The humanitarian
and development communities have long been the “frenemies” of international
aid. But with a growing strain on resources, is it time to break down the walls
between them and forge a stronger, more willing partnership?
Camps,
such as this one in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
have
traditionally been viewed as a humanitarian concern, but displacement
also
has a big impact on a country's development, especially in the case of
protracted
crises.
|
Whole departments, funding
streams and staff are locked into these very separate classifications. Although
development programmes complement – and can even reduce the need for –
emergency aid response, there is little actual crossover between the two.
A paper produced for the Inter-Agency Standing Committee,
the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank in December
last year observed that while humanitarian assistance has kept many people
alive, it has also left large numbers stuck in aid dependency.
Development agencies, on the
other hand, have not done enough to “focus on… the most vulnerable people in
fragile states and protracted crises,” the report noted.
The resilience agenda – a concept
that has emerged in recent years to bridge the gap – has broken down some of
the barriers between the two communities.
But, the report said, there is
still “a tendency for individual donors and agencies pursuing their own
agendas, rather than collective action and alignment behind a common analysis,
vision and plan of action.”
So where is the middle ground?
This question is back on the
agenda as governments, policymakers and aid organisations gather in the
Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa this week to discuss how to pay for the
soon-to-be-ratified post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The third UN Financing for
Development (FFD3) summit will focus on ways to secure funding from new types
of actors, especially in the private sector, as well as on improved tax
collection, multilateral development banks in emerging markets, and new
mechanisms such as risk financing.
Similar discussions about how to
get more money are going on among humanitarians in the run-up to next year’s
World Humanitarian Summit (WHS).
And yet they are happening
largely in parallel to the FFD3 debate, despite obvious opportunities for
joined-up approaches.
Sandra Aviles, a senior advisor
on programme development and humanitarian Affairs at the FAO, hoped that
humanitarians paid attention to what was going on in Addis Ababa this week but wasn’t
confident they would.
“There is still this notion that
there are two pots of money; that development is going to do this and
humanitarians are going to do that,” Aviles, who is also part of the Future
Humanitarian Financing (FHF) initiative, which is looking at new approaches for
emergency aid funding, told IRIN.
“Unfortunately, humanitarians
were not collectively engaged with Sendai [the UN Disaster Risk Reduction
conference held in March], or with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
and they have not collectively engaged with Addis.”
Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah has a
foot in both camps through his role as secretary general of global civil
society network CIVICUS and as a member of the newly formed UN high-level panel
on humanitarian financing.
“Much more needs to be done to
bring the development and humanitarian actors together to work more
efficiently,” he said. “Whether that’s in thinking about how we can use common
data platforms, all the way to that handshake between humanitarian relief and development
action.
“Sometimes sitting in discussions
about humanitarian financing, it does feel like I am learning about a totally
different community. There is a different language and very different
approach.”
Intimately connected
In an interview with IRIN, Bertrand
Badré, managing director and chief financial officer (CFO) of the World Bank
Group – regarded as a member of the “development” camp – outlined why he
believes the two sectors are “intimately connected” and why they should be
working together, especially towards more shared financing solutions.
“Humanitarian crises are really shocks,
whether they are connected to war or to natural disasters. At the World Bank,
we are not involved directly in humanitarian activities, such as managing
refugee camps, but our job is to improve the readiness and capacity of a
country to face shocks,” he explained.
“You can’t stop an earthquake from
happening, but what is in our power is to make sure the affected country is
more prepared to deal with the consequences better and faster and at a lower
cost.”
Displacement – previously seen as solely
an emergency aid problem – is another area where the World Bank, and other
development actors, are starting to become more engaged, particularly around
notions of livelihoods, economic integration and resilience-building.
In Jordan and Lebanon, the bank is
supporting the governments to manage the economic impact of hosting millions of
Syrian refugees, and under the lender’s Global Program on Forced Displacement
it has also worked with the authorities in Azerbaijan and Colombia.
“Development actors are slowly starting
to realise that protracted displacement has an impact on development,”
explained Manisha Thomas, head of the secretariat of the Geneva-based Solutions
Alliance, formed last year to seek out partnership responses to protracted
displacement.
“People have woken up to the fact that
if you want to reduce poverty, you need to take displacement into
consideration,” she added. “The whole theme of the SDGs is ‘leave no-one
behind’, and that has to include displaced populations as well.”
Complementarity
Rachel Scott, team leader of the
conflict, fragility and resilience development co-operation directorate at the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), agreed that a
“much more complementary approach” was required, particularly in the case of
displacement.
“Changes are needed on both sides. We
have to look more holistically at our response. Humanitarians shouldn’t be only
analysing the basic physical needs of human beings,” she said, but also
considering well-being factors such as economic needs and social cohesion.
Development actors, meanwhile, should be
“looking at national policies such as the right to work, and taking the burden
away from the economy, and finding long-term solutions for displacement by
changing government policies, and eventually reducing case-loads.”
Debate over the parameters of the
two sectors is nothing new, far from it.
It’s had various labels,
including the “relief to development continuum” or Linking Relief
Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD). Since the 1990s there has been an extensive
body of literature on why the two sectors should – but in many cases have
failed to - work better together.
“The humanitarian/development
discussion has been on the table for longer than I can remember,” said Thomas,
of Solutions Alliance.
“Although there is
definitely a difference in cultures in how humanitarians and development actors
work, I don’t sense a huge amount of resistance about doing more together, I
think it’s more about how to figure out how to make this work in practice.”
Barriers
One major barrier to more
joined-up thinking is that humanitarians subscribe to four defined humanitarian
principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.
Development funding is meanwhile
governed by accords, such as the 2005 Paris Declaration, which stipulates aid
should go to governments in terms of developing capacity and helping build
institutions.
Lydia Poole, an independent aid
policy consultant, told IRIN this can sometimes be “extremely difficult” for
humanitarian actors, who in certain situations, particularly conflicts, “may
have a difficult relationship with the state” and so feel joint programming
wouldn’t work.
“Humanitarian funding is a very
precious resource that enables you to operate in a principled manner in highly
contested settings, so I don't think we should be diluting that and spreading
it too thin across this ever-growing scope of programming ambition.”
FundingThat the funding streams – for
the above reasons, as well as administrative and bureaucratic issues – have largely
been kept separate is another explanation for the cultural divide between the
two sides and their staff.
Necessity is the mother of
invention; funding – or rather the lack of it – may also end up bringing the
development and humanitarian worlds closer together.
Simultaneous protracted conflicts
such Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan, on top of natural
disasters like the earthquake in Nepal, have left emergency aid organisations
scraping around for cash.
“The financing discussion is definitely
one that is driving this move to bring development actors into a displacement
response much earlier, and I think it makes sense,” said Thomas, pointing to
the example of investing in the water systems of a refugee hosting country
rather than continuing to pay out to fix temporary latrines.
But, she added, “It’s important
that this doesn’t become only about money and that we don’t lose sight of the
end goal of humanitarian and development actors working together to bring their
collective strengths to the table in order to be able to deliver better
solutions to those in need.”
Sriskandarajah, who is in Addis
Ababa this week to chair an event about humanitarian funding, agreed that
financing could lead to better cooperation.
“Financing is a great vehicle for
bringing the two sides together,” he said. “Both sectors are seeking out new
partners and new types of financing, and these new models are not going to
worry about our sectors and sub-sectors. They are just going to want to get the
job done.”
Badré, of
the World Bank, told IRIN: “We have to stop finding opposition to one another,
it doesn’t make any sense.
“We are not in competition with
humanitarians, we are here to complement and support their actions. Everybody
is in their own silo, but we have to really connect and agree, and accept, that
more and more we can work together.”
No comments:
Post a Comment