The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned that UN and international NGOs are failing to respond to humanitarian emergencies.
The report criticised crisis management, saying many organisations were more concerned with risk aversion and securing funding than providing a serious relief effort.
Vickie Hawkins , executive director of MSF UK, Wendy Fenton , from the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute, and Michael von Bertele, humanitarian director at Save the Children International, answered your questions on Tuesday 8th July in our live Q&A.
Follow the live Q&A here: papaspyrou asks how can we avoid bureaucracy?
Very interesting subject often discussed in many humanitarian fora. Everybody seems to agree that NGOs are overwhelmed by bureaucracy and under pressure of insurance companies, donors, security requirements and so on. Once we have said that what is the next step ? How can this discourse be transformed into action ? What practical, structural and strategic changes Save the Children or MSF are making to be more flexible and less risk adversed ? Is it an organisation issue or an individual issue ? Excessive professionalisation has led to a deep transformation of our sector and developped the charity business. How do these organisations nurture the humanitarian culture and engagement of their staff in order to have people working in the organisations who are humanitarians before being WASH or nutrition experts ?
One of the initiatives that big NGOS have taken to address some of these problems is the START Network (former CBHA). This brings together many leading international NGOs, trying to channel funding to local partners and organisations.
The new £1.8m fund is managed by a network of NGOs, not the UN. This is presenting an alternative to the UN bureaucracy and an indication that these NGOs are taking these issues very seriously and trying to address them. One of their expressed interests is to avoid creating an unwieldy bureaucracy.
As for professionalization, the desire to respond more professionally stems from a commitment to ensuring that affected people get the best possible response. I don’t think that professionalization has undermined the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian response.
Save has reorganised so that it is able to delegate decision making to its country offices which are much more in touch with the actual needs of the people they support. They provide the needs assessment and work with donors to meet those needs. They work increasingly with local organsiations to build local capactiy, rather than replace it, and when the country office lacks capacity or is overwhelmed by a massive disaster, the regional or central humanitarian team steps up to offer assistance. The whole organisation is thus realigning to recognise its responsibility to respond across the full spectrum of need from emergency to development.
I think it is both individual and organisational, but the individual element should not be minimised. One of the interesting findings of our report was that when agencies - MSF or others - had bold, innovative and responsive individuals heading up their relief programmes on the ground - the kind of people who aren't sometimes afraid to argue against/ignore HQ, then aid was generally more relevant and effective.
Yes, this is true - documented extensively in the ALNAP Leadership study in 2011 http://www.alnap.org/resource/6118. See also the 2013 study 'Who's in charge here?' http://www.alnap.org/resource/8640
MarkCAnderson asks does the blame lie with the UN and international NGOs?
Does the blame for inadequate emergency relief efforts lie solely with the UN and international NGOs? Are there other actors in the global emergency response system that might be at fault?
I think it’s a collective responsibility. There’s a huge range of actors that are populating the humanitarian space and in conflict situations the belligerents also bear responsibility for refusing to grant access.
No, of course the first responsibility lies with governments. But some are less well prepared, some are not adequately funded, and some use aid as a conditional tool to support their political objectives. NGOS recognise this and try to work with governments to help them discharge their responsibility, support sectors that are weak, and to fill gaps where they are not able to cope.
An anonymous user asks the panel:
Another question from an anonymous user:
When will NGOs (and to some extent UN agencies ) stop prioritising crisis that present good media opportunities and focus on those in the most need?
Slightly unfair - we get our funding from people and donors who want to help people in need. They want to know where their money has gone, and a successful response, with a positive narrative supports further fund raising. We spend a huge amount of our unrestricted funds raised in this way on crises that never hit the press - last year more than 120 small scale responses across the world, affecting many thousands of children displaced by conflict, food shortages and natural disasters.
GregBarrow asks what level of risk is acceptable?
I'd be interested to hear from the panel what level of risk they think is acceptable. Speaking on behalf of the UN World Food Programme, our team has to make risk assessments every day while delivering food assistance in places like Syria, Central African Republic, South Sudan. In every case there is a very real threat to life and property but we do everything we can to keep on reaching the hungry in some of the world's most remote and dangerous locations. My colleagues who work on the ground say the modus operandi today has moved from a philosophy of determining when to pull out, to one of deciding how to remain while minimising risk.
Now we feel like we have to be everywhere – that humanitarian agencies have to be present in every emergency. The question is, is it realistic to expect agencies to be able to operate in conflict-affected countries at scale in extremely violent and polarised environments. We need to manage expectations. Perhaps here we should to local and national responders (e.g. NGOs, civil society groups, networks). We should be supporting people who are there and choose to be there to provide assistance.
And on this point, the MSF report points to need to build technical capacity to respond – but it’s also important to build up capacity of the usual first responders: local people. It’s often people who are affected by crises themselves who are helping others.
MSF is not trying to detract from the role that local partners can play in response to humanitarian crisis. But the kind of contexts we are looking at - where there is a need for an urgent and rapid scale-up in response to a significant deterioration in the needs - are the ones where local partners can find themselves equally affected by the crisis and overwhelmed by the needs. MSF is calling for a bit of a back to basics approach - not to lose our ability to respond at scale and in the short-term.
Partnership is the key in every humanitarian response and that means partnership not just with civil society groups and local/national NGOs but also with national governments and the private sector if capacity is there.
I agree with that - though it's not one or the other, even in these contexts.
@IanECox asks the big question:
From Twitter @IanECox asks:
Are NGOs 2 concerned with risk aversion?
There are different aspects to risk aversion. In relation to security, it has to be acknowledged that many of the conflicts we work in today are dangerous for humanitarian workers. This cannot be underplayed. However we see in the field that many organisations have an over dependence on the UN department for safety and security, which in some contexts does not have a good enough security analysis and therefore limits the areas that NGOs can work in. This is the case in Central African Republic. Also in DRC we've seen organisations very much limiting themselves to the areas patrolled by MONUSCO.
BrunoNetherlands asks if incentives are there for NGOs to be self-critical:
Great that the Guardian is again hosting such an online debate!
This MSF-report raises some important points and paints a worrying, although sadly familiar, picture of the aid industry. I am happy to see that MSF has again invested in a critical assessment of the workings of the industry that they are part of. Their previous 'Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed' (2011) was another good example.
On this recent report: I feel that it is understandable that humanitarian NGOs are investing an increasing amount of money and time in their HQs because that is from where the lobbying for financial and political support has to be done. In a time of financial crisis and public scepticism wrt aid in general, it seems logical to be investing more resources in this. However, I feel strongly that NGOs ánd the UN system could devote more resources in doing or subcontracting candid self-assessments on a) the effectiveness of the humanitarian aid delivered; b) the unintended consequences of aid delivered; and c) the root causes of humanitarian crises that keep coming back and what can be done to prevent that from happening. I feel strongly that such self-assessments could help inform a mature debate about ways forward, and could possibly take away some of the scepticism/cynicism that parts of the wider public succumb to when they hear about aid being looted and so forth.
Are the incentives right for (humanitarian) NGOs to be sufficiently open, honest and self-critical? This MSF-report and online debate seem a welcome exception to a rule of closedness.
Yes, we feel that it is timely for a bit more of an open debate on some of the issues. We also recognise that we've been open enough with some of our internal evaluations on effectiveness in particular which is why we've linked into some of those findings on our website and we commit to more of this in the future http://www.msf.org.uk/msf-report-where-everyone-responding-emergencies-most-difficult-places
goodintentions asks what will make agencies take notice of the report?
Marc du Bois, ex MSF UK Exec Director wrote for the ODI in 2010 about the way the 'protection' debate was being used as a 'figleaf' to cover up the inefficacy of much practical humanitarian work - the unglamorous but real health, water and sanitation issues that are now being mentioned in MSF's latest report. It doesn't seem that the message has been listened to - in fact agencies have fallen over themselves to recruit protection staff and put them into positions where they are completely incapable of providing protection and must sit and watch populations die of preventable diseases caused by lack of potable water. What will prevent this report just being ignored by agencies while they concentrate on more marketable issues?
That's exactly what this debate is about. To try and put more of a spotlight onto the issues that MSF is encountering in these very acute situations.
Via Twitter @Adesoafrica asks about fear of funding militant groups:
Another via Twitter:
Q to @GdnDevelopment: isn't risk aversion by donors in contexts such as #Somalia that fear diversion of funds by militant groups, spot on?
the diversion of aid money in any context should be of concern whether it be to armed groups or to governments, which is all the more reason from MSF's perspective that we should be limiting levels of bureacracy and promote direct implementation and therefore accountability
It is not risk aversion - it is a requirement that we comply with international law and the laws of the countries where we are registered. Diversion of aid to prohibited organisations is a very real risk but we have found that if we can demonstrate that we have adequately assessed and mitgated that risk, and reported the fact when we do lose aid, then donors and the authorities have taken a pragmatic view.
Mike, those are good points but I wonder if what is no doubt a costly and lengthy process just adds to the bureaucracy and delays. And are all agencies treated equally?
Muslim Charties Forum has documented how Muslim charities come under particular scrutiny. These issues need to be addressed
It took us a while to produce the policies that allowed us to program in these environments, and it was important to make all of our staff aware of their responsibilities, but once in place it works quite smoothly.
Why's the UN obsessed with aid targets and cheesy videos? asks an anonymous user
A further anonymous question for the panel:
Why are UN agencies (possible exception WHO) so obsessed with telling us what aid they have delivered, down the decimal point of food parcels, (and making cheesy videos about it) rather than telling us what the needs are on the ground and where they haven't been able to deliver?
I agree that there is a tendency to focus on what has been delivered, rather than looking at what the gaps are and what resources need to be mobilised to meet those gaps.
And @cynan_sez on Twitter asks if governments are the problem:
And from @cynan_sez on twitter:
Why aren't you asking: are [government] donors too risk averse?
In some cases, donors are actually starting to become less risk averse. They’re funding things like the START Fund for example, they’re funding humanitarian innovations with an understanding that there will inevitably be failures. And many are funding humanitarian operations in contested areas (cross-line and cross-borders) despite the political implications. We have to accept that donors do have political objectives and relationships with other governments that will have a bearing on the level of risk that they are prepared to take. But these are some positive steps
It is not so much risk aversion, as a slow realisation that things have changed and the compliance mechanisms that were designed for rapid onset disasters, or in uncontested space, are no longer appropriate when there is a rapidly evolving insecure environment and people put their lives at risk trying to deliver aid. They can't always get list of beneficiaries or receipts or invoices for everyhting they spend. some donors are being much more pro-active than others in adapting to the new environment.
How do we balance concerns with response? asks Anne-Marie Schryer-Roy
I think this is a very interesting report from MSF, and there is definitely too much risk aversion when it comes to humanitarian response. The delayed response to the 2011 drought and famine in Somalia is a sad, and well-documented, example of where fear and risk aversion led to deaths that could have been avoided. NGOs definitely have their role to play, but what about donors? Risk aversion by donors also makes it increasingly harder for NGOs, and the UN for that matter, especially in contexts such as Somalia where fears of diversion to terrorist groups exist. How do we balance such concerns with the need to respond?
The risk aversion that we refer to in the report is not only about security, but about the willingness to take on programmes that are difficult and might fail. In Jordan, we met several INGOs who were quite clear that one reason why few agencies were supporting urban refugees were that they were very difficult to make succeed and that wouldn't look good to donors.
Another anonymous user asks how to involve local people more:
An anonymous question via email just in:
Could a commitment to capacity building be the answer so that local people are part of a faster response? However, can we successfully deliver capacity building programmes under such overwhelming beaucracy as outlined in the report?
This is a long-term approach. Capacity building cannot produce results today. In the meantime, we see again and again that there is an insufficient response to the needs of today rather than thinking about the needs of tomorrow.
The Humanitairan Leadership Academy initiaitive, led, but not owned by, Save, is a major attempt to stimulate local capacity building. It aims to train 100,000 humanitarian leaders over the next 5 years, at every level from the most basic technical skill to a Masters diploma.
An anonymous user asks about getting aid to Iraq:
We've had this question emailed in by an anonymous user:
Why did the wider humanitarian community refuse to acknowledge there was an issue in Iraq with ISIS and displacement until the pictures of the queues at checkpoints hit their television screens in June? ISIS has been fighting in Anbar since January and in the first six months of the year 450,000+ people were displaced, but despite the magnitude of the situation only a handful of NGOs responded, funding was woeful, and the barely registered in the media. [Despite best efforts of a few noble actors like STC, NCCI and DRC] Suddenly, IDPs start arriving into Kurdistan, which has a good airport, nice hotels and is easily reachable for aid deliveries (as well as photographs and vox pops), and every NGO in the world sends a team over to Kurdistan to help with the "Iraq crisis" as if it's a new thing.
This would very much fit in with the analysis of the report that emergency aid tends to favour the easy to reach places. We saw the same thing in Jordan, with the assistance effort focusing on Zaatari camp.
And a final word from our panel:
Thanks to all for joining the debate, glad to see that there is some take-up on the issue. We don't have all the answers (which is why there are no recommendations in the report) but do want to have a frank discussion about what we feel is a loss of capacity and know-how in acute, conflict-related emergency response. If you want to continue the debate, we have an opinion section on our website - follow this link to see how you can contribute. http://www.msf.org.uk/opinion-and-debate
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