By Gareth Price-Jones, Senior Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy Coordinator, CARE International
On the 6th October the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) Secretariat published their Synthesis report, just a scant eight days before the WHS’s Global Consultation here in Geneva. It is a magnificent document, summing up over 180-odd pages conversations with 23,000 people across the world and providing updated statistics on the scale and dimensions of humanitarian need across the globe. It captures 232 proposals, both from traditional aid actors like CARE, who have been in the business for 70 years, and new actors just dipping their toes into the water. It captures inputs from affected states, big INGOs, local civil society, UN Agencies, diaspora groups, businesses and engaged citizens from the global north and south.
A Boost to the Humanitarian Endeavour
One of the big objectives of the WHS consultations has been to seek big new ideas and thinking on humanitarian assistance. In this regard, the document is something of a disappointment. There are no big new ideas here – it’s mainly what we’ve known for some time is best practice: Affected people need to be consulted and involved. Women and girls must be at the centre of humanitarian action. Protection is key. Humanitarian principles are critical. Humanitarian action needs more resources. We need to continue innovating. Decision-making should be decentralised. Partnerships need to be two-way, not just contracting relationships. Building resilience to reduce the impact of conflict and disaster is better than fixing things up after they have happened.
For those of us who are professional humanitarians, this is reassuring. We can do better, and best practice is far from universal, but generally we are getting it right. We haven’t missed something big (or if we have, it continues to elude us even with all the new voices in the conversation). This should be a big boost to the humanitarian endeavour, and a further rebuke to the dwindling group who claim humanitarian aid is failing in its approach or fundamentals.
So in the absence of big new ideas what do we do? As the report makes abundantly clear, the need for our services is growing. With climate change, the need will grow still further. We actually cannot do significantly more with less. For all the recent growth in humanitarian aid, a $78 trillion world economy can certainly find more than $24.5 billion (0.03%) to build resilience and meet immediate, urgent needs. So we need to grow to better meet those needs. We need to recruit more committed, passionate, innovative and smart aid workers. We need to deploy those resources more efficiently.
Humanitarian Action not Enough
But even after we’ve made efficiency gains, and doubled or tripled in size – cloned all those aid workers, set up big new NGOs in the north and the south, increased budget allocations to Civil Defence and Disaster Management Ministries – it still won’t be enough.
And this for me is where the WHS process and the Synthesis report have generally failed, and where the Istanbul summit must succeed. Only one of thirty-two recommendations in the executive summary mentions the most important issue: Humanitarian action is just treating the symptoms.
Humanitarians are tremendously powerful actors. Annually, we collectively save the lives of millions of people. We can treat the symptoms we see at greater scale, more innovatively and more effectively, but that will not solve the causes we see played out on our TV screens and on Turkish beaches. To Restore Humanity, we need those with the power to mobilise nations to take action – those in the perhaps less-well-regarded professions of politician and journalist.
Needed: Political Leadership
We need political leadership – driven by an activist global media that holds politicians to account – that is genuinely committed to addressing the political causes of humanitarian need and reaches beyond small notions of national interest to seize the bigger prize. We need a functional Security Council, and a General Assembly that holds it to account. We need international law with teeth. We need genuine commitments to addressing climate change. That one recommendation is by far and away the most important, and is lost in the detail.
As humanitarians we can – and will – commit to change. CARE will commit to taking on the best practice that the Synthesis report captures so well, and implementing it in our programs and our partnerships. We will use this process to demonstrate our legitimacy and secure humanitarian space. But ultimately, to address the challenges faced now and in the future, humanitarians from the global north and the south must unite to utilise the opportunity to drive political leadership in UN Member States to address the root causes that lie beyond our power.