Civil-Military Relations in Natural Disasters - 2011 keynote speech

NGO-Military Contact Group Keynote Hugo Slim

The topic of today’s conference is not without a history. Born on a battlefield in 1859, modern humanitarian action has always had a close relationship with military forces. The question about how close and cooperative this relationship can be has always preoccupied humanitarians. So too has the question of armed protection. Is it a good, necessary or bad thing for humanitarians? Interestingly, humanitarian views on this have changed over time. Here is a description of an aid convoy in Ethiopia in 1936: “I kept the convoy well together and placed guards on the roof of the lorries. I squatted on top of the leading lorry myself with my Winchester rifle between my knees.”

Rather surprisingly, perhaps, this was written by the famous ICRC delegate, Marcel Junod, who was ICRC’s first delegate in Ethiopia. Things have now changed. Junod’s “tooling-up” is hardly standard practice in the ICRC today!

Again, it may surprise people to know that, at the end of World War 2, the NGOs operating in support of the British occupation of Berlin were required to wear khaki uniforms. Only the Quakers refused and insisted on wearing grey instead.

And, in my own lifetime, I remember an awkward first meeting with members of US Special Forces in a refugee camp on the top of a mountain in Southern Turkey in 1991 when humanitarian agencies and the US military were told to “work together” to provide humanitarian aid to the many thousands of Kurdish people fleeing from the wrath of a recently defeated Saddam Hussein.

So, we meet today around a continuously emerging norm in militaryhumanitarian relations that many of you have been actively shaping in recent years in a variety of natural and mixed disasters.

My task this morning is to raise some of the big themes involved in the development of the military-NGO relationship. In doing so, I will focus on themes that seem to frame and trouble your cooperation at the moment. I will then identify some missing issues that I think are often overlooked and need to trouble us more.

Current Preoccupations Four big themes jumped out at me as I looked afresh at NGO-military cooperation: eligibility, purpose, relationships and effect.

Eligibility Who is eligible to offer humanitarian help and to show human kindness in disaster and war? The answer to this is everyone. There is no essential contest or barrier around humanitarian eligibility. Humanitarian work is not just the preserve of humanitarian agencies. Military forces can be humanitarian and are required to be so by international law under the Geneva conventions and often also under national laws as a first line government resource in disaster.

There are three main types of military forces: government forces; international forces and rebel forces. State forces obviously have primary responsibility for support to disaster response but other responsibilities and obligations also apply to international forces as now agreed in the Oslo Guidelines, and humanitarian agencies, local civil society, neighbours and armed groups.

But while all military forces are eligible for humanitarian action, their eligibility is qualified by core humanitarian principles and obvious standards of quality and expertise. To be properly humanitarian, they must do it fairly and well.

Purpose There is perhaps a greater tension over shared purpose between military forces and humanitarian organizations. And this tension is a genuine one because governments have much wider responsibilities than a humanitarian organization.

Everyone can agree that humanitarian action has a common purpose in saving lives and livelihoods, and protecting a range of people’s rights. A government and its armed forces can help to do this but they also have a range of wider strategic priorities and interests. A government is an intrinsically multi-mandate organization and must govern as well as help. It needs to think about national security, national integrity and society’s long-term requirements. These responsibilities are proper to government but also mean that it will see disasters and wars in a different way to humanitarian organizations.

In mixed disasters – where armed conflict and natural disaster overlaps – governments and armed groups inevitably have wider goals than humanitarian organizations. It becomes very difficult for government not to integrate humanitarian action into its primary strategic security goals. Humanitarian action can make most sense to government as part of counter-insurgency strategies (COIN) and their efforts to win hearts and minds (WHAM). And, on this point, NGOs have not been slow to cry humanitarian foul.

Realistically, we must aim to find a middle ground. Humanitarian organizations should expect governments to have mixed motives and to be governing as well as helping. For their part, governments will be wrong if their COIN and WHAM concerns trump humanitarian obligations, and their policies involve the humanitarian exclusion of certain areas, denial of resources and deep political bias that violates some people’s rights to help.

Relationship Anxieties In their relationships with military forces, humanitarians seem to worry most about three things beginning with C. These are: complicity; contagion and culture. They worry that they will become complicit with violations if the state’s military relief is biased and unprincipled, governed more by WHAM than HINI (humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence). They also fear contagion – the risk of being associated by the population and government opponents with a particular political and military agenda. And, they worry about significant cultural differences between a military culture and a humanitarian culture – with the former being hierarchical, output driven and male.

For their part, governments and state military forces seem to worry about sovereignty and humanitarian invasion. The arrival and extension of large international humanitarian operations makes them anxious about the erosion of their national sovereignty and their right to govern. They may also resent an international humanitarian culture that is innately liberal, secular and critical.

Governments and their military forces may not unfairly feel that their authority and national dignity is being attacked and that, once again, they are being overrun and lectured by the West.

Military-humanitarian effect This is the most important aspect of the military-humanitarian question – its effect and the results it has in the lives of people affected by disaster. But it is often the question that is left until last because of the anxieties outlined above.

Basic humanitarian questions should be asked to shape any militaryhumanitarian operation: Who needs what?

Where?

When?

How best is it delivered?

For how long?

The answers to these questions should then dictate if and how civil-military combinations of humanitarian action are designed and implemented. Any combinations should always focus on maximizing complementarity between civil and military resources and skills.

Some Missing Issues There are also three issues that seem to be overlooked in the current debate about military-humanitarian operations. They are: evidence; local citizen response, and armed group humanitarian action.

Evidence The discussion around civil-military humanitarian operations is strong on ideology and weak on evidence of practical effect. It seems we need to find out much more detail about the effect of military-only and civil-military combinations on meeting humanitarian needs.

A greater body of evidence around cost, impact, impartiality, community experience and popular preferences would enable a more empirical discussion and more informed policy making.

Local civil society and citizens response Current discussion and policy-making around military-humanitarian options can also sound like the booming conversation of two big humanitarian actors drowning out the wider conversation of the majority of humanitarian actors – ordinary people.

In natural disasters and mixed disasters, the affected population, their neighbours and local civil society are usually the primary actors in emergency response. It may well be that our emphasis on national institutions is misplaced in disaster response when rapid reaction and resilience is most likely to be built best at local level. Understanding, supporting and financing local primary actors should, perhaps, demand our attention more than our current preoccupation with high profile secondary actors like armies and agencies.

Armed group humanitarianism Finally, if everyone is eligible to be a humanitarian actor, we should not exclude armed groups from the opportunity and responsibility of humanitarian action. If an insurgent group is best placed to help meet people’s rightful needs in a mixed disaster then we should expect them to do so. Like their government opponents, they too will have WHAM motives, but their humanitarian efforts cannot be criticized or prevented per se if they are working impartially. In many emergencies, they will have a vital role to play.

Conclusion I have tried to flag some main themes and currents swirling beneath the topic of today’s conference. You know them all, and many of the case studies today will analyse them in detail around specific operations in Haiti and Pakistan. These

discussions will, I’m sure, continue the process of describing events, sifting the evidence and shaping good practice in NGO-military cooperation in humanitarian action.

END