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Canada & the UN > Newton Bowles Reports
Humanitarian Intervention We used to call it "emergency assistance" or "relief". Mostly this involved survival aid-- food, blankets, medicals-- for victims of "natural" disasters-- floods, famine, hurricanes, quakes, assumed to be beyond human control. Good people-- U.N. or NGO-- arrived with the supplies, helped to distribute them, and went away. Within the past decade, just as we have switched from "emergency" to "humanitarian," so have we seen a radical change in who needs help and why. Of course, natural disasters keep happening, but their victims are few compared to victims of unnatural disaster, armed conflicts usually within the boundaries of nation States. We don't call these conflicts "civil wars" any more: we resort to terms like ethnic conflict, or religious or cultural strife, or history, or population pressures or just plain poverty, as we grope for some explanatory label for amoral brutality. "Humanitarian" was supposed to mean impartial, above or outside the conflict, not taking sides, just helping people wherever there was need. But in many conflicts, the national government has little or no authority, and attacks by undisciplined bands are turned against the civilian population, women and children. How can humanitarian aid and aid workers look impartial if helping civilians is helping the enemy? Here is what the Secretary-General wrote in his 1998 report to the General Assembly on strengthening humanitarian assistance (document A/53/139): The international community must send a consistent and unambiguous message to Governments and armed groups that the right to humanitarian aid is inviolable, and that failure to honour that right will lead to appropriate and targeted measures against those responsible, including criminal prosecution. Deliberate attacks on civilian populations have continued. Increasingly, such attacks have become the objective of armed conflict, rather than an unfortunate by-product. Warring parties seek to terrorize populations into leaving specific areas. Hatred and suspicion between members of different ethnic or religious groups are incited by media controlled by faction leaders. In some places violence has been perpetrated against aid workers, whose help to the innocent victims of conflict is seen as threatening the political objectives of armed groups. As such attacks constitute flagrant violations of international humanitarian law, those responsible for these attacks must be held accountable for their acts. This is a savage new game, far from the innocent rules of charity. In the past year, over 20 U.N. civilian personnel have lost their lives, and many more have been harassed or detained. Since 1992 over 140 killed and another 140 taken hostage. Not only must U.N. and associated workers be protected, but of equal importance is the safety of those civilians, mostly women and children, whom they are trying to help. We have seen earlier in this report that this challenge to law and conscience has been laid before the Security Council. It should also be a challenge to the International Criminal Court once it gets to work. OCHA with the Inter-Agency Committee in Geneva has proposed ways to ease the impact of Security Council sanctions on vulnerable innocents. Meantime-- yes, this is a mean time-- the U.N., its several arms and NGO partners, carry on. With armed conflict spreading in all regions, humanitarian aid has taken a prominent place in U.N. assistance. As regular aid (ODA) has gone down, humanitarian aid has gone up. In 1991, as this trend was beginning, the General Assembly, moved by donor concern for "efficiency", gave U.N. Headquarters the authority and capacity to lead and coordinate. This leadership function has morphed into today's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (felicitously OCHA) headed by the experienced Sergio Vieira de Mello, exalted as Under-Secretary. In New York, Sergio de Mello chairs an Executive Committee that brings together all U.N. actors, focusing on policy. More operational is the Inter-Agency Committee in Geneva which includes NGOs. Work in countries is pulled together by the U.N. Resident Coordinator who oversees all U.N aid. The U.N. is trying to find the right people to do that and give them some guidance ("training") on how to do it, to discourage competition and overlap among the zealous. Fund raising by the operational arms of the U.N.-- chiefly WFP (food), UNHCR (refugees) and UNICEF (mothers and children)-- is pooled in "joint appeals" consolidating natural and unnatural (conflict) disasters. The 1994 appeal was for nearly $2.8 billion to serve over 39 million people. With the reduction in refugees (people fleeing their own countries), the 1998 appeal was for just over $2 billion to serve 25 million people. Donor governments have become far less generous. In 1994, contributions met 80% of needs, in 1998 only around 50%. Why? They don't trust the U.N.? They don't care? What is "donor fatigue"? The Security Council, the big powers, are being warned not to disguise political impotence as humanitarian prosthesis. Now how to disguise the prosthesis? |
