the politics of foreign countries involved in international conflicts, leads it, through its role as “manager” of the humanitarian response, to have a predominant position vis-à-vis the different “parties to the conflict”. The positions taken by OCHA and the way in which this organisation directs and coordinates the various parties involved – including NGOs and the Red Cross – are always carefully observed and interpreted by the protagonists in the crisis. This coordinatory role takes place within “clusters”.

Coordination in humanitarian clusters

The General Assembly resolution 46/182 of December 1991 laid the foundation for the current international humanitarian coordination system.24 Almost 15 years later, in 2005, a major reform of humanitarian coordination, known as the Humanitarian Reform Agenda, introduced several new elements to improve predictability, accountability and partnership. Among them was the “cluster” approach. Clusters are groups of humanitarian organisations, both within and outside the UN system, formed in each of the main sectors of humanitarian action, for example, water, health, and logistics. Decisions on the number of clusters required and which organisations are best placed to lead each cluster are based on the specific needs identified in the response plan. The objective is to clarify the division of labour among all the humanitarian organisations working in different sectors, and define their respective roles and responsibilities.

The UN’s role in funding international humanitarian assistance

Every year, based on assessments carried out by OCHA and its partners, a report on global aid needs is published. It is supported by an assessment of the funding requested from UN member states to meet these needs. These needs have been growing steadily in recent years, from $7 billion in 200825 to a projected $29 billion in 202026. An overview of the 2019 humanitarian year is provided in the following chapter, allowing for a more precise analysis of the countries in crisis, the populations assisted, the main entities providing the funding and the respective share of aid provided by the Red Cross, NGOs and UN agencies.

In addition to this forecast, carried out annually, the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) can also be activated by the UN system. This is a funding mechanism that facilitates an immediate response to a crisis situation. It helps humanitarian agencies to obtain funds immediately, without waiting for possible contributions from donors.

Tension between humanitarians and politics - where does it come from?

The United Nations agencies are the last of the three major families of actors, referred to here in order of appearance historically, that enable international solidarity in conflict situations: the ICRC, since the middle of the 19th century, the international charity organisations since the beginning of the 20th century, that have since been renamed NGOs, and finally the agencies of the United Nations, which were born from the ruins of the Second World War, in the middle of the 20th century. This does not only constitute a journey through time. It highlights similar tensions between the desires of ordinary citizens and those of states, or groups of states in intergovernmental organizations such as the UN.

Henry Dunant, shocked by the horrors of the battlefield, put forward the idea that the law should be above governments and is needed to humanize war. This was the beginning of IHL, which has since constantly evolved. At the same time, English and French citizens began to speak out against a particular military blockade, a particular strategic alliance, or the inertia of their country in a particular conflict, in the name of its economic interests. In the same vein, leaders of specialized UN organisations refuse to obey demands for political consensus, which, they say should not be sought at any cost. Negotiating to maintain peace is necessary, if it is in order to preserve the capacity to provide relief, denounce those who oppose the delivery of aid, and provide the means to condemn those responsible for war crimes.

When faced with this kind of tension between political and humanitarian objectives, and despite the great diversity of its member organisations, the humanitarian community constantly reasserts its fundamental positions of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.

Yet, how does the tension between humanitarians and governments play out in practice? An examination of the available data for a “humanitarian year” provides useful insight into this issue. The three “families” described in the previous chapters are the tools used via international solidarity to deal with the many short-term or long-lasting conflicts that affect the world today. These different organisations are part of a larger whole, known as the “humanitarian ecosystem”. In addition to humanitarian organisations, it includes donor countries and the various sources of funding, the countries and populations benefiting from international aid, as well as the local and national actors who take action in the field. Together, these entities help to shape the interventions that feed world news. So, which areas are in crisis? Do they have specific risk factors? Where does the funding come from? Which countries benefit from this? Is it channelled towards certain crises? Do the humanitarian actors themselves decide how to use the funding? Is it sufficient? Does the funding reflect thematic and political choices? The following chapters will pose these questions, and attempt to answer them.

20. Nations unies: Accueil ONU; Notre action; Fournir de l’aide humanitaire. URL: https://www.un.org/fr/sections/what-we-do/deliver-humanitarian-aid/index.html

21. Patricia BUIRETTE, “IV. L’ONU, la Croix-Rouge et l’action humanitaire”, in: Patricia Buirette éd., Le droit international humanitaire. Paris, La Découverte, “Repères”, 2019, p. 71-78. URL: https://www.cairn.info/le-droit-international-humanitaire--9782707197597-page-71.html

22. Nations unies: Accueil ONU; Notre action; Fournir de l’aide humanitaire. URL: https://www.un.org/fr/sections/what-we-do/deliver-humanitarian-aid/index.html

23. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, History of OCHA. URL: https://www.unocha.org/about-ocha/history-ocha. Consulted May 11 2020.

24. OCHA d’une seule voix: l’approche Cluster. URL: https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/dms/Documents/OCHA%20on%20Message_Cluster%20Approach_vFR.pdf. Consulted May 11 2020.

25. OCHA, Financial Tracking Service (FTS), 2018. UN Appeals and response plans, 2008, $7.1 billion. URL: https://fts.unocha.org/appeals/overview/2018. Consulted May 11 2020.

26. Appeal for UN humanitarian funding 2020: $28.9 billion. OCHA, Aperçu de la situation humanitaire mondiale 2020. URL: https://www.unocha.org/sites/unocha/files/GHO-2020-FR-Web.pdf

4.
Overview of the global humanitarian situation

Media coverage is short-lived. One crisis follows another on prime time news and in the headlines. Each is described and examined on a case-by-case basis, but only long term and global analysis can study the “humanitarian system”: the populations at risk, the crisis mechanisms, the aid providers, the financial contributors, the beneficiaries, the quantity of resources mobilised, whether or not this is constant, its geographical distribution, and the freedom granted to aid workers to use the funding.

This detailed information builds up the outline of a global situation, and the constituent parts that make it up. The data, compared each year, portray how the landscape is changing and distinguish the dynamics that set it in motion.

This data, and the regular comparisons, are valuable sources of information for humanitarian organisations, political decision-makers, funders and academics who study international solidarity.

It provides objective information for operational and financial decision-making, and because of its global nature, it feeds potential development strategies and highlights major trends, which are important for structuring points of convergence and NGO alliances. It is also useful in maintaining the balance of power between political power and civil society so that the latter can play a full role in the global international relations system. This chapter therefore paints a picture, which the last part of the book will translate into advocacy techniques27 to address the main issues identified, some of which, as we shall see, expose NGOs to the worrying threat of manipulation or paralysis.

It is not always easy to provide an overview of the current issues in humanitarian affairs and global conflict. Lumping together very specific countries and political contexts tends to downplay the complexity of the situation. We are examining situations in which, to use the Heidelberg Institute’s triad, the protagonists who clash must be described and analysed on a case-by-case basis, including their motives, the actions implemented and their consequences.

Social, environmental and political vulnerability: the breeding ground for humanitarian crises

Three main phenomena trigger situations that require international assistance: conflicts, environmental crises and situations that combine violence and environmental issues. These three often intertwined phenomena tend to be behind the disruption of an already fragile equilibrium.

Poverty, and political and environmental fragility, are the breeding ground for major humanitarian crises: 1.9 billion people in the world live below the poverty line (3.2 dollars per day per person); 753 million below the absolute poverty line (1.9 dollars per day per person). When a critical event occurs, there is a shift from situations of poverty and/or political vulnerability to situations that can suddenly put the immediate survival of groups of people at stake. Consequently, conflict and environmental degradation are often closely linked. Violence is sometimes the cause of deliberate destruction of the natural environment, which is punishable under international law: crop damage, for example forest or crop fires that have been started deliberately for strategic purposes. Violence can also result from changes in the environment that set populations against each other: conflicts between itinerant herders and sedentary farmers in areas such as the Sahelian strip where desertification is worsening; displacement of populations in coastal areas due to rising sea levels; conflicts over access to water. Violence can also result from a desire to obtain natural resources with a high market value: wood, diamonds, rare metals, oil. These precious resources are tightly controlled by local, self-appointed warlords, and so can turn into a real curse for the local population. In these situations, state intervention is essential to regulate and redistribute common goods like water and land. But it also allows indigenous populations to receive the dividends they would be entitled to expect from rare raw materials with a high commercial value, intended for export. However, in countries hit by serious crises, the state is often at fault: poorly resourced, riven by political, tribal or family divisions, or sometimes a puppet of a major foreign power. Corruption is common. The World Bank has recently shown that the increase in aid payments to the most dependent countries coincides with rising numbers of transfers from these states to offshore financial bodies.

“Data deprivation” complicates analysis and strategy choices

Analysts need to be cautious when interpreting figures and realistic about the reliability of certain information, due to problems with collection systems or possible manipulation by local or national stakeholders. In certain countries, the social and political environments might not be very functional, and epidemiological collection and surveillance systems may be basic or lacking in human resources and/or skills. Depending on the situation, protagonists may downplay or exaggerate the numbers of displaced, dead or injured according to strategic agendas and/or for fear of being accused of negligence. In war-torn countries, poverty is both pervasive and invisible. Little reliable, locally produced data is available, yet nearly 400 million poor people live in these areas. In a report published in February 2020, the World Bank stated its desire to fund tools and services to combat what it calls “data deprivation”28.

However, the figures produced each year in the Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) report provide information which is considered reliable and which comes from a research institute whose rigour and independence are not disputed by humanitarians and decision-makers. These reports provide a realistic assessment of situations and needs, and are useful in highlighting trends and making annual comparisons possible. They are the main source of information used in this chapter29.

Another aspect, relating to financial data, is important. The data provided, the most recent of which were included by the GHA in its October 2019 report, mention information (income, expenditure, geographical breakdowns, distribution between humanitarian actors, etc.) from 2018, and sometimes 2017. This financial indicator time lag is an unavoidable constraint. All the major organisations that contribute to humanitarian action, including governmental funders, must wait for the closing and consolidation of accounts before they can publish their results. They must also wait for annual activity reports to be drawn up and examined so that they can communicate, as reliably as possible, about the sums requested from donors, those actually obtained, the amounts disbursed, their allocation in cost accounting, and the sums made available in the field which are eventually transformed into services rendered and aid provided. These clarifications about financial data are deliberately emphasised in this book, because an analysis of the overall financial data for the humanitarian “system” is a key element in understanding the human, political and ethical issues faced by humanitarian organisations.

Affected populations

Like other humanitarian actors, international NGOs face economic and structural megatrends, which affect their projects and their capacity to act.

Among the challenges, there is the world population’s exponential growth and its accelerated urbanisation, particularly in Africa. A number of conflicts involve urbanised populations whose behaviour is influenced by their change of habitat. Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syrian refugees in Lebanon illustrate this new phenomenon: they find themselves part of the urban fabric of the countries and cities that have hosted them, which requires NGOs and their funders to devise appropriate responses. Cash transfers, which provide direct financial aid, is one way that NGOs have adapted to this shift.

Other major features of the annual global humanitarian aid picture are that major crises tend to occur in a limited number of countries; poverty is the primary determinant of crises; they tend to be long-lasting and involve massive population displacements; and Africa is over-represented as a continent in humanitarian emergencies. While the 2018 data shows that more than 200 million people in 81 countries are in need of humanitarian assistance, Syria and Yemen alone have the largest numbers of people in need: 22 million and 13 million respectively. Next come the Democratic Republic of Congo with 13 million people affected, Turkey with 11 million, Afghanistan with 10 million and North Korea with 10 million. These 6 countries represent 40% of the world’s population in need of assistance. Ten countries alone receive 63% of annual funding.30

Every July 1, the World Bank updates its ranking of the world’s economies. This update is based on estimates of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita for the previous year. The criteria are as follows: GNI per capita of $1,025 or less defines low-income countries; GNI per capita between $1,026 and $4,035 defines lower-middle income countries; GNI per capita between $4,036 and $12,475 defines upper-middle income countries; GNI per capita of $12,476 or above defines high-income countries.31 In 2018, about 100 countries fall into the high-income category32, but only around 20 of these make a significant and voluntary contribution to state funding in response to humanitarian crises. In 2018, 22 countries – out of 81 affected by a crisis – were the subject of coordinated appeals for funding from the United Nations (UN), even though they had already been recipients of this funding the previous year. In these countries with protracted crises, there is a substantial percentage of the population living in poverty (21%), and living below the extreme poverty line (33%). There are robust links between poverty and major crisis.

In 2018, 24 of the major crises in the 40 countries most in need were caused by conflict. Of the 13 major humanitarian crises, 10 are in African countries.33

27. See part IV “The political moment”.

28. État des lieux de la situation humanitaire mondiale “La Banque mondiale au chevet des pays en guerre”, Julien BOUISSOU, Le Monde, 29 February 2020.

29. This chapter and the data it analyses are mainly built upon information published by the independent research body Development Initiatives, in its annual report entitled Humanitarian Assistance, report 2019. URL: https://devinit.org/publications/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2019/

30. Development initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance, report 2019. 20 largest recipients of international humanitarian assistance by income group, 2008–2017, 28 p.

31. World Bank Blog, New ranking of countries according to income: 2016 update. URL: https://blogs.worldbank.org/fr/opendata/nouvelle-classification-des-pays-en-fonction-de-leur-revenu-actualisation-2016. Consulted June 16 2020.

32. World Bank, data, GNP per inhabitant. URL: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD?end=2018&start=2018&view=map. Consulted June 16 2020.

33. Development initiatives, op.cit., p. 20-21.

Populations affected by crises

The vast majority of people who flee their homes remain in their countries of origin, or in the immediate vicinity

The number of forcibly displaced people reached 70 million in 2018, an increase of 2.8 million refugees from 2016. Even in the midst of the turmoil, people forced to flee their homes prefer to stay in areas close to where they usually live. It is as if, even in the worst circumstances, they were fleeing violence but hoping to return. Two thirds of displaced persons who cross a border take refuge in a country bordering their country of origin. The Middle East and the northern Sahara remain the main sources of refugees, with more than 11 million people forced to flee, followed by the African continent with 8 million displaced persons.34 Internally displaced persons account for 62% of the overall number and ten countries account for 58% of forced displacement. Sadly, Syria holds the record: 6 million refugees and 6 million IDPs. Then comes Colombia with almost 6 million IDPs. Turkey hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees and, linked to the situation in Turkish Kurdistan, 1 million IDPs. Then there are three African countries with the highest number of forced displacements: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia.

Humanitarian organisation funding

The three main categories of humanitarian actors – international NGOs, the Red Cross movement and the United Nations – have a dual role in these crises, as described in the chapters on each type of organisation: they are involved in implementing aid projects and in seeking funding.

In these long-lasting crises, certain crucial aid expenditure is provided from one year to the next, and is anticipated by the relief organisations when drafting their annual provisional budget. The United Nations, through the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), therefore has a key role in ensuring that the necessary budgets are renewed. The Red Cross movement organises the same sort of coordinated annual appeals.

International NGOs, on the other hand, solicit individual donors through messages and appeals for donations throughout the year. This income is used to supplement funding requests to governments and the United Nations.

Annual funding available to respond to the many humanitarian crises around the world is therefore made up of all these different types of government funds and individual donations.

NGOs to the rescue of states…

Funding is clearly targeted towards a certain number of major crises. Two characteristics stand out: the funding requested by the United Nations, in the annual needs assessment, is largely underfunded by donor countries, and the funding obtained from these same governments is not always directly correlated with the financial assessment of the populations’ needs. This reveals that, when faced with major global disruption, donor states decide on the humanitarian priorities they wish to commit themselves to. In 2018, The United Nations coordinated appeals called for $28.1 billion in aid and raised $17 billion. Overall, 39% of appeals were not met, resulting in a shortfall of US$11 billion. For the past ten years, this phenomenon of not meeting identified needs has remained relatively unchanged, with a general shortfall of 40% of the sums requested.

However, combined government and private funds have increased by 30% since 2014. INGOs have been able to maintain this increase through sustained efforts to solicit their donors, despite the large increase in annual international humanitarian aid needs.

In 2018, the DRC, Yemen and Bangladesh are the reason for the increase in coordinated appeals. The annual envelope available rose from $22 billion in 2014 to almost $29 billion in 2018, with private funds raised mainly by NGOs, which have provided a quarter of the overall total.35

Donations from states remain predominant, and come from a limited number of countries

In terms of public money, the funding of the international humanitarian system relies mainly on developed countries, members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD defines itself as “an international organisation for economic studies, whose members – mostly developed countries » share a democratic system of government and a market economy”.

Countries outside the DAC contribute on average 5% of the total amount paid by governments. This percentage has remained broadly unchanged over the past ten years. The emerging powers (BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) make insignificant contributions to international humanitarian aid in relation to their Gross National Income. In 2010, for example, China contributed $37.6 million. This was less than Luxembourg’s contribution of $52 million. Furthermore, 75% of China’s contributions were in the form of bilateral aid to governments affected by humanitarian crises.

The European Union as a whole (the Commission and the Member States) has been one of the world’s leading humanitarian donors since its creation. In April 1992, the European Commission created the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), which became the Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DG ECHO) in 2004. European funding is provided through partnerships with 200 organisations from the three main families of humanitarian actors.

Aid funding comes solely from voluntary contributions from donor states.

In the mid-2010s, funding required due to new emergencies and the prolongation of older major conflicts (Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc.) exceeded 25 billion dollars. New, non-Western humanitarian aid funders appeared, with substantial contributions from Turkey and the Gulf States.

International humanitarian aid from governments by donor region, 2009-2018.36

These broad trends have continued in recent years. In 2019, EU states contributed 47% of annual global humanitarian aid, down 9% from the previous year. The main donors were: Turkey, the United States of America, Germany, the European Union, Great Britain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.37 France is 12th in absolute terms (with $581 million). Two countries have significantly increased their contributions and entered the top ten donors in 2018: the United Arab Emirates (+567%), and Saudi Arabia (+173%). These financial contributions are linked to conflicts nearby, particularly in Yemen.

Top 20 financial contributors to international humanitarian aid, European governments and institutions, 2018.38

The above data does not take into account the expenditure incurred by countries hosting refugees, apart from Turkey, which has several million asylum seekers and refugees. On the other hand, the main contributors, such as Germany, receive tens of thousands of people on their own soil who have fled war zones without revealing the cost of it. Turkey openly declares the cost of hosting migrants, and therefore shows up as the world’s largest contributor. It is largely supported by the European Union following financial agreements signed in 2016, in the framework of a three billion euro “migration pact”.39

International NGOs: major actors on the humanitarian scene

The funding of the “global humanitarian system” therefore comes from two main sources: governmental funds, whose main contributors we have just revealed, and private funds. Multilateral organisations, mainly the specialised UN agencies (UNHCR, WFP, ILO, UNICEF and WHO), receive 60% of government funding. They use part of this funding to support projects led by NGOs and/or the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

87% of private fundraising is undertaken by large international NGOs. The United Nations agencies – via UNICEF in particular – receive 10% of this funding. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement receives 3% of private funds. Donations from individuals account for the vast majority of NGOs’ private funding, with corporate sponsorship and foundations contributing the remainder. Private funds account for an average of 58% of NGO funding. This means that, in their overall economic model, the ability to obtain funding from individual donors, via marketing campaigns, is of great importance and raises issues of independence, the political and ethical limits of which will be highlighted in Chapter 12.

INGOs thus directly receive about 20% of all government funds, i.e. 4 billion out of a total of 20 billion dollars in 2018. In total, in the field, INGOs therefore use: 5.7 billion in private funds plus 4.1 billion in public funds. The sum of 9.8 billion dollars represents 35% of the annual budget for humanitarian crisis management. In addition, there are financial transfers from government funds collected in the first instance by specialised UN agencies and then made available to NGOs. This means that almost 40% of annual global funds are committed to projects implemented by NGOs: they are, in fact, major operators in humanitarian crisis management.

A recurring debate has been taking place among humanitarian organisations since the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in 2016. This review meeting was organised by the United Nations to learn from the experience of dealing with the greatly increased humanitarian needs arising from Arab Spring triggered crises. It resulted in a number of recommendations. One of these involved finding a better balance between funding managed by international organisations and that entrusted to local actors, in particular national NGOs present in countries in crisis. Recent conflicts, which have had serious human consequences, have shown that, in certain contexts, only local solidarity, afforded by national or local organisations, was capable of providing relief. This is particularly the case where foreign actors are not welcome, to the point of clearly being designated as targets by combatant groups. The Istanbul recommendation in this regard was that, by 2020, local and national actors in crisis countries should be the ones using 20% of the annual assistance package raised by “the international community”. In 2016, they only had use of 3% of the available funding, and this target is clearly still far from being met.40

34. Ibid., p. 23, p. 24, p. 25.

35. Ibid., p. 28, p. 32, p. 33.

36. Ibid., p. 39.

37. Ibid., p. 36.

38. Ibid., p. 38.

39. “Quel est le bilan du pacte migratoire UE-Turquie au bout d’un an?”, Le Monde, 17 March 2017. URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2017/03/17/pacte-migratoire-ue-turquie-quel-bilan-un-an-apres_5096504_3210.html

40. Development initiatives, op.cit., p. 64.

Part II
Ambiguities

Ambiguous: Bringing together two opposing qualities, participating in two different ways.

“An ambiguous character, a mix of vice and virtue.”

abbé Prévost

Philos. Indeterminate, seeming to participate in contrary ways and lead to contradictory judgement. (Le Petit Robert dictionary, 2013)

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their additional protocols of 1977, together with the four principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, constitute the fundamental benchmarks that guide humanitarian action. These qualities unite the three main actors involved in providing aid in conflict situations: the Red Cross movement, international NGOs and the United Nations family, via the specialised agencies.

When NGOs work in the field with the other two families, ambiguities may appear. This book intends to highlight the changes that have taken place in the way they are perceived, and the doubts that may arise about them. The Red Cross movement is a combination of the ICRC and national societies, and the United Nations deploys different agencies who specialise in humanitarian response, but remain subordinate to the political will of the General Assembly and the Security Council. NGOs on the other hand, are numerous and diverse. For local populations as well as for the armed groups fighting each other, distinguishing between them and deciphering who does what, as well as the logic and agendas of each organisation, may turn out to be a complex interpretative operation. Analysing the motives and behaviour of what are, in essence, three large tribes that often live together is a difficult exercise in humanitarian anthropology.

With respect to the countries which receive massive quantities of aid due to their suffering from long term crises, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Haiti, and the newer countries, Syria, Central African Republic, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, the positions of each of the foreign actors involved can be easily confused. The organisation of relief is made even more complex by the required coordination, which is often entrusted to UN agencies via OCHA and clusters. So the links between NGOs and local political bodies as well as the political bodies in their country of origin, and the multilateralism of the United Nations, can become unclear or suspect. These doubts then jeopardise NGOs’ often hard-won position of neutrality and impartiality, which should guarantee their staff’s safety and their ability to operate wherever they choose.

An anniversary that reflects a dilemma

Every year, August 19 is an important date for humanitarian aid and its actors. It commemorates a sad event that acts as a reminder of some of the grey areas surrounding international humanitarian action.

On 19 August 2003, an explosion devastated the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including the UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. In 2008, the General Assembly of the same organisation voted in favour of resolution A/RES/63 139, establishing a “World Humanitarian Day”, celebrated on the anniversary of the Baghdad bombing.

This day is not a celebration of the thousands of lives saved there, but a reminder of the dangers and obstacles that now stand in the way of solidarity: the paradox that humanitarian aid is increasingly being exposed to outside threats.

The Baghdad bombing killed people for reasons not directly or personally linked to them, but to sanction positions and behaviour that predated the engagement of those who died that day.

Following the US invasion of Kuwait, the first Gulf War (1990-1992) ended with an Iraqi defeat after a massive military operation led by the United States army. The surrender of Saddam Hussein’s regime was also the result of economic coercion and a severe embargo, aimed at curbing the country’s ability to restore large-scale military capability. The embargo also aimed to create tension and encourage Iraqi people to overturn the regime, not by a third country officially removing it, but as a result of mass discontent.

The whole process was cloaked in a humanitarian guise and took the form of an “oil for food” programme that was so demanding that it led to extreme deprivation and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, but did not lead to the hoped-for ousting of the head of state.

The United Nations was entrusted with the implementation of this programme which engendered massive fraud and misappropriation of funds, and will remain, in the people’s minds, as well as in the analysis of Iraqi leaders, a human tragedy brought about by the United Nations.

It was this entire chain of suffering that led to the 2003 attack. So, the August 19 commemoration day can also be seen as a symbolic reminder of the sometimes equivocal character of humanitarian interventions, when the principles that underpin their legitimacy are misused and the way they are implemented goes awry.

Behind all this, we find different kinds of ambiguity, some of which might contradict the principles of neutrality and independence and thus actually be considered political in nature. The oil-for-food programme in Iraq and the conflicts in Nigeria and Afghanistan are examples of this.

Ambiguity, or mere slippages, raise ethical questions that call into question the principle of otherness with the people being helped. The shared humanity concept, which justifies the rescue workers’ desire to intervene, is thus undermined. Such slippages took place during the Ebola epidemic in Africa when the local culture was not sufficiently taken into account in biomedical approaches to medical treatment, or in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake when fragile people were taken advantage of and made objects of sexual predation. These situations do not necessarily take place on the crisis battlefields, but they are linked to conflicts. They express a form of violence against the population and thrive in areas of confrontation where people’s bearings are disturbed. When faced with extreme destitution, people are particularly exposed to arbitrary behaviour and abuse of power. And all this casts doubt on the very spirit of humanitarianism. It can lead to the dual peril of trying to deny or hide situations for fear of tarnishing the humanitarian approach or, on the contrary, caricaturing the situations and making them seem commonplace.

1.
From Nigeria in 1967 to Nigeria in 2020: the new “without borders”

On July 18, 2019, a convoy chartered by Action Contre la Faim (ACF) was the target of an attack north of Maiduguri, in the north-east of Nigeria, in Borno state, not far from the border with Niger. Borno is one of the regions around Lake Chad where radical armed groups who claim to belong to the Boko Haram movement operate. Depending on their territories, positions and alliances, these groups, who are on international terrorism lists, take on different names: in Borno State, Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) is one of the most active rebel movements in Nigeria. For about the last 10 years, Borno, along with two other states, Adamawa and Yobe, have seen fierce clashes between the rebel movements and the powerful Nigerian army.

This remains one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with seven million people in need of life-saving assistance and 1.8 million uprooted, the vast majority of whom are women and children. A number of them have crossed borders to seek refuge in the neighbouring countries of Chad, Niger and Cameroon. The displacement of populations, as well as the mobility and deployment of various rebel groups that do not respect borders, have given this conflict a regional dimension.

Over the past ten years, the conflict has claimed 27,000 civilian lives and devastated communities, villages and entire towns in the three most affected states41. While the country is one of the heavyweights of the African continent in terms of size and economic might, the rebellion has thrived due to a number of factors: local environmental degradation, including the alarming drying up of Lake Chad and its impact on farming, pastoralism and local fisheries, and, in this huge continent-state, tribal and political struggles against a backdrop of neglect by the federal state. However, Nigeria is receiving considerable international support to meet the basic needs of the displaced populations, actively supported by funds from the United States and the European Union.

This is a major programme for ACF, worth tens of millions of dollars a year and benefiting 200,000 people whose survival depends, to a large extent, on food aid, medical care programmes and water sanitation projects, carried out by several hundred staff. The teams also work to identify and treat cases of acute and severe malnutrition in children living in the area covered by the programmes.

During the July 18 attack on a convoy returning to the Borno capital late in the afternoon, a lorry driver was killed and six people kidnapped by the assailants: a young woman employed by ACF and five men, three recruited on an ad hoc basis to transport equipment and two representatives of the Ministry of Health. Negotiations to obtain the release of the hostages began almost immediately, through various strategies and channels, but the first man was executed in September. His death was the subject of a macabre video-sharing scene, and was accompanied by communication on social networks that certain radical groups had made their trademark. Negotiation nevertheless continued, in the midst of the turmoil and stress, impacting the organisation as a whole. Despite all efforts, the four remaining men were executed on December 14, 2019, the same day that the hostage-takers announced that the young woman, a Christian, would be enslaved, but kept alive.

In the days following the attack on the convoy, which had no clear motive other than their incredible accusations of alleged complicity with the rebels, relayed by the press – which was neither fortuitous nor insignificant – ACF’s premises were closed down by the Nigerian army and all its programmes were suspended sine die. It took several weeks of negotiation, along with remarkable solidarity amongst all the humanitarian organisations, before the conclusions of a secret investigation, carried out by the military authorities, were published; this allayed all suspicion, and the programmes resumed. At ACF’s Paris headquarters, the events led to serious discussions on whether or not, given the worsening security in the area, humanitarian programmes could be maintained. In January 2020, the board of directors took the formal decision, voted by a large majority, to continue the programmes, subject to conditions. However, everyone is well aware that the organisation is walking on a tightrope, between ensuring their teams’ safety and the survival of the populations they serve. Although the board only discussed Nigeria that day, the shadow of many other major crisis areas such as Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name but a few, hung over the discussions. This dilemma is now commonplace for humanitarian leaders.

For an attentive observer of the history of the French humanitarian movement, the attack on Borno raises issues about the legacy of the Biafran war, a crucial event in the development of the “without borders” movement, and about the dynamics that gradually led to the emergence of French NGOs of international stature. The ingredients for the complexity of any humanitarian situation, and the ambiguity that can surround its existence, were already present in Biafra: this is the subject of the following chapter. In the case of Borno, the rebels’ and military authorities’ attitudes differ enormously. The consequences, both in terms of capacity to act and level of security, are nothing like those experienced by the founding fathers of the large French NGOs during the Biafran war. The “Other” is now carefully observing NGOs’ activities in their country and the vision has changed. It may now be critical or aggressive. And perhaps some of the leaders, in the Nigeria of 2019, have the events of 1967-1968 in the back of their minds…

It all started in Biafra with outrage and oil42

The Biafran War was where today’s humanitarianism all began. From May 1967 to January 1970, this conflict pitted the central government of Nigeria against the mostly Christian and animist Ibos people after the latter had seceded to the east of the country and proclaimed the Republic of Biafra. This deadly civil war saw the emergence of a new, more disturbing, more demanding kind of international solidarity and gave rise to a new generation of humanitarian activists, determined to bring the weight of public opinion to bear upon foreign policy decisions. A country’s international relations were no longer to be the preserve of diplomats and the military.

It all began on 26 May 1967 when the Eastern Region Advisory Council voted to secede. On May 30, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu named the new territory Biafra and gave it a capital, Enugu. The reaction of the Federal Military Government (FMG) was immediate: it declared a state of emergency. The “police measures” quickly turned into a full-blown civil war. At the height of the conflict, Lagos committed almost 250,000 men.

In July, violent fighting broke out between Nigerian and Biafran troops. In May 1968, the region was cut off from the sea after Onitsha and Port Harcourt fell to the government forces. A de facto naval blockade led to a devastating famine. In December 1969, a 120,000-strong offensive overcame the last rebel defences after several months of siege. On 12 January 1970, Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire, leaving his second in command to sign an unconditional ceasefire. Thus ended the Biafran War: thirty-three months of fighting which left hundreds of thousands dead (mostly from famine and disease) and displaced more than three million Ibo refugees43.

The political and ethnic war in fact masked an economic issue: Biafra is home to four-fifths of Nigeria’s oil wealth, which was producing four hundred thousand barrels per day in 1966. This is why the major international powers and the oil companies were very quick to get involved in the civil war.

At the time, Nigeria had protested against the French atomic experiments in the Sahara and relations between Lagos and Paris were not good. France decided not to get directly involved in the conflict and simply declared an arms embargo. It let the Nigerian government know that it would not recognise Biafra. However, the rebels received discreet help in terms of equipment and soldiers (especially mercenaries44) from General de Gaulle. Actually, the French government saw opportunity in the political weakening of the former British colony with its immense oil wealth.

The independence of Biafra was officially recognised by only four African countries (Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia45) and by Haiti, while the UK and the USSR supported the federal government and supplied it with arms. The United States also supported Nigeria, but opposed any sale of arms to either side. So, the ingredients found in more recent conflicts coexisted in this war too: radicalised violence, identity issues46, failure to apply the international law of war, use of private armed groups, bloc rivalries, a religious dimension, interest in oil production and massive foreign intervention. “In the study of the evolution of violence in Africa, the 1955-1969 period is two and a half times more violent than that of 1990-1995, says historian Danielle Domergue-Cloarec. In the classification of conflicts in terms of estimated number of victims, Nigeria ranks first, with Rwanda in fifth place.”47

A chain of international solidarity was organised to help the starving population hit by the blockade and clashes. Nigeria became the scene of the largest emergency programme since the Second World War, “SOS Biafra”. But the lack of humanitarian coordination sometimes turned into somewhat of a mess. Charities from several countries, including Ireland, the United States, Germany and France, delivered food and basic goods. Many of them were Catholic or Protestant. The federal government, which did not facilitate the deliveries – they were therefore often carried out at night, at makeshift airports – was then accused of genocide of the Ibos people. Although the Nigerian government was hindering the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the latter managed to send 10,000 tonnes of food and medicine per month to the three million people in need. But despite all the international aid, the death toll was massive and the Biafran territory shrank.

In September 1968, a handful of doctors entered the secessionist enclave, which was being shelled by the federal army. They had signed up with the French Red Cross, whose involvement had been requested by the Élysée Palace, and whose president was a military officer, General Raymond Debenedetti. The French Red Cross set up air deliveries of food and medicines from Libreville, Gabon, as well as supplies of arms and ammunition for the Biafran rebellion under the Red Cross banner. The Red Cross delegate in the Gabonese capital was the French military attaché in that country, Colonel Merle.48 The humanitarian air convoys were criticised by Nigeria, whose army even shot down an ICRC plane mid-air. One of the ICRC doctors, Bernard Kouchner, and his friends raised awareness of the famine and the war through the media, breaking the rule of silence decreed by this organisation.49 A few years later, the idea of the right to intervene, defended jointly by Mr Kouchner and a professor of public law, Mario Bettati, emerged.50

Appeals to the media in line with diplomacy

This mobilisation in favour of the Biafran population led to the creation of Médecins sans frontières (MSF) and later several other French humanitarian associations, including Médecins du Monde (MDM), which then became the “borderless” movement. For the first time in a situation of war, young French doctors appealed to the media and criticised the response to the crisis situation, calling upon governments and the public to get involved.

Since 1968, the humanitarian-media duo has brought many of the world’s tragedies to the forefront, from Biafra to the South China Sea, Somalia to Afghanistan, Rwanda to Bosnia, Timor to Darfur, and Kosovo to Iraq. The relationship has definitely had its ups and downs. However, it is clear, without judging their intentions or insulting their revolt, how these humanitarian pioneers’ media appeals were in synergy with French diplomacy at the time. The French authorities’ great interest in oil production led to their “sympathy” for the Biafran secessionists.

And this demonstrates the great ambiguity. In 1994, Rwanda offered a new illustration of the mixing of foreign policy rhetoric and humanitarian action, when French troops (Operation Turquoise) were mandated by the United Nations Security Council to “secure an area” while the Tutsi genocide was taking place. This intervention ended up protecting Hutu genocidaires fleeing to what was then neighbouring Zaire.51

Incidents like these have not been forgotten. Today, humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are subject to targeted violence and are sometimes accused, because they are Western, of having to take sides in conflicts involving their countries of origin. In this new kind of situation, a clear dissociation between state and non-governmental humanitarian aid has become crucial for NGOs’ capacity to act and for their security. In fifty years, the balance of power in the world has changed dramatically, as has the perception of the West, where today’s humanitarian movement originated. Humanitarian immunity can no longer be taken for granted. As Régis Debray pointed out: “What can reality do when up against representations?“52 This is a crucial question for humanitarians today.

41. ONU info, Nigeria: après 10 ans de violences, la crise est loin d’être terminée, 1er août 2019. URL: https://news.un.org/fr/story/2019/08/1048891. Consulted May 13 2020.

42. Article published by the author in Le Monde diplomatique, in September 2008. URL: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2008/09/MICHELETTI/16263

43. A death toll of a million (and up to two million) is regularly mentioned.

44. All the French Fifth Republic presidents either let mercenary operations happen or even provoked them: General de Gaulle then Georges Pompidou, from Katanga to Biafra; Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, from the Comores to Benin; François Mitterrand, from Chad to Gabon. Under Jacques Chirac’s presidency, several operations were tolerated: Zaïre (1997), Congo-Brazzaville (1997-1998, 2000), Côte d’Ivoire (2000, 2002).

45. Their decision shook the young Organisation of African Unity (OAU), as it is attached to the principle of intangible borders, and fears the splitting of other states on the continent.

46. Religion was behind the conflict: Biafrans were predominantly Christian and Animist; the Lagos junta was mainly Muslim. Plus, there was a brewing conflict between Yoruba and Ibos peoples.

47. Danielle DOMERGUE-CLOAREC et Antoine COPPOLANI (dir.), Des conflits en mutation? De la guerre froide aux nouveaux conflits, Complexe, Bruxelles, 2003, p. 137-150.

48. François-Xavier VERSCHAVE, La Françafrique, Stock, Paris, 2001, p. 150.

49. Max Récamier et Bernard Kouchner, « Biafra, deux médecins témoignent », Le Monde, 27 novembre 1968.

50. Lire : Mario Bettati et Bernard Kouchner, Le Devoir d’ingérence, Denoël, Paris, 1987, et Mario Bettati, Le Droit d’ingérence, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1996.

51. On the events in Zaïre, lire: Colette BRAECKMAN, “Guerre sans vainqueurs en République démocratique du Congo”, Le Monde diplomatique, avril 2001.

52. Régis DEBRAY, Un candide en Terre sainte, Gallimard, Paris, 2008, p. 149.

2.
The blurring of lines in Afghanistan

Afghanistan was born on the margins of three great empires: Russia to the north, Persia to the west and the British Indian Empire to the east. A land of migration, a bridge between civilisations, a land of wealth, a land of conflict.

Myth has it that the high mountain ranges, which render large parts of the country inaccessible in winter, are the result of friction between the three empires and that the ensuing “plate tectonics” caused the mountains to rise high into the sky.

The sad reality is that Afghanistan has often experienced war as well as foreign greed.

In March 2020, a fragile peace agreement was signed in Doha, Qatar, between the United States and representatives of the Taliban, rebels who mostly come from the Pashtun ethnic group that has dominated the country and its politics for generations. This agreement put an end to the latest sequence of a war that began in 2001, and ushered in a NATO coalition under American command.53 Yet, the president, Ashraf Ghani, and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, have been accused of corruption and both continue to claim victory in the September 2019 presidential elections, in which turnout was very low. The current government has not been invited to participate in the Doha negotiation process.

Afghanistan’s “recent” violent episodes began in 1979 with the deployment of Soviet troops to support the then Moscow-friendly regime. When the Soviet army withdrew in 1989, the country fell off the major powers’ radar.

This indifference to Afghan affairs might have continued had the Taliban regime not been harbouring Osama Bin Laden and his staff. It was from eastern Afghanistan, where the leaders of Al Qaeda were based, that the 11 September 2001 attacks against the United States were planned and carried out.

And NATO and its allies have not succeeded in defeating the Taliban since they entered Afghanistan at the end of 2001 much like the Soviets didn’t...

During the fighting that began in 1979, Afghanistan became the breeding ground for many French NGOs; after Médecins sans frontières in 1971 there came Afrane, Acted, Aide Médicale Internationale, Médecins du Monde, Solidarités... These organisations’ rise to power was made possible by the massive financial aid made available to them by the United States and Europe, who were delighted to see the “French Doctors” supporting the areas controlled by rebels who had risen up against the Soviet occupiers. For the NGO leaders present at the time, anti-totalitarianism was a definite motive; anti-communism might have been too.

From 2001 onwards, with the intervention of NATO, the ambiguity surrounding humanitarian actors changed course due to the positioning and diverging humanitarian and political objectives of the United Nations.

In 2016, for the 10th consecutive year, Afghanistan was one of the 10 greatest beneficiaries of international humanitarian aid54, along with Ethiopia and Palestine.

During 40 years of violence, the causes and nature of the conflict have evolved, forcing the various aid organisations to constantly adapt to the prevailing political landscape.

“An eternal war”

Since the 1950s, Afghanistan’s geographical position has made it a battleground for the Cold War and US-Soviet rivalry. Some authors believe that the development aid granted to the country by the major powers led to a rupture between urban and rural areas, which was one of the explanations for the terrible 1972 famine, and became the catalyst for the 1978 political crisis, which led to Soviet intervention.55 After the Red Army entered the country in 1979, there were ten years of resistance by the “Mujahideen” (jihad fighters) who finally drove out the Soviets in February 1989; it then took three more years for the communist regime to finally be brought down in 1992. Two more years of civil war followed, before the Taliban came on the scene in 1994. They effectively took power in 1996 and a blanket of darkness covered the country from 1997.

The 9/11 attacks led to a new foreign-armed intervention, under a United Nations (UN) mandate, aimed at defeating the regime of Mullah Omar, accused of protecting Osama Bin Laden. Nato troops then settled in long-term, engaged in a war of counter-terrorism, which evolved into a counter-insurgency mission and, in the end, a new cycle of immeasurable suffering for the civilian population.

With violence on the rise again since 201756, the situation there poses a risk that humanitarian actors will be prevented from doing their job. This risk is now spreading well beyond the Afghan conflict, as mentioned in the previous chapter on Nigeria.

A crucible for contemporary humanitarianism

Humanitarian action has been a constant in Afghanistan’s troubled history. It has been affected by structural changes in the nature of successive conflicts there, and by more wide-reaching changes in the “international community’s” strategy. Periods of extreme politicisation and manipulation have alternated with times when humanitarian principles were easier to respect. Political and military vicissitudes have led to a huge need for humanitarian assistance. The way in which the “international community” – and in particular the United Nations – has responded to the need for assistance and protection there, and the way in which this response has evolved over time, has been heavily influenced by political issues that often run counter to humanitarian objectives.

From 1979 onwards, each political phase has been matched by a different form of humanitarian intervention

The first phase extended from the Soviet invasion to the fall of Najibullah (1979-1992) and had two distinct stages: the cross-border solidarity phase, during which NGOs and UN humanitarian agencies operated, by necessity, only from neighbouring countries, particularly Pakistan. Then, the first attempts were made to establish a strong UN coordination mechanism for humanitarian action, and it became feasible for humanitarian organisations to operate on Afghan territory. Pakistan-based solidarity initiatives were able to build on the cross-border links of the Pashtun tribe, which had been split up by Pakistan’s independence in 1947. When the Najibullah regime collapsed in April 1992, Afghanistan disappeared off the radar and there were no longer any ideological issues to fight for. Afghanistan became a Cold War orphan, after having been, and what President Reagan wished for, “the tomb of the Red Army”.

A second phase of humanitarian aid then began, which included the civil war and ended with a victory by warlords and their short-lived time in power (1992-1996). This brought about chaos, and the complete collapse of institutions, which then greatly hampered the delivery of aid. It was also a period of extreme instability for humanitarians, both in terms of their work in the field and their ability to find funding.

The third phase covers the entire Taliban period, after they took over from the warlords. The Taliban regime, with its relative international indifference, enabled humanitarian principles to be better applied. Aid programmes could be deployed as security had been restored. But gaining access to the population involved systematic, bitter and incessant negotiations with the Taliban authorities, in particular where the delivery of aid and care to women was concerned.

The breakdown in respect for humanitarian principles, brought about by the evolution in political affairs and the changing protagonists in the conflict, underwent a lasting and seriously damaging period in the wake of the attacks on the Twin Towers in the US.

The failure of the UN’s humanitarian mandate

So, a new phase has been underway since 9/11.57 Under theocratic rule, Afghanistan has gone from a laborious rebuilding of state structures, to a return to chaos. The strong commitment of the “international community” since 2001 has, once again, been tainted by the prioritisation of politics over respect for humanitarian principles, in the vain search for lasting peace. In this phase, “post-conflict” rhetoric has taken centre stage at the UN, where the need for humanitarian action has been put on the back burner. This artificial rhetoric stems from the desire – imposed by the foreign coalition – to endorse the idea that the country is now at peace and able to turn its attention to the reconstruction of its institutions and infrastructure.

But the reality invalidates the rhetoric: humanitarian aid can be deployed, but not without ulterior motives on the part of the foreign coalition.

When Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001, the UN took a wrong turn: it opted to align itself with one of the parties to the conflict (NATO) and therefore stopped being an impartial negotiator in peace talks. Moreover, its humanitarian branch, OCHA, and the rest of the “humanitarian community” did not forcefully negotiate access to areas controlled by the opposition, and sometimes suddenly deserted areas where NGOs were working with the Taliban authorities. Nor did the UN openly advocate for the respect of humanitarian principles by all parties to the conflict, even though UN General Assembly resolution 46/182 specifically holds OCHA responsible for “actively facilitating, including through negotiation if needed, the access by the operational organisations to emergency areas by obtaining the consent of all parties concerned”. Asymmetry in the deployment of aid shows a failure of OCHA’s mandate and reflects the lack of UN leadership when dealing with the military coalition during the crisis.

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator has a dual role as both the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General (DSRSG) responsible for aid, and the UN Resident Coordinator responsible for addressing political issues. From a humanitarian perspective, this dual role highlights the consequences of an integration-at-all-costs policy: it is difficult, if not impossible, for someone to be an advocate for impartial humanitarian action and at the same time be responsible for development and reconstruction issues on behalf of the government and coalition forces.

So, it transpires that the main funders, and the coalition forces, are initially unwilling to recognise the severity of the humanitarian crisis associated with the conflict. They do not encourage the UN to move away from government-occupied cities to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground. OCHA and the SRSG do very little to engage with the other warring party, the enemy of the NATO-led coalition.

The UN’s unilateral stance on Afghanistan is a result of the various Security Council resolutions that led to the setting up of UNAMA (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) and supported ISAF (the International Security and Assistance Force, the international coalition troops under NATO command). These resolutions repeatedly refer to the UN Special Representative, foreign military forces, and the Afghan government in terms of rationalisation, synergy and coherence. The numerous references to the link between the growing US civilian and military strength and the activities of UNAMA reinforce the impression that the UN and the international military intervention are inseparable.

Afghans’ trust in the UN has, on the whole, been seriously affected.

Protected by ever-higher blast walls to protect itself from attack, the “humanitarian community”, facing pressure from all sides, is isolating itself from the Afghan population it is supposed to be helping. The danger of being associated with the government, or with coalition forces, entails security risks that many NGOs are not prepared to take. Populations living outside the major cities are vulnerable and require urgent attention, and their needs are not being addressed. The majority of both UN and international NGO agencies with humanitarian goals are becoming increasingly concerned for their security. However, they don’t seem to be rethinking the way they operate in Afghanistan with a view to maintaining the aid that they provide wherever it is needed. This is pretty much like admitting that their scope of responsibility is defined by political and security considerations, rather than based on need and the imperative aim of saving and protecting lives. The issue of the centre-periphery divide and the urban-rural split, first identified by international aid organisations in the 1950s, is still present. And the “non-internationalist” Taliban (who fight for control of Afghan territory and not universal jihad) thrived on this divide until they once again controlled a large part of the national territory in 2017.58 Another issue that runs alongside the UN’s lack of clear position, which contributes to the perceived unclear role of international aid protagonists, is the armed forces’ position, which, oddly, seems to have become resolutely “humanitarian” in nature.

The rise of a new US military doctrine

In the mid-2000s, the idea circulated in Western decision-making circles that NATO was losing the war in Afghanistan.59 The American president became aware of how urgent the Afghan situation was. American forces on the ground doubled between 2007 and 2008 to 48,000 troops, then to 65,000 in 2009 and to almost 100,000 in 2010. The improved security situation in Iraq led troops to be redeployed to Afghanistan.60 The American military, which advocated counter-insurgency measures, therefore took charge of managing the conflict, first under the command of General McChrystal, then General Petraeus, by means of troop reinforcements granted by President Obama (17,000 additional troops, followed by 30,000 more).

The overall objective was to stabilise the zone militarily. The new counter-insurgency strategy, beyond the considerable increase in troop numbers, aimed to remedy the failures of previous operations by gaining the support of Afghan civil society through civilian-military initiatives. The guidelines, signed by General Petraeus and issued by ISAF to its troops at the time, clearly illustrate that: securing and serving the population, living among the people, combating the culture of impunity and helping Afghans to build acceptable governance were given top priority, and came before any mention of fighting the Taliban.

Humanitarian aid and its essential operational agents, NGOs, were assigned a precise role in these projects, through a specific mechanism: Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).

This led to a general change in the perception of humanitarian aid within the diplomatic and military institutions of the countries involved. Humanitarian aid is generally viewed as an alternative means of intervention in corrupt or failing states. It allows for greater efficiency in the delivery of aid or the creation of infrastructure and basic services, and the reintegration of combatants. Humanitarianism has great potential for gaining the trust and recognition of local populations, and helps to maintain local public support for interventions. In addition, NGOs make a very important contribution to the economy by creating jobs and providing the population with basic resources.

Winning hearts and minds

Money is used as an essential weapon.61 Its distribution is intended to make local populations more loyal, yet this strategy is criticised by NGOs for militarising aid.62 The military has its own resources to implement this strategy, the mechanism of which is called the Commander’s Emergency Response Funds (CERF). In 2010, the US army doubled the funds that were available immediately – without the usual procedures around assessment and transparency – to 1.2 billion dollars.

The actual plan seems to be to combine the delivery of aid by states or NGOs with tactical military considerations in a better way, which some INGOs find rather controversial. This occurred with the Obama administration and the International Rescue Committee in November 2009, during the “Afghan surge”, when Washington announced a large increase in the number of US troops sent to Afghanistan. In counter-insurgency doctrine, aid is perceived as a weapon, much more than it was during the Cold War. The army now brazenly channels aid whilst incorporating underlying military objectives.

This process is taking place at a local level: NGOs are strongly encouraged to implement state programmes, or programmes planned/executed in conjunction with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, often quick impact projects, to stabilise specific districts. An example of this is the rural development programmes in grassroots communities, where access to health care is entirely dependent on NGOs and not the Afghan state. These programmes are often implemented under the rather intrusive eye of the coalition military.

This process is developing around two key actors, who are responsible for coordinating and financing projects: USaid (assisted by the British Department For International Development - DFID) and the World Bank. USaid is increasingly run according to diplomatic and military objectives. Half of USaid’s aid goes to those warring provinces which are considered the most dangerous, where the guerrillas are the most active and powerful: Nimroz, Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar and Uruzgan.63

And all this blurs the lines for humanitarian workers. They have to face the suspicion of the Taliban, manipulation by NATO troop command, and the blatant subordination of UN operational agencies to the politics of American leaders. The official rhetoric remains that the country is on the path to “reconstruction”, while there are immense needs in parts of the country that are becoming especially dangerous. It is precisely in these areas that American and British financiers are encouraging humanitarian actors to work. A clear strategy is thus being put in place to, as much as possible, help the coalition prevent the population siding with the Taliban.

The Doha agreement, signed at the beginning of 2020, implements one of the lessons learned from the Vietnam War (which Afghanistan has somewhat replicated): leave before having to accept military defeat. There are common features to both of these US-led foreign operations: military failure and state lies.64

The majestic mountains of Afghanistan have been the backdrop of interventions by numerous international NGOs. Some NGOs even began there. From 1979 to 1989, they worked with rebel groups opposed to the communist government in Kabul, supported by the powerful Red Army. The Western rhetoric was that humanitarian aid was being provided to “freedom fighters,” the very people the Soviets called terrorists. Afghanistan was the largest CIA operation since World War II.

In 2001, twelve years after the departure of the Soviets, it was NATO that intervened in the country, heading an international coalition that wanted to show its solidarity with the United States. This time, the “terrorists” were the same figures that the CIA had armed and supported so that they could fight and weaken the Russian army. In the wake of NATO, NGOs were then encouraged to put themselves at the service of the government that had been set up and supported by the international coalition. This was a surprising reversal of position. But the NGOs have matured and are well aware of the role they are expected to play in order to “win hearts and minds”. They have learned to evolve in the subtle and manipulative international relations game orchestrated by the major powers. They are no fools, and are everyday witnesses of the impact of this never-ending conflict. Until a form of effective peace is reached, which all hope will be soon, the population will continue to live in extreme poverty. And this is the reason why the NGOs continue, despite the danger and manipulation, to remain close to a people that some of them have worked with since they were born.

The central role of the United Nations in the history of humanitarian aid in this “eternal war”, has led to an extremely confusing combination of humanitarian and political considerations. The whole experience provides food for thought, as the UN now plays a crucial role in the coordination and financing of all global humanitarian actors.

53. Jacques FOLLOROU, “Accord historique entre Washington et les talibans”, Le Monde, 3 March 2020.

54. Development Initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance, report 2016, p. 53.

55. G. DORRONSORO, « Les enjeux de l’aide en Afghanistan », Cultures et Conflits no 11, 1993, pp. 93-112.

56. J. FOLLOROU, Le Monde, 23-24 July 2017.

57. A. DONINI, “Les Nations unies entre démission et compromis”, in P. MICHELETTI (dir.) “Afghanistan, Gagner les cœurs et les esprits”, RFI/Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2014, pp. 163-183.

58. J. FOLLOROU, “Les talibans afghans se disent prêts à gouverner”, Le Monde, 5 July 2017.

59. P. DROZ-VINCENT, “Le leader américain: de la valse-hésitation à la nouvelle doctrine militaro-humanitaire”, in P. MICHELETTI (dir.) “Afghanistan, Gagner les cœurs et les esprits”, RFI/Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2014, pp. 121-137.

60. G. PARIS, “Trump s’engage à “gagner la guerre’ en Afghanistan”, Le Monde, 28 August 2017.

61. Center for Army Lessons, Handbook n° 09-27, Commander’s Guide to Money as a Weapon System, US Army Combined Arms, Fort Leavenworth (Kansas), April 2009. Quoted by P. DROZ-VINCENT, op.cit., p. 133.

62. R. NORDLAND, “UN rejects “Militarization’ of Afghanistan Aid”, The New York Times, 17 February 2010.

63. M. WALDMAN, Falling short, Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan, Kabul, Acbar Advocacy Series, March 2008, quoted by P. DROZ-VINCENT, op.cit., p. 290.

64. Georges LEFEUVRE, “Débandade américaine en Afghanistan”, Le Monde diplomatique, April 2020.

3.
The sex scandal

On May 21, 2018, the daily newspaper Libération headlined with, “Abus sans frontières” (Abuse without borders), which detailed its investigations into sexual abuse by humanitarian organisation staff, revealing already identified slippage.

The initial shock came from Haiti. It shook humanitarian organisations, pilloried Oxfam and, in a wave of panic, led all actors to urgently investigate their programs, and, in some cases preventively self-criticise, and launch monitoring and sanctioning measures to tackle the behaviour that had been brought to light.

Transposing a democratic model to international relations

The chapter about NGOs details how they have traditionally brought people together around specific themes and issues as a counter-power to governments. In Great Britain, this logic has been part of international relations since the beginning of the 20th century. NGOs have regularly spoken out against British government sanctions on civilian populations during international conflicts. Care, Save the Children and Oxfam were born out of this dynamic.

In European democracies, political science teaches us that NGOs are part of a sort of salutary confrontation, accepted by governments and other powerful entities, such as major private corporations. Civil society is organised so that it has an impact on public policy and makes sure it has a say in the way policy evolves. In order to maintain their influence, NGOs draw their legitimacy from three sources: their size and worldwide clout, their expertise in their field of intervention, and their capacity to fight for moral values. International NGOs have been inspired by this model and try to transpose it beyond their borders, hoping to influence global governance according to their own wishes. Handicap International and its fight against anti-personnel mines, Action contre la Faim’s publications and reports on food insecurity, Médecins du Monde’s denouncing of the price of certain medicines, MSF testimony on the use of toxic gas against the civilian population in Syria, demonstrate these three kinds of legitimacy.

The aim of this book is not to examine the many problems raised by this transposition process, but to make sure we don’t forget that international humanitarian action takes place in asymmetric circumstances: the asymmetric financial power of those who provide aid; asymmetric scientific and technical knowledge; asymmetric logistical power; but also, during conflicts, asymmetry that results from the psychological state of people suddenly thrown out of their homes, pushed onto the roads, grouped together (and sometimes penned) into huge refugee camps. Besides, NGOs find themselves in the field facing political environments that differ greatly from those of their homelands, and governments which don’t necessarily share the same perspective on their role as political actors. NGOs work in states that have not historically integrated civil society. INGOs sometimes work alongside despotic, predatory political leaders or governments that are no longer able to govern properly.

Besides, the humanitarian movement has a very idealised side, linked to its reputed generosity, and justifies its work on the basis of belonging to a “common humanity” that doesn’t hesitate to take risks in conflict areas. And this symbolic ideal, in essence, cannot show any weakness. And yet, the INGO movement, with the sexual abuse revelations in Haiti, has clearly and painfully been experiencing weakness. The scandal jeopardises these organisations’ economic model, and affects the financiers, governments and individual donors’ trust.

Expertise versus morality

As in any human endeavour, humanitarians may have silent predators in their midst who take advantage of distress, destitution and chaos to use field intervention as a sexual hunting ground. Among the personnel who work in these difficult situations, there will always be profiteers who must be identified, investigated and in the case of misconduct, dismissed. Unfortunately, abuse occurs in large institutions around the world among teachers, religious or political leaders and many others. Difficult and crowded living conditions in crisis areas can produce the conditions for harassment within confined teams whose mobility is limited by the insecurity that often prevails.

Oxfam’s situation is emblematic of the characteristics and mechanisms that are mentioned above. Since its creation, the charity has been involved in democratic and peaceful confrontation with political powers. In Great Britain and around the world, it has built up solid and active activist networks. Every year, it produces landmark reports on food, environmental issues and unbalanced trade relations between rich and developing countries. And, immediately after the revelations about Haiti in February 2018, Oxfam published two reports that were widely reported in the international press. The first dealt with the difficulty of funding the annual 100 billion dollar “green fund” intended to fight against global warming. The second focussed on how profit is distributed in large corporations. The international NGO is considered an expert on these two subjects. This kind of expertise in no way excuses the scandal, but shows that the inappropriate behaviour of isolated individuals should not dismiss the concrete contributions of the institution as a whole.

In the aftermath of the revelations, during the power struggle between Oxfam and the British government, one issue was immediately raised by the Conservative government. It called into question the funding for Official Development Assistance, which had been fiercely negotiated by UK charities and the British government. Oxfam has worked hard to ensure that London respects the international commitments made by the British government, namely to devote 0.7% of GDP to development aid, which explains some British newspapers’ desire to drag the British NGO through the mud. The day after the revelations, Jacob Remord, a leading light on the right wing of the Conservative Party, submitted a petition that had been signed by 100,000 people, to the Prime Minister, which was picked up by the Europhobic Daily Express, which cried “stop foreign aid madness”.65

Some years ago, Haitian authors of great repute, such as Louis-Philippe Dalembert (Noires blessures), Lyonel Trouillot (Kannjawou) or the poet James Noël, had expressed, through their writings, the shortcomings of the “NGO Republic” from which their country suffers.

In Haiti, as elsewhere, for Oxfam as for any international organisation caught in the act, justice must be done, and there must be no impunity of any kind for humanitarians, and no stereotyping either. The Oxfam scandal reveals the tension between expertise and moral slippage. It reflects the conflict between short term and longer term visions: the sudden journalistic spotlight against the patiently acquired skill of a devoted organisation in the field. The services rendered by a large organisation disappear behind the ethical failure of a few individuals and the immense media coverage, which is so dear to certain French humanitarians, and which is suddenly turned on its head by those who want to use it for the sake of international politics. It is humanitarianism trapped by its symbolic power, in the throws of ignominy due to a handful of black sheep.

It was also in Haiti that a cholera epidemic, imported by a battalion of Nepalese peacekeepers after the dramatic earthquake in 2010, had dramatic consequences. The epidemic killed nearly 9,000 people, and led to violent demonstrations and an enduring denial of responsibility by the United Nations. It took the scientific rigour and determination of Professor Renaud Piarroux and his team to bring the real facts to light. At the end of a long investigation that started to resemble a scientific-political thriller66, the misinformation was quashed, proof was found and the truth, which seemed to have escaped the Haitian population, who may have been too poor or uneducated to be recognized as having the right to it, was established.

This Caribbean health crisis was followed a few years later, in Africa, by another serious epidemic. Both illustrate the sometimes stormy relationship between health policy, the chosen intervention strategies and the disapproval of local populations when they are insufficiently informed or consulted about intervention choices.

65. Le Monde, Affaire Oxfam: en quoi consiste l’aide publique britannique au développement, 13 February 2018.URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2018/02/13/affaire-oxfam-en-quoi-consiste-l-aide-publique-britannique-au-developpement_5256284_3210.html. Consulted May 13 2020.

66. R. PIARROUXN Choléra, Haïti 2000-2018, Histoire d’un désastre, Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 2019.

4.
Culture denial: the fight against the Ebola virus in Africa

Violence, whether symbolic or real, may not be sexual in nature. For example, intervention strategies, operational methods and even the strictly professional behaviour of humanitarian teams may offend the “beneficiaries” if the aid upsets the feelings, customs or cultural representations of the host populations. These are common ethical issues in the health field where, in the desire to be efficient, staff seem to ignore these considerations, which leads to another form of asymmetry, knowledge asymmetry, echoing the saying: “The giving hand is always above the receiving hand.” The foundations of the most excessive forms of this medical authoritarianism come from colonial medicine, to which, to some extent, some French NGOs are the historical heirs. And in the background, a WHO definition of “quality of care” hovers over all the debates.67

“Quality of care is an approach in which health care services provided to individuals and patient populations improve desired health outcomes. In order to achieve this, health care must be safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and people-centred”.68

In mirroring what they might interpret as violent behaviour from humanitarian staff, people who consider that they have been victims of poor health treatment may in turn develop violent behaviour, which can also be symbolic or real.

The virus of discord A strategic quarrel expresses supranational actors’ power

From March 2014 to March 2016, an Ebola virus epidemic spread from Guinea, officially claiming 11,310 victims. The epidemic was the subject of great controversy.

First, the WHO was criticised for its slow response. Second, the staff’s colossal protective equipment was judged by some of those involved in the crisis to be the result of excessive and dehumanizing concern for those in need of medical help. All this eventually led to criticism of the MSF teams for having systematically ruled out any strategy other than treatment delivered by ultra-specialized teams in places where there was no way of maintaining links with the patients’ communities.69 On top of the clash between the two international giants, the locals were deprived of their traditional funeral rituals, which led to a substantial backlash from local communities. The system put in place for funerals was intended to contain the spread of the epidemic, and was at the heart of tensions between the health care teams and the families of the deceased, who weren’t able to support their loved ones before or after their death.

The MSF-WHO controversy over the late warning

The epidemic was confirmed in March 2014, but was not officially announced by the WHO until August 2014. Such an undoubtedly slow decision-making process was the result of a chain of command that joined the headquarters’ response to obstacles and blockages at each level: from the national to the regional level, and then from the regional to the Geneva headquarters, with actor interplay, a compartmentalised chain of transmission, and a national office subordinated to the politics of the host government. The WHO hid behind these mechanisms to explain its relative “inability” to act quicker, even though the resources and skills were supposedly available, ready to be mobilised.

In Guinea or elsewhere, whether the reasons are true or not, this tends to be what happens: the principle of sovereignty means that UN agencies must strictly comply with the positions of the local government, unless the General Assembly or the UN Security Council rule, for example, that a government is failing in its “responsibility to protect” its population.

As the researcher Mathilde Bourrier mentions in her article, on the Guinea situation, there was competition between two “external powers” with differing constraints and rules of engagement. It is also worth noting the differences in the mandates and funding of the two organisations, beyond their dissimilar legal status. WHO has a very broad mandate on international public health strategies, to meet the ambitious challenge of safeguarding and improving global health outcomes; MSF has a mandate to respond to humanitarian crises: the management of situations where the health of populations exposed to conflict or environmental degradation is impaired, or a combination of the two.

While the mandates of the two organisations are very different, the resources available to them are too. In 2015, MSF’s international network generated a total of 1.4 billion euros.70 The same year, WHO (ranked 6th in terms of funding out of 8 UN specialized agencies involved in humanitarian relief) had a budget of $520 million (€450 million).71

The personal protective equipment issue

Considerable tension built up as a result of healthcare workers’ concern about the risk of contamination. There were two main positions: a “maximal” approach, which MSF adopted, and a “reasonable” approach, advised by the WHO. The tension arising from this worsened the dispute over the WHO’s delayed warning. There was indeed a real risk of contamination: in 2015, 815 health personnel were contaminated, and two thirds of them died... With rare exceptions, airlines refused to transport people who had been exposed to the disease, which meant that foreign volunteers were potentially unable to benefit from “medical repatriation”.

The logic, specific to each of the two opposing organisations (yet sometimes indistinguishable for observers in the field who used the acronym OMSF...) is nevertheless understandable. How could MSF’s leaders not protect their volunteers in the best possible way? If too many staff had been contaminated and had died, doing otherwise would have seriously affected the trust placed in them, throughout the world, by the thousands of people who work for the NGO. Furthermore, the controversy came at a time when international NGOs had already been subject to several lawsuits brought by staff who felt that their employer had not taken all the necessary measures to ensure their safety.

On the other hand, being a key player in global healthcare, it’s easy to understand the WHO’s desire to seek out reasonable technical options, and solutions that can be reused elsewhere, during other incidents, at a reasonable cost for the communities and governments of developing countries.

How can we fail to be convinced by other arguments, like the “dehumanising” nature of such equipment on the patient-caregiver relationship? Or the criticism of humanitarian organisations’ use of anthropologists, acting as “social mediators’ responsible for applying measures described as “biosecurity”, to the letter? To be able to form an opinion on these issues, it is worth remembering what the WHO’s vision of “quality of care” means.

MSF teams’ exclusive use of isolated care environments

The third part of the controversy partly echoes the aforementioned issues with personal protection for staff. It concerns the use of isolated care environments and the accompanying fierce opposition to the strategy, which included rather critical comment from social scientists, who used terms such as “camps, coercion, biosecurity peace, lack of reciprocity”: Didier Fassin in his article on the unavoidable tensions between “culturalism and universalism” in international health interventions72, or Jonathan Mann describing the “socioparesis of public health”73. Once again, in the theses explored by these authors, whose objective is to set limits on care-givers’ power, the shadow of colonial medicine looms.

The crux of the problem resulted from MSF’s unwavering refusal to treat patients “outside the walls”, or use any system other than the isolation centres where the NGO’s teams operated under the protective conditions described above. Neither home-based care nor care within the community of the infected people were considered possible solutions by MSF’s management. Here we find the same fault lines: for the NGO it was a case of efficiency and safety first, whereas the UN organisation was more focused on avoiding community disintegration, preserving cultural acceptability, and lowering costs. On top of all this, MSF staff internal discussions ended up being leaked to the press, which reflects the culture of confrontation which is typical of this organisation.74 Controversy also broke out after criticism of the almost total absence of “support care” (mainly analgesics and rehydration fluid) in certain closed centres, as exhausted health care teams prioritised patients with a real chance of survival. So the ethical debates that were shaking the humanitarian organisation to its core were also put on public display.

Lessons learned

This controversy spread throughout all the decision-making strata of organisations with antagonistic points of view, right to their headquarters.

Some observers of health anthropology believe that what happened showed a desire by the staff, who are mainly trained in biomedical sciences, and who are hindered by the input of social scientists, to stop communities using any “forgotten knowledge” they might have, or even encourage the “involuntary production of ignorance”. In fact, MSF has made responses to medical emergencies, an inheritance from the “Samusard” and Pasteurian spirit of its early years, a trademark, even when it abruptly interrupts certain field projects, without any real concern for what occurs after the emergency. On the other hand, by strictly following this strategy, the NGO has acquired operational medical and surgical efficiency, including that acquired in the riskiest war zones that no one disputes. Besides, MSF’s different divisions may have differing positions, and the Spanish division, for example, might have been more receptive to the contributions of anthropologists.

There are actually two other considerations that need to be taken into account to complete this Ebola in Africa story.

The first consideration brings us back to the political arena. WHO and MSF are two “external powers” that no local authority can control or regulate. The authorities of the epidemic-affected countries had no say in the decisions made by the two international giants, so the response to the Ebola emergency could be seen as a complete denial of sovereignty.

Some may argue that local governments, who lacked the financial resources, expertise, or even the motivation to battle the epidemic, other than that required to protect their cities from contamination, could not compete in the same league.

Of course, the objective of this chapter is not to deny the incredible service provided by the MSF teams, who were efficient, courageous and committed. But, in the end, though we can see that no room was made for the “community” model, by utilising the operational, financial, logistic and political power of a non-governmental foreign player in the field, outside observers might view this emergency as having been managed by a private operator in a neoliberal manner. So, what knowledge will the local state, and communities, retain from the experience? What alternative to a new outside intervention would be possible tomorrow, if a new virulent pathogen arrived?

The second consideration brings us back to a notion familiar to humanitarian organisations: the principle of “humanity”; the “humanitarian principles”, the keystone values, because of which the staff of international solidarity organisations claim the right to assist their fellow human beings who are suffering. It was first established as one of the fundamental principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly through resolution 46/182 of 19 December 1991. So it is a principle that is shared by MSF and the WHO. Yet, during the Ebola epidemic, if NGOs did indeed neglect cultural specificities, due to asymmetry of knowledge and means, they could be accused of having neglected this principle of humanity.75 For it involves accepting the other’s differences, and not constantly referring to a dominant model of which the humanitarian actor is the omnipotent ambassador.

The two main organisations that handled the epidemic are often said to be in two different camps: MSF tends towards humanitarian reasoning76 whereas the WHO tends to follow technical-political reasoning. But are things that clear? When managing the epidemic, was MCF really the only organisation with a humanitarian approach? Was the WHO the only one focusing on the technical side of things? By analysing the dividing lines in more depth, things turn out to be not so clear-cut.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in some areas, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the management of the Ebola crisis has had a direct impact on the safety of humanitarian teams. In 2018, the DRC became one of the four most dangerous countries in which there is conflict, a deterioration attributed in part to violence towards people actually involved in fighting the virus.77

The Ebola epidemic is now becoming even more acute as Covid 19 has complicated its treatment. This new infectious disease has led to an extraordinary situation, due to its ubiquitous nature and the unprecedented scientific mobilisation it has generated. Analysis of the issues and strategies that have arisen from the Ebola epidemic provides us with useful food for thought, and a need for political and ethical vigilance.

Over the years, failure to be politically neutral, abuse of power, lack of consultation with host communities, and blurred alliances between the organisations involved in a crisis, have led to a certain lack of trust on the part of recipient communities. When such issues accumulate, there is a possibility that people will reject “humanitarian action” or those who embody it.

67. Guillaume LACHENAL, Le Médecin qui voulut être roi: sur les traces d’une utopie coloniale, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, coll. “L’univers historique”, 2017, 353 p.

68. Qualité des soins: définition. URL: http://www.santepublique.eu/qualite-des-soins-definition/ d’après OMS. Consulted 15 October 2018.

69. Mathilde BOURRIER, “Dans les coulisses de la gestion de l’épidémie Ebola en Afrique de l’Ouest (2014-2016): l’ère de l’“OMSF’”, Sciences sociales et santé, vol. vol. 37, n° 2, 2019, pp. 39-66.

70. Médecins Sans Frontières, International Activity Report 2015, page 94. URL: https://www.msf.org/sites/msf.org/files/international_activity_report_2015_fr_2nd_ed_0.pdf. Consulted 15 October 2018.

71. URL: http://devinit.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/GHA-Report-2017-Full-report.pdf, page 72. Consulted 15 October 2018.

72. D. FASSIN, “Internationalisation de la santé: entre culturalisme et universalisme” Esprit, février 1997, p. 83-105. URL: https://esprit.presse.fr/article/fassin-didier/l-internationalisation-de-la-sante-entre-culturalisme-et-universalisme-10130. Consulted 15 October 2018.

73. Emmanuel FORICHON, “Santé et précarité(s): comment surmonter la socioparésie de la santé publique?”, Empan, vol. no 60, no 4, 2005, pp. 86-90.

74. Elsa RAMBAUD, “L’organisation sociale de la critique à Médecins Sans Frontières”, Revue française de science politique 2009/4 (Vol.59), pp. 723-756. DOI 10.3917/rfsp.594.0723.

75. Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, Volume 97, Sélection française, 2015/ 1 and 2, 84 p.

76. Didier FASSIN, La raison humanitaire. Une histoire morale du temps présent, Ed. de l’EHESS, Seuil/Gallimard, 2010.

77. A. STODDARD, P. HARVEY, M. CZWARNO & M. BRECKENRIDGE (2019). Aid Worker Security Report 2019, Speakable: Addressing sexual violence and gender-based risk in humanitarian aid. Humanitarian Outcomes, June, 6 p.

Part III
Time for introspection

The settings in which NGOs operate – extreme poverty, environmental stress, lack of resources or insufficient state regulation, as well as corruption and war – expose those who choose to work there to violence. They choose to be involved due to social or political activism, or sometimes religious conviction. They also do it for the symbolic rewards to their personal and social lives. And, of course, they also do humanitarian work to earn a living. However, it is clear today that the breeding ground for humanitarian crises also generates violence of sometimes extreme brutality, in all kinds of settings. Volunteers in the field are not spared from this, despite their status, and sometimes because of their status and the image they project as it is perceived by certain actors in the conflict.

Incidents that place NGO staff in danger might simply be linked to them being in the wrong place at the wrong time, in areas where conflict is rife, so attacks may not be deliberate. Chapter 14 discusses the number of recorded security incidents, the particularly affected geographical areas and the multiple forms that this violence can take. The trouble is that people’s perception of humanitarian intervention is now being affected by a new and worrying mechanism, anti-terrorism laws (COTER), whose impact is crucial as they affect humanitarian organisations’ financial capacity and operational deployment. These laws are enacted by the governments of donor countries, whose main financiers are also stakeholders in the international strategy to combat radical groups.

The violence can take many forms, including the dreaded kidnapping, which always hits the targeted organisation hard. The kidnapping of humanitarian organisation personnel may be linked to the new rules of the game imposed by COTERs. With regard to hostage-taking, a change in doctrine began a few years ago, and brought the French position closer to that of the United States or Great Britain, which are more radical in their negotiations with hostage-takers. These states are obsessed with the fight against terrorism and believe nothing must be done to fuel the financial capacity of terrorist groups. Giving in to requests for ransom is therefore not an option, and places NGOs in great difficulty in terms of their responsibility towards their employees.

So the new COTER constraints mean that private funds, derived from donations, have turned into a lifeline which protects NGOs from manipulation, or even attempts at political control, by state funders. But this private funding is not necessarily 100% virtuous just because it helps maintain NGO independence. Besides, not all humanitarian crises trigger the same surge in public generosity, which is linked to how close potential donors feel to the affected country, and the level of media attention the crisis gets. Giving is definitely a subjective matter, linked to the way people perceive or identify with other people’s suffering. For example, the French population donated very generously for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, but donated much less for the flooding in Pakistan a few weeks later. But shouldn’t all victims be treated equally? Is there always a hierarchy of importance?

When operational expenditure rises, increased financial needs may push NGOs towards the sometimes questionable kinds of compassionate marketing and searches for new sources of private funding they may not be familiar with. This may lead them to deviate from the model of civic commitment that they claim underpins their work and may push them to mimic the way businesses operate, thus jeopardising their fundamental values, at least in terms of the history and sociology of French NGOs, whose model is not universal. NGOs have very varied positions on these issues, even those grouped under a shared logo. All the major NGOs are, in fact, involved in transnational networking and set up sister entities in different countries, which brings together organisations with different backgrounds and sociology. Today, NGOs in the same network are experiencing cultural clashes that can be quite painful. The chapter on civil society humanitarian organisations shows that this heterogeneity has been present since the concept of non-governmental organisations first appeared under the aegis of the United Nations in 1945. And the way each NGO defines its financial strategy (a balance of funding from governments, public fundraising and corporate sponsorship, provision of services or sale of by-products…) reveals this lack of uniformity.

The above considerations lead to one clear observation: NGOs, with their dual sources of income, are constantly trying to rebalance an unstable situation. Government funds may tempt states to tie aid to their strategic interests; individual donations expose NGOs to unpredictable variability in the way in which they take action, depending on the nature or location of crises. This funding situation, and the uncertainties that go with it, leads to perilous management: NGOs navigate between the pitfalls specific to each source of funding. This subtle and sometimes difficult balance leads them to try to choose what is acceptable, or not, in the event that they end up depending on either of these two funding methods. NGOs’ economic models prevent them from being totally independent: they try to be wise and opt for the best strategy possible...

1.
Anti-terrorist laws put NGOs to the test

The beginning of the 21st century has seen radical groups and new forms of conflict proliferate: terrorism on a mass scale has struck and has led states to adopt drastic measures78 to track down terrorists and dry up the sources of funding that enable them to operate. These measures are known as “COTER”, a contraction of the words “counter terrorism”.

Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia and Iraq are the settings for these new kinds of conflict. Throughout these countries, government armed forces and rebel groups, which may themselves be formed of enemies, are pitted against each other.

So, does all the funding given to NGOs by donor states – which provide, let’s not forget, three quarters of the $29 billion in annual international aid devoted to humanitarian crises – strictly comply with COTER? For example, NGOs, as recipients of these funds, are dissuaded from entering into contact with any of the warring factions79 80 identified by the funding governments and listed as terrorists by the “international community”. This position is difficult for NGOs and potentially dangerous for the security of humanitarian workers. The general feeling is that anti-terrorism policy should not encourage humanitarian organisations to turn their backs on their fundamental principles.

Henry Dunant’s incredible intuition

In the middle of the 19th century, the powerful intuition of Henry Dunant, who “by chance” had witnessed the bloody battle of Solferino, changed the destiny of the Swiss businessman. He was on his way to request an audience with Napoleon III in an attempt to obtain the right to buy land in Algeria that belonged to France. After witnessing the carnage of the battlefield, he became the instigator of contemporary International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Dunant’s impetus came from a philosophical premise: that a common humanity should lead us to overcome the murderous divide between warring parties and bring relief to the soldiers who survive the battlefield. This position led to another: that neutral relief workers, who cannot be suspected of taking sides, must be able to intervene on the battlefield, and help the victims of conflict without distinguishing between them.

Little by little, in ever-widening circles, IHL extended its reach beyond the battlefield, which was soon no longer the only theatre of violence: prisoners, shipwrecked survivors and the civilian population, who now make up 90% of the victims of war, entered the extensive perimeter of IHL.

The law is always one war behind

In 1986, the four cardinal principles of humanitarian response were incorporated into the ICRC’s statutes and then, in stages, voted in by the United Nations General Assemblies. Today, the majority of humanitarian organisations rely on these principles, including international NGOs which have become key players and crisis response funders. At the European level, these principles are guaranteed by the “European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid”81, signed in December 2007 by the Council of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission.

However, the law is “always a war behind”, and in the 20th century, new violent organisations emerged and non-international conflicts multiplied. At the same time, combatant groups were forming whose aim was to break free from colonially inherited borders, and replace them with territorial entities which were sometimes based on tribal or religious affiliation.

However, in order to be able to reach populations in need, humanitarians must be able to negotiate, where possible and necessary, with all the protagonists in civil wars and wars between states. They are therefore concerned about maintaining access for their relief efforts, and guaranteeing, as far as possible, the safety of the intervention teams. Meeting and negotiating with all the actors in a conflict is therefore an essential strategy to avoid any of them thinking humanitarians have “chosen a side”.

The inability to provide relief might be the result of the rebel groups’ own failure to recognise humanitarian principles. They may oppose aid from international NGOs in order to control access to civilian populations and maintain the closed-door situation.

Being able to negotiate with all warring parties is imperative

The point is not to question the legitimacy of measures taken to curb terrorism, but to avoid any form of criminalisation of humanitarian work. When it is necessary for anti-terrorism laws to be applied by NGOs, donor governments place them in an unacceptable position, totally unsuited to their mandate. Donor states closely and indiscriminately monitor the application of security laws, and will threaten to cut off financial support to an organisation that fails to comply with them. This truly compromises the principle of neutrality. NGOs’ ability to establish contact and negotiate with all warring factions is an absolute necessity.

Not doing so means breaking away from the founding spirit of international humanitarian law. And forcing NGOs to enforce security laws and thus bar access to certain groups manifestly subordinates humanitarian action to the political will of the donor countries. It amounts to saying loud and clear: “whoever pays, decides”. It puts the teams at risk and, above all, ultimately threatens to paralyse NGOs as they seek to provide aid that is often vitally important.

For all these reasons, it is of the utmost importance that international NGOs be exempted from enforcing anti-terrorist laws in conflict zones, in order to allow them to provide relief in the most effective way. Such an exemption would require international political negotiations at the highest level.

As a permanent member of the Security Council, the French government would be honoured to act as one of the catalysts of this exemption. Similarly, the European Union and the United States, as major funders of global humanitarian work, have a crucial role to play in obtaining it.

Rejecting the principle of a global embargo: the case of Iran

Iran – described by the United States as a “rogue state”, is subject to a highly coercive embargo – which is often described as a textbook case, and which has the potential to dramatically impact its people. Iranian people’s lives are therefore dependent on the international political situation. There are potentially colossal consequences for the health of its 83 million inhabitants due to the economic and financial pressure that is being applied in order to asphyxiate the Tehran regime, though Iranian diplomats are working hard to mitigate the effects82. It is ethically inconceivable that an effort to meet the needs of the population should be forbidden, all the more so given how research reveals how serious an impact deprivation can have. It is interesting to note that the major British NGOs have a long tradition, referred to in Chapter 2, of countering blockades by their government.

The Iranian situation is reminiscent of the strategies utilised in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War (1990-91), where it is estimated that restrictions of all kinds, and food shortages, led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.83 84

The rapid spread of the Coronavirus epidemic in 2020 has, among its many consequences, led the UN to request that Iranian sanctions be relaxed, along with those of other countries subject to international embargoes (North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela...)85. There is particular justification for this position as Iran has been heavily impacted by the pandemic and its people are particularly vulnerable. NGOs shouldn’t be singled out or accused of collusion with the Iranian regime when they are clearly trying to provide relief to people in need. NGOs will always comply with their mandate and the principles that accompany it. There are no “good” or “bad” victims.

78. Commission Nationale Consultative des droits de l’Homme, Avis sur l’incidence de la législation relative à la lutte contre le terrorisme sur l’action humanitaire 2 octobre 2018. URL: https://www.cncdh.fr/sites/default/files/181002_avis_lutte_contre_le_terrorisme_et_aide_humanitaire.pdf. Consulted May 14 2020.

79. OCHA, Reliefweb, “Cadres antiterroristes et sauvegarde de l’espace humanitaire: recommandations humanitaires avant l’événement parallèle de haut niveau de l’UNGA”, 23 September 2019. URL: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/counter-terrorism-frameworks-and-safeguarding-humanitarian-space-humanitarian. Consulted May 14 2020.

80. Chatam House, Recommandations pour réduire les tensions dans l’interaction entre les sanctions, les mesures antiterroristes et l’action humanitaire, 23 août 2017. URL : https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/recommendations-reducing-tensions-interplay-between-sanctions-counterterrorism-measures. Consulted May 14 2020.

81. Commission européenne, Protection civile et opérations d’aide humanitaire européennes. Consensus européen sur l’aide humanitaire, 2017. URL: https://ec.europa.eu/echo/who/humanitarian-aid-and-civil-protection/european-consensus_fr. Consulted May 14 2020.

82. Thomas FLICHY, Iran / États-Unis: embargo réel, guerre rituelle, Conflits, 23 July 2019. URL: https://www.revueconflits.com/thomas-flichy-neuville-iran8650-2/. Consulted May 14 2020.

83. Sénat, rapport parlementaire, L’Iraq en danger, Mission to Iraq by a senatorial delegation of the France-Iraq friendship group from June 18 to 23 2001. URL: https://www.senat.fr/ga/ga38/ga38_mono.html. Consulted May 14 2020.

84. Assemblée nationale, Rapport d’information, n° 3203, 27 June 2001, by the Commission des affaires étrangères sur les sanctions internationales. URL: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/rap-info/i3203.asp. Consulted May 14 2020.

85. RFI, “Coronavirus: l’ONU veut assouplir les sanctions visant des pays comme l’Iran”, 24 March 2020. URL: http://www.rfi.fr/fr/moyen-orient/20200324-l-onu-sanctions-pays-iran. Consulted May 14 2020.

2.
Kidnapping: when rescue is no longer a priority

Combatting terrorist groups has clearly become a major security concern, particularly for Western countries that have become their targets. The previous chapter illustrates one of the consequences of this attack on the neutral stance of humanitarian organisations, and describes the potential consequences of anti-terrorism laws for NGO staff security. NGOs can be victims of different forms of violence. One of these is exposure to the risk of kidnapping by groups whose motives might be political, financial or religious or a mix of the three. Countries employ a host of strategies to obtain the release of hostages: the exchange of prisoners held by local authorities, the launching of special forces operations by countries whose nationals have been kidnapped, and ransom negotiations. Each strategy seeks to achieve a subtle balance: protect the hostages while trying to avoid enriching the hostage-takers or releasing prisoners suspected of criminal behaviour. Governments aim to circumvent the “snowball” effect, which includes the idea that hostage-taking systematically leads to the payment of a ransom.

In 2013, a family was kidnapped in northern Cameroon by rebels claiming they were part of the Islamist Boko Haram group, which is based around Lake Chad and is from Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria. The kidnapping led to a change in French government rhetoric which caused concern amongst humanitarian leaders. In 2019, Boko Haram was also responsible for the kidnapping and subsequent murder of five people employed by Action Against Hunger who had been abducted in north-eastern Nigeria.

The French government’s 2013 change of doctrine has muddied the waters for humanitarian NGOs

The release of the seven French hostages, kidnapped in 2013, was an opportunity for the then French President, F Hollande, to confirm his government’s changed position and show it would no longer pay ransoms and would also oppose payment by companies or organisations faced by kidnappings.86

Hollande spoke shortly after the release of the hostages, stating that no ransom had been paid. This does not mean that other negotiation strategies, such as exchanging hostages for Boko Haram prisoners held in Cameroon or Nigeria, were not used.

Whatever the terms of the transaction, for this definitely amounted to a transaction, the affair must have disturbed the leaders of French NGOs, who are regularly faced with such situations. The president’s message reinforced the doubts that NGOs still have about their ability and willingness to launch operations in crisis areas, including those in which France supposedly has political or economic interests or a military role. The shadow of Biafra, and the hidden role of the major powers, still hangs over certain conflicts. Combatants’ violence towards humanitarian actors is now more explicit, more blatant, more aggressive.

A collective trauma

A kidnapping situation is traumatic for an NGO. When it occurs, an NGO is faced with several immediate concerns, which fuel the internal crisis that is systematically triggered by this type of event. Energy and emotions run high and have an impact on the functioning of the organisation, until such time as the issue comes to a happy or dramatic conclusion.

As soon as word of a kidnapping reaches the NGO’s headquarters, the family must be informed and closely communicated with throughout the kidnapping. Local networks, including the national authorities, must be activated in order to try to identify the hostage-takers and do whatever can be done to obtain an early release, which is always the desirable outcome for the safety and mental health of the abductees. NGOs also need to try and establish contact with the kidnappers, to ascertain their demands and obtain evidence that the abductee is still alive and in good health. Internal communication needs to be managed, as a kidnapping is never a trivial matter for any staff member in the field where such events may occur and affect their lives too. The French authorities and all the services concerned (Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE), Directorate General of External Security (DGSE), secretariat of the Presidency, etc.) all have to be approached in order to share information, determine who does what and, above all, to decide on the role that the NGO intends to allow the French state to play in managing the crisis. If a ransom is demanded, the question of “who will pay?” lies at the heart of discussions. Depending on its resources, the organisation may or may not have taken out insurance to cover a hostage situation, and may or may not have called in an external service provider with the skills to advise the protagonists during this tense period.

NGOs can, in theory, get round the 2013 change to the French government approach, although the state can, if it wishes, stop a ransom being delivered by calling on Tracfin, the Ministry of Finance department in charge of preventing the transfer of funds likely to fuel terrorism. Besides, many former members of the special services work for private companies whose borders with the organisations in charge of state intelligence remain porous...

The affected NGO will then try to establish how far the French government is prepared to go to put a stop to the hostage-taking of French nationals, and how far the NGO’s own desire and ability to circumvent France’s doctrine will go.

Not all NGOs are equal when faced with a hostage situation

Broadly speaking, there are two main categories of kidnapping situation, which are essentially determined by an NGO’s size, financial autonomy, level of competence and degree of independence.

Smaller NGOs have no alternative but to delegate almost all the above-mentioned steps to the authorities in their country. In this case, should the French government’s decision of 2013 have to be applied, it puts them ipso facto in the position of only sending teams to areas “authorised” by the French government. Non-compliance with the regulations would put the leaders of a “non-obedient” NGO in the position of bearing the moral responsibility for placing abducted volunteers and their families at risk and being unable to manage the situation without the help of the state.

For the most competent and experienced NGOs, the situation is more complex. From the outset, they tend to have a better capacity to mobilise political, social or community actors in crisis areas. So the pressure applied on the kidnappers by all the local actors often enables them to ensure that the hostages are released quickly.

Their financial resources also allow them to consider other aspects of hostage-taking differently: the choice of “who will pay” is theirs, at least at the beginning of the incident, and can influence the relationship with the French state. If they wish to do everything possible to avoid government intervention, they can also use the services of a private company to help them negotiate and, if necessary, deliver a ransom to very a remote and dangerous location, decided on during the negotiations with the kidnappers. Most of these kinds of companies are based in the UK, but some are based in France.

A key ethical issue

However, whether the money comes from NGO funds or from private insurance companies they have contracts with, all NGOs, large and small, face the same risks and ethical considerations with regard to their volunteers in crisis areas.

The potential consequences of President Hollande’s words came as a triple blow to French humanitarians: new areas and populations in need potentially became inaccessible to them; it confirmed that the “deployability” of French volunteers in the field was starting to resemble the deployability of volunteers from the United States, whose numbers had greatly reduced in recent years; and finally, the French decision constituted a de facto recognition that NGOs cannot escape “la raison d’État”, which in itself actually contradicts the core values of the French humanitarian movement: independence and neutrality. Yet, time has passed since 2013: political changes have taken place and, former positions have become less clear-cut.

One idea to tackle a delicate kidnapping situation would be for ministers to not systematically travel, with journalists and television crews, to welcome home those who have been released. This of course comes with good intentions, but the wide media coverage feeds the political notoriety of the kidnapping groups. This sends an ambiguous message to the hostage-takers: that the government refuses to negotiate, but is happy to send over its Minister of Foreign Affairs every time a hostage is released...

In addition to the stress that a kidnapping and a government’s political stance generate for an NGO, the situation is made even more complex by the fact that states, and particularly the major powers, do not all agree on the best strategies to adopt, and may end up manoeuvring in the shadows to break down negotiations that they disapprove of.

Refusing to pay ransoms is morally unsound

Quite unexpectedly, humanitarian action has become embroiled in the controversy surrounding the revelation of certain elements of what are now known as the “Snowden archives”.

In 2016, the daily newspaper Le Monde published a series of articles that refer to these archives, which must perturb NGOs: for example, certain NGOs had their emails intercepted (Médecins du Monde at the beginning of 2009). The archives also reveal the discord between the French, British and American secret services as regards how to manage hostage-taking, a phenomenon which humanitarian organisations sometimes have to face, but which fortunately is pretty rare.87

Though the payment of ransoms cannot become the norm, making non-payment an intangible rule is also a dangerous path to take. It can lead, as we have shown, to the long-term paralysis of international NGOs.

Growing security concerns

Kidnappings, when they are not the work of local thugs, clan leaders or warlords looking for easy money, have three main motives: to finance the military, to provide a bargaining tool for protection and/or to obtain the release of prisoners and, lastly, by means of the media coverage that surrounds them when they hit the media limelight, to influence public opinion by frightening the public or demonstrating the power of their group. The staged execution of hostages is the most shocking and revolting outcome of a kidnapping.

For all NGO leaders, security has become a major concern, which has gradually permeated all organisations, and led them to recruit security staff and bolster security procedures. Ten years on, Action contre la Faim (ACF) is still traumatised by the summary execution of seventeen members of its team in Muttur, Sri Lanka, during the bloody conflict between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. In this dramatic event, no hostages were taken in advance of the executions taking place and it is still unclear who ordered and committed the killings.

Some analysts believe that measures to tackle security concerns have gone far enough. They consider that such tragedies are bound to happen, considering the sharp increase in the number of crises and personnel deployed to the field, and that focussing on security is partly a result of a desire to dramatise NGOs and their work. These analysts are both right and wrong.

A breach of a moral contract

They are right, because as one of this book’s chapters shows, working in a series of particularly exposed countries: Syria, the Central African Republic, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, etc., has indeed become much more risky. Yet, in other countries, reliable studies, rare though they are, suggest unchanged levels of risk.

They are wrong, because they confuse the real incident statistics with the feeling of insecurity that sometimes leads NGOs to abandon their relief efforts in certain areas, though populations still desperately need them, particularly in high risk countries. These withdrawals therefore keep the figures low.

How can NGOs, whose work is so lauded that they often inadvertently become tools of foreign policy, agree to send volunteers to the field, knowing from the outset that the French government or one of its traditional allies will refuse to pay a ransom or even thwart the organisation trying to pay one? This would breach the moral contract that links an NGO to its actors. It would then be unable to demand the kind of funding that should go hand in hand with NGO involvement in particularly changing and dangerous situations.

Not only would this position be morally untenable, but it could also quickly lead to the judicialisation of certain situations that link volunteer families with their humanitarian employers. This could in turn make NGOs give up their work in most countries shaken by internal conflicts.

Political negligence

If organisations were to continue to risk conducting relief work and then fail to use their own resources to make ransom payments, armed groups would be left with only the visual power of executions to gain political leverage, or symbolic clout if their credo is based on jihad.

The Snowden archives have raised concerns for humanitarians at a time of ever-increasing international emergency aid needs. The cost of meeting these needs was relatively stable, at around 15 billion dollars, until 2010, but have almost doubled since then.

In some countries, while waiting for the political or military outcome of conflicts, the population is solely able to survive due to international aid. The ambiguity of governments’ “zero ransom” policy is therefore clear. It is as if they were saying: “go ahead, we are counting on you to help these people survive, and even though we are helping to fund the work you are undertaking in these countries, watch out, if anyone is kidnapped in these dangerous areas, we will refuse to provide the ransom money to have your staff member released.”

This could be seen as another step towards political negligence.

Confused roles

The joint position of Washington and London, which refuse to see ransom money used to acquire arms, is puzzling when one considers the legacy of the CIA in Afghanistan.

It was in this very country that the two countries financed a rebellion whose aim was to manipulate religious faith and jihad to fight the unreligious Soviet occupiers and turn Afghanistan into an intractable quagmire for the Red Army. But the plan somewhat backfired.

As described in the chapter on Afghanistan, it was again in this country that the international coalition, under US leadership, made extensive use of initiatives carried out by their armed forces but presented it as humanitarian work, to “win hearts and minds” through the “Provincial Reconstruction Team” mechanism. This blurred the line between humanitarianism and militarism, and contributed to confusion about the role played by NGO staff. It placed them in a difficult situation that went well beyond Afghan borders. With the age of the Internet and social media, the spread of information, like jihad, had become a global affair.

86. Cameroun: la famille de sept otages français libérée et “rendue aux autorités camerounaises”, Le Monde-Afrique, 19 April 2013. URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/04/19/cameroun-la-famille-de-sept-otages-francais-liberee-et-rendue-aux-autorites-camerounaises_3162698_3212.html. Consulted May 14 2020.

87. Jacques FOLLOROU, “Révélations Snowden: otages et rançons, le double jeu des alliés de la France”, Le Monde, 9/12/2016. URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/12/09/otages-et-rancons-double-jeu-entre-allies_5046041_4408996.html. Consulted May 14 2020.

3.
Emotion does not make a strategy: refusing random generosity

French NGOs have a long-standing relationship with the media, dating back to the birth of the “without borders” movement in Biafra, when they raised awareness of the famine there with a great deal of media coverage of doctors working in the affected areas.

At the time, they wanted to appeal to the public and get political decision-makers to lift the blockade that was having such dramatic consequences.

At that time, the main concern was to call the decision-makers to account and, indirectly, get the French population to rise up in protest against the blockade. They hoped that this rallying movement would pressurise the French government into using its influence as a member of the UN Security Council to facilitate access for aid workers and resolve the crisis through diplomatic channels. This strategy seemed to suit the French authorities perfectly at the time given their rivalry with Britain over access to Nigerian oil.

This awareness-raising strategy is still used today. However, not all crises benefit from the same level of media or public interest, and the public reaction to a crisis is unpredictable.

Over the years, with the increasing number of crises and the growth of large NGOs, communication has become increasingly important, playing a major role in fundraising. At a global level, private donations form a substantial proportion of annual funding for international humanitarian aid.

Communication for “marketing” purposes has now been added to “political” communication, and involves tools and processes that raise ethical questions.

Refugees: compassion yes, but not only compassion88

Compassion has its benefits, and helps to build power relations that lead to political outcomes. In the space of a few days in 2016, in Europe in general and in France in particular, there was a change in the governmental position on how to deal with refugees fleeing conflict zones, some of whom die during appalling journeys.

After years of harassing Afghan and Somali refugees in the “Calais Jungle”, following delegation of the task of stemming the flow of refugees from Eritrea, Yemen, Iraq and areas of violence and despair to more or less respectable North African governments, there was a sudden shift in the rhetoric and approach of European governments. A sense of compassion and benevolence is now clearly present in political leaders’ statements.

The power of the image, and its limits

This – temporary – shift in political rhetoric is partly the result of the media saturation that accompanied the death of a young Syrian child, whose photo hit world headlines. Little Aylan, whose lifeless body was found and photographed on a Turkish beach, suddenly presented the disturbing reality of the conflict that led his parents to risk the dangerous crossing.

However, there are limits to the compassion logic, which we should not lose sight of: it must not obscure the law and the application of legal texts, in particular those of 28 July 1951, which protect people who flee their countries because they fear for their lives. Isn’t this the case for a large majority of those who have massed at the gates of Europe since 2011?

The compassion logic shifts political decision making to an emotional level, making it optional, voluntary, and left to the free will of governments, which, once again, have shown their inability to unify around a much-needed international policy for the European Union.

People’s compassion and consequent generosity follows a logic of geographic gradients, from near to far. Because they die on our doorstep, the fate of Syrian children suddenly invites itself into our homes, challenging and disturbing us. It sways public opinion and forces governments towards greater solidarity and openness. This is a mechanism that humanitarians know well. Donors’ generosity is built upon and potentiated by proximity: such as Western tourists who experienced the effects of the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, the French West Indians and the diaspora moved by the tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and the mountaineers who regularly visit Nepal, which was also devastated by an earthquake in 2015. Geographic proximity is sometimes reinforced by a shared history with a particular country. Sometimes it is expressed via the delicate realm of religious solidarity; people might be particularly concerned about the fate of “Eastern Christians” or “Burmese Muslims”, following in the footsteps – even if the rhetoric is pretty controversial – of Samuel Huntington and his “clash of civilisations’ theories. But how many little Aylans are still dying every day in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, countries that are experiencing ongoing violence that is being ignored by prime time news stations? Syria is no longer of interest, since a large contingent of the international coalition troops have been withdrawn, which again breaks the link that fuels proximity, and therefore compassion.

Compassion is short-lived: the photo of Aylan blurs the image of the Yezedi exodus, which blurs the image of the displaced people of South Sudan, which erases the image of Haiti, which is actually still being rebuilt, just as our empathy for the people of Darfur or the DRC has faded. Yet all these tragedies are still continuing.

Compassion is an addictive phenomenon. To continue to be effective, to shift the lines, the dosage must be effective and strong. Even if it leads to a double standard: showing the bodies of Haitians caught in the earthquake, or those of Syrians washed up on the beaches, or those of Afghans suffocated in a truck, but not those of our fellow citizens who die in huge floods or a rail disaster.

Compassion distorts our memory. It polarises attention to a symptom, temporarily diverting our eyes from the etiological mechanisms that persist: those that throw thousands of endangered people onto the roads of, or seas bordering their own countries, to end up dying whilst escaping. To illustrate the ephemeral nature of compassionate solidarity, but also the gap it opens up for people’s and politicians’ subjectivity, the current chapter looks at a series of position papers I published in the French national press from 2010 to 2019.

Compassion is a key part of the humanitarian puzzle, but only when political and legal responsibility, and strategies for crisis resolution, are constantly re-evaluated. Compassion requires consistency and good memory, otherwise it is just a fleeting affair.

Whenever compassion is called for, preconceived ideas, feelings and oversimplification are given free rein. Journalists are no exception to this, and they sometimes become the instigators of such mechanisms .89 The case of Pakistan provides food for thought on this subject.

Pakistan: the “clash of civilisations” trap90

In the summer of 2010, Pakistan was hit by catastrophic floods that affected over ten million people. Pakistan has been an international relations hotbed due to its neighbouring conflicts with China and India since its independence, as well as the double standards it is often accused of in the Afghan conflict. The floods were widely covered by the media. In terms of the press treatment of the subject, in addition to a brief description of the situation, the French press emphasised the specific risk of the population’s distress being exploited by Pakistani Muslim NGOs. Some of these NGOs, the columnists wrote, could use the disaster to engage in a form of religious proselytising, which would play into the hands of the radical pro-Taliban movements.

Without wishing to be naive, it seems that, when faced with such huge disasters, there is something behind this kind of editorial position! During the earthquake in Haiti a few months earlier, was there the same kind of focus on the proselytising ulterior motives of NGOs, international or Haitian, with a religious element? Have Catholic organisations been accused of using strategies of conversion to “liberation theology” to help certain politicians seize power? Has the possibility been raised that North American evangelical churches could take advantage of the circumstances to strengthen their presence, to advocate a wait-and-see policy, or to lay the groundwork for a strategy that allows the US to dominate? When such scenarios have been presented, was it done in a similarly ostentatious and disturbing way?

Islam used as a bogeyman

Reducing Pakistan’s humanitarian response to being strictly about proselytizing or political motivation shows a bias that denies the realities of the field, or reflects a partial blindness to the historical vision of humanitarian action. It forgets that, in any disaster of this type, the first form of solidarity is humanity and local aid. The first hands that reach out to help are those of family, neighbours and the wider community. It forgets that Pakistan shares, with its neighbour and rival India, a large and active network of local NGOs, whose work and responsiveness have been praised, in particular by Jean-Maurice Ripert, the UN special envoy. Brandishing the bogeyman of radical Islam in this way disregards the fact that in France, and other Western countries, humanitarian action has been grounded in religious beliefs since the Knights of Malta, an example of this being the Red Cross, which has a cross on its logo (even if it denies this, arguing that it is just the Swiss flag with the colours inverted). It also forgets that the Biafran war at the end of the 1960s was also a complex conflict in which the victims of violence and famine – like the rescuers – were Christians, in a Nigeria that was predominantly animist and Muslim. It was during this Biafran conflict that the major Irish Christian NGO, Concern, was born.

Of course, in Pakistan, Lebanon or other Muslim countries, local NGOs may have strategies to “win hearts and minds”, to borrow a phrase they do not use but sometimes actualize. However, reducing their motives simply to political conquest ignores the universal right to compassion and denies otherness. It maintains the myth that only large international NGOs are pure, free of ulterior motive or capacity for manipulation.

Construing that manipulation is what motivates their work also maintains the idea, which may be mirrored by local observers who watch foreign NGOs provide relief in their countries, that they are nothing but power-hungry religious zealots. This creates the conditions for international NGO staff to be suspected of the same proselytist and political motives and to be the targets of attacks.

Aquarius, a symbolic vessel which failed twice91

What happened with the rescue ship Aquarius provides an illustration of the potential impact of a situation in which the boundaries of compassion have been tested. The image of little Aylan had faded and political reasoning had taken over. The rescue and reception of migrants crossing the Mediterranean had once again become an issue of domestic politics, while the media saturation about the ship’s fate obscured elements of international law.

The boat, chartered by SOS Méditerranée, hit the headlines throughout the summer of 2018, and constantly reminded us that the flow of migrants does not stop in summertime: on the contrary, it is the “high season” for smugglers taking advantage of calmer and less fearsome seas to convince potential migrants to attempt a crossing presented as less perilous.

However, though media hype is a salutary way of tackling public and political indifference, the press cannot really focus on the details of the procrastination that took place over where the boat, full as it was of undesirable passengers, would be released. The media ended up simply relaying European politicians’ migration-related bravado, which was unacceptably off point. The Aquarius was symbolic of current problems with international law and the collapse of a political Europe.

Politics has clearly drifted away from the texts of international law, in particular the text formalising the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951. Let us recall some of its provisions.

Article 1 states that “[...] the term “refugee” shall apply to any person [...] who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

Article 14 states: “Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries.”

The convention was written at the end of the Second World War, in a world in which only fifty or so states were part of the United Nations when it was created, a world traumatised by mass extermination. A world that had legislated on the basis of the political borders in place in the middle of the 20th century. Today, the world comprises 193 recognised states, whose borderlines have multiplied exponentially. Each border crossing may activate the mechanisms defined by the 1951 Convention. It is worth wondering whether this increase, particularly the expansion to the populations of former colonies or protectorates, contradicts its initial protective ambitions?

There is no doubt about the legal framework, though. Yet, it is the way in which the European Union member states are ineffectively and irrationally dealing with the situation that is turning migration policy into a sinking boat without a trajectory or captain. Faced with the wandering of the Aquarius, old Europe showed its inability to remember the sinister events that occurred on its soil and which led to the formalisation of refugee rights. Member State leaders believe that migration policy can simply be left to the compassion, appreciation, goodwill and “generosity” of each European State. This approach disguises the fact that asylum policy is a matter of law, and political consistency. Statistics are unfortunately drawn up which lump together the realities of Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, the DRC, Mali, etc. despite the stark differences and condense the issue to a depersonalised global stat: total number of migrants, taken out of context, reduced to worrying units of measurement that have to be shared out between host countries.

In 2017, approximately 65 million people had been “forcibly displaced” from their homes. Official statistics show that Europe has welcomed around 1.8 million migrants since 2015. This figure is impressive. But it is important to understand that two-thirds of these forcibly displaced people have remained within their own countries, and that almost 20 million have been welcomed to countries other than Europe, the vast majority in states bordering war zones. The political rhetoric, which is aimed at fuelling the sense of a massive invasion, forgets to mention that only 4% of the total population of a European Union of 510 million inhabitants are foreign.

How can we believe in the future of a Europe, which, on such a concrete and urgent human issue, is not capable of speaking and acting with one voice in order to play its part in a peaceful and equitable manner to remedy the misfortunes of the world?

Solidarity with the Sea Watch captain92

A year later, in the summer of 2019, the Aquarius was threatened with seizure by the Italian authorities on the spurious pretext of defective wastewater management, and was subsequently impounded. Another rescue ship, the Sea Watch, was also targeted.

Having decided to force entry into Italian territorial waters to disembark migrants whose health was in danger, Carola Rackete, captain of the Sea Watch, was arrested on arrival in Lampedusa. She dared to defy a government that had flouted the fundamental principles of rescue and first reception of migrants. She consequently saved Europe’s lost honour. She challenged the blind every-man-for-himself policy of Dublin and the hypocritical agreements, entrusting countries on the margins of the EU with the task of carrying out, on behalf of all Europeans, inhuman and often fatal migration policies.

This arrest was the latest episode in a series of measures implemented over several months to block NGOs involved in helping migrants.

In the history of European politics, NGOs have had a well-established and commonly accepted role as a counter-power to government policy-making. Yet, despite being essential to democracy, and a key counter-power in the field of migration and asylum applications, substantial efforts have been made to undermine NGOs’ work.

Wherever populism takes hold, political leaders are well aware that a section of the public is now seduced by anti-foreigner rhetoric, which deliberately muddies explanations as to why migrants feel forced to flee their homeland.

Moreover, governments are using an increasing assortment of threats and intimidatory measures to undermine NGO work: in 2016, Frontex accused Save the Children (a British NGO) of complicity with smugglers; ordinary people have been taken to court for helping migrants cross borders (in Calais or the Roya Valley for instance); The French Minister of the Interior accused French NGOs of similar “crimes”; the Italian government accused Pia Klemp, another NGO rescue boat captain, of “aiding and abetting illegal immigration”; and of course the aforementioned forced immobilisation of the Aquarius whose only real objective was to interrupt the rescue operations carried out by SOS Méditerranée...

From the crime of solidarity to the denial of humanity

All these strategies constitute repeated attacks on the main principle of International Humanitarian Law (IHL): humanity. At the end of the 2010s, the number of attacks aimed at undermining the ethical and legal foundations of this universal principle, began to grow.

It is in the name of a common humanity that free citizens, acting individually or grouped together in associations, are justified in reaching out to help foreigners fleeing their homeland to seek help, often risking their lives to do so. This Other, despite what separates us, is a part of ourselves.

Carola Rackete’s arrest was unacceptable:

It flouted maritime law.

It flouted the 1951 Refugee Convention.

It flouted the principle of humanity.

88. P. MICHELETTI, “Réfugiés: la compassion oui, mais pas seulement”, Le Monde, May 2016.

89. A.-C. Robert, « La stratégie de l’émotion », Lux, 2018..

90. P. MICHELETTI, “Pakistan: le piège du choc des civilisations”, Libération, 17 August 2010.

91. P. MICHELETTI, “Aquarius, figure symbolique d’une double défaillance”. Le Monde, 24 August 2018.

92. Collectif, “Solidarité avec la capitaine du Sea Watch”, Le Monde, 2 July 2019.

4.
Sources of funding: choosing a side

Today’s global economic model has led to crucial issues as regards international solidarity. There are a certain number of indicators which shed light on what is known as the “global humanitarian ecosystem”. Four criteria are particularly important: overall international solidarity income, its source (private/governmental funds), and the characteristics of donor and recipient countries. These criteria enable observers to understand the humanitarian “process” and its major trends and interpret donors’ geographical priorities and the motives behind them.

With regard to income, it is important to note that donor countries can specifically earmark contributions for particular situations (earmarked funds), or they can be put into a common pot of “non-earmarked” funds, which each organisation working in the field can use as it sees fit. The above distinction obviously affects humanitarian organisations’ freedom to deploy aid as they wish, and, as a result, affects their independence of action. In their economic model, international NGOs pay attention to this factor as well as another financial indicator: the ratio of funds received from private donations to those from governments or intergovernmental agencies (European Union, specialised UN agencies) which varies according to the NGO. Some are essentially financed by government funds, some by a variety of funders, while others, such as Médecins sans Frontières-France, prefer private funding, and the political and operational independence it offers.

The reality is considerably more complex as no source of funding is completely free of constraints. Each organisation therefore needs to try to keep some degree of control over the constraints that it is willing to accept, rather than hope to achieve a form of utopian independence.

In their quest for private funding, NGOs must take into account the fickle nature of individual donors, who may care about one country and not another, or prefer one type of humanitarian crisis to another. In the process, in order to encourage donations, NGOs can end up having a rather simplistic relationship with donors in terms of how they describe the causes of a conflict. Ethical questions may emerge about how the Other is represented, and it can be tempting to reduce the potential beneficiaries of aid to a simplistic visual representation. Of course, marketing departments are under pressure to do their utmost to generate private donations, which are essential to enable them to operate independently.

The ratio of state to private funding raises a crucial political question for humanitarian organisations: is it the responsibility of governments and multilateralism to launch major humanitarian relief efforts, or can NGOs rely on private individuals’ generosity and compassion, which are inherently optional and variable?

Government funds: largely dominant but driven by state interest

An estimated $29 billion was allocated to humanitarian aid in 2018, an almost identical sum to the previous year. However, though the total sum had considerably changed since 2015, its funding sources remained relatively stable: ¾ government funds, ¼ private funds, a large proportion of which came from individual donations.

International humanitarian aid 2014-2018:

Amounts committed (in billions of dollars) and breakdown of funding sources between public funds (governments and European institutions) and private funds (as a % of spending).93

In recent years, there has been a recurrent discrepancy between the funds requested by the United Nations in its annual coordinated appeals to respond to crisis situations, and the contributions actually obtained from governments.

UN Annual Coordinated Appeals 2009-2018:

Sums requested and raised, in absolute terms and as a percentage of requested sums.94

The above graph shows the amount of government funding considered necessary by the UN each year and is an assessment of financial needs for ongoing crises at the time of the annual appeal, excluding new emergencies. Needs almost tripled from 2009 to 2018, from almost $10 billion to $28 billion. Over this ten year period, and in a relatively consistent way, only 60% of the sums required were actually obtained from the contributing states.

Therefore – as illustrated earlier – private donors’ generosity levels tend to be variable because they are subjective and based on emotion, which may seriously affect the sums raised. State funding responses may also depend on the contexts that lead the UN and NGOs to submit financial requests. This all leads to considerable funding uncertainty.

In 2018, the coordinated financial appeal included 34 separate financial requests for 29 countries, some of which were eligible for national or regional response plans (RRPs). The table below details the amounts requested in the annual consolidated appeal.

Eligible states

Sums requested (In millions of $)

% obtained /requested

Senegal

17

45%

Indonesia

51

48%

Philippines

61

24%

Burkina Faso

90

66%

North Korea

111

24%

Mauritania

116

63%

Pakistan

123

62%

Burundi

142

55%

Myanmar

183

77%

Ukraine

187

39%

Haïti

252

13%

Libye

313

25%

Cameroon

320

44%

Mali

330

56%

Niger

338

64%

Central African Republic

516

49%

Palestine

540

46%

Chad

544

53%

Iraq

569

89%

Afghanistan

599

78%

Bangladesh

951

69%

Sudan

1 008

54%

Nigeria

1 048

67%

Ethiopia

1 177

56%

Somalia

1 543

56%

RDC

1 675

46%

South Sudan

1 718

68%

Yemen

3 108

85%

Syria

3 364

65%

Syria RRP

5 609

52%

Nigeria RRP

157

50%

Burundi RRP

391

37%

RDC RRP

547

37%

South Sudan RRP

1 379

50%

UN coordinated financial appeal: eligible states, requested sums and percentage received, 2018.95

Clearly, the sums requested by UN agencies vary greatly according to which country is requesting aid. This in turn leads to very variable generosity on the part of contributing states: for example, 89% of the sum requested is obtained for Iraq, 67% for Nigeria (these are countries which trigger substantial responses) compared to 24% for the Philippines and North Korea. The “coverage rate” is clearly not in line with the sums hoped for. Haiti was expecting $252 million and obtained a mere 13% of the hoped for sum, in Yemen the needs were estimated at $3.1 billion, 85% of which were covered.

As a reminder, the following graph shows, in absolute terms, which 20 countries are the largest aid contributors. This data, in a different format, is also discussed in Chapter 4 of this book.

The 20 largest contributors to international humanitarian aid: governments and European institutions, in 2018.96

Turkey’s situation is atypical as its international solidarity budget is almost exclusively used to provide relief for Syrian refugees in Turkey itself, for which it has received financial support from the European Union since 2016, due to it being linked to a “migration agreement” programme. The Turkish president does not hesitate to use this situation to pressure European states, threatening, when disputes arise, to “turn on the migration tap”. In 2020, EU-Turkey tensions over the Libyan and Syrian situations illustrated the use of this pressure tactic by the Turkish government at a time when Europe was facing a rise in xenophobic attitudes and identity-based views within the electorate.

Of the $20 billion in government funds in 2018, three quarters went to multilateral organisations, in particular the UN specialised agencies. A quarter went to international NGOs and 1/10 went to the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. A proportion of the sums initially allocated to UN agencies is then passed on to NGOs. These payments come on top of government funds paid directly to NGOs and funding from their private donors.

A large proportion of the government funds (83%) allocated to UN agencies are “earmarked” funds, i.e. their geographical and sometimes thematic destination is specified before payment by the funding State, according to its priorities. It is worth noting that, in the case of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 100% of the funding received is earmarked, demonstrating, in terms of the now very sensitive issue of migratory flows, the eagerness of funders to explicitly influence the agency’s priorities.97

Private funds: freedom at a price

Each year about a quarter of the money raised for humanitarian crises comes from private sources. More than 85% of these funds come from the public via campaigns launched by large international NGOs. The money can also come from large foundations and corporate sponsorship. UNICEF and the Red Cross movement also appeal to private donors, but NGOs have always been the main sources of this private funding, which means that two observations can be made about the place of “civil society” in the overall economic model of international humanitarian aid. NGOs contribute almost a quarter of the overall annual aid budget, and have done so consistently over the last five years. They provide between 35 and 40% of the annual sum devoted to field projects (which comes from private donations and funds from governments and UN agencies). As it stands, NGOs, which are able to operate thanks to the free association of citizens, have a major responsibility as international relations stakeholders in global humanitarian crises. A later chapter will return to this issue to highlight the challenges and limitations of this situation.

To understand the economic model of international NGOs, it is important to know that the income – from public and private funds – they receive, has three destinations: most goes to fund programmes in the field (generally more than 90%); some goes to headquarter operating costs, which cannot be directly attributed to the project (general administrative and structural costs); and finally, a proportion goes towards communication and marketing for fundraising, to enable more projects to be launched.

A small fraction of government funding enables NGOs to meet the following final two categories of expenditure, which are not directly linked to deployment of field projects, but which are absolutely key to running the organisation. In international administrative jargon, these overheads, which supervisors manage according to their own needs, amount to between 5 and 15% of the sums allocated to a project, depending on the governmental funding body. The money is theoretically earmarked for management and overheads, but nothing prevents it from being used for field programmes. These overheads therefore constitute, along with private donations, a very important source of funding for NGOs. Furthermore, this “non-earmarked” income allows NGOs to maintain a certain degree of freedom to choose where they wish to provide aid...

Although this mechanism meets the economic needs of large NGOs, it does have two major pitfalls. The first is that, in order to save as much money as possible on overheads, which can then be redirected towards “forgotten” crises, organisations may have to cut their management expenses, often payroll, with potential human and social consequences for their staff. The second pitfall comes about when NGOs exaggerate their provisional overheads, which makes them more dependent on government funds in terms of the overall balance of funding. They might also take on too many projects given the technical, IT, human or legal resources available to them. In the process, though their initial aim may have been to gain freedom of action via increased funding for overheads, they end up exposing themselves to greater financial, operational and, ultimately, political dependence on the donor countries, which end up acting as their mentors. Donor governments then become the main providers of “non-earmarked” funds, and might request to be consulted on the projects they are prepared to support, which then increases the technocratic burden for NGOs. This type of funding forces NGOs to go through complex procedures to account for the public funding they receive. It also means that they have to abide by the aforementioned anti-terrorist laws.

So NGO funding, whether public or private, is a complex issue. Every type of funding has its pitfalls, constraints and possible ethical, legal, security and social problems, far removed from the simple, generous and supportive image of humanitarian action. At the heart of the global humanitarian machinery are powerful political forces and hazardous paths that leaders must face realistically. In their relationship with the powers around them, whatever happens, NGOs will never be completely free from external manipulation and its potential dangers.

93. Development initiatives, op.cit., p. 32.

94. Ibid., p. 33.

95. Ibid., p. 34.

96. Ibid., p. 36.

97. Development initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance, report 2018, Figure 4.8: Earmarked and unearmarked international humanitarian assistance 2013-2017, p. 52.

Part IV
Preserving the ability to act:The political moment

War and humanitarian action have the same DNA and one leads to the other, with violence the common denominator. However, humanitarian organisations believe that it is possible, even during an armed conflict, to set limits on the use of force, though in this regard, reality often overrides hope

Conflicts in 2015 (National and International Level)

Source: Heidelberg institute for international conflict research, 2016 barometer.

Since the Second World War and the genocide of Jews and Gypsies, through the Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols, and the 1951 Refugee Convention, IHL has attempted to establish a normative framework aimed at protecting civilian populations. Numerous recent conflicts have shown that these agreements are not actually very effective at protecting people: the Vietnam War is a dramatic example of the high civilian death tolls which have become characteristic of recent conflicts. There was little international humanitarian mobilization in Vietnam, unlike the Biafra war, which took place at the same time. The differentiated approach to these two conflicts by humanitarian actors represented a kind of double standard. As soon as a war involves the major powers, the application of the Geneva Conventions is compromised, and, during the Vietnam War, the Hanoi government, supported by the USSR and China, did not for example allow the ICRC to visit American prisoners.

The previous chapters have shown us that none of the three main families of humanitarian actors, whose remit is to bring relief to the victims of war, can totally evade the considerable tension that has existed since the battle of Solferino, between the warring factions’ politics and the humanitarian imperative. Armed conflict is one way of regulating international relations, while the progressive introduction of International Humanitarian Law has sought to humanize war and ultimately protect civilian populations. Yet, the Red Cross movement, international NGOs, and the UN all seem to want to instrumentalise politics to a certain degree. The three types of organisations may have behaved ambiguously in the past and thus cast doubt on the intangible and universal character of the principles of neutrality and independence, which justify their interventions in conflict areas.

This ambiguity came to light in Syria when doubts emerged about the Syrian Red Crescent’s ability to help the victims of the warring groups, while the Red Crescent Society in Qatar, a country whose leaders support the opponents of the Syrian regime, and which is itself present on the ground without having been officially invited, is accused of supporting armed opposition groups. These two national societies, members of the same organisation, but auxiliaries of their home governments, do not respect the NGO’s principles and end up spoiling its image and undermining the security of ICRC teams.98 The multi-form international NGOs find themselves in ambiguous situations during field operations when some but not all distance themselves from their respective governments’ political positions. Members of the same NGO family might not always see eye to eye and conflict can arise. For instance, during the Kosovo war, a dispute within the MSF international network led to the exclusion of MSF Greece for its pro-Serbian positions, which were in line with its own government’s positions.99 This kind of confusion between politics and humanitarian considerations may even affect the United Nations in war-torn areas like Libya, where the UN representative gives in to pressure from the major powers by favouring one of the two clans fighting for control of the country and its oil wealth100: it’s a return of “The Biafran syndrome”... People need to be wary of politicians’ attempts to steer humanitarian action. The field coordinators, under the banner of the United Nations, intimately link the image of all the NGOs involved, which the warring factions might consider as one bloc. When one of the organisations is found to be lacking neutrality or independence, particularly when it is linked to the UN, the credibility of all the organisations is at stake.

This desire for control has taken on a new guise in recent years, with regard to the question of financing. Since the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in the United States, international politics, under American leadership, has imposed drastic anti-terrorist laws. Today, these laws have a truly harmful impact in conflict areas where relief efforts are funded by governments, and it is time that that the alarm is raised.

Politically speaking, the first challenge is therefore to question the amount of funding currently provided, where it comes from and how it is used. This will help with assessing whether there is a risk of manipulation and deviation from core NGO principles. NGOs are already focusing on these questions, yet in an insufficiently coordinated and proactive manner. These anti-terrorist laws therefore need to be examined in a more critical fashion.

And this kind of analysis leads us to question another assumption: the “international community” and, in particular, multilateral actors, seem to have resigned themselves to the limited fund-raising capacity of governments. As has been highlighted in previous chapters, each year, nearly 40% of the sums requested by the United Nations during coordinated appeals are not received, despite the increasing number of major and prolonged crises.

Questioning the “humanitarian system” model as it functions today, and the actors who compose it, also means facing the fact that this model has largely been designed, financed and implemented by organisations from, or close to, Western countries. Without saying that humanitarian organisations are ipso facto foreign policy tools of their country of origin, it is important to note that the virtual monopoly of European and North American NGOs no longer corresponds to the reality of the political, scientific and financial power that characterises the world. This situation is no longer acceptable, and needs to be tackled, with the long-term aim of directing more funds to national and local organisations, and leaving more room for the powerful NGOs from emerging countries.

The policy ideas put forward in this book are particularly crucial for the African continent. Africa has a number of issues, some of which are cause for concern. Although contexts vary greatly from one country to another, the continent as a whole deserves close attention and the continued mobilisation of the humanitarian sector. The annual figures clearly prove that humanitarian crises deteriorate in places where poverty is rife. Africa, with its great diversity of physical, political, cultural and economic realities, brings together a number of worrying risk factors. Several countries combine poverty, environmental degradation and risks with poor governance, making the African continent the backdrop for many conflicts.

Another problem is that the “global humanitarian ecosystem”, whose architecture, complexities and ambiguities we have highlighted, has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has had a great impact on its financial and organisational structures.

All this analysis has led to a set of ten recommendations aimed at tackling the many obstacles faced by humanitarians, some of which result from the heterogeneity of the NGO sector. This book proposes ideas to reform the whole system. Such a reform is essential to maintain an authentic, effective and optimal capacity to act freely and avoid seeing aid subordinated to the political manipulation of the major powers.

98. Lema Luis, “Syrie, le grand malaise humanitaire”, Le Temps, Genève, 6 February 2013. URL: https://www.letemps.ch/monde/syrie-grand-malaise-humanitaire. Consulted May 14 2020.

99. J.-M. KINDERMANS, “Médecins sans frontières s’explique”, MSF internal document, 9/12/99. URL: file:///C:/Users/Pierre%20M/Downloads/19991209%20MSF%20Intl%20Press%20release_0.pdf. Consulted May 14 2020.

100. Pierre HASKI, “La démission accEtats-Unis d’Amériquetrice de l’émissaire de l’ONU en Libye”, France Inter, Géopolitique, 3 March 2020. URL: https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/geopolitique/geopolitique-03-mars-2020. Consulted May 14 2020.

1.
The global financial model is not a dogma

Large international NGOs’ business models raise crucial questions about their governance, independence and neutrality, but also about their social and managerial practices.

Today, NGO executives must cope with constant challenges, and be fully aware of the complex game in which their organisations are placed, caught between ethical considerations, instrumentalising powers, major security risks, against a backdrop of sometimes massive, often long-lasting humanitarian crises. Since 2010, the funds requested by the United Nations have almost tripled to cope with the accumulation of serious humanitarian situations. Furthermore, aid requirements have significantly increased since 2015 with, in addition to the Syrian and Iraqi crises, continuing serious crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Somalia, and major new crises in Yemen, South Sudan and Bangladesh...

To face this upsurge in need, NGOs continue to contribute almost a quarter of the world’s aid resources. Is this funding situation acceptable? Does it make sense for the general public, mainly OECD citizens, to play such a role? That NGOs bear such responsibility? That they accept a model that raises a host of social, political and ethical questions, without fundamentally challenging it? That they are constantly walking a tightrope between the strategic interests behind major states’ government funding and the somewhat questionable logic behind humanitarian marketing, which doesn’t differ greatly from the consumerism of today’s globalised economy?

As mentioned in previous chapters, the deployment and humanitarian response capacity of international NGOs is hindered in many ways: certain combatant groups have begun viewing NGOs differently and suspecting them of being the “soft power” tools of the main donor states. Moreover, tribal or religious radicalism may combine to prevent often vital aid from reaching its targets. This is all worsened by the new anti-terrorism laws.

This leads us to a final point, which should now be the focus of attention for NGOs, and other humanitarian actors, including UN agencies and the International Red Cross movement. They all need to thoroughly re-examine the global economic model of humanitarian aid and come up with logical avenues for reform and advocacy. To have any chance of success of boosting funding and changing its origins and the way it is deployed, humanitarian actors must form strong and determined alliances.

Not accepting the current funding situation

LNGOs cannot continue to blindly accept what contributing governments describe as generous levels of funding that they cannot possibly increase: 20 billion dollars from states is neither a colossal nor an unsustainable amount, when military spending reached a whopping 1.80 trillion dollars in 2018101 and is steadily rising.

In 2018, 200 million people were in need of assistance due to conflicts with multiple causes and mechanisms. Since the Solferino massacre in 1859, the face of war has changed and the main victims of armed confrontations are now civilians. Furthermore, an echo of this contemporary reality of war is seen in the 70 million people who have fled their homelands. Yet, the community of nations says that it cannot raise more than 1% of its military expenditure to address the world’s woes. This is shocking! And it’s left up to NGOs to fill the gap...

To put it differently, devoting 20 billion dollars of public funds to humanitarian aid means trying to cope with all the world’s emergencies with 10% of the sum spent by France on its own health sector.

Can we honestly solve all the world’s crises with a mere 8% of the funding that the US spends on medicines alone? The US, despite being the world’s largest contributor of aid in absolute terms, only comes seventeenth, behind Belgium, when its contribution is viewed as a percentage of its GDP, i.e. 0.03%. By the same token, France, the world’s eighth largest economy, has dropped out of the top 20 contributors.

NGOs simply cannot stand idly by and watch the UN’s coordinated fundraising appeals only raise 60% of the sums deemed necessary. They must be aware of the power and responsibility conferred upon them due to their operational capacity (almost 40% of annual funds are utilised by their teams) and their role in attracting private funds (for example, in 2019, they received almost a quarter of the annual 29 billion dollar aid budget). No mean feat!

Over the past five years, and despite a sharp increase in humanitarian spending, they have increased their contribution to aid in equal proportions in terms of income to the major powers!

They have been able to attain this increased funding potential through the dedication of their teams, and extreme rigour in administrative cost management, but have sometimes had to employ rather “neo-liberal” social and managerial practices, which themselves are said by some to have triggered some of the world’s crises…

They have thus accepted the idea that it is appropriate for citizens, through donations and other forms of contribution, to be called upon to help the victims of the worst political behaviour and environmental degradation, which knows no borders.

For example, the Sahel people are innocent victims of the drought that is affecting their region, just like those living in coastal areas in the Philippines or Bangladesh are not responsible for rising sea levels.

It is therefore unacceptable to believe that humanitarian responses to such situations are optional, and should be left to NGOs’ marketing know-how and the variable-geometry compassion of a public bombarded with appeals for donations. This paradox often means that NGOs, in order to respond to emergencies, can’t analyse the intimate mechanisms behind a crisis, and have to focus on triggering people’s instinctive, emotional generosity.

Consequently, and despite the fact that these marketing techniques have no other purpose than to generate more funding to do more, NGOs cannot go on accepting this situation. They must join forces to renegotiate their relations with government funders and thus avoid any unethical behaviour in the search for private funding. They must oppose donor states’ pressure to reduce their operating costs, and its potential impact on their social, salary and managerial practices.

The anti-terrorism law trap

Another thing NGOs should not accept, from these same donor governments, is finding themselves in a position in which they derogate from their principles of neutrality and independence, by obeying a ban on contact with rebel (terrorist) groups, even though negotiating with them can be crucial to gaining access to the populations under their control and, as far as possible, safeguarding NGO staff on the ground.

NGOs must join forces to resist the rising number of technocratic, IT and cost accounting procedures, which are reaching Kafkaesque levels. They must continue to refuse to provide lists of the beneficiaries of aid to their funders, under the guise of security protocol. They are forced to carry out compulsory, and sometimes repetitive, screening of their employees, service providers and partners in order to receive government funding. In strict compliance with French legislation, they use computer software created in accordance with anti-terrorist laws.

This administrative burden is carried out to the detriment of other work required to operate effectively in today’s complex and often extremely risky terrain. Using the tax argument in their respective countries, NGOs must hold the governments that fund them accountable, and push them to justify costly administrative procedures to the public, as well as to the potential beneficiaries of aid. Governments must be made to prove that the technocratic measures that have been imposed have been decided democratically by the taxpayers of their countries.

Don’t forget development aid

A financial analysis of this situation points to yet another contradiction to which political decision-makers, at the behest of NGOs, must find answers. Crises are most likely to occur where there is poverty or extreme poverty. As soon as a country experiences a humanitarian crisis, emergency funding rises, and might sometimes reach 30% of the overall annual international aid received by a fragile country. Yet, clearly, emergency aid does not automatically boost the resources allocated to proper long-term development policymaking. On the contrary, it can disrupt local economic circuits and stimulate corruption. In such cases, it may prevent structural and social problems from being effectively taken into consideration by the national political decision-makers of countries in crisis. This creates the conditions for a never-ending cycle of poverty – humanitarian crisis – decline in development aid – poverty – humanitarian crisis…

Are all crises equally important?

Understandably, private donations vary considerably according to people’s feelings about the crisis and how close they feel culturally to where and why it is happening. But strangely, the financial data show that the same is true for states. They are guided by their geostrategic and economic interests and, especially now, by the dual concern of having to welcome migratory influxes and pacify countries that are hotbeds of international terrorism.

As a result, more than 80% of government funds are channelled to countries chosen by donor states. NGOs, which receive a percentage of these funds, have to go with the flow: those NGOs whose economic model is essentially based on public funds clearly appear to be the implementers and tools of the foreign policy of donor countries. As detailed previously, this situation leads them to appear, in the eyes of the warring parties, as if they are working to the advantage of the countries that support them financially. Some armed groups particularly disapprove of this apparent cosy relationship.

To conclude on the instability of the global economic model, it is important to highlight another way in which large NGOs’ interventions and financial management are undermined.

Apart from major crises, which are the subject of primary political attention (Syria, Yemen, etc.), only a small proportion of the funding provided by governments is multi-year funding. The facts show that today’s crises have two main characteristics: major crises are either concentrated in a few countries (Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, etc.) or spread over time (Palestine, Afghanistan, Haiti, etc.), so multi-year funding is absolutely essential and forms an important area of advocacy for the major international NGOs to work on together.

The resources that are currently being allocated to help populations facing humanitarian crises are clearly insufficient, so new sources of funding, or even new approaches must be proposed. The response to conflict-generated humanitarian crises, as well as the strengthening of the “humanitarian system” as a whole, can no longer be reduced to voluntary contributions from current donor states.

The major international NGOs are almost exclusively from OECD countries, the vast majority of which are European or North American. This shows the extent to which humanitarianism is insufficiently open to organisations from other countries, even though this would have beneficial operational, financial and political implications. The humanitarian system, which essentially mandates western NGOs, with a large proportion of their funding coming from Western countries or their historical allies, needs to be cross-fertilised. This observation combined with an analysis of the list of conflict areas where international humanitarian action is deployed, definitely raises suspicions.

0.03% of the world’s Gross National Income!

Examining the economic model of international humanitarian aid isn’t simply a question of listing the money needed and where it is spent. The sources of funding, its origins, the conditions imposed by funders, and the priorities for allocating it are also key issues. These decisions reflect political logic, inter-state power relations, and counter terrorism strategies. The description and analysis of financial data have therefore been a major part of this book. The data go beyond the rhetoric of compassion and reveal more ambiguous mechanisms. They indicate urgent avenues for change.

As it stands today, the financing of international humanitarian aid has three major drawbacks:

– It fails to raise enough money to cover the needs identified each year by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

– It limits humanitarian aid and exposes it to various forms of subordination to the political will of a few countries that largely dominate, through their voluntary contributions, to the annual funding package.

– It transfers responsibility for finding additional funding to the main international NGOs. It therefore leads these NGOs to commercialise their mission, in an incessant quest to boost performance and reduce operating costs, and to depend on the generosity of private donors.

Therefore, to overcome the above-mentioned obstacles, we need to abandon the idea of voluntary funding by a very limited number of countries.

More than 100 countries form part of the high-income group as defined by the World Bank. Together, they generated a massive $80 trillion of Gross National Income in 2018102. So think about it…if each of these countries contributed just 0.03% of its GNI, it would cover all the money needed to address international humanitarian crises every year. The United Nations must therefore be persuaded to introduce a system of compulsory contributions from the countries in this group, to top up the annual funding package made available to the various humanitarian actors.

This would include the leading donors today, i.e. the US and the EU in particular, but also Russia, China and Brazil, to name but a few of the countries among the existing or emerging major powers currently making an insignificant contribution. The case of Russia is particularly emblematic of the imbalance that prevails today. This major power, a member of the Security Council and politically involved in many major conflicts, contributes 0.3% of the funding mobilised for emergency aid in the world each year. Yet, the way this funding package is distributed should be entrusted to an independent entity, one that is not linked to a particular member of the Security Council, in order to prevent humanitarian action from being manipulated and/or politicised by means of the choice of countries and crises taken into consideration.

101. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Les dépenses militaires mondiales augmentent et s’élèvent à 1800 milliards de dollars en 2018”, press release, 29 April 2019. URL: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/milex_press_release_fre.pdf. Consulté le 14 mai 2020.

102. World Bank data, GNI per country. URL: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/NY.GNP.MKTP.CD. Consulted June 16 2020.

2.
Breaking free of the Western NGO monopoly103

Since 2002, the majority of international humanitarian aid, in financial terms, has been directed towards countries in conflict. Yet, there are now situations in which warring parties act as if they don’t care about humanitarian principles. Since the 1990s, certain armed groups have been ignoring IHL because of their cultural and/or political interpretation of humanitarian action. Humanitarians are perceived as having a religious bias (anti-Sunni, pro-Christian or pro-Shiite) and as colluding with the governments of the countries where they are headquartered. Humanitarian organisations’ alleged positions are then used to justify the violence against them that they are considered to deserve. These observations are put forward by those who see a clear link between the identity of the NGO and the geographical characteristics of the conflict location. The chapter on aid by country has clearly shown how state donor responsiveness varies according to the location of the war.

Aid goes mainly to Muslim countries

These suspicions are reinforced if the location of the most serious humanitarian crises is analysed. By 2007, seven of the ten countries that receive the most humanitarian aid were Muslim. In 2012, the six countries, also Muslim, that received the most humanitarian funding were, in descending order: Syria, Sudan, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. More recent developments have added Iraq and Yemen to this list.

The Syrian conflict, its consequent extension to Iraq, and the Islamic State fighters’ aim of creating a “caliphate” have created a new fault line between some Western countries and the ultra-radical fighters operating in this region whose credo is Jihad. There are often several rival armed groups operating, whose composition and alliances vary. Territory might only be controlled fleetingly and all this means that analysing the conflict and the multiple “front lines” becomes a complex affair. Humanitarians now work in a “leopard-skin” manner, where each spot is controlled by a distinct group of combatants and evolves in a volatile way, through armed operations. The “borderless humanitarian movement” is therefore faced with a double set of “new borders”: a transnationalisation of conflicts (armed groups do not recognise the borders inherited from decolonisation) and the emergence of micro territories defended by distinct armed groups. With whom should NGOs negotiate access to needy populations in this mosaic of actors? What level of respect can be expected from a verbal agreement, given by a leader whose exact role, reliability and actual position in an illegible chain of command is unknown? Therefore, assessing the level of security has become a constant balancing act and a matter of intuition, in which the skills of an NGO’s national teams and managers, its network of contacts and its participation in coordination meetings with the ICRC and UN agencies are imperative.

Increasing insecurity for humanitarians

Access to Aleppo denied, repeated kidnapping of staff in Somalia or Nigeria, and evacuation of teams in the Central African Republic... In today’s major crises, warring factions do not respect International Humanitarian Law (IHL). During the conflicts in Afghanistan and Yemen in 2016, the bombing of hospitals, clearly identified as venues for crucial humanitarian work, might even have been decided upon by the US and Saudi commands. The courts will decide whether they were genuine war crimes or not. However, Islamist radicalism is definitely not the only force behind violent attacks. The naval blockade of Yemen, in force in 2020, involves ships sold by France to Saudi Arabia, and maintained by them.

The number of violent attacks on humanitarian workers has doubled in ten years (1997-2008), mainly because of incidents in a group of particularly exposed countries: Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Chad. In absolute terms, the number of victims has continued to rise since 2008, peaking in 2013, when 474 victims were recorded, and then a relative decline in 2014 to 329 victims (121 deaths, 88 injuries and 120 kidnappings). Almost all of these events took place in a limited number of countries (in descending order): Afghanistan, Syria, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Pakistan.

2018 data on insecurity shows a steady increase, since 2009104

Insecurity, major incidents, 2009-2018

In 2018, there were 405 victims of violence, over the course of 226 attacks. 131 people were killed, 144 injured and 130 kidnapped. Men are 3 to 6 times more affected by these forms of violence, while sexual violence, although clearly underestimated, is overwhelmingly prevalent among women. Five countries have the highest number of reported incidents, according to the latest available figures. In descending order: South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.105

Highest incidence rates, 2017-2018

The rate of violence has been rising steadily for the past ten years in absolute terms. However, closer analysis reveals that the figures tend to involve a small, but regularly changing, number of “accident-prone” countries.

In the five most violent countries, when looking at the period 2016 to 2018, the type of violence differs.

Highest incidence rates with type of attack (when known), 2016-2018

Kidnapping and gunshot wounds are the most common types of attack on humanitarians (1997 to 2018 worldwide data106).

Violence towards NGO staff: differing data for local and international staff

Figures differ according to what kind of staff are involved in the attacks. In 2018, there were the same number of attacks on local and international staff: 71 per 100,000 staff. When it comes to fatal attacks though, the situation is very different: 3 international staff died in 2018 compared to 128 national staff, i.e. a death rate of 7/100,000 for expatriates and 24/100,000 for national staff.107 This data raises important ethical questions, at a time when, in some conflict areas, humanitarian organisations temporarily move their expatriate teams to neighbouring countries whenever the security situation deteriorates. They then continue to operate using Remote Management while national staff remain in the country. The resulting asymmetry in terms of exposure to risk partly explains the different death rates.

Avoiding deadlock: Deconstructing the “clash of civilisations” notion

In order to improve security, the first thing NGOs need to do is to make sure international humanitarian law is strictly applied by all the parties to a conflict, and ensure that sanctions are implemented if it is violated.

But that is not all; another approach is now required and is the result of an observation: non-governmental humanitarian aid is dominated by Western funding and a clearly Western organisational model. So, to avoid being seen as a foreign policy tool, despite its declared principles of neutrality and independence, it needs to evolve. This will necessarily involve a form of “de-Westernising” of humanitarian actors – to use the political interpretation of the term – and not an approach that chimes with Samuel Huntington’s culturalist theses108 (his analysis of international relations and conflict states that violence is caused by the conflict between “blocks” of religions: Christian, Muslim, Buddhist...). And this de-Westernising will require humanitarian work to be carried out in a concerted, clear and synergistic manner. It’s a complex task. Between 2006 and 2010, the proportion of humanitarian aid used by armed forces doubled,109 mainly due to “military-humanitarian” operations conducted by the United States armed forces.

Although many of today’s serious crises are occurring in Muslim countries, Islam is not the only culprit. Violence that is associated with religion can be reduced if the crises are rendered less complex, less multifactorial.

We should therefore be careful to avoid singling out Islam as the common denominator of conflict zones. Otherwise, we risk reducing international relations to an exercise that “essentialises” the religious factor, thus endorsing Samuel Huntington’s ideas. Georges Corm, a Lebanese politician and historian, encourages us to analyse complex crises from a “multifactorial politology”110 angle. The fact remains that, in the eyes of some ultra-radical fighters, humanitarian workers are typically Christian, even if NGOs deny any underlying identity-based logic or proselytism. This viewpoint is often behind the attacks against them. Consequently, international NGOs, with, generally speaking, Western headquarters and funding, get caught up, against their will, in the “clash of civilisations” rhetoric. And, where their mission is interpreted this way, their aid work may be seriously hindered. This is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Mali, Niger and the Central African Republic, and faced with such a situation, each country becomes a special case.

Religion is manipulated to gain power

Although a religious dimension might be found in many conflict areas, the country’s history, underlying economic logic, religion, tribal dimension and capacity to manipulate politics are intertwined. These factors are sometimes influenced by third countries. Therefore, the only thing that leads to a “clash of beliefs” is when the country’s situation is oversimplified or manipulated. Focussing on the religious factor, which is omnipresent in many crisis areas, is often a means of manipulation and a convenient diversion in the conquest of power. In many non-international conflicts, the protagonists play on religious differences, which do exist, but are one aspect of a myriad of community, political, economic and land disputes... Combatant leaders use religious affiliation to fan the flames of conflict and reference religious identity in a false and exaggerated manner. Examples of this have been seen in the Sahel strip (Mali, Chad, Niger), where the fighting was largely triggered by tensions between herders and sedentary farmers, against a backdrop of increasing desertification. In these countries, agrarian disputes are superimposed upon religious factors, which clan chiefs manipulate to acquire more land, political power or natural resources. In Africa, this Manichean opposition between Christianity and Islam has been widely exploited beyond Sahel: for instance, the pre-independence violence in South Sudan and the recent unrest in Côte d’Ivoire.

In other regions, such as Afghanistan, which is still at war, we shouldn’t lose sight of the way the Cold War accelerated the use of religion to fuel conflict. Wherever Western powers, especially the US, confronted the Soviet bloc, what better fuel than religion to keep the combatant groups mobilised against the agnostic and communist enemy! The CIA actually organised the migration of foreign combatants (Yemenis, Chechens…) to Afghanistan to fight the Red Army in the name of international Jihad. And once the Soviet army withdrew, these fighters remained active and radical, harbouring Ben Laden and others who planned the 9/11 attacks. So, after having fuelled anti-communist sentiment through religion, the situation escaped the control of its Western mentors, turning against its former master.

Western funding + Western NGOs = ulterior political motives?

Caught up in the “clash of civilisations” rhetoric due to the location in which they were founded as well as their sources of funding, international NGOs find themselves in an ambiguous position.

For several decades now, the main NGO humanitarian projects in conflict areas have been funded by organisations created in Western countries: Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children, MSF, Oxfam, Care International, Action Against Hunger and World Vision International. Over the last ten years, three quarters of their budget has been funded by countries that comprise the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which are mainly Western countries.

Yet, cooperation with organisations from non-Western countries is becoming an important part of the debate and is one of the possible ways of improving security in today’s crisis situations.

However, the main reason for ending the Western monopoly on international NGOs is because the world has evolved since their birth in 1945. New economic, political and scientific powers are emerging everywhere. While steps are being taken by all the major French NGOs to build up an international network, said to be the expression of their desire to open up, with rare exceptions, they are still not very open to emerging countries. Why should international humanitarian work be deprived of these new skills, funding and knowledge?

Accepting the loss of power

The International Committee of the Red Cross has resolutely embarked on a process of de-westernization111, and is not afraid to use the term. This has resulted, among other things, in a complete overhaul of the organisation’s payroll system: it has put all local and expatriate staff on an equal footing, despite the protests of the latter...

In its conclusions, the World Humanitarian Summit, held in Istanbul in 2016, recommended a significant increase in the funding channelled through national and local NGOs. This is known in field jargon as “localisation”. Today’s major conflicts, as per the case of Syria, have highlighted the essential role of local actors when international aid volunteers are prevented from working in the field for security reasons. However, the most recent annual data show that nothing has changed since Istanbul. The actual funding made available to local NGOs active in crisis areas remains at a mere 0.5% of the overall annual international aid package.

The closing of borders during the Covid-19 pandemic has once again demonstrated the validity of the Istanbul Summit recommendations, underlining the urgent need to strengthen national teams when international actors are unable to deliver aid in the field due to travel restrictions.

The NGO humanitarian movement needs to be more “hands-off”. Yet, there is a gap between the declarations of intent and what actually happens. It is one thing to “Africanise” or “Asianise” the teams in the field, and another thing entirely to profoundly shake up the organisation by attempting to amalgamate the geographical and cultural origins of management, and by encouraging the opening of sister NGOs in emerging countries. In the end, the large international NGOs must accept losing power in the asymmetric relationship that humanitarian intervention has fundamentally instituted in its relationship with the Other...

103. P. MICHELETTI, “Il faut désoccidentaliser l’aide humanitaire”, Le Monde, 24 August 2016

104. A. STODDARD, P. HARVEY, M. CZWARNO & M. BRECKENRIDGE (2019). Aid Worker Security Report 2019, Speakable: Addressing sexual violence and gender-based risk in humanitarian aid. Humanitarian Outcomes, June. Figure 1, p. 5.

105. Ibid.

106. Ibid., p. 6.

107. Ibid., p. 7.

108. Samuel P. HUNTINGTON, Le choc des civilisations, Editions Odile Jacob, Paris, 2005.

109. Lydia POOLE, “Counting the cost of humanitarian aid delivered through the military”, briefing, Global Humanitarian Assistance, March 2013. URL: http://devinit.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/gha-2013-briefing-military-involvement-humanitarian-aid.pdf. Consulted May 14 2020.

110. G. CORM: Pour une lecture profane des conflits, La découverte, Paris, 2012, 24 p.

111. Yves DACCORD: “Les attentes envers le CICR ont changé”, Le Temps, Genève, 24 juillet 2018. URL: https://www.letemps.ch/monde/yves-daccord-attentes-envers-cicr-ont-change. Consulté le 14 mai 2020.

3.
Africa, a priority continent

In 2017, during his first trip to Burkina Faso, Africa, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, said he wanted to see France’s contribution to Official Development Assistance (ODA) reach 0.55% of Gross National Income (GNI).

Given the state of the country’s economy, and the fact that this announcement came before the Covid 19 crisis, the intention was praiseworthy, but this single figure is insufficient to surmise the country’s overall strategy for dealing with the enormous challenges facing the continent.

The problems faced by many African countries are disproportionate to the money raised through ODA (132 billion euros - 2018 data).

The problem is that conflicts and major humanitarian crises leave behind them situations of extreme poverty that the African continent is already famous for. Half of official development assistance is channelled to the least developed countries (LDCs), a definition conceived by the United Nations in 1971 to categorise the world’s least developed and most fragile countries. In 2018, 47 countries fell into this category and the majority are on the African continent.

The French President also raised the crucial question of the predicted demographic boom, advocating for an efficient birth control policy. However, wanting to reduce the birth rate is just wishful thinking, if the problems that lead to high birth rates are not resolved. Because people tend to have many children when they lose a lot of children, and as the birth rate is strongly linked to (particularly) girls’ education, this is where the focus must lie.

However, Africans, whose life expectancy rose from 50 to 58 years between 1990 and 2012, are still faced with health outcomes that make their continent by far the worst affected on the planet: while it contained approximately 15% of the world’s population in 2020, the continent suffered 70% of the world’s AIDS deaths and 75% of new HIV infections. In Central and West Africa, for every four eligible AIDS patients, only one will receive treatment; Africa has 50% of global maternal deaths; 90% of the world’s deaths from malaria; and in more than half of African countries, the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) is above 140 per 1000. In more than 10 countries on the continent, one child in four will not reach the age of five... In order to deal with all the health problems, those mentioned above but also those linked to our increasingly urbanised societies like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, many African countries possess totally insufficient resources: this is the case for one of the largest countries, Nigeria, which devotes less than 1% of its GDP to health, in contrast to France, which devotes 12%, and India 4%. In some countries in North Africa, Senegal, Guinea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, Namibia and Tanzania, trained doctors have a tendency to relocate to Europe, Australia and North America. The continent is home to only 3% of the world’s health workers. French psychiatric hospitals and other specialised units, where more than a quarter of the practitioners’ posts are filled by doctors from abroad, benefit greatly from these flows of selective immigration, a new type of North-South solidarity.

While Africa will account for 25% of the world’s population in 2050 and 40% by 2100, according to certain estimates, a decline in agricultural yields is predicted, linked to global warming. Yields could even fall by up to 50% in areas that border Africa’s “Great Green Belt”. Other environmental factors need to be taken into consideration, such as overfishing by large foreign industrial fleets and the consequent plundering of fish stocks, hydrocarbon pollution (for example in the Gulf of Niger) or the lack of water and waste treatment facilities brought about by the often anarchic development of megacities.

In addition to these long-term issues, there is the local or regional impact of conflicts: Central African Republic, DRC, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, Libya, etc. Combined with poor governance and high demographic growth, these wars hinder the undeniable economic potential of many African countries.

The crucial food issue

Today we produce enough food to feed 12 billion people worldwide. Almost half of this is wasted, lost or used for animal feed. The UN estimates that the world’s population will exceed 10 billion by 2050.112 Meanwhile, by 2030, more than 60% of this population will be urban, and live in informal settlements or slums. This rapid growth of the urban population poses new challenges for food security. Urbanisation usually goes hand in hand with an increased demand for food, but also by a change in eating habits.

Sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world with low agricultural productivity, high population growth and high vulnerability to climate change, is in particular danger. One of the consequences of climate change in Africa will be an increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts, which will lead to a massive increase in the number of people suffering from food and nutrition insecurity.

Climate and hunger

A study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicts that “income in middle to poor income countries will be about 50 percent lower than it would have been without climate change”. This 2015 study was based on a temperature rise of 3°C by 2100, about half the warming we are actually likely to experience.113 The most optimistic projections for global warming (+2°C at the earth’s surface) predict that the undernourishment rate in Africa will increase by 25 to 90% by 2050 depending on the area.114 In 2050, the decrease in calorie availability will increase child malnutrition by 20%, compared to a scenario without climate change.115 In addition, climate change is likely to eliminate many of the gains in tackling child malnutrition that could have been made in the absence of climate change.

In 2020, 240 million Africans were already hungry. By 2050, a one to two degree increase will be enough to increase the number of undernourished Africans by between 25 and 95%. Declining agricultural yields and population growth will put additional pressure on an already fragile food production system. In this context, if the current situation continues, Africa will only be able to meet 13% of its food needs by 2050.116 Climate change also poses a new threat to the 65% of African workers whose livelihoods directly depend on farming, including children and the elderly, who are the primary victims of food insecurity.

So it is clear that even though the African continent is not the only world region suffering from poverty, notwithstanding the multiple economic, human and political realities of the continent, there is definitely a worrying trend ahead.

The 21st century is likely to present a great challenge for Africa so it should have priority status for international aid in all its forms, for the future of its population and for the equilibrium of the world. Since the French President’s visit in 2017, Burkina Faso has seen large-scale armed conflict and has suffered considerable poverty, a stark reminder of how closely linked these phenomena are. The countries of the Sahel region have become emblematic of this sinister equation. Mali, Niger and Chad are also plagued by fighting which has led to religious extremism and trafficking of all kinds. France has deployed a large military force there, which gives the impression that there is a balance of power, but this “armed peace” is not supported by fair redistribution of wealth, which is the only way of putting an end to the root causes of the clashes.

112. Gilles PISON, “Combien d’humains demain? L’ONU révise ses projections”, The Conversation, 17 June 2019. URL: https://theconversation.com/combien-dhumains-demain-lonu-revise-ses-projections-118798. Consulted May 14 2020.

113. J. ROMM, “Bill Gates Is Still Wrong On Climate Change, It Will Undo His Foundation’s Work”, Climate Progress, 18 février 2015.

114. S. J. LLOYD, R. S. KOVATS & Z. CHALABI (2011). Climate Change, Crop Yields, and Undernutrition: Development of a Model to Quantify the Impact of Climate Scenarios on Child Undernutrition. Environmental Health Perspectives, p. 119.

115. Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation. Food Policy Report 21. 2009, Washington, D.C. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), p. VII.

116. Richard MUNANG, Jesica ANDREWS, “L’Afrique face au changement climatique”, Afrique Renouveau: Édition spéciale Agriculture 2014, page 6. URL: http://www.un.org/africarenewal/fr/magazine/%C3%A9dition-sp%C3%A9ciale-agriculture-2014/l%E2%80%99afrique-face-au-changement-climatique#sthash.zA4goxgc.dpuf. Consulted May 14 2020.

4.
The humanitarian movement faces the Covid-19 pandemic

This book focuses on the economic model and the financial flows between donors and recipients of aid. The resulting analysis points to the political intentions, strengths and weaknesses of humanitarian actors. They use the resources at their disposal, whilst abiding by their guiding principles in a subtle balancing act in the “big game” of international relations.

At the beginning of 2020, this situation was turned upside down by the Covid-19 epidemic, which rapidly became a global pandemic. It was a bombshell that immediately shook NGOs’ financial model and their ability to function, with a considerable knock on effect. This further complicates the fate of populations living in conflict zones, who suddenly have to face a highly contagious virus in an environment where health resources are non-existent or scarce. Containment as a global strategy leads to problems around access to food for people who are suddenly deprived of the daily income they need to survive. India provides a timely example of the dramatic consequences of containment policies in a country heavily impacted by malnutrition. The pandemic has also seriously disrupted the operations of NGOs, whose staff have had to interrupt their travel plans and thus lose the possibility of reinforcing their teams abroad, or repatriating those who wish to return home. The epidemic has also had the immediate knock-on effect of reducing the generosity of donors, who are worried about money or catching the disease. Some NGOs will not survive these financial losses. But, if there is one thing that this health crisis is showing, it is that when danger is near, we know how to find hundreds of billions of dollars to support the economies of developed countries.

Once again, politics is disrupting management of the crisis

As the pandemic unfolded in early 2020, the WHO found itself at the centre of a new political crisis, the likes of which it had not seen since the Ebola epidemic in Africa in the mid 2010s. As with Ebola, the Geneva-based organisation has been strongly criticised for its poor response to the crisis.

It straightaway became the target of other criticism, this time relating to its lack of transparency and the “dangerous links”117 that it allegedly maintains with China. According to its detractors, the organisation did everything possible to conceal or minimise the liability, cover-ups and negligence of the Chinese authorities in terms of the spread of the virus from the city of Wuhan, the supposed starting point of the pandemic.

This episode has been a kind of caricature, and a new textbook case, to illustrate the fragility of the UN specialised agencies when faced with the political logic of the Security Council members. It has once again highlighted the rivalry between the United States and China.

The management of the pandemic reveals a parallel with humanitarian action. The WHO’s budget, like that of NGOs, is based on the principle of voluntary contributions from states, plus a large proportion of funding from private sources (which allegedly sometimes attempt to influence the WHO’s strategy, for example, the pharmaceutical industry). This is where the balance of power between the two giants of the Security Council immediately comes to the fore. The United States is critical of the WHO and thus announced it would stop contributing to the organisation’s budget (it contributes about 10% of the WHO’s annual budget of 4.8 billion dollars). China then immediately committed to an exceptional payment of 50 million dollars to enable the World Health Organisation to deal with the pandemic. This crisis has thus once again highlighted disagreement within the Security Council and the desire of the UN’s political bodies to control the specialised agencies.

France first?118

It was Jean Montalat, deputy-mayor of Tulle, a French city in the rural Corrèze department, who came out with the now famous “Corrèze before the Zambezi!” line at the National Assembly in 1964. Montalat was firmly opposed to France’s continuation of aid to its former colonies119. Yet, might this kind of sentiment surface again with the Covid 19 pandemic? Might the government decide to drastically cut the already insufficient sums devoted to international humanitarian aid?

Governments of wealthy countries are mobilising astronomical sums of money to fight the health, economic and social effects of the pandemic. The figures are staggering: 2,000 billion dollars for the United States, hundreds of billions of euros for the European Union states.

Once considered to have all the virtues, suddenly the champions of free trade are being pilloried. The champions of market regulation, heralding growth until recently, now swear by the control of monetary flows and urge a return to our lands of production sites that had been relocated to the other side of the planet. The moderating welfare state, concerned with the protection of the public and solidarity, is no longer a dirty word, in contrast to yesterday when social Darwinism was the rule.

So the department of Corrèze now has a window of hope. Policy-makers have promised that its agriculture, local markets, factories, hospitals, schools and post offices will once again be the centre of attention. The French yellow vest movement hasn’t been forgotten and was a clear warning of unrest to come.

Yet, the funds that have suddenly become available are also firing the imagination of the part of us that has one eye on places like the Zambezi. For until 2019, when a microscopic being made the whole planet cough, shook the foundations of its most efficient hospitals, triggered market fever, and “almost” made people lose their taste for capitalism, the coffers had been declared empty. Now, stock market traders are suffering excruciating migraines due to the flood of new money into the global financial matrix.

Until Covid came along, it would have been impossible for the most advanced countries to meet the commitments of the COP 21 and to finance an annual 100 billion dollars “green fund” by 2020. Impossible to find more than 132 billion for Official Development Assistance (ODA), while more than two billion people live below the poverty line (less than $3.2 a day) and 750 million live below the extreme poverty line (less than $1.9 a day). Impossible also to add to the international humanitarian emergency aid fund, estimated by the UN at more than 20 billion dollars a year, when an analysis of needs for the 200 million people facing humanitarian crises shows that “just” 30 billion dollars are needed.

With aplomb and a certain degree of detachment, and before the recent viral mutation began, the “community of nations” left it to NGOs, the docile tools of liberalism, to find the missing billions via compassionate marketing. This is what they are trying to do. Not because the leaders of humanitarian organisations are under orders or particularly ingenuous, but because the reality of the situation and their mandate lead them, without an ounce of naivety, to simple get the job done. NGOs therefore have to compensate for the negligence of states and explain to the 70 million people who have fled their homes that the “world”, which carefully observes their wanderings for fear they might knock on developed countries’ doors, cannot do any more for them.

As you can see, the sudden availability of funds has led to serious questions and has raised the hopes of international NGOs. In these times of financial miracles, they have a simple plea: let us not forget troubled regions like the Zambezi, because poverty leads to humanitarian disaster. Disasters like the flooding there are also contagious: they definitely cause suffering, and can lead to war, radicalisation and terrorism. The latter, as we now know, is a very aggressive virus that knows no borders. It’s the eternal debate…isn’t prevention better than cure?

117. P. BENKIMOUN, M. BOURREAU, F. LEMAITRE, “OMS-Chine: les liaisons dangereuses”, Le Monde, April 29 2020.

118. Article published as a tribune in Libération (online), April 1st 2020.

119. P. MICHELETTI, “La Corrèze et le Zambèze”, Libération, April 1st 2020.

Conclusion

Non-governmental humanitarian aid is currently dominated by an organisational model, funding and operational visibility which could be seen as a tool of Western soft power. This model is reaching its limits in terms of credibility, effectiveness and acceptability. It has become anachronistic amid the emergence of a multi-polar world.

The international humanitarian sector, centred around NGOs, has had difficulty defining a proper role for itself, sometimes slipping through the cracks of state sovereignty. It increasingly finds its fieldwork hampered by attempts to drag it into cooperating with counter-insurgency policies aimed at winning the loyalty of communities.

To avoid relief efforts being paralysed or politically manipulated, all the actors involved in a conflict or crisis need to cooperate closely. The armed forces should no longer use humanitarian symbolism or rhetoric in settings where their tactical ulterior motives are obvious.

Having been one of the cradles of the French humanitarian movement, Afghanistan seems to be stuck in a quagmire that international NGOs are now facing in other countries. This means their humanitarian action is frequently hindered in areas where some of the belligerents question their neutrality or independence.

Because of their large number, their very varied fields of competence, their relationships with their home and host state, and their sources of funding, NGOs have rightly been described as a heterogeneous constellation. They clearly have close, long-standing associations with war, and work alongside two other major aid actors in conflict zones: the United Nations, via its specialised agencies, and the Red Cross movement. These two other families have their own legal and financial frameworks, and specific mandates, and their roles are more precisely formalised than INGOs in terms of methods of intervention. Yet, more formalised intervention guidelines do not completely prevent tension and disagreement between members of the same category of actor. Afghanistan and Iraq for the United Nations, and Syria for the Red Cross movement, are recent crises where these tensions have been explicit and perceptible within each “family” of humanitarian actor.

No matter where they come from, NGOs might soon no longer be able to bring relief to war zones. This potential or real “impediment” is the result of a variety of interrelated mechanisms which reflect changes in the “Other’s view” of what international NGOs are and do. The context has evolved considerably since the humanitarian movement was founded. The symbolic power and tacit immunity that humanitarians once enjoyed has gone. In today’s humanitarian movement, emerging as it has from “civil society”, there are four mechanisms, four dynamics, we could even say four “temptations”, the first three of which date back years.

The “neo-liberal temptation”120 121 122 has been present since the NGO concept first appeared in 1945. This NGO movement brought together entities that were very different from the French concept of association, as theorised by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century. The neo-liberal dynamic is also behind the global financial model of international humanitarian aid, a quarter of which relies on the random generosity of private donors, and three quarters of which depends on the optional contribution of a limited number of states. The lack of public funding compels humanitarians to take the risky and ethically questionable path of emotional marketing.123 There are ingredients of liberalism behind INGOs’ concrete actions, though they might deny it or even seek it. This often leads to disputes between the different organisations on issues such as: favouring performance-based management or private money as a guarantee of “entrepreneurial freedom”, mistrusting the power of states, wanting to be free of all forms of regulation/coordination, and criticising the “competition”.124 125

“Western-centrism” is obvious from the sources of funding and the near-monopoly of Western-based NGOs on the humanitarian scene. The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul has so far failed to implement one of its recommendations, which was to empower local and national NGOs to deliver aid. The latest available figures show that the global financial package of almost $29 billion per year only marginally benefits local NGOs, whose proportion of funding fails to rise beyond 2.5%, despite the Istanbul Summit calling for an increase to 20% by 2020.

The main funders’ “focus on security” is becoming a major concern, which is widely illustrated and analysed in this book. It has led to a series of fussy and intrusive control mechanisms, and in war zones, prevents NGOs from freely negotiating with all the warring factions, thus hampering their ability to deliver aid. NGOs are now burdened with Kafkaesque administrative procedures, and forced to jeopardise the founding principles of neutrality and independence theorised by the ICRC. They are also faced with the ethical dilemma of responding to certain funders’ insistence on receiving a list of aid beneficiaries, which is particularly problematic for healthcare workers. Funders’ position is ambiguous: they mainly channel their donations towards war-torn countries, and are therefore often confronted with the issue of religious radicalism as a factor of the violence; they mandate INGOs to implement projects, but are reluctant to see them engage in the negotiations with the warring factions that are absolutely crucial for aid to reach those who really need it. There is a clear transfer of risk from donor states to NGOs. The latter are responsible for conducting relief operations, contributing to funding, acting as peacemakers and recording the number of people injured, kidnapped and killed in the course of their work. Donor governments simply reap the political and strategic rewards of the aid provided on the international scene.

The Covid-19 pandemic has added an additional risk to these principal issues, some of which are rooted in the origins of NGOs: the “temptation to withdraw”. The spread of the epidemic, which began in 2020, is giving rise to a kind of paradox. To prevent economic and social breakdown, massive state intervention has become the norm, even in countries that are champions of unbridled capitalism. It’s like a return to the welfare state. The role of governments in financing international humanitarian aid is once again being questioned. Over the last ten years, the coordinated appeals of the United Nations have shown a constant shortfall in government funding of around 40% of the sums requested ($10 billion for instance in 2018). This shortfall suddenly appears derisory compared to the money being pumped into developed countries’ economies. And if the global economy emerges from the pandemic in a very deteriorated state, government funding for international humanitarian aid might end up being seriously cut. In a pessimistic, but not unrealistic, scenario of decreased funding from OECD countries – focused on strengthening their economies – and a severe lack of private funds raised by NGOs, the whole financial structure of global humanitarian aid would be dramatically affected.

Financial considerations have been discussed extensively in the previous chapters. The data arithmetically reflects the power lines which reveal donor states’ strategies, and is therefore extensively utilised to make the following proposals.

120. Nonna MAYER, Johanna SIMEANT, “L’espace de l’altermondialisme”, Revue française de science politique, 2004/3 (Vol. 54), p. 373-378. DOI: 10.3917/rfsp.543.0373. URL: https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-science-politique-2004-3-page-373.htm. Consulted May 14 2020.

121. “Les ONG: instruments du projet néolibéral ou bases solidaires des alternatives populaires?”, Alternatives Sud, 4 (4), 1997, p. 5-34.

122. B. HOURS, “Les ONG, mercenaires du village planétaire ou gardiennes des ghettos?”, L’homme et la société, 105-106, 1992,p. 36-50.

123. Stéphanie DUPONT, École de Journalisme et de Communication de Marseille Université de la Méditerranée, Promotion 2002, Mémoire de DESS Nouveaux médias de l’information et de la communication les enjeux d’Internet dans la communication des associations. URL: http://stephanie.dupont3.free.fr/integral.pdf.

124. “Médecins sans frontières suspend sa collecte de dons pour l’Asie”, Le Monde, January 4 2005. URL: https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2005/01/04/medecins-sans-frontieres-suspend-sa-collecte-de-dons-pour-l-asie_392968_1819218.html. Consulted May 14 2020.

125. . MICHELETTI, “Solidarité avec les ONG”, Libération, January 11 2005. URL: https://www.liberation.fr/tribune/2005/01/11/solidarite-avec-les-ong_505784. Consulted May 14 2020.

Manifesto to transform the international humanitarian movement

These ten proposals outline the urgent changes required to protect the humanitarian movement from long-term paralysis.

1. The UN General Assembly must vote in favour of a financial contribution from all high-income countries to the annual financial reserve for international humanitarian aid. They would use the list of countries drawn up each year by the World Bank in which average gross national income per capita (GNI) is above 12,000 dollars per year.

2. The United Nations should push for the abolition of a funding system based on voluntary contributions alone and opt for a compulsory contribution of 0.03% of its GNI for the states on the abovementioned list.

3. The “earmarked donations” system, which allows a country to specify the interventions it wishes to support, should be stopped. In a new system, government contributions should be placed in a “common humanitarian fund”, used to fund projects with no distinguishable link to the source of funding.

4. A tripartite body, OCHA, the Red Cross movement and a Council of international NGOs, should meet regularly to decide on the distribution of the fund, based on the needs identified by the coordinated UN appeal (emergency funds would be allotted separately).

5. NGOs should not be subject to anti-terrorism laws (COTER), in order to preserve their capacity to act in all crises. A clear distinction should be made between countries at war, where NGO intervention would not have to abide by COTER regulations, and other countries.

6. Funding for NGOs’ administrative costs should be increased.

7. The Istanbul Summit recommendations must be made binding to increase the funds managed by national NGOs to 20% of the annual funding package. Only those respecting the fundamental principles of humanitarian aid should be eligible for funding.

8. Part of the new system’s annual funding package should be used to finance skill transfer from large international NGOs towards a network of sister NGOs in emerging countries.

9. The new funding system, which would be based on mandatory contributions, should ensure that humanitarian organisations can count on multi-year funding to deal with long-standing crises.

10. A “High Authority for Humanitarian Affairs” should be set up within the UN system, drawn from and appointed by the International Committee of the Red Cross. This figure would guarantee the independence of the UN’s specialised agencies, vis-à-vis the members of the Security Council, in situations of armed conflict.

These ten proposals, which have been submitted to the various international NGO coordination bodies and to ICRC officials for debate, will serve as a plea to governments and the UN. The future of humanitarianism clearly depends on the capacity of international NGOs to reflect upon the different “temptations” mentioned above, and on their willingness to form an alliance to understand and address them, and influence political decision-makers. The mobilisation of civil society finds its true voice in the service of action and change. Together with the all-important government funders, INGOs need to undertake a complete rethink of their role, yet still impose their own rules, and insist that absolutely all major economic powers pay their way. These salutary – and democratic – power relations, based on the skills and operational power of international NGOs, will enable relief efforts to be continued under the universal principles that underpin their legitimacy. These principles are the essential pillars for action: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.

List of abbreviations

ACF: Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger)

CAR: Central African Republic

CERF: Central Emergency Response Fund

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency

COP 21: 21st Conference of the Parties Paris

COTER: Counter Terrorism

Covid-19: SARS-CoV-2

DAC: Development Assistance Committee

DFID: Department For International Development

DGSE: Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (Directorate General for External Security)

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid

DRC: Democratic Republic of Congo

ECOSOC: United Nations Economic and Social Council

ERP: Emergency Response Plan

EU: European Union

GDP: Gross Domestic Product

GHA: Global Humanitarian Assistance

GNI: Gross National Income

ICRC: International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent

IFRC: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

IHL: International Humanitarian Law

INGO: International Non-Governmental Organisation

IOM: International Organization for Migration

ISAF: International Security and Assistance Force

ISWAP: Islamic State for West Africa Province

LDC: Least Developed Country

MFA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MSF: Médecins Sans Frontières

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NGO: Non-Governmental Organisation

OCHA: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ODA: Official Development Assistance

OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

OXFAM: Oxford Committee for Famine Relief

RRP: Regional Response Plan (United Nations Regional Rapid Response Plan)

SDN: League of Nations (Société des Nations)

U5MR: Under-5 mortality rate

UN: United Nations

UNAMA: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

UNDP: United Nations Development Programme

UNHCR: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF: United Nations Children’s Fund

UNRWA: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

USaid: United States Agency for International Development.

USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

WFP: World Food Programme

WHO: World Health Organisation

Introduction to the author and prior publications

Pierre Micheletti is a doctor and a graduate of the École des hautes études en santé publique (prestigious school of public health).

He first worked abroad in 1985. In 1987, he joined Médecins du Monde as head of mission in Guatemala. He was appointed director of programmes in 1996 and was elected president in 2006, a position he held until 2009.

Since 2009, he has been teaching at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies, where he co-directs the MA in International Organisations and Policy, and at the Grenoble medical school, where he set up and directs the Health-Solidarity-Security Diploma.

In 2014, he joined the board of directors of Action contre la Faim, of which he was elected president in 2019.

He has written numerous articles for the French media, in particular as a contributor to Le Monde diplomatique.

Other health-related positions:

• Director of health policy for Grenoble city council (2000-2008).

• Technical advisor and board member at Saint-Egrève psychiatric hospital (2009-2014).

• President of the Association of Health Centres (Agecsa) (2009-2014).

• President of the Health Commission and board member at Uniopss (2012-2016).

• Member of the National Council for Mental Health (2014-2016).

By the same author

Author

• Humanitaire: s’adapter ou renoncer (book), Marabout, Paris, 2008.

• Les orphelins (novel), Lucien Souny (2th edition), 2016 (1st edition DDB/RFI, 2010).

• Les Poissons pleurent aussi (novel), Editor: Lucien Souny, 2016, paperback, 2020.

• Une mémoire d’Indiens (book), Editor: Éditions Parole, 2018.

Director/co-author

• Afghanistan: Gagner les cœurs et les esprits, PUG, RFI, 2014.

• La santé des populations vulnérables, with C. Adam, V. Faucherre and G. Pascal, Editor: Ellipses, Paris, March 2017.

Contributor to collective work

• L’action humanitaire internationale entre le droit et la pratique, directed by Abdelwahab Biad, Editor: Némésis-Anthémis, Brussels, 2016.

• La nouvelle géographie du développement, directed by Arnaud Zaccharie, Editor: La Muette - Le bord de l’eau, Brussels, 2016.

• Dictionnaire de la guerre et de la paix, directed by Benoît Durieux, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène-Vilmer and Frédéric Ramel, Editor: Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, March 2017.

• Droit et pratique de l’action humanitaire, directed by Sandra Szurek, Marina Eudes (Author) Philippe Ryfman (Author), Editor: LGDJ Lextenso, Paris, 2019.

Preface writer

• Toute une vie d’humanitaire, Pascal Grellety-Boisviel, Elytis, 2013.

• Jours tranquilles à Kaboul, Emmanuel Moy, Riveneuve éditions, 2014.

• Comprendre les organisations humanitaires, François Audet, Presses Universitaires du Québec, Montréal, 2016.

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