John Mitchell’s response to the GHA Report 2011
A few days ago Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, wrote a blog lamenting the failure of the international humanitarian system to prevent the food security crisis in the Horn of Africa. He argued that our humanitarian system is ‘broken’ and is wrongly focused on responding to disasters rather than preventing them.
And when one reads the excellent GHA Report 2011, it is pretty clear that the financial data backs up his observations. The most recent figures show that 70% of official humanitarian spend in 2009 went to chronic long-term emergencies, most of which are in conflict and drought-affected sub-Saharan Africa.
And, as Mr. Forsyth notes, humanitarian aid is not providing any long-term benefit. Only two of the top 20 recipients of international humanitarian aid have clearly moved out of the emergency phase in the past five years. On this basis, it is not surprising to read that total expenditure on disaster risk reduction (DRR) reached just US$835 million in 2009, a mere 0.5% of total ODA. Of the US$150 billion spent on the biggest humanitarian recipients over the past five years, only 1% of that has been reported as DRR.
Finding meaningful patterns in financial data is not a straightforward exercise but, on reading the GHA report, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the international aid system is increasingly taking on the job of providing welfare in a relatively small number of countries that are deeply entrenched in crisis. All of them require radical political and economic solutions outside of the remit of humanitarian aid.
But this is far from the whole picture as the data also reveals that ‘traditional humanitarian actors’, i.e. western aid agencies and OECD DAC donors, no longer dominate the delivery of humanitarian aid, especially in response to sudden onset natural disasters in countries with growing economies. One of the most eye-catching statistics in the GHA Report is that contributions from non-OECD DAC member governments to humanitarian pooled funds increased from US$4 million in 2009 to US$98 million in 2010. Equally significant is what the report recognises it cannot capture, namely the huge efforts and cash flows from individuals, organisations and governments within crisis-affected countries themselves.
It would appear that many middle-income countries are increasingly confident of their own internal capacities to respond to natural disasters within their borders, and have increasing access to funding from non OECD-DAC sources. And this raises questions for the international system. How should it engage with emerging national disaster management authorities and how important is DRR?
We know that DRR works best in situations where national disaster management authorities are strong and when it is approached as a multi-sectorial activity. Indeed, governments that we in ALNAP have spoken to, particularly from middle-income nations, consider DRR and resilience to be central to their plans for disaster management. If the humanitarian system is to remain relevant in those contexts, DRR is going to be an important area to focus support.
John Mitchell is the Director of ALNAP.
Back to top
Reinier van Hoffen (@ReiniervHoffen) says:
Hello John and others,
While our colleagues struggle to mobilize local capacity to utilize the resources made available for dealing with the current crisis in the Horn, the discourse seems to again focus on the mobilization of resources. Your analysis is right as far as the ongoing shift of the funding base is concerned. What is important against this backdrop is how this affects the way capacities that were developed with foreign support and that continue to rely heavily on external assistance for its maintenance and even running costs. The number of agencies that have managed to build expertise in the humanitarian aid sector is enormous as well as the costs. However, the agencies that have been able to effectively utilize local resources and capacities are few, the short contract periods of foreign nationals being the main reason. Also the massive flows of foreign aid and related training programs have caused local HR capacities to develop and consequently move abroad for more attractive benefit packages being deployed in other emergency settings. Though this so called South-South deployment has long been hailed as beneficial for exposure purpose, it has hardly returned home. As a result the advantage of local knowledge and understanding of historic patterns combined with expertise with the international humanitarian aid system being available locally (especially in remote areas) has been lost. If the aid system would reinvent itself valuing these local capacities as much as international expertise (also in terms of benefit packages) would help to regain some of the losses, and would also protect local agencies against a continues depletion of human resources to the international aid system (starting with local UN recruitment). I would like to challenge each NGO to submit proposals to its donors that do factor in these benefit packages for local capacities, combined with the deployment of a single international technical advisor based long-term in-country rather then frequently moving in and out along with emergencies as they come and go.
Reinier van Hoffen
Consultant Learning for Change (Humanitarian Aid)
PSO
DATE:
01/08/2011 1:53 pm
John Mitchell says:
Thank you for the useful comment Reinier. I agree that the challenge you highlight is very important. Amongst the key findings of the ALNAP Study, Leadership in Action: Leading Effectively in Humanitarian Operations was that “Nationally recruited staff – who offer wider sets of cultural identity – face structural and attitudinal barriers in developing their leadership potential and moving into international leadership positions.” Amongst our recommendations for the international humanitarian sector was the “urgent need to invest more in national leadership.”
This issue was then raised by several contributors on the ALNAP Leadership Forum:
One contributor noted, in relation to ‘addressing gender imbalances and also in developing national staff potential… there was not the will by management, or the HR systems, or the money, or the level of coordination within international organisations necessary to make them work.” Whilst a commentator from an African NGO noted, “To date, a good number of our best trained and tested managers and medical doctors who operated in the most challenging humanitarian environments throughout Africa have been lured by I-NGOs and UN system agencies.”
The investment in the “organisational enabling environment that sustains leadership”, or effective humanitarian action more generally may well be the most important part of this resourcing debate highlighted by GHA’s report.
DATE:
04/08/2011 3:12 pm