A reflection on World Humanitarian Day (with Pakistan front of mind)

World Humanitarian Day provides an opportunity for all people to celebrate the life saving efforts of the global humanitarian community (see official video below).

At a personal level it provides an opportunity to reflect and remember the dedication of my former colleagues who were killed and injured on that first World Humanitarian Day on 19 August 2003 when the UN Headquarters in Baghdad came under attack.

On this World Humanitarian Day the global humanitarian architecture is straining at the seams and this is most visible in Pakistan where the complex operational environment is challenging the ability of the humanitarian system to provide effective, predictable and timely assistance to civilians affected by the floods.

The foundations of humanitarian assistance rest on the fundamental principles of independence, neutrality and impartiality that are designed to help uphold the rights of people in need of assistance and protection. While these humanitarian principles must be defended, humanitarian practice needs to change and evolve if it is to remain relevant.

There is often a significant gap between the assistance required and that which is provided. The negative impact of this is an accountability and transparency deficit between the aid receiver and the provider. A far more inclusive process of assistance that emphasises high quality, needs-based practice is needed. In order to achieve this, more needs to be done to challenge the Western look and feel of the humanitarian assistance.

ActionAid recently published some research on the response to the conflict in the Swat Valley in 2009.  It  found that the local people’s understanding of “international” was synonymous with “Western” and more disturbingly many local people found “Western” to be synonymous with “American”. Interestingly, the research found that this has also been the view of staff members of international organisations, whether the interviewees were national or expatriate. Several organisations recognised this bias and tried to address it by appointing “more national-looking staff” in Pakistan. Examples of the “national looking staff” included Iraqis, Syrians, Saudis, and Iranians.

While these efforts are commendable in principle, they exemplify a particular world view and bias that still maintains ‘international’ as meaning necessarily ‘Western’ and a mode of operation that sustains the ‘us/them’ dichotomy. ‘International humanitarian principles’ should mean exactly that: the distillation of the humanitarian ethos of all people, countries and regions, and this includes Pakistan and Pakistanis.

As international organisations, we need to challenge our own interpretation of what ‘international’ means. This strategy requires a genuine willingness to question some of the strongest implicit assumptions of the nature and ‘origins’ of humanitarianism. It requires that traditional concepts of partnership and accountability are stretched at the levels of discourse and practice.

Rather than national NGOs being on the edges of coordination fora and absent from humanitarian strategy formulation, they need to play a central and equal role in them. Rather than accountabilities having a bias towards donors and governments, as they currently do, local accountabilities and transparency should be given equal weight. This needs to be more than a set of tools and mechanisms. They should mean accountability for and true sharing of the humanitarian principles that bind the humanitarian project – a sense of true partnership with the affected communities (and not only national or local NGOs), where these communities are not only included in humanitarian assistance but also take responsibility for the decision-making process.

The response to the floods in Pakistan presents an opportunity to all international actors to accelerate our efforts to truly internationalise humanitarian assistance and to provide accountable and transparent assistance that is consistent with the humanitarian principles. The people of Pakistan cannot afford for us to fail.