Volume 93 Number 884 December 2011
EDITORIAL: THE FUTURE OF HUMANITARIAN ACTION
What evolution and underlying trends influence the future of humanitarian action and its ability to respond to the crises of tomorrow? Since the end of the Cold War, humanitarian activity has grown exponentially to the point that, given the development of such organizations in number, weight, and professionalization, it is now possible to speak of a ‘humanitarian sector’ or an ‘industry’.1 Polymorphic and complex, this sector is composed of different systems or ‘networks of networks’ with no central governance. We see three main components to this sector today: non-governmental organizations of extremely diverse size and missions, the United Nations humanitarian agencies, and finally, the components of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The largest of these organizations, whose headquarters are all in the Western world, manage large and constantly increasing budgets, and exercise an influence that, while fluid, is nonetheless real and one of a truly international civil society.
Several factors today seem to demonstrate profound changes in the humanitarian sector. These are factors related first to the development of crises and vulnerabilities and the risks that are emerging, second to the environment around humanitarian action and the contemporary challenges to compliance with humanitarian principles, law, and access to victims, and third to new methods and changes in the composition of the sector itself.
In this edition, the Review gives the floor to representatives of a number of humanitarian organizations and research centres to discuss each of these three aspects of change that we think are critical to the future of humanitarian action.
New threats, new responses While conflicts, in particular non-international ones, still represent a major cause of suffering, humanitarian action also responds with increasing frequency to disaster situations, natural or massive technological catastrophes, which have worsened in terms of frequency and magnitude.
The basic idea behind the humanitarian approach is that human suffering knows no borders and, that in dealing with crises, not all countries seem to be in the same boat. Southern countries, more vulnerable to climate change, pay the price of the ecological bill for the development of the powers of the ‘North’. In addition, those who live in the slums of Port-au-Prince or the farmers of the Indus Valley are just as much the victims of earthquakes or floods as they are of poor infrastructure, a lack of local relief capacity, and governance problems. The map of climatic risks is thus often overlapped by patterns of political instability, chronic insecurity, and underdevelopment. The line between crisis response and long-term development is consequently unclear, particularly in the context of chronic conflict (for example, in Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo). One uses the term ‘complex emergencies’ to emphasize the interdependence of the factors governing the vulnerability of populations. Nevertheless, the earthquake in Japan and the nuclear crisis that the tsunami triggered remind us that, in certain circumstances, even rich countries are not immune from crisis, and that their technological superiority can be intricately related to their weaknesses.
The root causes of conflicts between nations have not all been extinguished – far from it. Tensions around Iran, the two Koreas, and both Sudans are just some examples of political and humanitarian fault lines. Nor have noninternational armed conflicts decreased in frequency and gravity. In fact, most conflicts today have a long history and some are seemingly intractable, while the popular uprisings in the Arab world (and the repression that they have encountered) have caused new outbreaks of violence.
Finally, whether manmade or not, whether they strike the richest or the poorest, crises of political, climatic, epidemiological, or tectonic origins affect communities that are increasingly populated and urbanized, the city acting as an amplifier to the vagaries of nature and war.3 Faced with these multiple causes, planning the humanitarian response becomes more demanding and difficult to implement.