Two years before the United States accused Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe of weaponizing food shipments for votes, severe drought devastated the country’s agricultural sector. The resulting humanitarian crisis, coupled with hyper-inflation and high unemployment, prompted the international community to respond. Yet, Zimbabwe, as professors Michael Barnett and Jack Snyder point out, is a shining example of humanitarian aid gone wrong (Barnett & Snyder, 2012, p. 148). By June 2008, stories began circulating that Mr. Mugabe’s government was withholding food relief from voters registered to the opposing party (Pleming, 2008, para. 3). At the same time, the government froze the relief efforts of all international aid groups after accusing some of them of supporting the opposition (para. 8). Zimbabwe is, in many ways, an example of how well-intended foreign aid can have unintended negative consequences. The relief effort also illustrates the peril of conflating aid with a political agenda. Humanitarian aid provides a critical lifeline to people in need, but it is essential that providers be cognizant of unintended consequences. This essay argues that an apolitical, do no harm approach with strong local support is essential to delivering effective humanitarian relief.
Twenty-five years ago, Kofi Annan (1998) passionately argued the merits of nation building and intervention as a means of mitigating humanitarian disasters and avoiding another Rwanda. This was, in some ways, a response to broad recognition that simply providing aid wasn’t good enough, and often resulted in more harm than good. Getting involved militarily and spreading democracy around the world seemed the logical, if not formattable task ahead for developed nations. No one could imagine that only three years later, the events of September 11th would bog the United States down in a failed attempt at nation building; and, while the Afghan war wasn’t strictly based on relief, the humanitarian crisis under the Taliban, the rights of women, and general violence were strong interventionalist incentives. As Afghanistan has shown, however, nation building is difficult.
That said, even if political transition had a functional track record, expecting an NGO to take on that responsibility is naïve. As Drs. Barrett and Snyder point out, “peace builders lack the knowledge to transform crisis-prone countries into stable, liberal, free-market societies” (Barnett & Snyder, 2012, p. 152). Further still, even if NGOs possessed the expertise to engage in nation building, they most certainly lack the resources. Consider that of the nearly $13.5 billion of federal aid to Afghanistan in 2011, only $180 million was classified as humanitarian, while over $12 billion went to governance, and most of that to conflict, peace and security (U.S. Department of State, 2023). These numbers say nothing of the private funds from individuals and NGOs, nor of the costs of military operations in that country. Furthermore, the presence of war offers little qualification as violence almost always accompanies humanitarian disasters, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, or Somalia. In any event, for an NGO to cover the costs of just the U.S. federal government’s aid to Afghanistan, the humanitarian budget would need to increase by a factor of seventy-five. This provides some mathematical context to the task being suggested by peace building advocates.
While expecting NGOs and state-sponsored humanitarian efforts to take on the effort of nation building is foolish, remaining apolitical as do no harm suggests, is not so simple. Johns Hopkins University professor, Soren Jessen-Petersen (2011) speaks to this in a paper published by the U.S. Institute of Peace.
This kind of response, throwing humanitarian personnel right into the middle of conflicts, has tested the security of staff and the agencies’ understanding of politically sensitive involvement, courage, and stamina. It has also severely exposed the difficulties in combining such action with the fundamental principles of impartiality and neutrality. How do you maintain your neutrality and impartiality when a forceful Sri Lanka military embarks on a final onslaught…[and] indiscriminately targets the civilian population whom you are trying to protect? (p. 6)
While Jessen-Petersen argues against the aforementioned peace building efforts, he highlights the difficulty in maintaining neutrality. Yet maintaining neutrality is precisely what must be done. As Zimbabwe showed, partiality puts humanitarian aid at risk. To reduce the possibility of a misunderstanding, Jessen-Petersen proposes that engaging locals in the relief effort would help mitigate bad perceptions. For example, more direct Afghani involvement would have helped dispel the notion that aid organizations were dominated by western interests (p. 10).
At first, sourcing aid from the region where the humanitarian crisis is occurring seems far-fetched, but allowing the communities most impacted by aid to drive how it’s used is, in fact, the best application of do no harm humanitarianism. George Washington professor of Political Science Alexander Downes speaks to a ground up approach when he says, “regime change is highly destabilizing and outcomes depend less on the good intentions or strategy of the intervener and more on the conditions in the target country that are out of the intervener’s control” (Art et al., 2023, pp. 515-521). Columbia professor of Political Science Séverine Autesserre (2017) also wrote extensively on this topic in an issue of International Studies Review. In it, she says the actions of locals within their communities often plays a larger role in peace than those taken by international organizations. She goes on to say that foreigners often lack the knowledge or skills to interact with the population, much less build peace. For example, “Out of 140 diplomats working in the U.K. embassy in Kabul…only three [spoke the language]” (p. 125). Furthermore, international intervention can be poorly received by local communities as was the case in Congo. Auteserre writes, “Congolese youth activists emphasize that they would prefer outsiders to leave, because international peace builders get in the way of local people trying to hold their government accountable” (p. 124). Even regime change, as Downes writes, is best left to domestic forces, as was the case in Serbia. International involvement, he says, “should be limited to diplomatic pressure in support of legitimate domestic demands” (Art et al., 2023, pp. 515-521). In short, engaging locals in the humanitarian process is the surest way to direct international resources in the most needed direction, while limiting unintended consequences.
While do no harm is the most reasonable approach to delivering relief, it is not a perfect approach to humanitarian aid. As humanitarian writer Fiona Terry said, all aid has negative consequences. The best organizations can hope for is to mitigate unintended consequences as much as possible (Barnett & Snyder, 2012, p. 149). That said, there is a balance to be found between doing no harm and comprehensive peace building that will best position providers to succeed against tomorrow’s challenges. This approach begins with defining the limits of humanitarianism. Providing relief cannot be conflated with nation building nor can aid be tied to foreign policy. As Afghanistan showed, state’s interests abroad can change rapidly with little concern for the humanitarian consequences. More importantly, aid organizations should engage apolitically with local communities, and allow the citizenry to define the aid they need. While not perfect, this approach will provide the best possible outcome through the intelligent application of aid. Most of all, this approach scales with the unknown challenges of the future.
There is no foolproof solution to humanitarian relief. In fact, there is no decision one could make that does not carry some consequence. Yet attempting to control for every variable or expanding the scope of relief to include nation building, only results in the conditions that cause humanitarian disasters. Therefore, it is essential that states and NGOs involved in humanitarian initiatives, accept the limits of what aid can do and attempt to limit unintended consequences as much as possible.
References
Annan, K. (1998). Secretary-General reflects on ‘intervention’ in thirty-fifth annual
Ditchley foundation lecture. United Nations. https://press.un.org/en/1998/19980626.sgsm6613.html
Autesserre, S. (2017). International peacebuilding and local success: Assumptions and
effectiveness. International Studies Review, 19(1), 114-132. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26407939
Barnett, M. & Snyder, J. (2012). Humanitarianism in question. Cornell University Press.
Art, R.J., Crawford, T.W., & Jervis, R. (Eds.). (2023). International Politics. Rowman &
Littlefield.
Jessen-Petersen, S. (2011). Humanitarianism in crisis. U.S. Institute of Peace.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep12279
Pleming, S. (2008). U.S. says Zimbabwe uses food aid as weapon. Reuters.
U.S. Department of State. (2023). U.S. foreign assistance by country.