The politicization of humanitarian aid and its effect on the principles of humanity, impartiality and neutrality

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Table of Content I. List of acronyms II. Abstract 1. Introduction 1.1. Introduction to the topic 1.2. Methodology 1.3. Setup of paper 2. The humanitarian sphere 2.1. Humanitarian threats 2.1.1. Natural disasters 2.1.2. Complex emergencies 2.2. Environment of humanitarian response 2.3. Principles and standards 3. The political environment of humanitarian aid 3.1. Western humanitarian aid 3.1.1. Influence of Western foreign policy 3.1.2. Perception of Western NGOs 3.1.3. Faith based NGOs 3.2. External involvement 3.2.1. Donor influence on humanitarian aid 3.2.1.2. Bilaterization of humanitarian aid 3.2.2. Responsibilities of host governments 3.2.2.2. Difficulties of governmental interaction 3.2.3. Conflict regions 3.2.3.1. Humanitarian agencies in conflict regions 3.2.3.2. Local armed forces 3.2.4. Military involvement 4. Humanitarian principles in a political environment 4.1. Humanity 4.2. Impartiality 4.3. Neutrality 4.3.1. Controversies surrounding neutrality 4.3.2. Neutrality and local politics 4.4. Ambiguous approach of principles 4.4.1. Afghanistan 4.4.2. Serbia 4.4.3. Iraq

4.5. Solidarity 5. Conclusion 6. Annex 7. Bibliography

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I. List of acronyms

ALNAP CAP UN’s Consolidated Appeal Process CIMIC Civil-military Cooperation DAC Development Assistance Committee DHA UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs ECHO IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross IHL International Humanitarian Law IRC International Rescue Committee IRIN Integrated Regional Information Networks MDG Millennium Development Goals

MSF Médecins Sans Frontiéres NGHA Non-governmental Humanitarian Agency NGO Non-governmental Organization NPA Norwegian People’s Aid OCHA ODA Official Development Assistance ODI Overseas Development Institute PMF Private Military Forces UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNU United Nations University

USAID

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II. Abstract

The humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality provide an ethical framework that defines and delineates the humanitarian space within which relief agencies are supposed to operate. Current experiences, however, show that these traditional principles were not designed to cope with the development underlying the increasing merging of humanitarian aid and politics. To avoid political manipulation, relief organizations must rethink these traditional principles and face the responsibility of getting more involved in the broader political arena to be able to take appropriate action, and to avoid longterm damages on a society. The ‘Sphere’ project, which was launched to improve the quality of humanitarian action and to put relief aid on a legal basis as set forth by international law, acknowledges the dependence of humanitarian aid on external political decisions. Still, it emphasizes traditional principles and expresses agencies’ commitment to act in accordance with them. ‘Sphere’s actual value must there-fore be seen in defining a common basis around which agencies, donors and governing authorities can potentially agree on. It provides a basis for defining core humanitarian responsibilities that recognizes the limits of humanitarian action, while setting an agenda for individual and collective action. Even though the attempt to define humanitarian principles that serve as blueprints in every global emergency for all humanitarian organizations does not seem to be achievable, the importance of ethical guidelines and benchmarks still exists. The heterogeneity of relief work is just a phenomenon, which is based in the nature of humanitarianism and this will always put a stamp on at- tempts to find common standards, principles and codes.

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1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction to the topic

The past two decades have seen a significant increase in frequency and intensity of complex emergencies and natural disasters, leading to a rapid transformation in the policy and the institutional context of humanitarianism. Humanitarian assistance, which once covered a very narrow set of basic relief activities carried out by a small group of relatively independent actors, has expanded significantly to an ever-widening and much more complex range of rehabilitation work. This includes the definition of aid as being a starting-point for addressing poverty or being a tool for peace-building in internal conflicts. A growing diversity of “nonhumanitarian” actors in the field, such as various profit agencies, governmental and non-governmental armed forces, also changed the picture of humanitarian aid and the perception of its character. This transformation has created a broad variety of standards for performance in the field, and led to increasing uncertainties on the quality of humanitarian responses and its accountability. Humanitarian catastrophes, like the Rwandan genocide, finally forced humanitarian agencies to think beyond traditional relief assistance based on the delivery of food, shelter or basic health care, and take a deeper reflection on how they actually perceive their own role and accountability in the humanitarian sphere. In 1997, the ‘Sphere’ project was launched to develop inter alia a so-called ‘Humanitarian Charter’, which tries to put relief aid on a legal basis provided by international law. It emphasizes humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality and expresses agencies’ commitment to act in accordance with them. These principles provide an ethical framework, which defines and delineates the humanitarian space within which NGOs are supposed to operate. ‘Sphere’ and its commitment to these traditional principles have both supporters and critics within the humanitarian system, especially when it comes to its usefulness in addressing the complexity of political factors surrounding an emergency situation.

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Humanitarian assistance has always been a highly political activity, as it involves engaging authorities in conflict-affected countries or relying on financial support that can be driven by a donor’s political considerations. Nowadays, relief organizations seem to remain even less in control of their working environment due to expanding peacekeeping and “military-led” missions of the United Nations, regional organizations or major Western powers in armed conflicts. Furthermore, they are confronted with a growing scale of human rights abuses and the targeting of civilians, including humanitarian workers. However, the necessity to interact with armed groups started to blur the line between military policies and relief missions, making humanitarian action appear to be increasingly tied to the overall political response of donor countries to complex emergencies. This working environment is making it difficult for relief organization to maintain their neutrality and to avoid political manipulation. For humanitarian workers, it is a moral obligation to provide aid wherever it may be needed, and the alleviation of suffering in humanitarian crises is supposed to be the basic motivation in this context. Despite the pronouncements and practices of relief actors to ensure that their actions confer no military advantage and that they are driven solely on the basis of need, the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality are under constant assault. Several developments, most importantly the fact that in many current wars belligerents reject the very notion that war has limits and attacks on civilians and other abuses of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is part of a deliberate strategy, have led to the question whether this ethical framework is still achievable in practice. This paper examines the difficult realities in a heterogenic humanitarian environment, by addressing all the complex legal and political issues surrounding an emergency, including the impact of external actors like donors, host governments, and armed forces. It therefore provides a realistic

understanding of the possibilities and limits of traditional principles, rethinks their value in current crisis responses, and delineates the attempt to create and clarify new ones. In this regard, the paper further analyzes the ‘Sphere’ process, which commits participating agencies to act in accordance to these principles, on how far it is taking political

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influences on humanitarian aid into consideration, and can thus actually be seen as a reasonable guideline for relief organizations in the 21 st century.

1.2. Methodology

The research for this master’s paper delves into contemporary literature regarding the topic of how traditional humanitarian principles cope with current political influences on humanitarian aid. During the course of this study, a broad variety of literature resources have been analyzed, including publications from multilateral institutions like the UN, editorials from humanitarian experts in different academic institutions or NGOs, to field reports from local practitioners. A wide spectrum of opinions is covered in this paper, with the call for extreme political dominance over humanitarian issues at one end, to pure humanitarianism, with its emphasis on neutrality and independence, at the other. Publications and research papers published by the ‘Humanitarian Practice Network’ (HPN), an independent policy research group, have served as a very competent source throughout my work on this topic. HPN is part of the ‘Overseas Development Institute’ (ODI), Britain’s leading independent think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues. The ‘Sphere’ process has been integrated into this paper by analyzing how it actually has been aware of the phenomenon of humanitarian aid becoming increasingly politicized. In preparation for this paper, I appreciated the opportunity of interviewing Alison Joyner, Sphere project manager; and Veronica Foubert, Sphere Materials and Training Support Officer, at the ‘International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) headquarters in Geneva. Both have been very helpful in clarifying the actual meaning of the ‘Sphere’ process, which supported the aim of giving a comprehensive analysis on this project through robust literature reviews and various sources of information.

1.3. Setup of paper

After this introduction, Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of the working field in which humanitarian action is taking place, especially the impact of natural disasters and man-made complex emergencies on societies. It further focuses on the attempt to find international humanitarian standards to consolidate and regulate

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humanitarian action, taking the ‘Sphere’ process as the recently most prominent example. The main focus here resides less on the agreement of certain minimum standards, which aim to put a theoretical foundation into practice, but more on ‘Sphere’s ‘Humanitarian Charter’ and the leading humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality and neutrality. Chapter 3 gives an overview on the context and scenario of the political environment, which both influences humanitarian work and sometimes even dominates the perception of relief aid in recipient states. This section also points out the geopolitical trends in aid policy and the extremely complex realities that put humanitarian actors in danger of being misused to assert political, military or strategic objectives. Chapter 4 focuses on the limits of traditional humanitarian principles in terms of recent political developments and strategic choices that occurred. It also gives new perspectives on how NGOs can reinterpret these principles without limiting their ethical value. Finally, Chapter 5 provides overall conclusions and recommendations.

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2. The humanitarian sphere

2.1. Humanitarian threats

Since the end of the Cold War, an increasing occurrence of natural and humancaused disasters, including armed conflicts, has become a central issue for the international community. These humanitarian emergencies have led to an extensive loss of life, damage to property, and the long-term destruction of the environment. Many times, disasters have forced countries to postpone national development programs and exasperated already difficult social, economic, and environmental conditions, particularly in human settlements. Even so, every single emergency is accompanied by a high amount of human casualties, with over 1.5 million people being killed by natural disasters in the past two decades. The destructiveness of extreme natural events usually depends more on the number of vulnerable people impacted in the disaster region than on the magnitude of the event per se. Annually, drought affects some 220 million people, flooding 196 million, cyclones 119 million, and over 130 million people live in earthquake risk zones (UNDP, 2004: 1-8). 1 Figure 2.a. Economic losses caused by natural disasters, 1950-2002

1 It is important to note that the numbers of people killed by natural disasters is decreasing, in part due to better satellite forecasting, improved early warning systems, and improved community

preparedness in some countries such as India and Bangladesh, apart from 2004 when numbers soared because of the tsunami effect (Oxfam, 2000: 2).

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Figure 2.b. Number of fatalities (2002)

Source: Benson, C., Clay, E. (2004) Beyond the damage: probing the economic and financial consequences of natural disasters, in: HPN Humanitarian Exchange 27, ODI, London, pp. 44-45.

An additional 31 million people are affected by conflict, leading to approximately 2.3 million casualties between 1991 and 2000, leaving 4.400 people dead every week (Oxfam, 2000: 2). The number of people actually “of concern” to the ‘United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) rose up by 6 percent to 20.8 million, from the 2005 total, which already saw an increase by 13 percent from 2004: 2 Figure 2.c. Persons of Concern to UNHCR - by Region

This increase reflects differing patterns of movement among the various groups assisted by the agency, including refugees, civilians who have returned home but 2 See Annex 10: ‘Refugees and total population of concern to UNHCR 1981-2006’.

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still need help, persons displaced internally within their own countries, asylum seekers, and stateless people. 3

2.1.1. Natural disasters

Natural disasters exist in great variability and can have a severe impact and inherent risk on a society and its development process; as a civic leader in Bangladesh pointed out: “We have floods most every year. This year’s floods, however, have been more damaging than most, setting the whole country back by a full decade.” 4 Figure 2.d. Number and Cost of Weather-Related Disasters, 1980-2003

Source: The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 13.

Although natural disasters like floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, earthquakes and tsunamis exist in both developed and developing countries, the poorest and most marginalized urban and rural societies will be least likely to recover livelihoods and rebuild assets quickly. Several reasons have led to this weak coping capacity, which puts large populations of the poorest inhabitants chronically at risk. Often research and investigations carried out to identify and under-stand the risk zones in these countries are usually insufficient, leading to a fragmentary local knowledge on possible preventive measures, like land use planning, appropriate building codes, safety regulations and response plans. But even if the expertise in risk reduction exists in local institutes and universities, an appropriate

3 The global refugee population has dropped for the fourth consecutive year. Over the period end2000 to end-2004, the global refugee population has fallen by 2.6 million or 21 per cent. By the end of 2004, the global number of refugees reached an estimated 9.6 million persons. (http://www.unhcr.org).

4 Civic leader in Bangladesh paraphrased from BBC broadcast on August 2 nd 2004 (The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 12).

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financial mechanism is often not used and therefore necessary steps are not taken (UNU-EHS, 2005: 9). This lack of knowledge, or at least the lack of competent action, has resulted in a visible increase of hazards, which are influenced by human activities. For instance, the devastation from flooding is often compounded by preexisting environmental conditions such as deforestation or farming on steep hillsides, which can lead to mudslides, causing many additional deaths and injuries. 5 In particular, population pressure and poverty have been identified as key aggravating factors, leaving people in subsistence economies no other option then to exploit their environment (UNU-EHS, 2005: 9-10). Future predictions, driven principally by climate change, unsustainable land use, and improved technological means of exploitation posit an increase in the fragility of the environment and a growing number of natural disasters. 6 Furthermore, the distribution of populations, primarily in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, has its influence on global scenarios. The UN estimates that by 2025 half of the world’s people will live in areas subject to major storms and excessive flooding, leading to even more communities not able to cope with that fragility (The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 11-14). 7 5 The flooding of the Yangtze River in China in 1998, which displaced over 200 million people, has been officially blamed on deforestation in the highlands of Sichuan by the Chinese government. The typhoon that swept across southern Africa in 2000, producing flooding that displaced millions especially in Mozambique and Madagascar, triggered destruction that was exacerbated by land use changes and deforestation.

6 Especially the global warming issue tips the delicate balance between incoming and outgoing energy of the earth and leads to more frequent extremes, to more floods and more severe droughts

and therefore to higher death tolls (Ginkel, 2005: 2).

7 Population growth outside the ‘Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’ (OECD) region, primarily in Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, will make up practically the entire population growth from 1995 to 2020, during which time global population numbers will increase from 5.6 to about 7.6 billion. This increase over 25 years corresponds to almost the entire global population in 1950 (2.5 billion). Africa, China, and India should each have populations between 1.3 and 1.4 billion (United Nations, 2001: 12); see Annex 1: ‘World Population Growth by Region’.

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2.1.2. Complex emergencies

In some regions of the world, deformed and failed processes of modernization and transformation have caused a fundamental development crisis. Ethnic struggles, failing states, and social processes of chaos lead to warlike conflicts and political structures have to be installed while the economy and the society are influenced by force. The ‘Inter-Agency Standing Committee’ (IASC) 8 defines a complex emergency as “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country program” (McHugh, 2006: 7). With a focus on, often only formally existing, states of Sub-Saharan Africa, a World Bank Discussion Paper even describes the current status of many of these countries as a “stable situation of instability” (Michailof, 2001: 3). A situation that often leads to so-called “political economies of threat and combat,” includes a growing number of people who have an interest in the maintenance of the conflict and a high propensity to violence. The past decade has seen a frightening persistence and intensity of conflicts and half the wars that were thought to have ended have since resumed (World Bank, 2004: 4). The nature of war is also changing as conflicts become increasingly interrelated (whether at local, national, or regional levels) and the means of warfare evolves, including the deliberate targeting of civilians and the waging of war for specifically economic motives. More and more conflicts involve the targeting or forced displacement of civilians, as warring parties fight over territorial control as a means to weaken enemy forces by targeting host or supportive communities or access to natural resources. The parties involved are changing and proliferating, including non-state actors with uncertain chains of command that make dialogue and negotiation difficult and dangerous (OCHA, 2003: 2).

8 The IASC is a mechanism for inter-agency coordination of humanitarian assistance. Its forum involves the key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners. It was established in June 1982 in response to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/182 on the strengthening of humanitarian assistance.

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Figure 2.e. Wars and Armed Conflicts, 1950-2003

Source: The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 53.

The reality of contemporary warfare is that more than 90 percent of the victims are innocent civilians who are often targeted because of their ethnic or religious background. As a consequence, a large number of the affected population flee their home and their community, and this forces humanitarian organizations to operate in war-torn societies where conflicting parties are often openly contemptuous of fundamental humanitarian norms (United Nations, 2002: Report of the SecretaryGeneral).

2.2. Environment of humanitarian response

Complex emergencies and to a lesser degree natural disasters have a large impact on countries and people, like hyperinflation, massive unemployment, and net decreases in Gross National Product, which usually lead to a macro-economic collapse. People face episodic food insecurity, which frequently deteriorates into mass starvation, followed by movements of displaced people and refugees escaping conflict or searching for food. Finally, both central government authority and at least parts of civil society deteriorate or even collapse completely (Dijkzeul 2005: 15). Jose-Miguel Albala-Bertrand, Senior Lecturer on the Political Economy of Development at the Queen Mary University of London sees the fundamental difference between natural and politically induced disasters in the way institutions are affected:

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“In natural disasters, there can be some significant interference with society and therefore institutional change arising from both the impact effects and the responses, but this is infrequent, mostly incidental and not normally widespread or long-term. In complex emergencies, most aspects of the impact and effects have deliberate institutional aims and overtones. Likewise, the response to this type of calamity is also bound to cause significant interference with society, which may be intense, longterm and mostly deliberate” (Albala-Bertrand, 2000: 215). Parameters of complex emergencies are characterized by:

Source: Weller, 2005: 41; Janz, 2000: 2.

While traditional responses to natural disasters generally occur in stable working environments and lead to a rapid return to normal conditions, experiences of humanitarian crises during the 1990s have changed the humanitarian endeavor significantly. Humanitarian actors were forced to think beyond traditional relief assistance based on the delivery of food and shelter, and basic health care, and had to recognize the root causes of

vulnerability and strife. A development in humanitarian action that made social, cultural, and especially political constraints and complexities increasingly viewed as a real and vital aspect of any response. In crisis regions, it became an important challenge to the international community to provide aid in these settings without worsening the current conflict situation (IRIN, 2006: 6). This, in turn, led to an increasing complexity of aid services that put humanitarian organizations in the dilemma to act in an external environment over which it has little control. Faced with these conflicting trends, agencies have been “reassessing the processes that shape the nature and impact of their inter-

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ventions” (United Nations, 2000: Report Secretary General). Notably, the genocide in Rwanda 9 in 1994 increased awareness among aid agencies for more professionalism regarding evaluations, operational research, training, and improvement in systems. Since then, open debates and the exchange of experiences, both within and between agencies, have become integral parts of the relief sphere and have allowed discussion and thinking on the accountability of aid agencies (Dufour, 2004: 124). The humanitarian sector became actively concerned about the quality of humanitarian interventions, even though tensions between “convictiondriven social action and studied professionalism with its standards, systems and accountabilities” has energised humanitarianism since its founding years (Walker, 2004: 101). Oxfam realized as early as the 1980s that competition between agencies could lead to lower standards, and a number of initiatives have been launched internally within the sector that aimed to enhance the quality of humanitarian work and the accountability of humanitarian organisations (Vaux, 2006: 246). European non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular, were concerned that if they did not take the lead in implementing their own system of standards and accountability, they would find themselves forced to accept systems defined by their governmental donors (Walker, 2004: 101). A process was initiated to target the “perceptions of weakness and inconsistency of the humanitarian enterprise” and to search for an agreement on common principles based on international law and strategies to build capacity to respond to the changing humanitarian context effectively, including its social, economic, political, technological, environmental, and legal issues (The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 2). 9 The Rwandan Genocide was the massacre of an estimated 800,000 to 1,071,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It stands out as historically significant, not only because of the sheer number of people murdered in such a short period of time, but also because of how inadequately the United Nations failed to respond. (Recommended literature: Melvern, Linda (2004) Conspiracy to Murder:

The Rwanda Genocide and the International Community; Gourevitch, Philip (1998) We Wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.)

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2.3. Principles and standards

2.3.1. The ‘Red Cross Code of Conduct’ In the beginning of the 1990s, humanitarian agencies tried to summarize decades of practical experience by codifying what they had learned and use it to influence new agencies that were constantly forming. This process led to the ‘Red Cross Code of Conduct’, published in 1994. This code put up a framework in which “saving lives”, the basic aim of relief aid, was seen as the immediate need, but not as the sole objective of emergency operations anymore. A “developmentalist position” was adopted by supporting local capacities, reducing future vulnerabilities, and involving those affected by a crisis in the decision making process (Vaux, 2006: 240-47).

Although the ‘Code of Conduct’ was envisaged primarily as relating to relief in natural disasters, it has always been viewed as applying to NGO humanitarian work in armed conflicts too. 10

10 The first four articles of the ‘Code of Conduct’ are key restatements or re-workings of the first four principles of the Red Cross. The last six articles are more in the nature of statements of good practice in relief methodology (The Sphere Project, 2003: 312-322).

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The ‘Code of Conduct’ was soon criticized for “consisting principally of abstract statements about the aims of humanitarian relief” and not addressing in any way the critical issue of how to protect vulnerable populations and aid activities. Donor governments and NGOs appeared to be addressing humanitarian issues in a “pious and abstract manner far removed from the harsh dilemmas resulting from wars” (Roberts, 1996: 6061). Further, the critics argued that no mechanism was set up for monitoring compliance, for interpreting the code, and for making it widely known among decision-makers and practitioners. So the ‘Code of Conduct’ had little practical impact and was almost immediately overtaken by the genocide in Rwanda, which is seen nowadays as one of the defining events of 20 th century humanitarianism. Although aid agencies were present in Rwanda at that time, they had shown little awareness of the tensions building up in the region and that genocide was being planned. The response of the international humanitarian community was not only chaotic and competitive, with hundreds of organizations pouring into the camps in eastern Zaire, but also too late. Furthermore, the UN gave mandates to small organizations with no significant experience, causing unnecessary deaths of refugees (Vaux, 2006: 240-47). 2.3.2. The ‘Sphere’ project Faced with such an unparalleled crisis in Rwanda, agencies came together to produce a joint evaluation and to document the failures that occurred in detail. There-fore, the ‘Sphere’ initiative was launched in 1997, with the participation of over 700 individuals from over 200 organizations in over 60 countries, including the ‘Red Cross and Red Crescent movement’ (ICRC). The aim was to find a way to combine practical humanitarian work with the body of International Law and to clarify what it actually means to live a ‘life in dignity’, which Article 1 of the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ assures: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and

rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (http://www.un.org). The participating agencies came up with a technical elaboration of the ‘Code of Conduct’ and a ‘Humanitarian Charter’ to reassert the so-called ‘humanitarian im- perative’: the right to receive humanitarian assistance and to provide it wherever it

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is needed, to all citizens of all countries (Slim, 2002a: 4). ‘Sphere’ was supposed to be “a tool for humanitarian agencies to enhance the effectiveness and quality of their assistance, and thus to make a significant difference to the lives of people affected by disaster” (The Sphere Project, 2003: 14). The agencies committed themselves to be held accountable against specified levels of good practice and, in a broader sense, the entire international community against sufficient support in financial and political ways (Vaux, 2006: 247). Figure 2.f. The ‘Sphere’ diagram

The ‘Sphere’ project contains three things: “a handbook, a broad process of col-laboration and an expression of commitment to quality and accountability” (The Sphere Project, 2003: 5). It was built on the existing humanitarian foundation and combined current best practices and existing

universal standards, whether they were from Unicef, Oxfam or ‘Médecins Sans Frontiéres’ (MSF) publications. 11 11 When the concept of a broad NGO-led standards project was first mooted in early 1996, at least eight other similar initiatives were going on. For example, MSF had taken a lead in developing ‘Standard Response Packages’; Oxfam and UNHCR had been developing standards in water and sanitation; within the ‘Development Assistance Committee’ (DAC) of the OECD there are moves

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An agreement was found on Minimum Standards in regard to peoples’ need for water, sanitation, nutrition, food, shelter and health care, 12 following the aim to "quantify the requirements given by the Humanitarian Charter for sustaining the lives and dignity of those affected by calamity or conflict” (The Sphere Project, 2003: 16). 2.3.2.1. ‘Sphere’ minimum standards The Standards, as they appear in the handbook, are general statements that define the minimum level to be attained in a given context, and the indicators act as ‘signals’ that determine whether or not a standard has been attained. The Standards further meant to describe dilemmas, controversies, or gaps in current knowledge on humanitarian practice and to offer advice on priority humanitarian issues or help to tackle practical difficulties. The ‘Sphere’ committee advises users of the handbook to strive to meet these standards as well as they can and to use ‘Sphere’ as a starting point or as benchmarks. Most of the standards and the indicators are not new, but consolidate and adapt existing knowledge and practice (The Sphere Project, 2003: 6-14). However, the attempt to “cloth technical standards in the language of humanitarianism and international law” seems to be a general vulnerability and led to concerns that ‘Sphere’ is promoting a picture of humanitarian aid that is limited to providing water, food, health services and shelter in emergency situations (Dufour, 2004: 139). 13 to develop common financial reporting standards for humanitarian agencies (Walker, 2004: 101-2).

12 The focus on food, nutrition, water, health and shelter and their linkage to the Humanitarian Charter were not a foregone conclusion. There was robust discussion early on over whether a section on education should be included, with staff from UNHCR, Unicef and SCF arguing that the provision of education in refugee and IDP camps, on the edges of conflict zones, was an essential conflictprevention measure and thus also an urgent life-saving provision (Walker, 2004: 109).

13 ‘Sphere’ nevertheless took this critique during the revision process for the 2004 edition of the handbook into account, which now includes important issues that are relevant to all sectors, like Children, Gender, HIV/AIDS or Protection. These particular issues were chosen on account of their relation to vulnerability, and were the ones most frequently raised in feedback from users of ‘Sphere’ in the field. This also led to a new section in the handbook dealing with ‘Food Security’ and an additional chapter, which details a number of process standards common to all sectors, including participation, assessment, response, targeting, monitoring, evaluation, staff competencies and management (The Sphere Project, 2003).

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MSF, and in particular MSF-France, were extremely cautious of the ‘Sphere’ process and concept. They criticized ‘Sphere’ for not taking into account that human crises happen across such a wide range of environments, economies, and cultures that would make it impossible to set meaningful global standards. Fur-thermore, it has been argued that in the initial phase of an emergency response, or in a volatile context like an ongoing displacement, aiming ‘Sphere’s ‘Minimum Standards’ is “above and beyond” everything that can be achieved and only possible if unhindered access to an affected population and adequate resources were given (Tong, 2004: 182-3). Sphere’s technocratic approach was therefore seen as a “strain jacket” that would pull MSF and others away from being “a valuedriven to a more supply driven business”, which could be provided by government donors to constrain agencies action (Walker, 2004: 106). ‘Sphere’ nevertheless outlines that it is clearly intended to be more than just a manual of good humanitarian practice and that it should not be reduced to its technical issues. In contradiction to all the criticism on ‘Sphere’s allegedly limited perspective, it does not dictate to any organisation what decisions to make, or to use their recommendations as an imperative or blueprint (Lowrie, 2001: 37-38). Instead it acknowledges that it is impossible to standardize the different approaches among humanitarian agencies on how to carry out relief activities because of their different identities, mandates and capabilities (The Sphere Project, 2003: 7). It also points out that in some instances, local factors may make the realisation of all standards and indicators unattainable, including a lack of access or security, insufficient resources, the involvement of other actors and noncompliance with international law (The Sphere Project, 2003: 14). The project sought a common format and rationale for standards, covering minimum and relative essential goods and services, implementation of assistance and stakeholder accountability. Additionally, donors were

suppose to take responsibility in order to provide adequate resources for future humanitarian operations and to force them to connect their “high statements of ideal”; they have signed up to international conventions, right down to what it practically means in the field (Walker, 2004: 101-5).

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2.3.2.2. ‘Humanitarian Charter’ and humanitarian principles The ‘Humanitarian Charter’ is the analytical foundation upon which the rest of the ‘Sphere’ handbook rests. It tries to clarify what the humanitarian identity actually is by providing some sort of moral and legal imperative behind the work that is done in relief assistance. “It’s only three pages long and it could easily just be flipped through and passed over. But I think what’s contained in those two or three pages is profound and it goes back to the legal framework in which we work and gives not just a moral and ethical legitimacy we base a lot of our work on. It gives us a legal legitimacy.” 14 The ‘Humanitarian Charter’ is unique in that it combines human rights law, international humanitarian law and refugee law:

Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 313.

14 Taken from ‘The Sphere Project DVD: An Introduction to Humanitarian Challenge, Oxfam Publishing’, 2004.

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The charter emphasizes that all possible steps should be taken to alleviate human suffering and affirms the fundamental importance of: 1. The right to life with dignity, which reflects the legal measures concerning the right to life, to an adequate standard of living and to freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 2. The distinction between combatants and non-combatants, which underpins the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols of 1977. Non-combatants are protected under international humanitarian law and are entitled to immunity from attack. 3. The principle of non-refoulement says that no refugee shall be sent (back) to a country in which his or her life or freedom would be threatened. 15

The ‘Humanitarian Charter’ further expresses agencies’ commitment to act in ac-cordance to the principles of the ‘Code of Conduct’ (see Chapter: 2.3.1. The ‘Red Cross Code of Conduct’), including the core principles that govern humanitarian action and that are classified as humanity, impartiality and neutrality. 16 • Humanity: Human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, with particular attention to the most vulnerable in the population, such as children, women and the elderly. The dignity and rights of all victims must be respected and protected. • Impartiality: Humanitarian assistance must be provided without discriminating as to ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political opinions,

race or religion. Relief of the suffering must be guided solely by needs and priority must be given to the most urgent cases of distress. • Neutrality: Humanitarian assistance must be provided without engaging in hostilities or taking sides in controversies of a political, religious or ideological nature (McHugh, 2006: 25). These principles provide an ethical framework, which defines and delineates the humanitarian space within which NGOs operate, since declarations like the ‘Geneva Conventions’ 17 do not address humanitarian agencies and therefore confer no 15 See Annex 2: detailed description of the principles of the ‘Humanitarian Charter’.

16 Additional principles complementing these three core tenets of humanitarian action include: Dignity; Respect for Culture and Custom; “Do No/Less Harm”; Operational Independence; Sustainability; Participation; Accountability; Transparency; and Prevention. These principles are drawn from: The Code of Conduct of the International Red Cross Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations in Disaster Relief (1999) and OCHA documents on principles and policies for humanitarian engagement (Macrae, 2000a: 11).

17 The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977 are the main humanitarian treaties. The four Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol apply to conflict

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rights or impose obligations upon them. Although the Red Cross principles are not prescribed by the Geneva Conventions, and established rather by the Red Cross Conferences, these are also recognized and given a certain status in international humanitarian law (Mackintosh, 2000: 4-7). 18 Relief organizations are bound by these principles, especially in conflict situations, foregoing political engagement in order to safeguard access for humanitarian assistance. The nature of this is captured in the idea that once humanitarian workers have established their nonaligned role in situations of violence, they will be able to protect the humanitarian space required by agencies in order to assure the safety and well-being of civilians (and other categories of 'protected persons') (OCHA, 2003: 3). The idea of humanitarian principles is an acceptance that war has limits; it assumes that belligerents are concerned with political legitimacy, and that all states have an interest in preserving respect for International Humanitarian Law (Leader, 2000: 2-3). However, the concern over the possibility of independent humanitarian work based on neutrality and impartiality arises given the increasingly politicized environment for aid work, where attacks on civilians and other abuses of IHL become a deliberate strategy; military forces expand their range of tasks onto humanitarian fields; and donor’s foreign policy has a growing influence on relief agencies’ perception. between States. Additional Protocol II and Article 3, common to all four Geneva Conventions, are applicable to internal conflicts.

18 The content of these principles is fleshed out to some extent by legal doctrine. One of the most authoritative sources of this is the official ICRC Commentary to the Conventions, published in 1958.

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3. The political environment of humanitarian aid

Humanitarianism has always been affected by political trends and therefore cannot be understood or evaluated without analyzing the politics surrounding an intervention. On a global level, donor states might channel huge financial sums into aid because of national security reasons, or to strengthen domestic economies by reinforcing trade and export ties (Harmer, 2005: 2). 19 On a local level, on the other hand, importing significant resources into poor and politically charged environments creates a concentration of power, which makes humanitarian aid a preferred target for non-humanitarian misuse in recipient states (Curtis, 2001: 11). Furthermore, traditional relief organizations are no longer seen as the only actors in the humanitarian sphere that engage in reducing human suffering, especially in prominent crises. Potential partners, like military forces and private providers, have increasingly emerged in the humanitarian enterprise and are active in policy areas of humanitarian interest (Macrae, 2003a: 1). This leads to a wide range of activities that are now carried out under the banner of humanitarian action or relief, some of which run counter to traditional ideas about humanitarianism, including the basic principles of independence, impartiality and humanity. In southern Sudan, for instance, observers have noted a wide range of nongovernmental actors with different religious, political and economic motivations, including profit-making corporations, all describing their work as humanitarian. Francoise BouchetSaulnier, legal counsel of ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ describes this development as: 19 In the 1990s, concerns for Balkan stability were important in starting aid programs for Central European states such as Slovenia. For South Korea and China on the other hand, security factors related to North Korea have always been large.

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“Today, the word humanitarian is a label that tends to be used for a wide variety of activities undertaken by actors who do not meet the humanitarian law concept of an 'impartial humanitarian organization'… operating under very different forms and legal conditions" (OCHA, 2003: 4-5). Moreover, humanitarian aid is seen by governments as part of a coherent strategy of conflict reduction, which mitigates the effects of political and military action undertaken by donor governments themselves. 20 While policymakers, therefore, incorporate humanitarian assistance into a political strategy to prove humanitarian credentials to their own domestic audience, and for those in conflict-affected countries to legitimize international military and political interventions, humanitarian actors fear losing humanitarian space and being reduced to a component of foreign policy (Macrae, 2002: 8).

3.1. Western humanitarian aid

The political framework within which humanitarian workers are active has become more dominant at the present time as a result of the current geopolitical and security impact on the humanitarian enterprise underlying the ‘global war on ter-rorism’. This war, which for many is actually seen “as an international vehicle for prosecuting US defense and foreign policy”, not only reinterpreted the international legal framework regarding the use of force, but in understanding the IHL system in general, in which humanitarian aid policy will be defined and implemented (Macrae, 2003a: 2). Francoise Bouchet-Saulnier even describes this war as “a non-existing body of law, that creates an empty space, rather than creating a framework for this action" (OCHA, 2003: 4).

3.1.1. Influence of Western foreign policy

Since the 2001 terror attacks, the lines between political, military and humanitarian actors have been blurred as never before, representing a whole new level of exploitation of relief. After the humanitarian community was reaching consensus on the failure of political cooperation in aid response and the importance of rein-forcing the principle of neutrality, discussions on how humanitarian workers 20 Thus, for example, in Serbia, the ‘Education for Democracy’ (EfD) project grew out of a need to quell anxiety among southern EU member states regarding the impact of sanctions. In Macedonia, the outpouring of aid sought to salve the costs of the NATO-hastened mass expulsions of Kosovo Albanians (Macrae, 2000: 51).

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should interact with states have since been revitalized (Macrae, 2003a: 2). This is particularly due to situations of political transition, like in Afghanistan, where the provision of relief and reconstruction support was of vital political importance. 21 Two years later, aid was already part of the coalition’s political project and has been strongly demanded by the US government and the State Department. Thereon the ‘United States Agency for International Development’ (USAID) depended upon NGOs to such an unprecedented degree that some agencies have been more or less degraded to contractors, who provide services to the Iraqi population and have added to the already existing difficulties for local people to distinguish between neutral aid workers and personnel attached to the occupying powers (Stoddard, 2003a: 5). 22 Instead of focusing solely on legal obligations to meet the basic needs of the population, the US government is clearly seeking to meet political objectives. For example, the contract awarded by USAID to a private company for the rehabilitation of the education sector aims both to get children back to school, and to “lay a foundation for democratic practices and attitudes among children” (Nickolls, 2003: 8). This is a governmental policy, which violates one of the basic principles of the ‘Code of Conduct for the ICRC and NGOs’, which underlines the independence of relief agencies and rejects any attempt to manipulate and employ humanitarian aid for the goals of national foreign policies: 21 One particularly example was the attempt by US forces to win Afghans’ “hearts and minds” through food drops and the deployment of special military units in civilian clothes for bridge building and digging wells (Vaux, 2006: 240).

22 The strategy of the US-led coalition in Iraq included among others to get NGOs into the politically-important city of Basra in southern Iraq, because there was, according to the militaryrun ‘Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Centre’ in Jordan, “a need to show people quickly that life

would get better now that Saddam Hussein had gone”. The desire to use assistance as part of a political and military strategy in Iraq is not limited to the military. In May 2003, Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of USAID, explained to NGOs that they were an arm of the US government: “we need to show the people of Iraq an improvement in their standard of living in the next year or two” (Nickolls, 2003: 8).

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Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 318.

In light of the new US foreign policy, the neutrality question has “suddenly become less academic”, and forced US NGOs to make some very difficult choices regarding their operating policy in Iraq. 23 Despite reservations about launching operations in this country and to refuse funding from the US military controlled local authority, nearly all have accepted financial support in one way or another (Stoddard, 2003a: 7).

3.1.2. Perception of Western NGOs

One of the difficulties to integrate humanitarian action within international politics is that relief organizations reflect the cultural, religious and political values of the societies and communities of which they are part of, even if they are neutral, impartial and ‘non-governmental’ (Macrae, 2003a: 1). This puts NGOs at risk of being intimately associated with the powers and forces that many in the recipient state might see as the actual cause of their rather humiliating position; making for rather difficult circumstances for agencies to work in, especially in environments where international humanitarianism is mainly seen as funded by a “small club of Western donors”, making it just “the latest in a series of impositions of alien values, practices, and lifestyles” (Donini, 2004: 193). 23 In May 2003, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios scolded NGOs for not clearly and consistently identifying their aid activities in Afghanistan as funded by the US government, and admonished them that they needed to demonstrate measurable results if they wanted to continue to receive USAID funding in the future. Shortly after the speech the website ‘NGO Watch’ was launched by conservative think-tanks - the ‘American Enterprise Institute’ and the ‘Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies’. The US NGO community suspects this project as being a tool for the administration to intimidate non-compliant NGOs (Stoddard, 2003a: 5).

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Western donors who are mainly represented in the ‘Development Assistance Committee’ (DAC) have never enjoyed a monopoly on humanitarian action, but they are a dominant force. Over the past few years however, the visibility of a number of non-DAC donors has increased, especially in the development of aid partnerships or regional cooperation. Nevertheless, in international forums where aid policy is discussed and decisions are made, non-DAC donors are still underrepresented, and the actual number of non-DAC agencies remains low in comparison to Western NGOs (Harmer, 2005: 1); the ‘UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance’ (OCHA) currently registers 260 Western NGOs and NGO consortia engaged in international humanitarian assistance. 24 While the US is home to the largest single number of these organizations, with around 90, Europe though combined accounts for a bigger overall share of international NGOs (Stoddard, 2003: 25): Figure 3.a. Operational humanitarian NGOs based in industrialized states

Source: Stoddard, 2003: 25.

Within this very large group of international players, a relatively small number dominates humanitarian action. UNHCR estimates that some 20 European and North American NGOs receive approximately 75% of all

public funds spent in emergencies (Macrae, 2002: 15). This might be one of the reasons for ‘Sphere’s image in parts of the humanitarian world of being a “Western top-down idea”, 24 These numbers exclude development-only organizations and the numerous ‘briefcase’ NGOs that spring up in response to specific emergencies. In total there may be between 3,000 and 4,000 international NGOs in the Northern industrialized states, including development, relief and social organizations.

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which just reflects the concerns, priorities and logic of certain industrialized countries with their own cultural and financial specificities. According to the 2004 evaluation report, ‘Sphere’ remains “outside for many in India and South Asia”, since for example, the living conditions of half of the population of Calcutta would not meet the minimum standards, even in ‘normal’ times (Dyke van, 2004: 41). ‘Sphere’ however tries to counter this perception by committing themselves to a diverse representation, which is supposed to reflect the global scope of the project. 25 The ‘Sphere’ Board, which is responsible for the project oversight, currently is comprised of 15 members, representing relief agencies in Europe, the United States, Africa and Latin America. Still, 10 out of 15 are European, with six of them based in Geneva. 26

3.1.3. Faith based NGOs

Humanitarianism in Islam often seems to reflect a wider and more complex interpretation of the term as it does for Western cultures. In particular for Gulf States, the charitable obligations of Islam are a strong driver of assistance, and Islamic solidarity has been an important factor in aid allocations (Barasi, 2005: 41-43). Since, according to their understanding, the idea of relief is suppose to “include those things which are needed to fulfill a person’s religious obligations and sustain their spiritual life”; it might lead to significant divisions between Western and Islamic traditions, especially if it comes to a more secular understanding of providing aid (Harmer, 2005: 2). These fundamental differences, as well as developments in the humanitarian sphere since the terrorist attacks, have complicated humanitarian collaboration. Western governments have been creating a climate of deep suspicion towards organized, nongovernmental Islam, accusing Islamic NGOs of being “hot-beds of terrorism”, while Christian NGOs operating in Muslim countries must struggle with local worries that they “spread their religion to 25 ‘Sphere’s ‘Guiding Principles for the New Governance Structure’, in: www.sphereproject.org.

26 Members of the ‘Sphere’ Board: Action by Churches Together & World Council of Churches (Geneva), CARE International (Geneva), Caritas Internationalis (Vatican), Christian Relief and Development Association (Ethiopia), InterAction (Washington, US), Int. Council of Voluntary Agencies (Geneva), IFRC (Geneva), Lutheran World Federation (Geneva), Mercy Corps (Portland, US), OXFAM GB, Save the Children UK, Voluntary Organizations in Cooperation in Emergencies (Brussels), Action Aid (South Africa), Comision Cristiana de Desarrollo (Honduras).

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create a bulwark against Islam”. According to OCHA Middle East Managing Editor Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, a few Islamic NGOs actually did stray into militant political extremism, where violence was accepted as another way of ‘defending’ Islam, while the majority however remains genuinely focused on purely humanitarian objectives (Ghandour, 2003: 14). Christian NGOs, on the other hand, have undergone a substantial revival in power and influence since the end of the 1990s, especially in Central Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where they support among others education, development or medical aid programs, often accompanied by religious instruction. 27 US policy has sought to avoid combining government programs and religious proselytizing for decades, to respect the Constitution's prohibition against a state religion and to ensure that aid recipients don't forgo assistance because they don't share the religion of the provider (Stockman, 2006, Boston Globe). This policy has been changed tremendously by the current US government, raising the budget for faith-based groups from US$ 250 million in 2001 to more than US$ 1.7 billion in 2005, making USAID a growing source of funds for Christian groups and shifting US humanitarian policy into faith-centered aid (Stoddard, 2003: 7). This shift in aid policy has been caught up in a virulent anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries, caused by the war in Iraq and the detention of Muslims at Guantanamo Bay. For locals it is extremely difficult to separate between policies on an international level that they vehemently oppose, from activities of Christian aid groups in their own country, even if faith-based groups may not tie assistance to religious participation (Milligan, 2006, Boston Globe). In such a precarious environment, symbols and religious tracts, in hospitals or schools for instance, are already enough to provoke discomfort in many Muslims, who are deeply resistant to conversion. Nevertheless, the reproach

of following missionary purposes gets reinforced by the fact that US faithbased initiatives overseas are almost exclusively a Christian 27 Thousands of Christian NGOs and consortia operate across the globe; Caritas for instance is one of the largest Christian networks with 154 Catholic agencies. It is based in the Vatican, receives funding from the Catholic Church and applies Vatican policies in its work. The ‘Love of Christ Brigade’ on the other hand deployed the largest resources of all NGOs during the response to Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998 (Ghandour, 2003: 14).

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domain, receiving not only 98.3 percent of all such funds, but out of nearly 160 faith-based organizations that have received prime contracts from USAID in the past five years only two are Muslim, while another two are Jewish. 28 Even in the case of the devastating 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, no Muslim organization has been awarded a prime USAID award for relief work in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world (Stockman, 2006, Boston Globe). 29

3.2. External involvement

The humanitarian response to an emergency situation should seek to alleviate suffering of the ones in most need. For that reason, the ‘Sphere’ project encourages relief agencies to design their response programs and projects by aiming to actually close the gap between existing living conditions for humans in distress and their suggested minimum standards. Nevertheless, the Handbook points out that an agency cannot expect to bring this about single-handedly (The Sphere Project, 2003: 13). In particular, the critical roles of donor and host governments in providing not only financial and material resources, but also ensuring access to the affected population and providing a reasonable security environment, has been emphasized quite frequently (The Sphere Project, 2003: 34).

3.2.1. Donor influence on Humanitarian aid

In order to meet the ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs), 30 some donors have increased their ‘Official Development Assistance’ (ODA), which also affects the amount of funds going into humanitarian assistance, making roughly 10% of the total ODA since 1999 (i.e. in 2003: total ODA US$ 69 billion; total humanitarian assistance US$ 6.9 billion - excluding Iraq) (Oxfam, 2005: 2). 28 See Annex 6: ‘USAID contracts with faith-based organizations’.

29 According to records obtained by the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ USAID spent US$ 57 million from 2001-2005 (out of a total of US$ 390 million to nongovernmental agencies) to fund almost a dozen projects run by faith-based organizations in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Only 5 percent of that sum went to a Muslim group, the ‘Aga Khan Foundation’ of the USA, which was given approximately $3.5 million for projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Milligan, 2006, Boston Globe).

30 The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 - form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and the entire world’s leading development institutions (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/).

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Figure 3.b. Humanitarian aid as a share of total ODA, constant (2000) prices

Figure 3.c. Total humanitarian aid per capita from DAC countries

Source: http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/ghafr2003.htm.

International assistance is often closely related to foreign policy and security objectives and reflects wider political and ideological interests or concerns. Aid is for that reason allocated in accordance to a range of political and economic, strategic and religious factors, than to the actual needs of affected communities - a phenomenon, which is visible both with DAC and non-DAC donors (Harmer, 2005: 1-3). 31 The Asian tsunami in 2004 moreover demonstrated, because of its massive public response, that a high media profile also determines donors’ and even agencies’ decisions to act.

Tsunami projects have since totally dominated the budgets and activities of several aid agencies, even though the needs of the tsunami survivors are nevertheless not exceptional compared to conditions such as those in Sudan and the Congo that 31 In some protracted crises, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, non-DAC donors exert both financial and policy influence. As a proportion of their national income, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia provided the largest volumes of humanitarian assistance amongst non-DAC donors in 2003, at 0.062% and 0.027% respectively.

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have a low political and media profile (Oxfam, 2005: 3). 32 After all, many organizations are quite aware of the paradoxical situation in their relationships to donors: they limit NGOs autonomy in organizing and managing relief programs because of the influence they have through their funding, though they only have a very limited knowledge of what actually happens in the field (Dijkzeul, 2003: 222). Donor influence is particularly tangible in the following areas:

Source: Caverzasio, 2001: 110-111.

3.2.1.1. Donor activities and ‘Sphere’ Donor themselves are also impelled to caution, facing a proliferation of organizations of sometimes questionable quality, who all seek funding from them. This leads from donor’s side almost automatically to a precautious

selection of partners, raising agencies concern that ‘Sphere’ could be used as a tool for that; for 32 One indicator of whether global humanitarian needs are being met is the UN’s Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) that launches appeals in response to complex humanitarian emergencies. In 2004, less than two thirds of the UN’s CAP requirements were met, with a shortfall of US$ 1.36 billion out of the US$ 3.4 billion requested (Oxfam, 2005: 3). In 2005, only the 22% of the DRCs huge unmet humanitarian needs were funded; in Somalia barely 8%; and in the Central African Republic only 6% (Egeland, 2005: 55).

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instance, by holding international agencies accountable for resources to the level of ‘Sphere’ indicators. This has not been the case after all, according to the evaluation report, except in extreme circumstances. On the contrary, it seems that most governments of the nine visited by pilot implementation teams actually understood that achieving standards is a joint responsibility that can be constrained by resources (The Sphere Project, 2002: 14-24). 33 Some donors also tend to set their own standards, based on unclear criteria, for identifying “good” and “bad” implementing organizations (Caverzasio, 2001: 110-111). ‘Sphere’ has picked up this point of influence and has taken agencies’ concerns into account by providing donor governments recommendations on how to interact with relief agencies:

Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 323 (Annex II).

These recommendations are meant to set a framework as well as limits on donor interference in relief activities, once they have agreed on support, and seek to secure agencies’ flexibility to respond to changing needs on the

ground. This appeal has been picked up by the UN Secretary-General who also called for more pre33 Donorssupport for ‘Sphere’ however appears to be rather inconsistent. In the experience of pilot agencies, some donors have required agencies to plan projects drawing on ‘Sphere’ and expect ‘Sphere’ indicators to be used and monitored through logical frameworks. Other donors have argued it is not always necessary to meet these indicators and have discouraged their use, especially with large populations where the total cost of projects would be beyond available funds (The Sphere Project, 2002: 14-24).

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dictable and flexible funding based on needs, referring to principles as articulated for instance in the 2003 ‘Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative’ (Egeland, 2005: 54). The ‘Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative’ was launched at an international meeting in Stockholm, hosting sixteen of the world’s largest humanitarian donors, including representatives of donor governments, UN agencies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its main purpose was basically to reflect on donor behavior, to analyze challenges in the humanitarian system and to commit themselves to the implementation of 23 principles essential to being a ‘good humanitarian donor’. 34 These principles include among others an increase in timeliness of aid and providing it according to need (Macrae, 2003: 10). As the tsunami crisis demonstrated, however, there is still a far way to go in putting these principles into practice. Donors’ unprecedented response to the tsunami in some cases exceeded humanitarian needs on the ground, and NGO capacity to absorb the money (Oxfam, 2005: 2).

3.2.1.2. Bilaterization of humanitarian aid

Within this very complex and heterogenic system of international relief, 35 it has long been clear that NGOs play a critical role in humanitarian assistance - both in delivery and in raising public awareness and support. Their financial capabilities are growing and some NGOs control a larger share of humanitarian resources than ever before. Data from twelve official donors show bilateral humanitarian assistance spending in the form of direct grants and contracts to NGOs worth over US$ 1 billion in 2001: 36 34 See Annex 3: ‘Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship’.

35 See Annex 7: ‘Resource flows within the International relief System’.

36 In addition, UN agencies fund NGOs to deliver their humanitarian assistance. In 2000 for instance, UNHCR spent US$ 311 million of its US$ 706 million income through NGOs (http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/ghafr2003.htm).

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Figure 3.d. Official humanitarian assistance spent through NGOs in 2001

Source: http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/ghafr2003.htm.

Since the twelve ‘bilaterals’ above exclude some major donors such as Japan, Germany and the Netherlands, it is clear that well over US$ 1.5 billion in official humanitarian assistance is channeled through NGOs. Taking official and voluntary estimates together, it is likely that in 2001, NGOs managed between US$ 2.5 billion and US$ 3 billion of global humanitarian assistance, which makes the income of some NGOs larger than total ODA from some DAC donors. This financial background puts them in the position to be active in more countries than many bilateral donors and being at least as influential as many OECD development ministries in their abilities to command public and political attention. 37 Nevertheless, the increase of governmental funding channeled bilaterally, instead of through the UN multilateral mechanism, brings donors nearer to operational decision-making and involvement in agencies coordination and negotiation. This tendency weakens the independence of humanitarian action and undermines the global capacity of the multilateral system (Macrae, 2000: 5).

37 http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/ghafr2003.htm (10. November 2006).

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Figure 3.e. Bilateral humanitarian assistance from DAC donors 2002 and 3003

In particular, the United States seems to have overcome the “perceived constraints of international decision-making” by working through a set of bilateral relationships rather than through a single multilateral body such as NATO or the United Nations (Macrae, 2003a: 2). This leads to a strong reliance of some humanitarian organizations on the government and puts them at risk of losing their ability of deciding independently on how and where to run certain projects. The major secular US NGOs could not operate at their current level without funding from the US government: CARE and ‘Save the Children US’ receive close to half of their funding through the US government; over 70% of the International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s funding comes from public sources. To be able to regularly refuse government support, these agencies would have to radically reduce the size of their organizations (Stoddard, 2003: 29). 38

38 The private funding raised by ‘Save the Children US’, for example, would not be sufficient to support significant programming by any one of its individual country field offices if its public funding were to disappear. During the 1990s, this dependence was expressed geographically, as the headquarters of major NGOs like CARE and CRS relocated from New York to cities closer to Washington. In Europe, and indeed for the US components of European NGOs, the picture is very different. Oxfam US is three-quarters privately funded, and Oxfam GB takes only about a quarter

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Figure 3.f. Public versus private funding for six major NGOs

Source: Stoddard, 2003a: 6.

It is important to note that because of the global effects of the war on terror, governments and populations in developing countries are demanding increasingly to know where particular NGOs get their monies from and sometimes questioning the political motivations of their actions (The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 77-78). Therefore, donor governments still continue to rely on multilateral channels for humanitarian action, especially when it comes to difficult political conditions in complex emergencies (Macrae, 2000: 5).

3.2.2. Responsibilities of host governments

Governments hold the primary responsibility to ensure the safety of their citizens. They are most likely to have the resources and capacity to undertake large-scale multi-disciplinary initiatives, and a mandate to direct or coordinate the work of others. Governments also create the policy and legislative frameworks within which risk reduction can be accomplished. During civil wars, they are required to educate and control the conduct of all armed forces on their territory and to prosecute all those who breach international humanitarian law. 39 When and where the of its funding from the British government. MSF maintains a 70% private-to-public ratio, with a strict policy of allowing no more than 50% of their total funds to come from governments.

39 Like any international treaty, the Geneva Conventions are addressed to states. They impose obligations upon states that ratify the Conventions, and in so far as they reflect customary international law, they are binding on all states, whether or not they are parties to the Conventions. Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions provides a legal basis on which impartial humanitarian organizations may offer their services to warring parties. Protocol II additional to the Geneva Conventions states that if the civilian population has been deprived of objects essential to

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protection of people has failed, and they become the victims of atrocity or deprivation, states are also required to meet their obligations to provide assistance for protected persons. If they cannot meet all of their humanitarian responsibilities directly, they are charged with enabling the provision of humanitarian action by impartial organizations. In regard to the ‘ALNAP protection guide for humanitarian agencies’, 40 these organizations are in turn responsible to maintain their impartiality and distribute aid on the basis of need alone (Slim, 2005: 36). Relief agencies’ aim is to use this humanitarian space, which has been offered by the host government, to restore some of the basic human rights, which “individuals are entitled by virtue of their membership in humanity” once they are deprived of them by circumstance (Terry, 2002: 17). 3.2.2.1. Host governments and ‘Sphere’ The ‘Sphere’ ‘Humanitarian Charter’ acknowledges that peoples’ needs are met first and foremost through their own efforts, and that international law puts the obligation on governments to be responsible for citizens where local capacities are inadequate. It nevertheless clarifies that humanitarian agencies are fundamentally accountable to the people they seek to serve, once they become active (Lowrie, 2001: 37). A principal concern of those developing the ‘Humanitarian Charter’ was to provide a framework of responsibilities for humanitarian agencies within the broader framework of legal and political responsibilities of governments. This is especially pointed out in section two of the charter: its survival, relief action of an exclusively humanitarian and impartial nature may be undertaken (Article 18). Governments are expected to give their approval for such impartial humanitarian relief work (Flüe von, 1997: 3-4).

40 The ‘Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action’ (ALNAP) was established in 1997, following the multi-agency evaluation of the Rwanda genocide. It is a collective response by the humanitarian sector, dedicated to improving humanitarian performance through increased learning and accountability (http://www.alnap.org/).

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Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 18.

The presence of national and international actors during a humanitarian emergency can sometimes lead to diffuse and sometimes confused responsibilities. ‘Sphere’ therefore urges to keep a clear spotlight on the responsibilities of governments and armed groups controlling populations, and included recommendations to governments in the handbook on how to interact with non-governmental humanitarian agencies: 41

Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 322 (Annex I).

During the evaluation of the ‘Sphere’ project, which was carried out between September 2002 and September 2003, pilot agency staff members

in various countries reported that it is essential for NGOs to share ‘Sphere’ with government agencies in order to create a favourable policy framework for implementation. These agencies consider that the best time to involve governments may well be at 41 See Annex 8: ‘Recommendations to the governments of disaster-affected countries’.

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the disaster preparedness stage and particularly in training. 42 However, according to the evaluation report, NGOs should be cautious of results; although attendance of government personnel at ‘Sphere’ workshops is encouraging, in many cases they may lack real authority in policy formulation or resource allocation. In addition, including humanitarian principles in policy or legislation may not imply a real commitment to implementation of the principles (The Sphere Project, 2003: 14-15).

3.2.2.2. Difficulties of governmental interaction

Humanitarian agencies can face many difficulties when dealing with local governments in crisis situations since their policies are often a major contributor to peoples’ vulnerability to hazards. Although access is inevitably hindered when battles are raging, all too often the denial of access to the people who are in need of relief assistance becomes a deliberate policy by one of the combatants. 43 By doing this, belligerents not only disregard the independence and humanitarian character of relief operations, but violate international humanitarian law and become themselves responsible for security risks (IRIN, 2006: 6). Further difficulties in coordinating humanitarian operations with local governments might appear due to a lack of capacity and resources, coupled with shortsighted planning, inadequate organisation and corruption, which can all lead to inefficient disaster- and conflict management. In some cases, the local administration may themselves even be rendered traumatized by the nature of the disaster; after the Tsunami in Indonesia for instance, or in the Pakistan earthquake, buildings and resources of local authorities were destroyed and many of the personnel killed or injured (IRIN, 2006: 6). 42 Governments also expressed interest in using the ‘Sphere’ handbook to inform the development of disaster policies, procedures and legislation in Nicaragua, Honduras, India, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya. In Angola, the Government used ‘Sphere’ and the Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Populations to inform legislation for the displaced. The Government has since trained ‘Provincial Humanitarian Coordinators’ in all eighteen provinces in ‘Sphere’ and uses ‘Sphere’ in planning humanitarian services (The Sphere Project, 2003: 14-15).

43 In twenty current conflict zones, humanitarian access is restricted, condemning civilian populations to protracted and unmitigated suffering. The risks for civilians are exacerbated even further by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and their illicit sale or supply to armed groups or militias (http://ochaonline.un.org/).

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Problems in achieving active and efficient engagement of government officials can also be traced to the overlap in responsibilities at local, regional and national levels. Simply coordinating relief work within a heterogenic system of hierarchies and functions can already be a major task for agencies. 44 For example, efforts by one branch of a government may be undermined by another or a lack of clarity within each mandate of officials, particularly in emergency situations, can fur-thermore worsen governmental efforts in useful collaboration (Saunders, 2004: 169). 45 After all, close consultations with local governments and the participation of responsible authorities always play a decisive role when it comes to ensuring local ownership, follow-up, and sustainability; and ‘Sphere’ however recognizes restrictions in cooperation, as “arguments for more work with governments, not less” (The Sphere Project, 2003: 14-15).

3.2.3. Conflict regions

The accountability of international aid has traditionally rested on the idea that the recipients’ state would sanction and monitor flows within their territory. Although in a number of Asian and African countries, the national governments lost its influence in parts of the state and local parties and warlords took control - including its natural resources and production plants. This development worsened the situation of the local population in these areas dramatically, regarding social and human security, economic redistribution and public services, like medical supply, schools and infrastructure and brought further implications for the way in which aid functions (Macrae, 2000b: 93). 44 There are many notable exceptions to this, including for example the network of state-level disaster management authorities across India centrally mandated to provide professional expertise and organizational capacity to the local governmental leadership. Further, the Indian government’s ‘National Disaster Response Plan’ includes reference to the ‘Sphere’ standards and national NGOs as well as governmental departments as key components (Saunders, 2004: 169-170).

45 At a more immediate level, disaster management can become subject to political forces. Casualty and damage figures are often used by political parties for their own purposes. For example, when Hurricane Georges struck the Dominican Republic in September 1998, the government consistently reported a relatively low number of deaths, while the oppositioncontrolled congress alleged that five times that number had been killed. The opposition used a high death toll to make the government look inept or uncaring; while the government’s political interests led it to downplay the disaster’s impact. In other situations, governments may exaggerate the human and economic casualties in the hope of attracting more international aid (Twigg, 2004: 292).

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Mary Anderson, author of ‘Do No Harm’, in which she sets out the lessons learned from the ‘Local Capacities for Peace Project’, describes the way outsiders enter and assume important roles in these circumstances as “the most complex moral, as well as practical, challenges aid workers face” (Anderson, 1999: 146). When international assistance is given in the context of a violent conflict, it becomes part of that context and thus also of the conflict. According to Anderson, experiences show that aid’s economic and political resources affect conflict in five predictable ways: • Aid resources are often stolen by warriors and used to support armies and buy weapons. • Aid affects markets by reinforcing either the war economy or the peace economy. • The distributional impacts of aid affect inter-group relationships, either feeding tensions or reinforcing connections. • Aid substitutes for local resources required to meet civilian needs, freeing them to support conflict. • Aid legitimizes people and their actions or agendas, supporting the pursuit of either war or peace (Anderson, 1999: 39). Complex emergencies are not only characterized by the complexity of the needs of a population under threat, but the real element of complexity lies in the political factors which underpin the humanitarian crisis (Weller, 2005: 34). One devastating example of politicized aid happened in the

Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border at the end of the Cold War, when humanitarian aid quickly became a renewable source of funding for the Khmer Rouge. It not only exacerbated the plight of the refugees, but also contributed to the continuation of the conflict (Mikolajuk, 2005: 2-3). 46 Another case happened in Sudan, when humanitarian aid was blocked by the deliberate strategies of merchants who wanted to profit from higher food prices and distress-sales of animals. The latter example shows that even the simplest forms of relief can be subject to manipulation and 46 In February 1980, a monitoring report revealed that 64 percent of the rice meant as food aid never reached the refugees. Stores of food and medical supplies were stolen and taxes were levied on Cambodian staff. The Khmer Rouge also set up secret military camps along the border, taking advantage of their proximity to the refugee camps, which provided their resources. This localization allowed the Khmer Rouge to routinely kidnap refugees, including children, who were forced to do labor in the military camps. As a result, the Vietnamese began to perceive the refugee camps as the source of a resistance movement and made them military targets, trapping the refugees in the conflict they had initially fled.

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political influence and maintains the widespread assertion that there actually is no form of aid that is simply ‘saving lives’. Relief operations will always be accompanied by hidden side effects, including the possibility that aid is fuelling or prolonging war (Vaux, 2006: 248). ‘Sphere’ has been aware of this global development and points out that during a relief operation no single sector can be considered in isolation from the others. It emphasizes the importance of a clear understanding of the general context, including its political and security factors. If the problem is “not correctly identified and understood then it will be difficult, if not impossible, to respond appropriately” (The Sphere Project, 2003: 2526). For example, in one of ‘Sphere’s checklists, armed forces are mentioned as an important factor that humanitarian workers have to be aware of:

3.2.3.1. Humanitarian agencies in conflict regions

The end of the alignment policy after the Cold War brought a change of economic and political interests on the international level. Inter- and intrastate conflicts in certain developing countries started to break out, while national borders in these areas started to become less relevant and local crises seemed to put development efforts of whole regions into danger. In response to the changed nature of conflict, including the increased number of non-state armed parties to conflicts, the need for structured and principled engagement of humanitarian actors with armed groups has increased markedly over the past 15 years. It became almost indispensable in today’s conflicts to engage armed groups in a structured dialogue in order both to promote better respect for international humanitarian and human rights law and to ensure the provision of protection and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations (McHugh, 2006: 8). 47 47 The increased need for humanitarian agencies to negotiate with armed groups has been reflected in successive reports of the UN Secretary-General on the protection of civilians in armed conflict

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3.2.3.2. Local armed forces

Local armed forces are by definition capable of employing arms to achieve political, ideological or economic objectives. They are not within the formal military structures of states, state-alliances or intergovernmental organizations and they do not act under the control of the states in which they operate (McHugh, 2006: 5-6). These forces differ in their appearance and range from rebel groups to private companies to self-enriching warlords; not all of them are connected to political structures in which political or diplomatic leverage can be used. Therefore, it is “often very difficult to know whom it is you're dealing with, where to point the finger of responsibility, not to become complicit in strategies that are actually abusive of civilian populations," according to James Darcy of the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) (OCHA, 2003: 11). International humanitarian law is intended first and foremost for governments, but regarding legal doctrine, it is also applicable to nongovernmental armed groups. It sets out who is entitled to protection, lays down the rights and obligations of the belligerents and provides a framework in which humanitarian activities can be carried out (Flüe von, 1997: 3). 48 However, irregular armed groups, militias and foreign mercenaries usually have little knowledge of international humanitarian law (IHL) and do not distinguish between fighters and civilians. The confidence of these “irregular” groups, that they will never be called to account for their crimes are furthermore a real threat to the perception and relevance of IHL in armed conflicts (OCHA, 2003: 4-11). "The fact that, in a lot of circumstances, we're seeing armed groups that don't have standard 'command and control' functions, that don't operate with standard military rules of procedures; that sometimes they're child soldiers, who are on drugs or who have been kidnapped - this is obviously complicating the environment." 49

since 1999. These reports have highlighted the importance of negotiations with parties to a conflict to ensure access to, and protection of, vulnerable groups.

48 When a state has ratified the Conventions or Protocols, the provisions relating to internal wars are also binding on the non-state party to the conflict. The relevant customary principles will be binding on any two or more non-state parties involved in an internal conflict, even if no state is involved. At an individual level, commanders and members of armed forces and armed groups also have personal responsibility for violations of the law (Mackintosh, 2000: 4).

49 Elissa Golberg, Policy Advisor, Humanitarian Affairs, Global and Human Issues Bureau, Department of International Affairs and International Trade, Canada, in: OCHA (April 2003) Special Report: Civilian Protection in Armed Conflict, IRIN, New York.

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In conflict regions, humanitarian agencies are in an extremely difficult position to fulfill their “duty” and to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance and protection to vulnerable populations. As long as they don’t know who to deal with and how to conduct themselves, the aim of preserving humanitarian space, and to promote better respect for international law becomes nearly unachievable. In case relief agencies actually do find a counterpart who is in charge of negotiations, humanitarian workers will always be at risk of being accused of losing their impartiality by being seen as conferring legitimacy or recognition to these groups (McHugh, 2006: 5-6).

3.2.4. Military involvement

Humanitarians have always dealt with regular armies, rebel and other forces in any armed conflict. What is new is the involvement of armies - especially international forces - in operations portrayed as helping and protecting civilians at risk, by engaging in activities traditionally carried out by humanitarian organizations, i.e. transport, evacuation, camp construction, food distribution and medical aid (Caverzasio, 2001: 106). Despite agreed guidelines, which put limitations on this kind of activity and seek to protect the humanitarian character of relief operations; this engagement continues to be an area of grave concern for humanitarian organizations (ECHO, 2004: 4). Of note, so-called “hearts and minds” operations designed to win local support in conflict societies blur the distinction between military and humanitarian actors, viewed as integral to the safety of humanitarian workers. 50 Nevertheless, recent developments have led to corresponding structural and organizational changes within Western militaries and government bureaucracies to combine civilian and military interests in crisis response and to develop civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) skills and capacities in military bodies (Wheeler, 2006: 2). 51 50 In Afghanistan, the military’s delivery of assistance in civilian clothing and the conditionality placed on military aid in return for intelligence have been particularly controversial; as were US airdrops of army rations over Afghanistan in October 2001 which were simultaneously reported as humanitarian, constituting part of the US pledge of assistance, and as being one element of their political strategy (Macrae, 2002: 10).

51 Governments have invested in structures to combine civilian capabilities with military assets to plan for and respond to crises. The US government, for example, has moved towards defense planning for ‘stability operations’, as well as cross-posting personnel between the Department of Defense and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The British government has established a cross-departmental planning capability (the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit) involving the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of

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After all, humanitarian and military organizations have certain features in common: both act in “the same theatre of operations”, use more or less similar logistical techniques, work in environments rife with strategic and political interests, and get largely funded by the same source - the government (Caverzasio, 2001: 106). While relief agencies put individual rights over state rights and commit themselves to comply with humanitarian principles as defined in the ‘Code of Conduct’, it remains impossible for the military to ensure or fulfill the principle of neutrality as well as that of independence (VENRO, 2005: 4). Those involved in peacekeeping operations are often even less conversant with humanitarian principles as they are commonly understood by aid agencies, in particular when it comes to the understanding of impartiality. 52 Where one party to a peace agreement clearly and incontrovertibly is violating its terms, continued equal treatment of all parties by the United Nations can, “in the best case result in ineffectiveness and in the worst may amount to complicity” (Brahimi, 2000, UN Report). Private military forces on the other hand have become increasingly common ac-tors in crisis environments, and links between the humanitarian community and the PMF industry are expanding, both as clients and as inhabitants of the same war zones. Recent experiences in Iraq though have raised significant concerns regarding the status of PMF employees and the efficacy of international mechanisms to oversee their activities. Furthermore, there are no standard guidelines as to how humanitarians should relate to PMFs, or what their various rights and responsibilities properly are. Since humanitarian actors tend to contract PMFs to provide security for their operations and staff in an ad hoc manner, knowledge networks and principles of good practice remain limited (Wheeler, 2006: 3).

Taken together, the political impact on humanitarian aid coming from these different types of armed forces, host governments, and donors seem to leave small room for principles of neutrality and impartiality. The difficulties arising from Defense. Investment has increased in CIMIC policies, and more senior CIMIC specialists are acting as high-level advisors to military commands.

52 See Annex 5: ‘UN peacekeeping operations worldwide’.

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these influences become apparent when it comes to developing a common approach and translating them into practice. Therefore, a new perspective on this humanitarian framework is necessary to create a practical environment for the humanitarian community.

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4. Humanitarian Principles in a political environment

The traditional approach of humanitarian action is seen exclusively as relieving the plight of the victims of humanitarian emergencies. It should be free of any strategic thought and guided by need alone, without any distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ beneficiaries. The humanitarian principles are an expression of this aim and they have been approved by the participating agencies of the ‘Sphere’ project that committed them to act in accordance with humanity and impartiality, and with the other principles set out in the ‘Code of Conduct’ (The Sphere Project, 2003: 16-17). The new form of politicization of humanitarian aid is seen to challenge these principles, by “subordinating humanitarian objectives to political and strategic ones” (Curtis, 2001: 13).

4.1. Humanity

The whole idea of humanitarianism is founded on the principle of humanity and is therefore probably the least controversial and the one most easily asserted by relief agencies, international politicians, and UN forces alike. The core of the Red Cross and Red Crescent definition of humanity is the desire “to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found….to protect life and health and to ensure respect to the human being”. The actual meaning of humanity transcends mere physical existence and focuses especially on how aid is provided, which often says more to beneficiaries about the motivation and principles than what actually is provided (Slim, 1997: 344-45). Jan Egeland, United Nations’ Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief emphasizes that “in our rush to provide aid quickly and efficiently, we must not neglect the power of presence - the act of human solidar- ity in the midst of suffering”. Even though beneficiaries may well have lost eve-

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rything in life, the first thing humanitarianism should represent is dignity and respect (Egeland, 2005: 55). For that reason, it also symbolizes one of the cornerstones of ‘Sphere’s Humanitarian Charter’:

Source: The Sphere Project, 2003: 16-17.

The basic understanding of humanitarian behavior is the obligation to provide aid to everyone who is involved in an emergency, based on a moral responsibility towards other members of humanity. Nevertheless, in reality, states and agencies customarily operate in the territory of just one party to a conflict. This might happen because of capacity reasons, logistical circumstances or out of pure sympathy to one side involved in a crisis. In fact, the international community has never denounced this policy to transcend the bounds of humanitarianism and even the Geneva Conventions permits national societies to provide aid only to one party ‘in need’. Therefore, probably no more can be deduced from this principle than the very basic definition given by the Red Cross and equate humanity with the aim to “prevent and alleviate human suffering” (Mackintosh, 2000: 7).

4.2. Impartiality

The classical ICRC definition of impartiality states that an organization makes no discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinion. According to this definition, humanitarian workers are obliged to recognize the similarity of all people but to identify the differences in their needs, and always determine their judgments on these “twin pillars of non-discrimination” as Hugo Slim calls it, Senior Lecturer in International Humanitarianism at Oxford Brookes University. Consequently humanitarian agencies are suppose to relieve the suffering of individuals, “being guided solely by their need and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress” (Slim, 1997: 348-49).

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‘Sphere’ recognizes the importance of impartiality inter alia to ensure fair and transparent contracting procedures in order to avoid any suspicion of favoritism or corruption. It further urges that aid should be provided without any intention of religious or political reeducation, like, for instance, food aid packages that contain messages that are “divisive in nature”, as a given example in the ‘Sphere’ handbook (The Sphere Project, 2003: 166); the latter however has frequently been discounted by humanitarians, who sacrificed the core principle of impartiality in a misguided effort to expand the sway of democracy and human rights (OCHA, 2003: 4). The expectation that humanitarian organizations do not take sides in a conflict was seen to be quite effective during the Cold War, allowing aid agencies to operate freely in crisis regions despite the confrontation of the two world powers (Vaux, 2006: 243). Nevertheless, this policy puts one of the toughest obligations on humanitarian workers, since it requires making no distinctions between beneficiaries, no matter if they might even be responsible for the extent of this crisis or if they have been involved in direct human rights violations. Interesting is a comparison to the policy of the UNHCR, since according to their statute (Paragraph 7d) it is explicitly prohibited to be impartial, in the sense just described, when it comes to assisting those who are accused of international crimes. This tension between the principles of UNHCR and those of international humanitarian law may have contributed to the lack of clarity among relief agencies over how to deal for instance with the refugee camps in the Great Lakes region after the Rwandan genocide (Mackintosh, 2000: 8). 53 Impartiality, in a traditional sense however, also entails agencies of absolute independence regarding their decisions on when, where and how to take humanitarian

53 The Genocide in Rwanda ended when the Tutsi-dominated expatriate rebel movement known as the ‘Rwandan Patriotic Front’ overthrew the Hutu government and seized power. Fearing reprisals, hundreds of thousands of Hutu genocidaires and other refugees fled into eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Many adults of the Rwandan Hutu refugees who crossed the border had participated willingly in the slaughter of the Tutsis and were now victims themselves, struggling with cholera and dysentery in the camps (Rieff, 2002: 25).

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action. 54 This is a requirement, which seems to be more and more difficult, since many organizations depend on government funding, which appears to be increasingly misused in providing aid as part of broader foreign policy goals (Leader, 2000: 19). This growing coherence between political objectives and humanitarian aid violates the principle of independence and eliminates humanitarians’ perception of being a legitimate “moral counterforce vis-à-vis the belligerents”, making impartial action more difficult, if not impossible (Curtis, 2001: 13).

4.3. Neutrality

According to the ‘Verband Entwicklungspolitik deutscher Nichtregierungsorganisationen’ (VENRO) the running of humanitarian activities depends considerably on acceptance of an aid organization among the population in need and the local authorities and parties. The principle of neutrality is therefore seen as a fundamental element and as a key to gain access to the target population in the first place. Specifically in politically charged environments, it shall provide opportunities for protection and assistance to people in need and also protect humanitarian staff by performing a defense role (VENRO, 2005: 4).

Source: McHugh, 2006: 29.

The ‘Red Cross and Red Crescent movement’ puts neutrality into practice by not taking sides in hostilities or by engaging at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature. According to Marion Harroff-Tavel, 54 The principle of ‘independence’ appears in many humanitarian doctrines, meaning the “autonomy of humanitarian objectives from the political, economic, and military or other objectives that any actor may hold with regard to areas where humanitarian action is being implemented for such reporting” (Macrae, 2003a: 11).

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Deputy Director of International Law and Communication at the ICRC, this policy reflects the very specific purpose of delivering aid to all the victims without any exception. Since humanitarian organizations cannot be partially neutral, ICRC neutrality would be “simply a means to this end” (HarroffTavel, 2003: 3), even though the ICRC commentary to the Geneva Conventions explicitly underlines that it does not require the organization to be neutral (Plattner, 1996: 161-179). The ICRC has been heavily under attack with its policy while dealing with concentration camps in Germany during the Second World War, and started the debate on when neutrality actually might turn into complicity. This controversy became urgent again after the Cold War due to changes in the political environment within conflict-affected countries and current developments in international political relations (Macrae, 2000b: 95).

4.3.1. Controversies surrounding neutrality

Neutrality is probably the most debated and contested humanitarian principle and, according to Hugo Slim, the one that most agencies and all military peacekeeping doctrines are retreating from because it is either seen as undesirable or simply not achievable (Slim, 1997: 347-48). There are continuous disagreements on its effectiveness, morality and its actual meaning, since this concept has many facets. Neutrality can be seen as the public position the organization has adopted regarding political disputes; it can also focus on the actual effect an intervention has on a community and its conflict; or it can be the perception of an organization by others (Stevenson, 2003: 1). Nevertheless, in an operational context, it means that humanitarian workers must stand apart from the political issues at stake in a conflict. ‘Save the Children’ (UK) for example had stipulated contracts in which national staff were committed to not expressing any political views at emergency food distributions (McIvor, 2003: 12-13). As a consequence, international organizations often try to work in a “technocratic manner”, focused first and foremost on meeting the material needs of refugees, with the aim of being value-free and neutral. Through this approach, the organization claims that its autonomy should be safeguarded, which can make life significantly easier in a multiparty context (Dijkzeul, 2003: 222). The preva- lence of technical approaches to humanitarian action nevertheless partly explains

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the widespread tolerance of the misuse of aid, since staff members are forced to keep an apolitical focus and to avoid any kind of political debate or controversy (Terry, 2002: 220). Despite the pronouncements of humanitarian actors seeking to ensure that their actions are driven solely on the basis of need, the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality are under constant assault. “Your organization in London might be neutral, but on the ground you have national staff with political views that undermine that principle” was one of the comments passed during the suspension of a ‘Save the Children’ operation in Zimbabwe (McIvor, 2003: 12-13).

4.3.2. Neutrality and local politics

Despite the best of intentions, international organizations can never leave the local political context completely out of consideration, in particular during civil crisis or when authorities are corrupt. It is the nature of their programs in development, humanitarian affairs or human rights that often lead to either tensions or conflicts with the government or other elites (Dijkzeul, 2003: 222). Local chiefs, for instance, might see foreign aid as undermining their role as guardians and benefac-tors of the poor in their communities, especially if they can claim no credit from allowing aid delivery in their territory. They might even interpret agencies’ insistence that neutrality must be respected as a condition on aid imposed by an organization with a political agenda. The fact that it is in conformity with an internationally recognized set of standards is rarely appreciated (McIvor, 2003: 13). In many crises around the world, humanitarian workers are already no longer regarded as neutral parties to the conflict, but rather seen as supporters of certain political aims. They are preferred and simple targets that get attacked without major consequences for those responsible (Kreidler, 2003: 4). 55 While the idea of armed protection can bring shortterm security to the staff and facilitate access to populations in need, being associated with a potentially unwelcome military force might worsen an agency’s neutral perception and decreases humanitarian working 55 The UN reports that people responsible for staff being killed on missions have been held to account in just 7 per cent of these cases (Kreidler, 2003: 4). More than 100 UN civilian and NGO personnel were killed in violence around the world between July 2003 and July 2004 (Muggah, 2005: 36).

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space immensely. 56 ‘Sphere’ thus gives advice in their ‘Guidance Notes’ that carrying out activities that could jeopardize the neutrality of an organization, such as carrying arms, should be strictly prohibited (The Sphere Project, 2003: 267). NGOs that reject the notion of neutrality do so mainly because they feel that it imposes an unacceptable silence upon them in the face of grievous violations of human rights. It further doesn’t seem to be useful anymore to exclude the local political environment, when humanitarian work is expanding towards engagement in conflict resolution, peace-building and peace enforcement. Especially in light of what we now know about the manipulation of relief supplies, and the fact that combatants and civilians are intrinsically mixed in today’s civil wars, local circumstances need to be taken into account to avoid making the issue of crisis prevention a failure from the beginning. After all, the majority of organizations do not have the diplomatic and political contacts, finances or professional competencies, as the UN or the ICRC does for instance, to negotiate and secure a rigorous position of neutrality in their relief work and also guarantee sufficient security for their staff (Slim, 1997: 347-48). 57

4.4. Ambiguous approach of principles

Humanitarian assistance has always been a highly political activity by influencing on the one hand the political economy of recipient countries and being shaped on the other hand by political considerations of donor governments and its geopolitical environment. Stark differences between the amount and type of humanitarian assistance given to various countries facing acute crises show that humanitarian aid has never been disbursed solely on the basis of need (Curtis, 2001: 3). Some of the most ambiguous examples in the history of providing aid when it comes to approaching humanitarian principles were reported in Afghanistan, Serbia and currently in Iraq. 56 As far as has been regularly reported, NGOs use armed protection on a regular basis in just four of the approximately 55 conflict affected countries in which they are working, namely northern Iraq, Somalia, Russia (Ingushetia/Chechnya) and northern Kenya. Armed forces may also be used on a case-by-case basis, for example at border areas and to support assessment missions in volatile areas, for instance in Rwanda (Macrae, 2002: 9).

57 Recommended literature: Cutts, Mark, Dingle, Alan (1998) Safety first: Protecting NGO employees who work in areas of conflict, Save the Children, London.

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4.4.1. Afghanistan

Afghanistan received the highest per capita aid in its history during the Cold War, with a majority of humanitarian agencies seeing themselves as being in solidarity with the anti-Communist movements. Nevertheless, relief budgets were cut dramatically after the Russian withdrawal in 198889, even as human suffering was still continuing (Curtis, 2001: 4). Even afterwards, humanitarian aid was used as a foreign policy instrument to isolate the Taliban, with principles of impartiality and neutrality “virtually absent from the discourse on relief”. The language of principles became mainstreamed into relief programming only when agencies started to engage with the Taliban (Macrae, 2003a: 1).

4.4.2. Serbia

The selective use of principles regarding Serbia during the Yugoslavian wars in the Nineties created some significant contradictions. During this time, which showed Serbia as the main aggressor from a Western perspective, the British government argued that the conditions for principled aid delivery did not exist and queried the extent of humanitarian need in the country. The reluctance to fund aid to Serbia appeared to be a result of increased donor scrutiny on the accountability of humanitarian aid and a step towards closer monitoring of adherence to the basic principles of impartiality and neutrality. It nevertheless did not correspond to the different levels of need in the region compared to aid given to Albania, Macedonia or even Montenegro at this time (Macrae, 2000: 52). Marina Skuric-Prodanovic, the Coordinator of the ‘Open Society Institute’ in Croatia, further argues that not many donors were willing to fund relief assistance in Serbia back then, and just a few international NGOs made the step to face the difficulties of working there. Humanitarian aid was mainly delivered to the “more prominent and politically correct” Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. (Curtis, 2001: 13). This leads to the impression that the selectivity of British scrutiny was actually misused to justify a new form of political humanitarianism (Macrae, 2000: 52).

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4.4.3. Iraq

There are different nuances in assessments of the situation in Iraq, but according to Antonio Donini, Chief of the ‘Lessons Learned Unit’ at the ‘United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs’ (DHA), most humanitarian actors agree that in the current crisis the indistinct lines between humanitarian and political action have resulted in a consequent erosion of the core humanitarian principles (Donini, 2004: 192). As already mentioned (see Chapter: 3.1.1. Influence of Western foreign policy), many NGOs have signed US government ‘cooperative agreements’ to work in Iraq, delivering services to the Iraqi people like private companies. Not only have these agencies given up the perception of neutrality, in addition the principles of impartiality and independence became difficult to uphold in this working environment (Nickolls, 2003: 8). Jo Nickolls, Oxfam’s Policy Adviser on Iraq, explains Oxfam’s role in Iraq and the meaning of humanitarian principles under these circumstances:

Source: Nickolls, 2003: 9.

The humanitarian community in Iraq has been formed rapidly, and with very little information given to the public. This makes it impossible for the vast majority of Iraqis to distinguish between foreign people in civilian clothes working for the occupying forces and any other newly arrived foreigner. Regardless of the origin, every non-Iraqi is referred to collectively as belonging to ‘the Americans’, and is thus presumed to be complicit with the US-led administration, which many claim as an element

of their suffering. This makes it impossible for NGOs to create an individual identity and be perceived as impartial from the beginning. In occupied Iraq nevertheless, neutrality would mean neither siding with the US-led coalition or with any Iraqi groups, which seems to be nearly impossible or at least insecure (Nickolls, 2003: 9).

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4.5. Solidarity

Current experiences show that traditional principles, which relief agencies are suppose to base their work on, do not correspond to the development underlying the merging of humanitarian aid and politics. The working conditions in recipient countries are, to a large part, determined by external actors, and the way humanitarians are perceived by target groups seems to be out of their control. The apolitical policy relief organizations try to represent rather implies immense disinterest, both to the reasons behind the suffering that humanitarians try to relieve, as much as to the implications of their work for the future. Further, being a ‘by-stander’ to the cruelty and violence in so many of today’s civil wars is personally testing for humanitarians and peacekeepers and leads to an increasing dissatisfaction with classical humanitarianism. The desire of many relief workers to know where their particular organization stands and what position it is taking as a third party shows the notions of active impartiality and solidarity with the target groups. Though, the individual cannot stop the hostility, he or she could interpret his or her role within the violence with a definite vision and under-standing of his or her position (Slim, 1997: 350). ‘Sphere’s loyalty to traditional humanitarian principles has therefore been heavily condemned by Fiona Terry, former Director of Research for MSF-France. She criticises ‘Sphere’ for being imbalanced by not promoting the element of solidarity sufficiently, which she emphasizes as fundamentally important in humanitarian response (Walker, 2004: 106); the term ‘solidarity’ in fact does not appear once in the ‘Sphere’ handbook. The theory of solidarity differs from traditional humanitarian principles in an explicit choice to side with a group of people and their political cause. Hugo Slim characterizes this attempt in:

• Consultation with and accountability to the people with whom solidarity is expressed. • Shared risk and suffering with the people. • Concrete action in support of the people and their cause, which may include providing relief and/or political or human rights lobby and advocacy.

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• Human rights objectivity and the pursuit of justice, which means a commitment to pursuing an agenda based on a set of rights (Slim, 1997: 349-50). Even though a strong political element is the focal point of solidarity, it is useful to make a distinction between a solidarity attempt that connotes shared suffering among those seeking to assist through the physical presence of a humanitarian agency, and, on the other hand, an explicit choice to work only with one side in a conflict (Dijkzeul, 2005a: 677-678). An attempt to ground humanitarian work on the idea of rights and solidarity has been made by ‘Norwegian People’s Aid’ (NPA). 58 They rethought the way of how NGOs can put classical humanitarian principles into practice by describing their work as independent, but not as neutral or impartial. NPA believes that to respond properly, it is important to analyze the political and social factors behind suffering, and to understand the influence of assistance. From their perspective, everyone who controls and distributes resources into a society marked by scarcity, conflict, injustice or oppression plays a political role. Consequently, an agencies’ choice about who to help, where to help and what to do to help has an impact on society beyond direct project results (Bjøreng, 2003: 9-10).

Source: Bjøreng, 2003: 9-11.

58 NPA is the Norwegian labor movement’s humanitarian organization. It works in 30 countries around the world, and has been in Iraq since 1995.

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‘African Rights’, an NGO which mainly focuses on human rights abuses and conflict in Africa, has suggested that, in many political emergencies and wars, the notion of solidarity might be the most appropriate guiding principle, around which relief agencies could align their operational position (Slim, 1997: 349-50). This attempt nevertheless requires political analysis and, more importantly, political calculations; a very different way of thinking for most humanitarians who are much more comfortable in the “absolute and uncompromising morality of their traditions” (Leader, 2000: 50).

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5. Conclusion

Analysis in chapter 3 and 4 has shown that humanitarian aid usually involves a critical political factor, which is circumscribed by ethical rules. Nevertheless, the whole confusion about the humanitarian-political relationship seems to be the fact that humanitarianism is a form of politics in which it is useful to assert that one is non-political (Fowler, 2005: 54). Even though some relief agencies keep up their non-political façade, efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance, especially in complex emergency crisis, cannot be divorced from overall political objectives. The involvement of external actors in relief agencies and the influence aid has for instance on warfare puts humanitarian workers inevitably into a position of responsibility in taking political impacts into account and to try to shape it accordingly; a rather painful situation for NGOs that wish to retain their focus on managerial disaster relief (Weller, 2005: 42). For this reason, humanitarian organizations need to get more involved in the broader political arena, and to think more like political actors to be able to take appropriate action, and to avoid manipulation or long-term damages on a society. Humanitarians who are aware of the drivers and incentives involved in an emergency situation are more sensitive towards tensions that may arise, and are more aware of possibilities as much as threats (Harmer, 2005: 4). The last decade has already shown that international NGOs are indeed policy entrepreneurs. They interact with other institutional actors in multiple ways, enter governmental and political debates, and influence policy in a more direct political way. Aid actors claim increased legitimacy in scrutinizing governmental strategies and already seek to influence the political landscape in recipient countries in order to enhance aid effectiveness and promote a rights-based agenda (Macrae, 2000c: 1). Nevertheless, in terms of enforcing greater respect for humanitarian and human rights principles, humanitarian organizations “remain on the sidelines of decision-making” in international operations, even though they bear important implications (Curtis, 2001: 11).

Increasingly, donors see humanitarian action often as a discrete and timelimited part of a broader set of activities in emergency response and stress the links be- tween security, development and humanitarian assistance, and their combined role

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in achieving foreign policy objectives (Randel, 2004: 54). NGOs should therefore increase their investment in analyzing global and country specific trends in relation to humanitarian policy in order to maintain critical engagement with official donors and to make an effort to ensure that donor priorities are more in step with their own priorities (Macrae, 2000: 6). Acknowledging that humanitarian action is a form of politics does not mean that it should be a form of foreign policy. Without a way of distinguishing between the two, conceptually and organizationally, the risk is that humanitarian aid will be politicized rather than foreign policy becoming more humanitarian (Leader, 2000: 55). ‘Sphere’s Humanitarian Charter’ and its standards could provide an eligible foundation for agencies and donors to establish an agenda to share a common responsibility. Host governments, on the other hand, also play a crucial role in determining the scope and nature of NGO activities as outlined in chapter 3. Particularly on a local level, many agencies work with governments on disaster planning, provide training or participate in government disaster committees, using ‘Sphere’ as a basic tool. Such engagement may increase, and a wider focus to embrace mitigation might encourage greater NGO participation (Twigg, 2002: 28). However, in many countries, relations between government and NGOs are strained, even hostile, and the question remains whether NGOs should approach local authorities - whether governmental or de facto authorities - to improve, for instance, protection for war victims. The answer probably varies according to the situation and the accessibility of those holding power. A good knowledge of the law, and the rights and obligations it sets out, would certainly help humanitarian workers to be more effective in this area (Flüe von, 1997: 4). Further, military involvement in affairs traditionally belonging to humanitarians is probably going to be a lasting phenomenon and the increasing proximity between the military and humanitarian actors implies a

need for the two communities to find agreement on core issues of responsibility and competence. The ‘2002 Sphere Implementation Report’ has picked up this topic and expressed some pilot agencies’ concern that NGOs are quickly losing ground to the military in disaster response. According to their evaluation, humanitarian agencies should focus much more on the difference in roles and purpose as defined in the principles as

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well as to international humanitarian law, human rights law and refugee law, as enshrined in the ‘Sphere Humanitarian Charter’ (The Sphere Project, 2002: 24). The UN ‘Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance’ (OCHA) promotes the ideal that a humanitarian operation using military assets must ensure to retain its civilian nature and character. While military resources would remain under military control, the operation as a whole would have to stay under the overall authority and control of the responsible humanitarian organization. Humanitarian actors should thus continue to promote guidelines establishing rules of engagement between the military and humanitarian communities, and lobby to limit the space of other actors in a way that does not harm NGOs or the humanitarian sec-tor. Relief agencies must demonstrate leadership in the field, in terms of sending consistent messages about the extent of their willingness to engage with militaries and the acceptance of their support (Wheeler, 2006: 4). This overall heterogenic engagement in relief activities pushed humanitarianism into becoming a more important form of politics, and enhanced the debate sur-rounding the neutrality of humanitarian organizations. And while agencies are still searching for a common moral stance of being a third party in other peoples’ wars, it becomes more and more clear that the traditional principles of humanitarian action were not designed to cope with this political role. Their neutral and impartial logic may well have its justification in cases of natural disasters, when politically disinterested actors seek to combat human suffering with the active and full support of the host state of the operation. But in man-made emergencies, the key-contributing factor to the creation of suffering that is to be addressed lies in political factors within the host state, making the question of neutrality much more complex (Weller, 2005: 34).

According to Hugo Slim, most of the different attempts to reframe humanitarian principles seem to have three main ideals in common: a commitment to the principle of humanity - albeit it in a minimal form; a desire to speak out in the face of human-rights abuses; and a guarantee of third-party immunity for humanitarian agencies (Slim, 1997: 351). The idea of solidarity however, as described in Chapter 4, obviously involves taking sides, which contradicts the desire for im-

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munity. Further, the decision to work with one group implies not to work with another, which makes some victims look more worthy of assistance while others are not because of a certain authority over them; an attempt that contravenes the fundamental idea of the humanitarian imperative (Dijkzeul, 2005a: 677-678). A solidarity-based approach is also easier when the sides are clearly drawn, which is not always the case in today’s internal wars. Political and military leaders often have little control over those who carry out atrocities in their name, meaning that solidarity can all too easily become solidarity with excessive and uncoordinated violence (Slim, 1997: 349-50). The ideal picture of being neutral in a conflict, while showing solidarity with all victims, seems to be impossible because the moment agencies actually adopt a political line to address the factors driving a crisis, they risk humanitarian immunity and threaten access to victims (Curtis, 2001: 13). This leads to the conclusion that the attempt of defining global humanitarian principles that work as blueprints in all global emergencies for all humanitarian organizations is quite ambitious but not necessarily achievable; notwithstanding the importance of ethical guidelines and benchmarks after all, even if they remain theoretical. The heterogeneity of relief work is just a phenomenon, which is based in the nature of humanitarianism and this will always put a stamp on attempts to find common standards, principles and codes. For that reason, the criticism of the ‘Sphere’ project and its supposedly limited focus on either technical issues or traditional humanitarian principles seem to be quite exaggerated. ‘Sphere’ was never meant to stand alone and must be seen as an expression of beliefs or values of a wide spectrum of agencies who tried to articulate what the minimum content of a ‘right to life with dignity’ is suppose to look like. It is self-evident that minimum standards by themselves do not guarantee that aid is actually

humanitarian or respect humanitarian principles and international law. This is why ‘Sphere’ never claimed to be a complete account of the humanitarian agenda or of political responsibilities of relief staff in crises (Darcy, 2004: 113-122). Nevertheless, ‘Sphere’ is aware of the political conditions humanitarian aid relies on and gives recommendations both to host governments and donors on how to cooperate with NGOs. More than once, the handbook embrace

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the necessity of sufficient resources and the will of political actors, knowing that ‘Sphere’ is only as good as it users make it. The whole ‘Sphere’ process was always supposed to do two things: to improve the quality of humanitarian action, and to move it from being a supply-chain, assistance-dominated endeavor to a movement concerned with the rights and dignity of those caught up in war and disaster (Walker, 2004: 110-111). Its actual importance lies in defining a common basis around which agencies, donors and governing authorities can potentially agree on. It forces humanitarian workers and their agencies to reflect profoundly on what their ethical values or their long-term goals are. Properly understood, it provides a basis for defining core humanitarian responsibilities that recognizes the limits of humanitarian action, while setting an agenda for individual and collective action (Darcy, 2004: 113122). Margarete Wahlstrom, member of the UN Mission to Afghanistan, describes it as: “The whole ‘Sphere’ idea is to develop very strongly the ability to be used as a tool for planning, for debate, for setting localized standards and also to create much better cooperation. When you get organizations, local authorities, and government together you are able to decide something that is relevant for that country and which held you all accountable.” 59 The co-ordination of relief measures of international aid organizations, local au-thorities and the international community can be an opportunity for a country regarding long-term development policy strategies. This has to be acknowledged by NGOs, but forces them to situate themselves more clearly in relation to political and military aspects of international interventions.

This highly political activity requires humanitarian staff to acquire skills that go beyond the more normal short-term emergency focus of relief agencies. For instance, future aid workers must be sensitized to political issues and need to have diplomatic skills to create alliances both between agencies and between different levels of authorities. They must enlist local NGO partners in the strategic planning process of aid delivery and also link different spheres, which have an effect 59 Margarete Wahlstrom, ‘UN Mission to Afghanistan’, taken from ‘The Sphere Project DVD: An Introduction to Humanitarian Challenge, Oxfam Publishing’, 2004.

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on the outcome of a relief operation in a broader sense, like disaster preparedness and development, environmental concerns and human rights work. Since the primary problem is seen to be that humanitarian aid can have a negative political impact in an emergency situation, maybe the goal should be to ensure that it has a positive political impact instead, beyond its purely humanitarian role of relieving suffering.

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6. Annex

Annex 1. World Population Growth by Region

Source: The Feinstein International Famine Center, 2004: 44.

Annex 2. The Humanitarian Charter

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Annex 4. Indicators for the Security, Good Health and Safety of Staff

Annex 5. UN Peacekeeping operations

Source: http://www.un.org.

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Annex 7: Resource flows within the International relief System

Annex 9: The Seven Principles of the Code of Good Practice

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Annex 8: Recommendations to the governments of disaster-affected countries

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Annex 10: Refugees and total population of concern to UNHCR 19812006

Source: http://www.unhcr.ch.

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7. Bibliography

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Lebas, Jaques (1996) Humanitarian principles: An ethical foundation for action, in: ECHO, Ethics in humanitarian aid, Non-Governmental Organizations Forum, December 9-10, 1996, Dublin, p. 13. Lowrie, Sean (2001) Reflections on the Humanitarian Charter, in: HPN Humanitarian Exchange 19, ODI, London, pp. 37-39. Mackintosh, Kate (2000) The Principles of Humanitarian Action in International Humanitarian Law, Humanitarian Policy Group Report 5, ODI, London. Macrae, Joanna (2000a) The Politics of Coherence: the formation of a new orthodoxy on linking aid and political responses to chronic political emergencies, Humanitarian Policy Group, London. Macrae, Joanna (2000b) Humanitarianism facing new challenges, in: Great Decisions, Foreign Policy Association, New York, pp. 87-95. Macrae, Joanna (2002) The new humanitarianisms: a review of trends in global humanitarian action, in: Humanitarian Policy Group Report 11, ODI, London. Macrae, J., Harmer, A. (2003) Good Humanitarian Donorship: a mouse or a lion?, in: Humanitarian Exchange 24, ODI, London, pp. 9-12. Macrae, J., Harmer, A. (2003a) Humanitarian Action and the ‘Global War on Terror’: A Review of Trends and Issues, in: Humanitarian Policy Group Report 14, ODI, London.

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in:

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Tong, Jaqui (2004) Questionable Accountability: MSF and Sphere in 2003, in: Disasters, Vol. 28, 2, June 2004, Overseas Development Institute, London, pp. 176-189. Twigg, John (2002) Mainstreaming disaster mitigation: findings of recent research, in: HPN Humanitarian Exchange 20, ODI, London, pp. 26-28. Twigg, J. (2004) Disaster Risk Reduction, Mitigation and Preparedness in Development and Emergency Programming, Overseas Development Institute, HPN Good Practice Review 9, London. UN/ISDR (2004) Living with risk. A global review of disaster reduction initiatives, United Nations, New York. UNDP (2004) Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development, United Nations, New York. United Nations, (2001) UNO World Population Prospects, The 2000 Revision, Population Division, New York. United Nations (2002) Report of the Secretary General on the Safety and Security of Humanitarian Personnel and Protection of United Nations Personnel, New York. UNU (2005) Human Security in a Changing Environment. Strategic Directions 2005-2008, Institute for Environment and Human Security, Bonn.

USAID/OFDA (2001) Annual Report 2001, USAID, Washington D.C. Vaux, Tony (2006) Humanitarian trends and dilemmas, in: Development in Practice, Routledge, Vol. 16, 3&4, pp. 240-254. VENRO (2005) Humanitarian aid put to the test - Principles, criteria and indicators to ensure and monitor quality in humanitarian aid, VENRO Working Paper 14, Bonn. Walker, Peter, Purdin, Susan (2004) Birthing Sphere, in: Disasters, Vol. 28, 2, June 2004, Overseas Development Institute, London, pp. 100-111. Weissmann, Fabrice (2004) Humanitarian Action and Military Intervention: Temptations and Possibilities, in: Disasters, Vol. 28, 2, June 2004, Overseas Development Institute, London, pp. 205-215. Weller, Marc (2005) Political Strategies for Humanitarian Operations, in: Paper for Bad Neuenahr Symposium within the Framework of Germany’s Presidency of the European Union January 01 - June 30, 1999, Europe and Humanitarian Aid -What future? Learning form Crises, Institut für Friedenssicherungsrecht und Humanitäres Völkerrecht, Europäischer Universitätsverlag, Bochum, pp. 33-52.

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Wheeler, Victoria, Harmer, Adele (2006) Resetting the rules of engagement: trends and issues in military-humanitarian relations, HPG Research Briefing 21, ODI, London. World Bank (2002) World Bank Group Work in Low-Income Countries Under Stress: A Taskforce Report, World Bank, Washington D.C. World Bank (2004) Breaking the Conflict Trap, World Bank, Washington D.C. Young, Helen et al. (2004) Linking Rights and Standards: The Process of Developing ‘Rights-based’ Minimum Standards on Food Security, Nutrition and Food Aid, in: Disasters, Vol. 28, 2, June 2004, Overseas Development Institute, London, pp. 142-159. Young, Helen, Harvey, Paul (2004) The Sphere Project: The Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, in: Disasters, Vol. 28, 2, June 2004, Overseas Development Institute, London, p. 99. Additional sources: DVD: The Sphere Project, an Introduction to Humanitarian Challenges, Oxfam Publishing. Internet sources: ALNAP - http://www.alnap.org/

ECHO - http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/echo.htm Inter-Agency Standing Committee http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/iasc/

(IASC)

OCHA - http://ochaonline.un.org/ UNHABITAT - http://www.unhabitat.org UNHCR - http://www.unhcr.ch United Nations - http://www.un.org Recommended links for information on humanitarian issues: Aid Workers Network - http://www.aidworkers.net BBC NEWS (online) - http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk Climate Action Network - http://www.climatenetwork.org Development Initiatives - http://www.devinit.org

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Disaster Mitigation Institute (DMI) - http://www.southasiadisasters.net Humanity Development Library - http://humaninfo.org Humanitarian Information Centres - http://www.humanitarianinfo.org Journal of Humanitarian Assistance - http://www.jha.ac Overseas Development Institute - http://www.odi.org.uk/ People in Aid - http://www.peopleinaid.org Reliefweb - http://www.reliefweb.int/library The Humanitarian Accountability http://www.hapinternational.org

Partnership

Int.

-