shifting sands: the search for coherence between political ......the search for ‘coherence’...

Overseas Development Institute

HPG ReportH U M A N I T A R I A NP O L I C Y G R O U P

The Humanitarian Policy Group atthe Overseas DevelopmentInstitute is Europe’s leading teamof independent policy researchersdedicated to improvinghumanitarian policy and practicein response to conflict, instabilityand disasters.

Joanna Macrae

Nicholas Leader

HPG Report 8August 2000

Shifting sands:

The search for ‘coherence’

between political and

humanitarian responses to

complex emergencies

Photocopies of all or part of this publication may be made providing that the source is acknowledged. Requests for the commercialreproduction of this report should be directed to the ODI as copyright holders.

Notes on the Authors:

Joanna Macrae and Nicholas Leader are Research Fellows at the Humanitarian Policy Group in ODI. JoannaMacrae has written extensively on humanitarian policy, focussing in particular on the analysis of aid in chronicpolitical emergencies and the changing institutional relationship between aid and foreign policy and betweenrelief and development aid. She has conducted research on Cambodia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and SierraLeone. Nicholas Leader has worked for Oxfam in several countries in Africa, East Europe and Asia. At ODI hehas worked on humanitarian principles, war economies and the relationship between humanitarianism andpolitics.

Acknowledgements:

This study treads on politically sensitive and conceptually challenging ground. Navigating our course has reliedupon the input and openness of many individuals and organisations.

Rob Dixon provided research assistance to the study, helping to underpin the study in a broader interpretation ofinternational relations.

Members of the study’s Advisory Group (see Annex 1 for a listing) have provided important insights and adviceduring the course of the study, assisting in logistics, identifying key informants and documents and commentingon draft material.

OCHA Belgrade facilitated the Serbia case study, and particular thanks are due to Robert Dann and Robert Painterfor their assistance, logistical and otherwise. In Macedonia, Oxfam UK provided logistical backup and advice, forwhich we are grateful.

The study was funded by the Disasters Emergency Committee, the Department for International Development,the Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and ActionAid.

Finally, many thanks to our colleagues in HPG who shared their insights and commented extensively on drafts ofthis report and other related material.

While acknowledging these contributions, the authors emphasise that the report expresses only our views. Weremain responsible for any errors of fact and interpretation.

ISBN: 0-85003-493-0

© Overseas Development Institute, London, 2000

Please send comments on this paper to:

Joanna MacraeHumanitarian Policy GroupOverseas Development Institute111 Westminster Bridge RoadLondon SE1 7JDUnited Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7922 0300Fax: +44 (0) 20 7922 0399

Website: www.odi.org.uk/hpgEmail: [email protected]

A copy of your comments will be sent to the author

H P G R E P O R T

‘To what extent do you justify sacrificing the humanitarianimperative to long-term political strategy? We are not debating

this — it is in the “too difficult” tray. ‘

Michael Moller, Department of Political Affairs2 November 1999

‘The relationship between humanitarian aid and political actionhas always been ambiguous. The moment that political forces areabsent or not coherent we ask for political action. The moment

they get too involved, we ask them to stop.’

Jacques de Milliano, former Director, MSF-Holland8 December 1999

‘What we are seeing is the re-emergence of the concept of the justwar, with good guys and bad guys. More and more we see aid ascoming from the “right” side. But what we should do is analyse

who is the good humanitarian actor through the eyes ofbeneficiaries. How do they see the conceptual elements of

impartiality, neutrality and independence?’

ICRC official, Geneva22 November 1999

Contents

1

3

2

Acronyms 1

Executive summary 3

Introduction 9

‘Coherence’ in context: geopolitical and domestic influences 11on the humanitarian/politics relationship

2.1 Introduction 11

2.2 Geopolitical humanitarianism: an overview of trends 11

2.2.1 Sovereignty and globalisation 11

2.2.2 The changing nature of war 13

2.3 The crisis in aid: the search for new purpose 14

2.3.1 The financial bottom line: reversing the fortunes of aid 15

2.3.2 Relief: an emerging critique 15

2.3.3 Aid and politics: a re-analysis of the international division of 16political labour

2.4 ‘Joined-upness’: the sine qua non of modern democracy 17

2.5 Chapter summary 18

Bilateral approaches to coherence: an analysis of policy 19trends in the UK and The Netherlands

3.1 Introduction and chapter overview 19

3.2 The UK: new Labour and Third Way foreign policy 19

3.2.1 Good international citizenship and Third Way foreign policy 19

3.2.2 The changing architecture of international policy: from ODA to DFID 20

3.3 Aid and war in the UK: from relief to the new, new humanitarianism 22

3.3.1 Putting conflict on the aid agenda 22

3.3.2 The new humanitarianism 22

3.3.3 Sierra Leone: an experiment in the ‘new humanitarianism’ 24

3.3.4 A new, new humanitarianism? 25

3.3.5 DFID, the new humanitarianism and the UK NGO Community 27

6 Conclusions and recommendations 55

6.1 Coherence and liberal peace 55

6.1.1 If you’re not with us, you’re against us 55

6.1.2 Beyond coherence: defining a complementary ‘politics’ 56

6.2 Recommendations to donor governments 59

6.2.1 Investing in politics 59

6.2.2 Investing in new forms of aid 60

6.2.3 Codifying principles: the role of law 60

6.2.4 Bilateralisation of humanitarian assistance 60

6.2.5 Proportionality of humanitarian spending 61

6.2.6 Human resource and representational issues 62

6.3 Recommendations to the UN 62

6.3.1 The division of political and humanitarian labour: OCHA & SRSGs 62

6.3.2 Capacity for political analysis and representation 62

6.3.3 The strategic framework 63

6.4 Recommendations to humanitarian organisations and NGOs 63

6.4.1 Defining ‘humanitarianism’ and politics 63

6.4.2. Operationalising principles 63

6.4.3 Creating and maintaining a constituency for humanitarian action 64

6.5 Conclusions 64

Annex 1: List of interviews 65

Annex 2: Advisory Group members 69

References 71

Endnotes 75

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H P G R E P O R TShifting Sands: The Search for ‘Coherence’

Acronyms

ASG Afghanistan Support GroupBPRM Bureau for Population, Refugees and MigrationCHAD Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department (DFID)DEC Disasters Emergency CommitteeDFID Department for International DevelopmentDPA Department of Political Affairs (UN)DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN)ECHA Executive Committee on Humanitarian AffairsECHO European Commission Humanitarian OfficeECOSOC Economic and Social CouncilECPS Executive Committee on Peace and SecurityEfD Energy for DemocracyEU European UnionEMAD Emergency Aid Department (ODA)FCO Foreign and Commonwealth OfficeHEP Humanitarian Evacuation ProgrammeHLWG Humanitarian Liaison Working GroupHTP Humanitarian Transfer ProgrammeIASC Inter-agency Standing CommitteeGA General AssemblyGOM Government of MacedoniaICRC International Committee of the Red CrossNATO North Atlantic Treaty OrganisationOCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairsoda official development assistanceODA Overseas Development Administration (UK)OSGAP Office of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and PakistanPCP Principled Common ProgrammeSRSG Special Representative of the Secretary-General (United Nations)(UN)SC United Nations Security CouncilUN United NationsUNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesUNSC UN Security CouncilUNSMA UN Special Mission in Afghanistan

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Executive summaryThe early 1990s have seen increasing calls to enhancethe coherence of political and humanitarian action.These have stemmed from an increasing recognition ofthe essentially political nature of vulnerability in complexemergencies, and thus of the need for political (asopposed to relief) action to mitigate these disasters.The coherence agenda was given added momentum in1996 by the conclusion of the Joint Evaluation of theInternational Response to Rwanda that aid cannot actas a substitute for political action, and has subsequentlybecome a routine refrain in international public policyin this domain. However, the interpretation of thecoherence agenda has not been uncontroversial. Thereis a growing sense from humanitarian and political actorsof mutual distrust, with the former concerned at theapparent politicisation of aid, and the latter frustratedby the political naïvety of aid.

This report examines the origins and evolution of theconcept of coherence and its implications in practice.As Chapter One explains, the report details the findingsof a six-month study on the politics of coherence. It isparticularly concerned to understand the precisecharacter of the new relationship proposed betweenaid and politics in the post-Cold War era.

In particular, does the coherence agenda, imply closerintegration of humanitarian policy with foreign policyobjectives of donor governments? Or does it imply alooser arrangement that seeks to formalise thecomparative advantages of aid and diplomatic actors,so enhancing their complementarity?

The study focused on two donor governments: theBritish and the Dutch. In addition, it analysed how theUN — the ultimate multi-mandate organisation —provided a means to operationalise and legitimise thecoherence agenda. Finally, in order to understand theimplications of coherence in practice, four mini-casestudies were undertaken in recipient countries. Thesewere: assistance to the energy sector in Serbia 1999–2000; the role of bilateral diplomacy in the negotiationof asylum for Kosovar refugees in spring 1999; theAfghanistan Support Group; and security and withdrawalof personnel in Afghanistan since 1996.

Chapter Two aims to put the arguments regardingcoherence in their historical contexts. It outlines howin the post-Cold War era, a shifting interpretation ofsovereignty, combined with the forces of globalisation,has forced a re-analysis of the legitimacy of internationalintervention in conflict-affected states. The 1990s alsowitnessed a widening in the definition of security toembrace economic and social determinants, alongsidemore traditional military and political components.

Combined, these trends have supported the reunificationof aid and politics, legitimising and compelling aid actorsnot only to take account of the political environment in

determining the type and volume of aid flows, but alsoto claim a role in delivering the new security agenda.This has meant that aid policy actors can be seen tomake decisions regarding whether to engage withparticular countries at all, and on what terms, not asracist neo-colonialists, but as defenders of human rights,peace and prosperity. In order to play this rolelegitimately, aid actors have had to confront increasingallegations that their interventions are fuelling conflict.Thus aid agencies have been seeking ways to takegreater account of the political contexts in which theywork.

The mandate of aid agencies to engage politically inthese environments is also being driven by the changingpolitical economy of war at the periphery. Lacking theleverage that followed from superpower financing ofThird World struggles, traditional forms of diplomacyare failing, forcing a search for new conflict managementtools. In this context, aid looks like an attractive optionto contain conflict.

Changes in the global political environment have alsoforced changes in the organisation of domestic policyin donor countries. Calls for ‘joined-up’ governmenthave been driven by the need to demonstrate theefficiency and effectiveness of public policy inresponding to complex problems of modern states.

While external conditions enabled aid actors to assumea more active, explicitly political, function in conflictresolution, three factors internal to the aid sphere forcedthem to do so. The decline in aid flows in the early1990s forced aid actors to reassert a clear purpose,prompting new claims regarding aid’s crucial role inconflict reduction. At the same time, the rising costs ofconflict, and of humanitarian aid, also meant that aidresponses to conflict were under unprecedentedscrutiny. The need for a more coherent, politicallyinformed aid response to conflict situations was drivenby a mounting critique that aid fuelled wars.

The convergence of these geo-political, aid-specific anddomestic contextual factors has encouraged theemergence of the coherence agenda and provided thespace for its implementation. The definition of thecoherence agenda that has emerged, however, suffersfrom a number of problems.

First, it assumes a shared understanding of the goals ofpeace and development. While the West appeals touniversal values to underpin its claims to intervenelegitimately in sovereign states, this is contested bymany non-Western states, who associate conditionalsovereignty with a new form of imperialism. Further,responsibility for conflict management continues to beplaced at the level of individual states, while it is farfrom clear that states at the periphery have the capacityto deliver this. Increasingly, violence represents a

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rational choice for state and non-state actors concernedto maintain power and accumulate wealth. Appeals toliberal values, including that of the need to respectinternational humanitarian law, therefore, hold littletruck. Finally, the degree of leverage aid can exert inthese environments remains unproven at best. Assumingthat it can exert leverage immediately requirescompromising humanitarian principles since it impliesa shared understanding exists regarding the legitimacyof a particular conflict and its desired outcome.

The primary source of humanitarian aid resources isfrom donor governments, they are the only actors whocan be ‘coherent’. Chapter Three examines the changesthat have been introduced by the British and Dutchgovernments in order to enhance the coherence of theirhumanitarian and political responses to complexemergencies. Comparative analysis of these twogovernments’ policies reveals a number of importantsimilarities.

In both the UK and the Netherlands, the search forgreater coherence between humanitarian and politicalaction has resulted in substantive change in theobjectives and organisation of humanitarian policy. Inboth countries, the need to enhance the connectednessbetween these different dimensions of internationalpolicy has been driven by a redefinition of internationalrelations in the post-Cold War era of globalisation, andby broader public policy pressures emphasising cost-effectiveness and accountability.

The original hopes of coherence laid out in policiessuch as An Agenda for Peace, the DFID White Paperand the Netherlands’ A World of Difference have beenquickly disappointed. Rather than aid playing asupportive role in a revived political strategy of conflictprevention and resolution, aid bodies are now primarilyresponsible for implementing a new form ofinternational policy. The reunification of aid and politicshas provided for a re-division of international politicallabour such that aid is no longer a substitute for politicalaction (Eriksson 1996). Rather, it is the primary form ofinternational policy at the geopolitical periphery (Macrae1998).

The concentration of development aid to a tightlydefined number of countries means that humanitarianassistance is the only aid/international policy instrumentdeployed in many of the most vulnerable, conflict-affected countries. Thus, humanitarian aid departmentshave been given considerable influence in shaping notonly relief operations, but broader internationalresponses to conflict. Adoption of this role has beenencouraged both by the withdrawal of other diplomaticand developmental actors, and by an increasingawareness of the potential impact of humanitarian reliefon conflict dynamics.

In the mid- to late-1990s, it was thought thathumanitarian aid could exert significant leverage overthe course of conflict, and that it was therefore legitimate

to calculate this potential net benefit and subsumehumanitarian assistance into a wider political strategy.This ‘new humanitarianism’, as it was called in the UK,assumed an integrated model of coherence, withhumanitarian aid a part of an agreed policy frameworkthat included other foreign policy and military actors.

The UK pursued this integrated model through itsbilaterally funded programme, developing new toolsto improve links between aid and conflict-reductionobjectives. These have included: selective funding;definition of humanitarian conditions; and theestablishment of field offices. In contrast, theNetherlands appears to have turned more towards theUN and to diversifying the range of organisations itsupports; its particular foreign policy culture appearsto have militated against implementing an integratedapproach where this would imply withholdinghumanitarian aid, instead it broadened the scope of thetype of intervention it was willing to fund. Thesedifferences in tactics, combined with the differentinternational positions of the two countries, haveresulted in very different international perceptions oftheir respective policies. The UK’s interpretation ofhumanitarian coherence has attracted the accusation ofpoliticisation, while the Netherlands’ stance, which ismuch more openly integrationist, has passed virtuallywithout comment.

Interestingly, despite these different initialinterpretations, in both countries, the complex andambitious vision of coherence laid out by ministersinitially has now been cut down to apparently moremodest goals. Rather than promising to play an activerole in conflict reduction, the current variant ofhumanitarianism is more concerned with aideffectiveness. Importantly, this more technocratic mode,with its emphasis upon accountability, will notnecessarily dissipate accusations that humanitarianismis the fleece under which a more sinister Western wolfis hiding. It will not do so for two reasons.

First, the technical conditions required for effectivehumanitarian action have not been systematicallydistinguished from political conditionality. The easewith which they are confused has not been lost onbelligerents in conflict situations, nor on Westernpolicymakers. Selective scrutiny of conditions fuelssuspicion that the accountability agenda is being co-opted to enhance control over humanitarian action andto justify cost-cutting.

Second, humanitarian actors, official and non-governmental, have as yet failed to define the type ofpolitics in which they are engaging. This lack of clarityregarding the fundamental purpose of humanitarian aid,and in particular the extent to which it is or is notexpected to contribute to developmental and conflict-reduction goals, provides significant room formanoeuvre for political actors at home and abroad. Ata time when conventional diplomacy is weakened bythe new political economy of war, the promise made

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by aid agencies that aid can contribute to conflictreduction invites diplomatic co-option of these assets.At the same time, the casual renunciation of neutralityon the grounds that it implies complicity, has shiftedthe actual and perceived political position of aid actorsin conflict zones. This, coupled with the proliferationof aid agencies, has contributed to the erosion of thesecurity and scope of humanitarian space.

Chapter Four looks at how the coherence agenda hasplayed out in the ultimate multi-mandate organisation:the United Nations. The rationale for including the UNin the study was twofold. First, the UN has proved animportant mechanism for international legitimation ofemerging norms regarding aid–politics links. Second,the UN system remains a crucial mechanism for thecoordination and implementation of humanitarianaction. The ways in which donor governments interactwith UN bodies have important implications in termsof the latter’s legitimacy and operational effectiveness.This chapter describes the opportunities that haveemerged for promoting the humanitarian agenda withinthe Security Council, although it also highlights thecontinued tensions between the UN as a guardian ofsovereignty and of individual human rights. It notesthe emergence of a number of mechanisms to facilitatecross-departmental and inter-agency working at globaland country levels. These are seen to have facilitatedincreased information exchange, but are not yieldingcommon programming strategies envisaged by the 1997reforms. The Secretary-General continues to promotean integrationist interpretation of coherence, in particularadvocating that his Special Representatives providepolitical direction to all UN programming. The validityof this approach has been challenged in a number ofmajor operations, where the demands of conflictmanagement have interfered with the need for impartialhumanitarian access.

Bilateral donors, including the British and Dutchgovernments are relying increasingly on informal, adhoc channels to send messages to the UN. ‘Friendsof...’ groups, and individual démarches, for example,are becoming more important because of the weaknessof formal mechanisms for consultation and decision-making. The risk of such strategies is that they reducethe transparency of decision-making and lead to theimpression that UN humanitarian policy is ‘owned’ bya small number of countries with a particular politicalagenda. Sensitivity on this issue is particularly high inthe aftermath of the Kosovo crisis.

Chapter Five presents the findings of the four mini-case studies in recipient countries. It examines the extentto which the theory of coherence has led to improvedanalysis of the political determinants of need in conflict-affected countries. It concludes that even at this mostbasic level of information sharing, the gains have beenminimal, reflecting both the weakness of existingsystems of information collection and analysis withinthe political strand, and that where such an analysisexists its objectivity is frequently compromised. This

implies a need to strengthen the quality and impartialityof political information systems. Correspondingly,humanitarian information systems need to bestrengthened to ensure that they adequately captureneed, so providing objective benchmarks against whichresponse can be measured.

The case studies reveal a strong trend towardsbilateralisation of humanitarian response, bringingbilateral donors nearer to operational decision-making.‘Bilateralisation’ entails a number of tactics including:earmarking contributions to multilateral bodies;increased donor involvement in coordination andnegotiation of humanitarian access; direct contractingof NGOs; and the deployment of field staff.

In some cases, these instruments were seen to haveyielded important gains — mobilising political andmilitary assets to which humanitarians would otherwisenot have had access. International legal standards andinformed media scrutiny can help to keep politicalengagement ‘honest’ in such contexts. Equally, ill-informed media pressure can provoke knee-jerk politicalreactions that negatively affect humanitarian space. Thissuggests the need for sustained advocacy and publicinformation in order to generate a constituency forhumanitarian action in donor countries.

Where bilateralisation entailed deploying humanitarianassets in order to achieve a particular purpose, this trendwas seen to be eroding the independence ofhumanitarian action and undermining still further thefunctioning of multilateral institutions. It is important tonote that, because of the difficult political conditions inmany complex emergencies, donor governmentscontinue to rely on multilateral channels forhumanitarian action. Yet the effect of bilateralisationin selected emergencies is to weaken the global capacityof the multilateral system.

Disagreement between different donors regarding theappropriateness of particular strategies meant thatbilateralisation did not necessarily yield greatercoherence of decision-making. Nor does bilateralisationguarantee enhanced accountability—a key objective ofearmarking, direct contracting and the deployment offield staff.

Finally, this section highlights the increasing conflationof the conditions required for effective humanitarianaction with de facto political conditionality onhumanitarian aid. It cautions that humanitarian aid is aweak tool as part of an overall strategy of conflictmanagement, and that attempts to use it as suchundermine its effectiveness in terms of relieving povertyand suffering.

Chapter Six concludes the report and outlines a numberof recommendations to donors, the UN and non-governmental humanitarian agencies. It argues that theidea of good international citizenship is premised upona shared global analysis of what constitutes a ‘liberal

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peace’. However, this model is ill-suited to dealingwith the very countries most vulnerable to conflict andcomplex political emergencies. It is weak in explainingthe origins of crisis, and its selective and conditionalapproach to engagement results in the exclusion ofpariah states from international society, leaving fewoptions to engage in their reform.

The integrationist interpretation of coherence has provedproblematic in theory and in practice. A preferableapproach to coherence would emphasise thedistinctiveness of diplomatic and humanitarian action,but highlight their comparative advantages. In practice,this would require intensifying and reforming politicalengagement in conflict-affected countries, and defininga clearer, rule-based modus vivendi between diplomaticand humanitarian actors.

The report’s recommendations include:

Recommendations to donor governments (in particularthe UK and the Netherlands):

• Increase investment in political analysis andengagement in non-strategic areas.

• Codify in law their commitment to guaranteethe principles of independence, impartiality andneutrality of humanitarian assistance. TheOECD-DAC should promote consistentstandards of definition across its membership.

• Urgently review the trend towardsbilateralisation of humanitarian assistance. Itssupposed advantages in terms of enhancedaccountability remain unproven, while its coststo the independence of humanitarian action aresignificant.

• Further examine and develop a range of aidinstruments for engaging in these environments,not just humanitarian assistance.

Recommendations to the UN:

• The Secretary-General should approve ECHA’srecommendation regarding the relationshipbetween SRSGs and Humanitarian Coordinatorsin situations of active conflict, preserving theindependence of humanitarian action frompolitical interference.

• The UN’s capacity for producing independentpolitical analysis and engagement should bestrengthened. This would entail reviewing thecurrent division of labour between DPA andDPKO; critical evaluation of past politicalperformance; and facilitating exchange ofpolitical expertise between UN departments andagencies.

• The Strategic Framework initiative is widelyseen to be flagging, this is regrettable. Theinitiative should be revived both globally andmore specifically in relation to Afghanistan.This requires revitalising the political track andclarifying the terms of engagement betweenits humanitarian, peace-building anddevelopmental components.

Recommendations to non-governmental humanitarianagencies (NGHAs):

• While NGHAs call for political action, they areuneasy regarding the ‘politicisation’ ofhumanitarian assistance. NGHAs thereforeneed to articulate more clearly and consistentlytheir institutional relationships with, andunderstanding of, ‘politics’ in recipient anddonor countries. Such a clarification impliesrecognition of the potential conflict betweenhumanitarian principles and NGHA’s claims tocontribute to peace-building and developmentalobjectives.

• Poor adherence to humanitarian principles byNGHAs undermines their claim forunconditional and unregulated access to publicfunds. These agencies should therefore reviewtheir commitment to these principles and agreemechanisms by which adherence to them canbe enhanced.

• NGHAs should increase their investment inanalysing global and country specific trends inrelation to humanitarian policy in order tomaintain a critical engagement with officialdonors and to develop an active constituencyfor humanitarian action in donor countries andelsewhere.

In addition to this report, the following documents areavailable reporting on the study’s findings. These canbe downloaded from the following web address:www.odi.org.uk/hpg/appp/forpol.html, or orderedfrom: [email protected].

Macrae, J. and Leader, N. (2000) Shifting Sands: The searchfor coherence between political and humanitarian action,HPG Report No 8, Overseas Development Institute, London.

Macrae, J. and Leader, N. (2000) The Politics of Coherence:humanitarianism and foreign policy in the post-Cold Warera, HPG Briefing Paper 1, Overseas Development Institute,London.

Macrae, J. (2000) The Monopolitics of HumanitarianIntervention: Defining the aid-politics boundary, Notes foran ODI seminar, 31 May 2000.

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Macrae, J. and Leader, N. (2000) The New InternationalDevelopment Act: the case for definition of humanitarianassistance, Briefing Note for a meeting of DFID officials/members of the International Development Committee,ODI, 27 January 2000.

Macrae, J. (2000) Oil...and Water: Political andhumanitarian intervention in the Serbian energy sector’,Network Newsletter 16, Relief and Rehabilitation Network,Overseas Development Institute, London.

Macrae, J. and Leader, N. (2000) The politics of oherence:the UK’s approach to linking political and humanitarianresponses to complex political emergencies, HPG Keysheet1, Overseas Development Institute, London.

Leader, N. and Macrae, J. (2000) Whose Side Are theHumanitarians On? The Politician, July.

Leader, N. and Macrae, J. (2000) Terms of Engagement:Conditions, conditionality and humanitarian assistance,Report on an ODI/Henry Dunant Centre Working Meeting3-4 May, HPG Report No 6, Overseas Development Institute,London

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The provision of humanitarian aid in conflict situationshas always been a highly political activity. The strategiesof contemporary conflict are often designed not simplyto secure a military victory, but to disempower theopposition and deny its identity and its economicviability. Humanitarian action is designed to mitigatethe effects of such strategies and therefore has an impacton the political economy of war. Belligerents are acutelyaware of these impacts, as are those governments thatfinance humanitarian assistance. Thus, the provision ofhumanitarian assistance has always been influenced bypolitical considerations on the part of donors and someNGOs. The degree to which political factors informedthe provision of aid was determined by the geopoliticalsignificance of the conflict, as well as its visibility.

The tendency towards using political criteria todetermine the allocation of humanitarian assistance wasconstrained to some extent by appeal to theconventional principles of humanitarian action:neutrality and impartiality. These principles reflecteda shared understanding between humanitarianorganisations, politicians and the military of the politicalfunction of aid in conflict situations, and can be seen aspart of a deal between these different actors, wherebythe potential strategic costs of facilitating humanitarianaccess are offset against the strategic and politicalbenefits of granting it (Leader 1999).

At a global level, these principles of impartiality andneutrality were reflected in the special rules that weredeveloped to guide the allocation and delivery of reliefsupplies. In contrast to development aid, humanitarianassistance was not subject to political conditionality anddid not imply political legitimation of the governmentin the recipient country (Macrae 2000). Indeed, reliefoften remained the only instrument for internationalaid engagement when development aid relations weresuspended on political grounds by donor powers.Channelling resources through internationalorganisations, particularly the International Committeeof the Red Cross (ICRC) and more recently throughinternational NGOs, secured political distance betweendonor and recipient countries in practice as well as intheory.

The end of the Cold War signalled a series of profoundchanges in the relationship between humanitarian andpolitical action. This report is about these changes inthe aid–politics relationship and their impact onhumanitarian operations.

It is particularly concerned to examine the concept of‘coherence’ of international responses to conflict andrelated emergencies, which gained increasingprominence during the early 1990s. This concept ofcoherence reflected an analysis that relief programmeswere insufficiently cognisant of the political origins of

vulnerability in many so-called complex emergencies,were unable to design appropriate responses, and wereinadvertently fuelling conflict. It also signalled anawareness of the limitations of humanitarian actors inconfronting these threats to human security and theneed for intervention from other political actors.

The absence of such political intervention was starklyrevealed by the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and itsaftermath. The Joint Evaluation of the InternationalResponse to the Conflict and Genocide in Rwanda(Eriksson 1996) famously concluded that humanitarianaction cannot substitute for political action. The reportrecommended increasing the coherence between thepolitical and humanitarian domains. Beneath thisheadline is a more specific articulation of the problem:

The underlying problem has been andcontinues to be political. But the internationalcommunity failed to come to grips directly withthe political problem. Thus it has in effect, andby default, left both the political and thehumanitarian problem generated by the Rwandacrisis in the hands of the humanitariancommunity. This is untenable. It puts burdenson the latter that it cannot and should notassume (Eriksson 1996: 47).

In other words, the problem was less that internationalpolitical and humanitarian responses were incoherent,than that there was an absence of any significant andeffective political intervention.

Some six years on from the tragedy in Rwanda the callsfor enhanced coherence between political andhumanitarian action have become routinised. The studyreported here aimed to understand the meaning andpractice of this coherence. In particular, it sought toanalyse the precise relationship between aid and politicsimplied by the coherence agenda.

Did it mean, for example, integrating humanitarian aidwithin a political framework for conflict reduction? Thismodel implies incorporating humanitarian assistance intothe toolbox of political intervention, alongside sanctions,démarches and threats or use of military force. If so,who was in charge of this unified approach:humanitarian or foreign policy actors?

Or, did coherence imply humanitarian and politicalactors sitting down together to agree a common plan,maintaining distinctive objectives and managementhierarchies, but highlighting where their roles werecomplementary?

The particular choice of model is of more than academicimportance. If the integrationist model of coherence isadopted by official bodies, this implies compromising

Chapter 1Introduction

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the principles of neutrality and impartiality ofhumanitarian action, as the overall objective is conflictmanagement, not the relief of suffering. It impliesproviding assistance on the basis of its political utility,not according to need.

Alternatively, the complementarity model of coherenceassumes that the extent and effectiveness of interventionby political actors has increased significantly. Whilethis model anticipates that there are likely to beimportant gains to be made from political andhumanitarian actors working together, it does notassume that they will always be pursuing exactly thesame objectives at all times. Put more crudely, thestudy was concerned to examine what kind of politicswas informing humanitarian action, and whether andhow changes in the quality of politics were influencingpopulations’ access to assistance.

In addition to a theoretical component, the studycomprised three empirical components. The first focusedon two donor governments: the United Kingdom andthe Netherlands. It examined the evolution of their globalpolicy frameworks to respond to complex politicalemergencies and their efforts to enhance the coherenceof public policy in this area.

A second, comparatively small, element of the studylooked at the UN, and how it has approached the issueof coherence between political and humanitarianresponses to complex emergencies. The reason forthis additional focus was twofold. First, the UN is theultimate multi-mandate organisation, and as such waslikely to provide insights into both the conceptualisationand the realisation of the shifting aid–politicsrelationship. Second, the UN is also an important vehiclethrough which governments seek to influence the courseof conflict and to mitigate its effects. Analysing howthe two case study governments interacted with theUN, politically and in relation to humanitarian issues,provided insights into the coherence of theirrepresentation, and into the mechanics of bilateralinfluence over multilateral humanitarian and politicalaction.

In order to try to understand the impact of these policyinnovations on humanitarian practice, the global policyperspective was supplemented by a number of smallcase studies. In the Balkans, there were two studies.The first examined the political and humanitarianinterventions put in place to address the energyshortages in Serbia during the winter of 1999/2000. Thesecond focused on the role of the two donor

governments in negotiating for asylum for Kosovarrefugees into Macedonia in the spring of 1999. InAfghanistan, the focus was on the donor coordinationbody, the Afghanistan Support Group (ASG), and therelated Strategic Framework initiative. In addition, theissue of conditions of humanitarian action was lookedat, focusing on security and withdrawal of personnel.These case studies were selected as they wereillustrative of the processes under study (see Chapter 5for a fuller explanation).

Over the course of the six-month study, more than 150people were interviewed in London, the Hague,Amsterdam, New York, Geneva, Skopje, Belgrade,Islamabad and Kabul (see Annex 1 for a list ofinterviews). More than 400 documents were collectedduring the course of the study. The study was fundedby the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC); theDepartment for International Development (DFID); theHenry Dunant Centre; and ActionAid. These fundingorganisations, together with officials from the UN system,the ICRC, the Dutch government, other NGOs and anumber of academics contributed to an Advisory Group(see Annex 2). The role of this group has beenthreefold:

� to facilitate the implementation of the researchby identifying relevant informants anddocumentation;

� to ensure the accuracy and independence ofthe research findings; and

� to promote dissemination of these findings.

It is important to emphasise that the role of the grouphas been advisory rather than managerial. The authorsremain ultimately responsible for the research and itsfindings.

The remainder of the report comprises five chapters.Chapter 2 outlines the geopolitical and domestic contextsagainst which the rethinking of the humanitarian/political interface has taken place. Chapter 3 reportson bilateral approaches to coherence, charting theevolution of British and Dutch foreign and humanitarianpolicy in relation to complex emergencies. Chapter 4focuses on the UN and how it has sought to harmonisethe political and humanitarian aspects of its mandate.Chapter 5 looks at how the concept of coherence hasworked in practice, reporting on the case study materialfrom the Balkans and Afghanistan. Chapter 6 concludesthe report, outlining issues and implications arising,and proposing a number of recommendations for action.

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2.1 IntroductionThe ending of the Cold War was an incremental process.The beginning of the thaw occurred at the geopoliticalperiphery, particularly in Africa (Clough 1992), andcoincided with a more intense period of globalisation.From the early 1980s onwards, important shifts weretaking place in the geopolitical landscape—shaped by,and shaping—the domestic political context in donorcountries. These shifts were to alter fundamentally thedemands placed on humanitarian actors and theirrelationship with political actors.

This chapter maps the key features of this changinggeopolitical context and of changes within the aid policyarena in order to explain the emergence of thecoherence agenda. As such it is concerned to analysehow in the 1990s, international political relations werereshaped by changing interpretations of sovereignty,security and the economics of war. It also examinesthe internal changes within the aid domain that haveforced a rethinking of its relations with ‘politics’.

2.2 Geopolitical humanitarianism: anoverview of trends

2.2.1 Sovereignty and globalisationThe concept of sovereignty, a central pillar ofinternational relations, has been shaken by the end ofthe Cold War.1 Jackson ( 1990) argues that the conceptof sovereignty comprises two components. The first— the juridical element — derives from the right toindependence and self-determination. This denotes thelegal status of a territory, embodied in its government,and its corresponding right to freedom from interferencein its internal affairs: so-called ‘negative sovereignty’.This element of sovereignty is unconditional andenfranchises all states as equal members of internationalsociety.

The second element of sovereignty is empirical. Itdescribes the extent to which the legally recognisedstate can in fact act as a state. In other words, its abilityto defend its own borders, maintain law and order andprovide basic services to its population. It was thisapproach to sovereignty that was used by Europeansto justify the establishment and maintenance of empire,arguing that indigenous societies did not possess thecapabilities required for positive sovereignty.

In the years after World War II, the rejection of theconditional approach to sovereignty adopted by thecolonialists meant that the basis for international relationswas to emphasise the imperative of absolute and

unconditional respect for sovereignty. In the contextof the Cold War, this respect for sovereignty wasfunctional (Clapham 1996). By placing a premium onnon-intervention in the internal affairs of another state,the risk of direct confrontation between the twosuperpowers was reduced.

What this model of sovereignty did not preclude,however, was investment by the superpowers in orderto strengthen, or threaten, the empirical sovereignty oftheir allies in the newly independent states. Thisinvestment, in the form of military assistance anddevelopment aid, shaped the political and economicdynamics of proxy conflicts across the Third Worldduring the Cold War. As Section 2.2.2 makes clear, thewithdrawal of international funding to sustain theseconflicts has had a major impact on political economyof war since the mid-1980s. Equally, the withdrawal ofthe political incentive of Western governments to investin bolstering Third World states has also had dramaticeffects on the volume and conditions of aid flows (seeSection 2.2.3 for a more detailed analysis of this).

Unconditional respect for negative sovereignty wassustainable neither economically nor politically.Economically, during the 1980s the wave to deregulateinternational trade and the adoption of monetaristpolicies limited the ability of states to control productionand access to markets. Globalisation of trade, albeitmoderated through increasingly differentiated regionaleconomic blocs, tested the meaningfulness of stateboundaries.

Politically, absolute respect for sovereignty was testedby a number of factors. The demise of superpowerconfrontation meant that such respect no longer serveda political function. In this context, the validity of thecrude aphorism —‘They may be bastards, but at leastthey’re our bastards’— used to justify support to weakand violent regimes, rang increasingly hollow.

Strategically, the need to support such regimes as partof global super power confrontation also declined, anumber of conflicts, previously of concern as part ofglobal power politics, became increasingly irrelevantto long-term strategic calculations. Often conflicts, suchas that in Afghanistan, mutated into self-sustaining ‘wareconomies’ (see Section 2.2.2). This new strategichierarchy was well expressed by the Administrator ofUSAID:

There are four categories of country in her [i.e.Secretary of State Albright’s] world-view: thosethat participate actively in international affairsand the global economy and abide by mutually

Chapter 2‘Coherence’ in context: Geopolitical and domestic influences on the

humanitarian–politics relationship

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agreed rules; those emerging democracies thatseek to participate positively in internationalaffairs because they accept that course as inthe best interests of their people; rogue statesthat reject the benefits of positive participationin international affairs, suppress their peopleand often support terrorism; and states that havefailed and are unable to provide the basicrequirements of life and physical security fortheir people (Atwood & Rogers 1997a).

Many conflicts that produce the worst suffering are ofcourse in the latter two categories of what might becalled ‘un-strategic’ conflicts, where intervention hasbecome a matter of choice rather than necessity.

Under growing scrutiny from both human rightsadvocates and, in the US, increasingly isolationistpoliticians, unconditional support for states solelybecause they were allied states became increasinglyhard to justify (Clapham 1996). As detailed in Section2.3, this weakening of sovereignty was reflected intougher conditions on development aid throughout the1980s.

Initially primarily a policy by omission, in other words,the withholding of support for regimes perceived todeviate from international norms, by the early 1990s,this approach to conditional sovereignty had evolvedinto active (albeit selective) interventionism. The 1990ssaw the establishment of a number of precedents to dowith intervention in internal conflicts, implementedvariously by regional and international bodies. Theforms of intervention ranged from the imposition ofsanctions, military protection of civilians (for examplein Iraq, the enforcement of no-fly zones), militaryprotection of humanitarian assistance (e.g. in Somalia,Iraqi Kurdistan, Bosnia,) and punitive bombardment (ofthe Republika Srpska after Sebrenica). Whatdistinguished the military aspects of these interventionsfrom those during the Cold War was that they wereundertaken without the consent of the warring parties.This meant the international community, as acommunity, taking sides, de facto becoming abelligerent.

They also signalled the emergence, however tentative,of a consensus that international political, economicand military assets could and should be deployed inorder to promote peace and stability. The publicationin 1992 of An Agenda for Peace by the Secretary-Generalof the UN distilled this consensus (Boutros-Ghali 1992).The report followed the first meeting of the SecurityCouncil at Head of State level on 31 January that year.In the context of this study, it constituted a significantstep in three ways.

First, it redefined security to embrace not simply militarythreats, but threats to stability posed by ecologicaldamage, poverty, population growth and inequality.Responsibility for the maintenance of this expandedconcept of international peace and security — known

as human security — was seen to lie primarily with theSecurity Council. This paved the way for opening thecouncil to a broad range of concerns and interest groups,including humanitarian actors, in the latter half of thedecade (see Chapter 4). The redefinition of the problemof security, therefore demanded coordinatedintervention from a corresponding array of actors:political, military and economic.

Second, then Agenda rationalised the idea of limitingsovereignty. Thus it argued:

The foundation-stone of this work is and mustremain the State. Respect for its fundamentalsovereignty and integrity are crucial to anycommon international progress. The time ofabsolute and exclusive sovereignty, however,has passed; its theory was never matched byreality. It is the task of leaders in States todayto understand this and to find a balance of theneeds of good internal governance and thedemands of global interdependence (Paragraph17).

This meant that aid policy actors could be seen to makedecisions regarding whether to engage with particularcountries at all, and on what terms, not as racist neo-colonialists, but as defenders of human rights, peaceand prosperity.

Third, as detailed in Section 2.3, it broke down thebarriers that had divided aid instruments from thepolitical and military dimensions of internationalrelations for three decades. The political function andimpact of aid in addressing the root causes of conflictwas acknowledged. In this way politics became alegitimate, technical concern for aid policymakers.

The weakening of sovereignty was a necessary conditionfor expanding the scope of security. It implied thepolitical strand of the UN, in particular the SecurityCouncil, involving itself in areas such as theenvironment, population and social exclusion. Previousinternational involvement in these domains had beenjustified on technical, largely economic, grounds andsubject to the political control of the sovereign power.Thus, the end of the Cold War allowed for theconvenient, but mythical, distinction between politicaland economic interventionism to be quietly forgotten(Adelman 1996).

By the end of the 1990s, the parallel processes thatreunited political and economic interventions, and thesoftening of sovereignty, meant that much of the rulebook which had governed international relations fornearly half a century required rewriting. The central,unspoken question was: In the absence of a state’sconsent, who decides, and on the basis of what criteria,the legitimacy of international intervention (economic,political and military) in the internal affairs of a sovereignstate?

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Until NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, internationalexperiments in military intervention in conflict zoneswere largely sanctioned by the UN Security Council(UNSC). The legality and legitimacy of the use of forcewithout a UNSC Resolution has been widely debated(Blair 1999; Roberts 1999). Important in these debatesare not only the specifics of the origins of the Kosovocrisis and of the tactics used by NATO to prosecute thewar, but also the principles at stake.

Juxtaposed are two international responsibilities. Thefirst is the protection of the right of self-determinationof peoples, embodied in the notion of the equality ofsovereign states. According to this view, whileimperfect, the system of sovereign states safeguardspolitical pluralism, since it provides for equality ofnations whatever their ideology. Thus, Inyataullah(1995) goes so far as to suggest that:

an international society based on the principleof sovereignty may be seen as a type ofdecentralized democracy where ideologicaldifference can be discussed and discussed anddebated without degenerating into the habitualuse of force.

The antithesis of this view is that sovereignty is really aveil behind which rogue regimes can hide with impunity.To allow major violations of human rights to occurwithout intervening is to be complicit, and is indeedillegal under international law which obliges states tointervene in cases of genocide and violations ofinternational humanitarian law. Furthermore, in manycircumstances systematic violations of human rightscannot be regarded as a purely internal matter, but alsoconstitute a threat to international peace and security.In an era of globalisation, it is also possible to arguethat states’ interests no longer stop at their borders: asdescribed in further detail in Chapter 3, domestic policyhas become internationalised. For example,containment of refugee flows to the West has been aclear goal of the redefinition of the human securityagenda since the early 1980s (Hathaway 1995; Suhrke1994).

It is important to note that while the NATObombardment of Serbia in 1999 was the most forcefulintervention undertaken by the West to respond to aperceived threat to human rights and internationalsecurity, it was not an isolated event. Rather, it can beseen as part of a continuum of political and militarysanctions that ranges from increasingly toughconditionality on official aid to trade sanctions to militaryintervention — that may or may not be debated andregulated by global bodies, such as the UN.

Arguably, little is new in these contested positionsregarding the legitimacy of intervention. They re-statethe collective versus individual rights debates that ragedback and forth across the East–West divide in the post-war years. What is different, however, is that the debateabout the legitimacy of intervention has moved off the

page of academic textbooks and competing UNresolutions, and into the domain of political, militaryand aid action.

These interventions have been undertaken by Westernstates seeking to legitimise their actions by appealingto universal values, particularly those of human rightsand humanitarianism, but also those of free trade anddemocracy. These apparently uncontroversial elementsof what Dillon and Reid (2000) have described as thevalues of ‘liberal peace’, have become associated witha Western political project. The ability of the West todeploy the economic resources and military assetsrequired to implement this project,2 gives the appearanceof a mono-polar world. This appearance is reinforcedby the lack of explicit rules codifying not only the rights,but also the responsibilities of those intervening withoutUN endorsement.

Paradoxically, however, what is revealing is thepersistence of pluralism despite, and in part becauseof, attempts to appeal to universal values. While thoseopposing ‘liberal peace’ may be caricatured as theenemies of rights, such a caricature does not dispose ofthe problem of regimes that flout what are portrayed asinternational norms of behaviour. Instead, there isincreasing confrontation between advocates andopponents of the liberal peace model, with many ofthe latter increasingly marginalised from the mainstreamof international economic and political relations. These‘pariahs on the periphery’ remain formidable threats tointernational peace and security. Arguably part of thereason they remain so is because the strategies to containthem are based on a misunderstanding of the origins ofsuch movements and what sustains them.Understanding the nature and dynamics of such forcesis critical for humanitarian actors, since the same forcesare responsible for the creation of humanitarian crisesand able to determine the quality and scope ofhumanitarian space. This is the subject of Section 2.2.2.

2.2.2 The changing nature of war

An interview with a senior UN official put it concisely:

The old, Cold War, rules don’t apply any more,it is no longer a case of Security Councilmembers phoning up their allies and tellingthem to behave. Traditionally we relied uponpolitical leverage, and in particular on pressurefrom the Security Council. Peacekeepers wereusually deployed when the superpowers hadscared themselves so much that they decidedthey had to do something. If we cannot relyon this anymore, then we need to look for otherentry points.

The dependence of Third World belligerents for suppliesof weaponry and budgetary support, meant that duringthe Cold War the respective superpowers had both theincentives and the means to influence the nature ofproxy conflicts. With important exceptions, the

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withdrawal of extensive external financing, combinedwith extreme strain on public financing, has meant thatwarring parties have had to find new sources of incometo sustain their conflicts. The emergence of what havebecome known as ‘war economies’ — the extraction ofwealth as much as an end in itself as a means to sustainmilitary activity — became a marked trend incontemporary conflicts from the mid-1980s onwards.The focus of these economies has ranged from trade innatural resources such as oil, diamonds and forestproducts (for example, Angola, Sierra Leone andCambodia); production of narcotics (Colombia,Afghanistan and Peru); to violent asset stripping (Sudan,Bosnia and Kosovo); to massive manipulation ofmarkets, particularly in food (Sudan, Somalia).

Le Billon (2000) provides a detailed review of thedynamics and impacts of war economies. Here thereare two key points to note regarding the changing natureof war and its implications for the aid–politicsrelationship.

First, the tactics of contemporary conflict are inherentlymore dangerous for civilian populations. Civiliansrepresent an important source of labour and assets forarmed movements, and have thus become incorporatedinto the conflict dynamic. The subsequent blurring ofthe distinction between civilian and military groups isnot a new feature of conflict, and was common to theguerrilla wars after 1945. What is new, however, isthat in contrast to the liberation and secessionistmovements that characterised the conflicts between the1950s and 1980s, in the post-Cold War era, the reciprocallinks between military forces and the civilians living inareas under their control appear to have been severedin many areas of the world. In the process, thedistinction between combatant and non-combatant isnot simply blurred, but rather dismantled by predatorymilitary groups (Leader 2000).

It is important to recognise that historically belligerent–civilian relationships were not safeguarded bysuperpower interest in the legitimacy of their ThirdWorld allies. Military and civil support to allied regimeswas not contingent upon their internal legitimacy.However, an ability to demonstrate some legitimacywas functional in the context of the Cold War, whichwas as much a war of demonstrating the merits ofcompeting ideologies as one concerned with control ofterritory. In the context of international disengagementand internal political and economic crisis, establishinglegitimacy with a domestic audience became anincreasing luxury for military movements concerned toensure their own survival.

These trends have had major implications forhumanitarian action, which has been premised on theexistence of reciprocity between politico-military groupsand the civilians under their control. In particular, ithas signalled the breakdown of the ‘deal’ between armed

groups and humanitarians (Leader 2000). This deal,grounded in principles of impartiality and neutrality,provided for the relief of suffering of civilians andmilitary personnel hors de combat on both sides, withoutproviding military advantage to either side. Itsenforcement, in other words, securing humanitarianaccess, is contingent upon warring parties having aninterest in the protection of the health and security ofcivilians. In an environment where reciprocity betweenmilitary and civilian populations seems to have becomemore contingent and unpredictable, so it has becomemore difficult and dangerous to secure humanitarianaccess and violations of humanitarian law are apparentlyroutinised.

Thus, in the face of widespread violation of internationalhumanitarian law, the international community has beenseeking new ways to influence the behaviour of warringparties and to secure humanitarian access.

A second important implication of the changing politicaleconomy of war is that the conventional tools ofinternational diplomacy are proving of limited value inengaging with increasingly factionalised armedmovements which draw significant financial benefitsfrom sustained violence.

In the search for new points of leverage in conflicts anumber of strategies have emerged. These haveincluded the increasing use of sanctions and selectiveuse of armed intervention, the choice of instrumentsreflecting the strategic significance of the particularcountry. Widespread in those countries on thegeopolitical periphery is the use of aid, includinghumanitarian aid, as a tool in international efforts forconflict reduction. As described in further detail inSection 2.3, international aid is no longer seen primarilyas a tool for economic intervention, it is now legitimateto use it as a tool for political intervention and as partof a coherent strategy for conflict reduction.

2.3 The crisis in aid: the search for newpurpose

As outlined above, the context of globalisation, post-Cold War realignment and the rethinking of sovereigntyall forced a re-examination of the relationship betweenaid and politics, fuelling demands for coherence. Atthe same time, a number of changes within the aidsphere itself forced a re-examination of its role in conflictmanagement (Macrae 1999). First, the decline in politicaland financial support for official development assistance(oda). Second, an increasingly robust critique of thedominant response to conflict relief assistance. Finally,increasing scrutiny of the relationship between differentelements of the aid system, and between the aid systemand foreign and security policy. Each of these factorsdriving the ‘new’ aid paradigm are described brieflybelow.

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Figure 2.1Total oda spent on emergency and distress relief (realterms) 1988–1998

Source: Randel & German (2000)

Figure 2.2Oda to humanitarian assistance (real terms) as shareof total oda 1988–1998

Source: Randel & German (2000)

Much of the increase in emergency relief in the early1990s was accounted for by an increase in the responseto conflict-related emergencies.3

The rise in relief expenditure can be explained not onlyin terms of a rise in humanitarian need, but in relationto the growing scope for humanitarian intervention,enabled by the softening in the international positionregarding sovereignty, particularly that of Westernmembers of the UNSC. This was reflected, for example,in UN Resolution 46/182, which created DHA, andargued that:

The sovereign, territorial integrity and nationalunity of states must be fully respected inaccordance with the Charter of the UN. In thiscontext, humanitarian assistance should beprovided with the consent of the affectedcountries, and in principle on the basis of anappeal by the affected country (emphasesadded).

2.3.1 The financial bottom line: reversing thefortunes of aid

In the introduction to his Agenda for Development, theformer Secretary-General of the UN argued that:

During the Cold War, competition for influencehad stimulated interest in development, but thatcompetition to bring development to the pooresthas ended. Many donors have grown weary ofthe task. Many of the poor are dispirited.Development is in crisis (Boutros-Ghali 1994).

The trends in oda flows suggested that concernregarding declining support for the aid project wasjustified. The 1990s witnessed a decline in oda flowsfrom OECD countries unprecedented since the 1960s.These figures signalled an absolute decline in oda, theyalso represented a sustained fall in the value of odarelative to the GNP of donor countries. By mid-1996,aid provided by member states of the OECD had fallento an average of 0.27 per cent of GNP, compared withthe UN target of 0.7 per cent.

It was against this backcloth that increased attentionbegan to be paid to the costs of conflict to thedevelopment process (see, for example, Olsen 1998;UNICEF 1987). At the same time, the international costsof conflict and its aftermath were also being felt. Thepeace and stability that had been promised by the endingof the Cold War did yield important settlements in anumber of countries, facilitated by superpowerintervention and underwritten by the UN. This waveof settlements required extensive military input to securethe transition to peace, in addition to the costs of thecivilian rehabilitation components. While optimism forpeace grew, however, the international communityconfronted a significant number of new crises in theearly post-Cold War years, including Iraq (1991), Somalia(1991/2 onwards) and the breakup of the formerYugoslavia. Combined, these processes of war andpeace placed new financial demands on the internationalcommunity, with the costs of UN peacekeepingoperations doubling between 1990 and 1994 fromUS$2.4 billion to $5.7 billion. These escalating costswere seen by many as a direct threat to internationalsupport for aid which, in contrast to peacekeeping, isfinanced largely through voluntary contributions(Boutros-Ghali 1992; Netherlands 1993).

2.3.2 Relief: an emerging critique

The rising costs of conflict were also reflected in trendsin relief expenditure which increased significantly inabsolute and relative terms from the mid-1980s onwards.Figure 2.1 shows the increase in oda allocated toemergency relief between 1988 and 1998. Figure 2.2shows this as a percentage of total oda.

US$

mill

ions

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The inclusion of the terms ‘should’ and in ‘principle’ seta precedent for violation of sovereignty if theinternational community justified intervention onhumanitarian grounds (Overseas Development Institute1993).

The financial and geographical expansion ofhumanitarian operations attracted considerable attentionfrom within the aid community and more broadly. Nolonger associated purely with the logistics of movingemergency food aid to the victims of flood and drought,nor with the secretive workings of the ICRC,humanitarian assistance entered the realm of highpolitics and media coverage. As relief aid came underincreasing scrutiny during the 1990s, so it attractedincreasing criticism from an apparently diverse rangeof sources (Macrae 1998). Two major themes haveemerged from nearly a decade of intense evaluation,academic analysis and practice in this field.

First, it has been argued that while it provides thetemporary palliative of relieving the symptoms ofdisasters, emergency aid does little to reduce people’svulnerability and enable them to re-establish their livesand livelihoods. Initially, the appeal for moredevelopmental approaches to relief was made withrespect to the potential socio-economic gains(Buchanan-Smith & Maxwell 1994). Such an appealwas particularly pertinent in conflict-related emergencieswhich did not conform to the short time frame envisagedby conventional disaster relief.

This body of work on relief-to-development linksquickly converged with a second strand of debate onhumanitarian policy in the early 1990s. This highlightedthe fact that the provision of relief resources mayinfluence significantly the dynamics of conflict. Evidencehas emerged from a diverse range of conflicts indicatingmassive manipulation of relief supplies by warringparties and allied commercial and political interestgroups. The effect of these manipulations had been tomake worse off more vulnerable civilians already inconsiderable distress (see, for example, African Rights1994; de Waal 1997; Duffield 1994; Duffield &Prendergast 1994; Keen 1991; Keen 1994). This raisedthe question of how relief might be better managed tominimise these negative effects.

It also raised the tantalising proposition that if aid inwartime might have negative effects, might the conversealso be true. Could aid be used to influence morepositively the course of the conflict (Anderson 1996;Keen & Wilson 1994)?

Thus, the relatively esoteric discourse of relief-development aid links was elevated to a mechanismfor conflict reduction (Macrae 1996). By identifyingthe causes of conflict as largely internal to the countryand as associated with the processes ofunderdevelopment, so a role for aid in conflictprevention and resolution emerged. If conflict was theresult of poverty and environmental decline, for

example, aid-supported poverty alleviation andenvironmental-protection measures would address theroot causes of conflict. Adopting developmentalapproaches to relief would thus serve multiple purposes— not only reducing dependency, but also reducingthe scope for conflict.

The reappraisal of the impact of relief in conflictsituations had important implications not only for therelationship between different aspects of the aid system(relief and development), but between aid actors andtheir counterparts in ministries of foreign affairs anddefence. Events in Rwanda in 1994 served to propelthese debates out of the margins of academic debateinto the forefront of international policy. Interviewsconducted during the course of this study demonstrateda wide degree of variation regarding the interpretationof these events, and in particular whether the primaryproblem was a failure of aid, or a failure of politics. Itis the answer to this question that informs operationalchoices between the two models of coherence outlinedin Chapter 1: integration or complementarity.

Answering the question, in other words, allocatingblame, is complicated by the fact that, in the 1990s, thedistinction between aid and politics has broken down.Section 2.3.3 argues aid is a form of international policy,with official aid agencies taking responsibility for politicallabour in non-strategic parts of the world. This suggeststhat what is at issue is less the division of labour andcoordinating mechanisms between ministries anddepartments responsible for aid and those responsiblefor foreign policy, than an assessment of the mandatewithin aid bodies to formulate and execute politicalpolicy.

2.3.3 Aid and politics: a re-analysis of the inter-national division of political labour

Adelman ( 1996) argues that during the 1980s a processwas started by which aid and ‘politics’ were reunited.During the 1960s and 1970s the aid system had soughtto protect its operational space from overt politicalinterference by couching its engagement in technicaland particularly economistic language (Griffin 1991).During the 1980s, there was a new convergence ofinterests between the aid (economic) domain and thatof politics (foreign policy). Specifically, the neo-liberaleconomic tradition advocated the stripping away of stateinvolvement in production and economic regulation,while also becoming aware of the constraints posed bypoor governance to the achievement of economicreform. Particularly in the US, these interests coincidedwith the political interests of the foreign policyestablishment, concerned to protect and promote freetrade and ensure stability of states. The mechanism toachieve these changes in Third World policy was nolonger seen as only or primarily the transfer of resources,but internal political reform.

The ending of the Cold War added further impetus tothis ‘reunification’ of aid and politics. There were

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increasing appeals to use the end of superpowerconfrontation to harness political will to achieve peacefulresolution to conflict. There was thus an assumptionthat in the post-Cold War era there was sufficientconsensus within and between major power blocs,including Europe and the US, to be able to definecommon foreign policy goals. Further, the importanceof coherence between the different facets of internationalrelations — trade, aid and diplomacy — was increasinglyemphasised (see, for example, Boutros-Ghali 1992;Boutros-Ghali 1994; Development Assistance Committee1997a; European Commission 1996; United Kingdom1997).

The reunification of aid and politics was initiallyconceptual. The firewall between aid and foreign policy,cherished by non-aligned countries in particular(Adelman 1996), was being dismantled, albeit in termsof a revival of the liberal internationalist ideals of theUN founders (Miller 1992; Netherlands 1993; Sida 1999).

Elsewhere, the bid for greater ‘coherence’ was achievedthrough institutional innovation and re-fashioning ofthe relationship between aid, trade and foreign policyministries. For example, in 1997 changes wereintroduced that meant that the Administrator of USAIDno longer reported directly to the president, but to theSecretary of State. In 1992, the Office of TransitionInitiatives was formed which also signalled a new modusoperandi. Drawing on both relief and developmentassistance budget lines, it was jointly managed by theState Department and by USAID, thus achieving ininstitutional terms the coherence between humanitarianand developmental policy, and between aid and politicsimplied by the new orthodoxy. By 1999, the veryarchitecture of US disaster response was up for review:with options including its incorporation into theDepartment of State. The architectural changes in Britishand Dutch international relations, and their implicationsfor humanitarian policy, are the focus of Chapter 3.

These shifts in the analysis of aid and politics, buttressedby broader changes in the geopolitical landscape,provided the aid establishment with a mandate not onlyto claim a role in conflict management, but to defineways of implementing it. In this respect, the paradigmwhich was to emerge during this decade was acontinuation of an earlier trend in aid policy. From themid-1980s onwards, as the US and France in particulardisengaged from Africa, aid agencies were left as theprimary means for political engagement by the West(Ellis 1996). In the face of the ‘politics of abandonment’,Ellis suggests that:

it is the Bretton Woods institutions, andespecially the World Bank, which are left inoccupation of the field. It is they whicharticulate most clearly the policy of theindustrialised world toward Africa, based on freetrade and liberal policy (ibid: 15.).

By the 1990s, however, the essentially economistic andtechnocratic paradigms of conventional developmentassistance were proving unable to demonstratesignificant impact in sustaining the political support ofdonors. Something new was required.

It is against this background that aid agencies wereincorporated into the wider vision of ‘human security’outlined in An Agenda for Peace (Boutros-Ghali 1992).This mandated all UN agencies to take an active interestin conflict. A key assumption of The Agenda for Peace,and related successor documents,4 is that they assumedthat aid would form a part of a comprehensive, multi-faceted strategy for conflict reduction that would include:political, military, environmental and trade interventions.

Similarly, the Development Assistance Committee (1997)in its Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Developmentstates:

conflict prevention and peace-buildingapproaches must be coherent, comprehensive,integrated and aimed at helping address theroot causes of conflicts. The close cooperationof all policy instruments (diplomacy, military,trade and development cooperation) based ontheir respective comparative advantages [isrequired].

What the analysis underpinning the calls for coherentaction assumes, however, is that the objectives of aid,foreign and diplomatic policy are necessarily compatible.By conflating these objectives into a single policyframework, the assumption is that foreign policy ishumanitarian, and by extension, that humanitarian actionserves a foreign policy function. This serves to obscurethe potential conflicts of interest between humanitariangoals and states’ interests. This problem of specificityof mandate of government departments reflects abroader conundrum of public policymaking in moderndemocracies. How can competing objectives bereconciled, particularly where they straddle differentministerial turf?

2.4 ‘Joined-upness’: the sine qua non ofmodern democracy

This assumption of consensus between different strandsof public policy is not peculiar to the developmentsphere. As Hoebink (1997) points out, the goal ofcoherence has attained the level of general principle inmodern government because policy incoherence mightfrustrate the implementation and effectiveness of policy,produce adverse reactions and ultimately lead to thequestionable legitimacy of government. The paradox,of course, is that the complexity of modern government,and by extension of international bodies such as theEU, makes achieving such coherence inherently difficult.Thus, governments and international bodies seek to

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develop new methods to manage such complexity, inparticular, by establishing new mechanisms for inter-departmental and inter-agency coordination.

Thus, in the UK, for example, the current Governmentprepared a White Paper on the Modernisation ofGovernment emphasising the importance of ‘joined-up’government, and encouraging the formation of cross-departmental task forces. By early 2000, some 13 suchtask forces had been established covering issues asdiverse as employment, crime and conflict preventionin Africa.

In the case of the EU, the basis for coherence is evenstronger. Under the Maastricht Treaty, the EU has astatutory obligation to achieve policy coherencebetween member states and between differentdepartments within the Commission. In the case ofdevelopment cooperation, these responsibilities wereunderlined by the adoption of a European CouncilResolution on Coherence of Development Cooperation(Visman & Brusset 1998). In line with the model ofhuman security outlined above, this emphasised theneed for a coherent approach to development, whichembraced aid, trade, security and foreign policy aspectsof the EU’s work.

As Robinson (1997) points out, implicit in suchapproaches to the issue of coherence, is the assumptionthat current policy in coherence is essentially the resultof poor management and implementation. Bystrengthening systems for policy management, forexample, by establishing improved mechanisms forcoordination, policy coherence can be achieved. Asecond assumption is that such coherence is necessarilydesirable from the point of view of the object of policyreform. Robinson cautions, for example, that increasedcoherence between donor governments on policyconditionality might not be in the interests of developingcountries if it leaves them with little option than toapply policy prescriptions of which they remainsceptical.

In other words, a potential problem is that idea thatjust because a policy is coherent, its content is necessarily‘right’. The political economy of coherent policymakingby modern governments is therefore an interesting —but open — question. What remains missing in amanagerial approach to defining coherent public policyis an analysis of who should make that policy, and inparticular, according to what critieria should competingpublic policy objectives be regulated. It is these

questions as they apply to the humanitarian sphere thatare at the centre of this study.

2.5 Chapter summary

The search for coherence between political andhumanitarian responses to complex politicalemergencies has been driven by global factors, as wellas by more parochial trends in aid policy and withindonor countries. Globally, the end of the Cold War, thesoftening of respect for states’ sovereignty and theemergence of new forms of conflict have driven aredefinition of security and provided space for newinterventions to respond to conflict.

Against this backdrop, the crisis in aid and an emergingcritique of relief aid in particular, has prompted newclaims regarding the role of official developmentcooperation in conflict management. Politicaldisengagement of the West from non-strategic countriesat the global periphery has left aid actors as the primaryrepresentatives of international policy. The reunificationof aid and politics in the early 1980s has enabled aidactors to claim that they have a legitimate role in theinternal affairs of recipient countries to ensure thetechnical efficiency and accountability of aidprogramming. The distinction between foreign policyand aid policy is therefore being dismantled: what isemerging is a new structure to manage internationalpolicy, with aid agencies taking the lead in non-strategiccountries.

As in other areas of public policy, where the drive tojoined-up government is evident, it is unclear what rulesshould be used to prioritise and reconcile numerousand competing policy objectives, and who should beresponsible for doing this.

The diverse motivations behind the search for coherencemean that it is unsurprising that its practical meaningremains ill-defined and elusive. While the arguments infavour of coherence have been important in shapinginstitutional reform, their implications for humanitarianpolicy have not been widely examined. In particular,the promotion of coherence assumes that political,military and humanitarian actors within and acrossparticular countries and institutions have congruentgoals. It further assumes both the accuracy and themoral ‘rightness’ of this agenda and the assumptionsupon which it is founded. As subsequent chapters show,in practice, many of these assumptions have provedflawed.

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3.1 Introduction and chapter overview

‘Coherence’, as a way of addressing conflict, is somethingonly governments can achieve. The primary source ofhumanitarian aid resources is official aid, and in additionto large aid programmes, donor governments also havediplomatic, trade and military assets that can be variouslydeployed to influence the course and conduct ofconflicts worldwide. This chapter examines three keyquestions:

• Why have donor governments thought itimportant to enhance the coherence of thisaspect of public policy?

• To what extent have institutional and managerialchanges been introduced in order to achievegreater coherence?

• What impact, if any, have these changes hadon humanitarian policy?

This chapter examines these questions in relation totwo case study governments: the United Kingdom andthe Netherlands. There were three main reasons forchoosing these cases:

• The institutional framework for coherence ismarkedly different in the two countries. In theUK, there has been institutional separationbetween ministries responsible for foreign affairsand development, with the opposite being thecase in the Netherlands.

• The UK is a permanent member of the UNSecurity Council, while the Netherlands iscurrently a non-permanent member. Thissituates them differently on the geopoliticalstage.

• Both countries have been in the fore of debatesregarding the role of aid in conflict managementfor at least five years. This meant that there wasa body of policy and practice to analyse.

The remainder of the chapter comprises three sections.Section 3.2 maps out the evolution of UK foreign policysince the 1997 general election. Section 3.3 charts thedevelopment, and revision, of DFID’s ‘newhumanitarianism’. Similarly, Section 3.4 analyses theapproach to delivering a coherent international policyframework for conflict reduction that has beendeveloped in the Netherlands. These trends are thenanalysed comparatively in Section 3.5.

3.2 The UK: new Labour and Third Wayforeign policy

3.2.1 Good international citizenship and ThirdWay foreign policy

Labour’s election victory in May 1997 signalled importantchanges in UK aid and foreign policy, and thus servedas a backcloth for the emergence of what was to becomeknown as the ‘new humanitarianism’ (Foulkes 1998).

The first was the emergence of ‘Third Way’ thinking inthe foreign policy sphere. This approach to foreignpolicy echoed the idea of ‘good international citizenship’put forward by Gareth Evans, the former Australianforeign minister. This approach dispenses with thesimplistic division between realist and liberalinternationalist schools of foreign policy, arguing thatin an era of globalisation, concern about human rights,democratisation and the eradication of global povertyis in nations’ best interests. Evans argued that the pursuitof a strong international order, secured by multilateralaction within the UN and wider international societywas not purely altruistic, but represented enlightenedself-interest.

In common with the vision outlined in An Agenda forPeace, the new UK government believed that in thepost-Cold War era the key to security lay not only intraditional domains of defence and diplomacy, but inpromoting sustainable development and the universalcommitment to uphold human rights (see, for example,Cook 1997a). The ethical dimension to foreign policymapped out by the new Government appeals to theuniversality of human rights. Thus the new ForeignSecretary, Robin Cook, made the connection betweenrespect for human rights and membership of theinternational community. In the new era of conditionalsovereignty, juridical statehood was no longer a sufficientcondition for membership of the internationalcommunity. Thus, Cook argued:

if every country is a member of the internationalcommunity, then it is reasonable to requireevery government to abide by her rules (Cook1997b).

The clear implication is that states that abuse humanright forgo the right to be treated as a legitimate memberof the international community and should become thesubject of international scrutiny and censure (Wheeler& Dunne 1999).

Chapter 3Bilateral approaches to coherence: an analysis of policy trends

in the UK and The Netherlands

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The worsening human rights situation in Kosovothroughout 1998 and into 1999 were to prove a majortest of this framework for foreign policy. The Britishgovernment was among the staunchest advocates ofmilitary intervention in the crisis, arguing that it waslegitimate to use force without a UNSC resolution onthe grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity.5

A key speech by Prime Minister Blair in Chicago situatedthis humanitarian rationale for intervention alongsidethe more traditional foreign policy consideration thatnational interests should be at stake.

This new doctrine of ‘Third Way’ foreign policy raisesthe questions of who decides the criteria according towhich membership of the international community isgranted, and when are sanctions applied against thosewho have forfeited their membership? The PrimeMinister clearly recognised the dilemma in a speech inSouth Africa saying:

People say you can’t be the self-appointedguardians of what’s right and wrong. True, butwhen the international community agrees tocertain objectives and then fails to implementthem, those who can act, must.

It is too early to judge the robustness of claims that theUK is pursuing an ethical dimension to foreign policy,or to analyse the extent to which clear rules are emergingto mediate when conflicts of interest emerge betweenethical imperatives of human rights, and those of tradeand threats to security. To date, the record is clearlyuneven, and this unevenness itself weakens theGovernment’s claims regarding the legitimacy to judgewho does and who does not merit full rights ofsovereignty.

This selectivity of emphasis on human rights issues toguide foreign and ultimately defence policy, has clearimplications in the context of this study. If foreignpolicy interests were unambiguously humanitarian intheir motivation, then the potential for conflict betweenforeign policy and humanitarian action would disappear.If, however, as is necessarily the case, foreign policyactors are weighing numerous considerations indetermining the UK position in relation to a particularconflict, then potential conflicts will emerge.

The framework of Third Way politics, sets out theconditions under which the UK engages with other statesin the diplomatic sphere. Peter Hain, the junior ForeignOffice minister for Africa, thus emphasised that:

Where African leaders show a real commitmentto their people, we show a real commitment tothem. But the reverse is true as well. We willnot support corrupt governments. We will notsubsidise economic mismangement. We will notfund repression or bankroll dictatorships ... Sogood governance means good internationalrelations. More reform means more aid. Cleangovernment means extra investment. With such

a renaissance based upon such principles, andwith tangible support from the EU, the US andthe rest of the industrially advanced world,Africa has a bright future (Hain 1999a).

An interesting feature of Hain’s speech is that in mappingout the elements of UK foreign policy in Africa, theprimary emphasis is on issues conventionally seen aslying in the domain of aid. HIV/AIDS and debt relief,hardly the conventional bread and butter of careerdiplomats, figure at the top of the minister’s list of theproblems facing the continent. Thus, as the concept ofhuman security is extended beyond the boundaries ofconventional diplomacy, so the conceptual distinctionbetween ‘development’ and foreign policy portfoliosbecomes harder to discern, at least in non-strategiccountries.

3.2.2 The changing architecture of internationalpolicy: from ODA to DFID

A second key contextual factor for the realisation of thecoherence agenda was the separation of foreign policyand aid portfolios, and the subsequent elevation of theministerial status of the aid department to cabinet rank.This institutional separation did not imply a conceptualdistinction between the aims and objectives of aid andforeign policy, rather they remain unified under theconcept of government having an ‘international’ policy.Although based on the argument that developmentassistance should be given free of foreign policyconsiderations, in the context of Third Way foreignpolicy, the conceptual unity between aid and foreignpolicy has probably never been greater, as Hain’s speechstresses. Despite the institutional separation, thedistinction between aid and foreign policy portfolioswas blurred, quite deliberately, in the Government’sWhite Paper on international development, which states:

‘This is not just a White Paper about aid. It is aWhite Paper about development and a securefuture for our planet and its people. The newDepartment for International Development hasthe aim of ... contributing to the elimination ofpoverty in poorer countries, not just throughits bilateral and multilateral programmes, butthrough working collaboratively with otherdepartments to promote consistency andcoherence in policies affecting development(United Kingdom 1997).

The new-found independence and status of thedepartment, and the definition of its role not just as aprovider of aid, but as political activist and partner fordevelopment within the UK and overseas, combinedwith its increasing financial base enhanced the profileand power of development portfolio. It has also meanta more active and explicit interpretation of the politicalpre-conditions for development, and a correspondinganalysis that it is legitimate for aid actors to act‘politically’.

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The political goals of the new department are laid outin the White Paper as follows:

• Particular attention [shall be given to] humanrights, transparent and accountable governmentand core labour standards, building on theGovernment’s ethical approach to internationalrelations.

• Resources will be used proactively to promotepolitical stability and social cohesion and torespond effectively to conflict (United Kingdom1997).

In the bilateral programme, the mechanism fortranslating these principles into practice is through theidea of ‘partnership’. This approach recognises thehistorical failure of punitive conditionality to achieveits objective (Killick 1997). Instead, it relies uponsecuring political commitment from the recipientgovernment to poverty alleviation and a joint processof negotiating a plan to realise this commitment inpractice. An important element in this process will beto encourage ‘stronger inter-donor coordination ... tostrengthen [the recipient government’s] commitment tothe implementation of pro-poor policies’ (UnitedKingdom, 1997).

De facto this approach implies a narrowing of the scopeof the bilateral programme to those countries wherepre-conditions are judged to exist for development. Inthose countries where the establishment of bilateralpartnership with government is judged to be neitherfeasible nor desirable, the strategy is to maintainmultilateral contributions and to use ‘alternativechannels’ such as ‘the institutions of civil society,voluntary agencies and local government ... tightlyfocussed on the victims of neglect and oppression’(United Kingdom, 1997).

Thus, in common with the government’s foreign policystrategy, the new aid strategy adopted by DFID andothers, including the Dutch government, implies a two-tier system of international aid relations. The first tieris characterised by full, bilateral relations wherepartnership with the recipient government has beensuccessfully negotiated and the aid tap turned on fully.In the second tier are governments that are unable orunwilling to effect the conditions required for effectivedevelopment partnership. These countries are subjectto a ‘continuum’ of conditionality that ranges from thewithholding of bilateral assistance to the suspension ofall forms of developmental aid. For those at the latterend of the spectrum, UK inputs are confined tohumanitarian assistance.

The institutional separation of DFID from the Foreignand Commonwealth Office (FCO) raises an interestingconundrum. If foreign policy goals are identical withthose of international development, and if the role ofDFID is no longer confined simply to the allocation of

aid resources but rather embraces wider politicalfunctions, then the rationale for institutional division ofaid and foreign policy is far from clear. This institutionalseparation maintains its logic only if there remainsignificant differences in the goals and mandates of thetwo departments, or if the FCO proves unable to realisethe expectations of other departments in relation tointernational policy. In other words, in theory ThirdWay foreign policy would logically lead to closerintegration of all aspects of international policy,including aid.

Evidence collected by this study suggests that practical(as well as political) considerations mean that argumentsare likely to remain for institutional separation, despiteits inherent contradictions. It also suggests that someof the apparent inconsistencies in the approach toseparation disappear, if, as appears possible, a newdivision of labour between the two departments isestablished. As the distinction between aid and politicsdisappears, so a new categorisation of division of labouris required.

Within this re-division of international political labour,DFID is assuming primary responsibility for the designand implementation of the UK’s international policy innon-strategic areas, while FCO maintains itsresponsibility for traditional diplomacy with key alliesand for more conventional threats to UK security andtrade interests, such as those in the Middle East, FarEast and former Soviet Union. Within this emergingdivision of political labour, aid is no longer a substitutefor political action, it is political action. Under this model,aid bureaucrats are not simply technocrats obligedunconditionally to accept sovereignty, but are ratherrequired to reflect a political analysis of regimes’legitimacy, and mandated to scrutinise every aspect ofrecipient governments’ policy — from economic, togender, to the security sector. Such a model recognisesthe political economy of aid itself; in other words, thataid itself legitimises the recipient regime, boosting itspolitical credibility as well as its capacity to act as astate.

The question that then emerges is what strategies shouldbe adopted if the UK does not wish to strengthenregimes guilty of poor governance and human rightsabuses? In these second-tier countries, wheredevelopmental space is limited by poor governance,human rights abuses and widespread violence,humanitarian assistance becomes a key plank ofinternational policy. As political and aid responsibilitiesfor non-strategic countries converge in, and becomeoperationalised by, DFID bilateral programmes, sowithin DFID, in relation to conflict-affected areas, theseresponsibilities have become increasingly concentratedin the humanitarian domain, and more specifically inthe Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department(CHAD).

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3.3 Aid and war: from relief to the new,new humanitarianism

3.3.1 Putting conflict on the aid agenda

Figure 3.1UK emergency aid spending 1977–1998 (real terms)

Source: Randel and German (2000)

Conflict was finally acknowledged as an aid policy issuein the dying days of the Overseas DevelopmentAdministration (ODA). Figure 3.1 shows the growth inemergency expenditure in UK in the 1990s, much ofthis related to conflict.

As a department within the FCO, ODA had to treadcarefully in claiming a role in preventing, containingand mitigating the effects of conflict. In 1995, officialswithin what was then the Emergency Aid Department(EMAD) began to define a niche for aid in conflictmanagement. Working within the confines of the FCO,aid officials had to be careful to emphasise two keypoints.

• The development and aid implications ofconflict. So, for example, the impact of conflicton development, and the contribution ofexisting aid programmes to addressing the rootcauses of conflict and mitigating its effects.

• The distinctiveness of ODA’s mandate andinterests from those of the FCO. Thus adistinction was made between aid interventionsthat had a political impact in the recipientcountry, and foreign policy interventions thatserve the UK domestic political interest.6

The submission to the Minister advocating an expandedrole for ODA in conflict handling was approved inSeptember 1995, and in January 1996, an ‘Approachpaper on conflict handling’ (Overseas DevelopmentAdministration 1996) was published. This paperdeveloped further the rationale for including conflict

on the aid policy agenda, and specified how ODA wouldtranslate its new mandate in this area into practice.

The paper was ground-breaking in two related respects.First, in acknowledging conflict as a problem at all brokethe taboo that had surrounded the issue during the ColdWar. Second it argued that the problem of conflict couldnot be addressed only through emergency aidprogrammes; rather it has to be seen as ‘an integralpart’ of bilateral and multilateral programming, includingdevelopment programming. Thus, it proposed, a‘mainstreaming’ of conflict within ODA.

While important in placing conflict on the whole of theaid policy agenda, because of the sensitivity regardingthe division of labour between aid (ODA) and politics(FCO), the proposals for action were relatively modest.The primary planks of the approach laid out in thepaper were:

• Improved analysis of the dynamics of conflictin aid programming.

• Professionalisation of emergency aid, and inparticular the adoption of more developmentalstrategies.

• Conflict prevention and resolution work at thecommunity level (with national-levelengagement firmly remaining in the diplomaticdomain).

The new approach was not seen to require anyfundamental adjustment of ODA’s approach todevelopment aid programming. What was called forwas to ensure that the ability of ODA’s typicalprogramme interventions in the spheres of povertyalleviation, food security, environmental managementand service provision, were targeted in a way such asto contribute to conflict prevention and resolution(Overseas Development Administration 1996). However,as the then Minister pointed out:

For the most part, we need not invent newwheels ... current development instruments areadequate, but need to be better deployed withmore explicit conflict management objectives.(Chalker 1996)

3.3.2 The new humanitarianism

The creation of DFID, the publication of the WhitePaper, as well as changes among senior staff in 1997,prompted a number of fundamental conceptual andorganisational shifts in British humanitarian policy. Thegranting of DFID’s independence from the FCO wasthe sine qua non of this evolution. This immediatelyincreased the scope for DFID engagement in conflictfrom the micro-level of project-based communityinterventions, as FCO had previously insisted, enablingmore systematic engagement at national and

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international policy levels in relation to specific complexpolitical emergencies. DFID was able to establish directcontacts with parts of government previously deniedit,7 and with missions in key international centres suchas New York and Geneva. With regard to the latter,interviews conducted with diplomatic staff made it clearthat policy briefs in relation to specialised humanitarianagencies of the UN, and with regard to the humanitarianaspects of the UNSC’s work were being formulateddirectly by DFID, and copied to — not drafted by —the UN department of the FCO. DFID’s new autonomygave it the ability to establish direct contacts with keyinternational political bodies, such as the UNdepartments of Political Affairs and PeacekeepingOperations (see Chapter 4 for further details of this).

The framework for the ‘new humanitarianism’ was laidout first in the 1997 White Paper (United Kingdom 1997).This developed further the rationale for including conflictreduction on the aid policy agenda, while alsoemphasising DFID’s catalytic role in mobilising politicaland military resources. It argues (paragraph 3.48) that:

Political stability, both within and betweenstates, is a necessary pre-condition for theelimination of poverty ... we shall deploy ourdiplomatic, development assistance and militaryinstruments in a coherent manner to:

• spread the values of civil liberties anddemocracy, rule of law and goodgovernance and foster the growth of avibrant and secure civil society;

• strengthen social cohesion, promotemediation efforts and encourage theregeneration of societies’ recovery fromconflict;

• protect and promote the full enjoyment ofall human rights;

• help solve political and other problemsbecause they cause conflict;

• advocate measures to control the means ofwaging war;

• provide humanitarian assistance for victimsof conflict and persecution;

• contribute to international peace-keeping.

Realising this ambitious vision required organisationalchange.

During the early 1990s, ODA had begun to adapt itsprocedures to accommodate the changing context fordevelopment assistance in situations of chronic conflict.In particular, with respect to the Horn of Africa,responsibility for humanitarian aid spending had beendelegated from EMAD to the geographical desks. Thisapproach had the advantages of releasing capacity

within EMAD to focus on rapid-onset disasters, the acutephases of complex political emergencies and chronicemergencies where there was no geographical desk(as was the case for Iraq and Bosnia). It also promoteda more strategic approach to providing humanitarianaid, the geographical desks benefited from extensivecountry knowledge and an ability to ‘link’ reliefprogramming with a broader development vision.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this approach ofstrengthening the emergency response capacity ofgeographical desks obviated the need for a centralised,specialist department. The departure of the head ofEMAD in 1997, prompted a re-analysis of the role andfunction of the department (Mosselmans 1998). Theconclusion of this exercise was the reshaping of EMADfrom a department responsible primarily for reliefmanagement, to a policy-oriented group responsiblefor both humanitarian and conflict-related issues. Whilein theory, the approach of ‘mainstreaming’ responsibilityfor humanitarian programming to geographical deskswas reaffirmed in the new structure, in practice thenewly created Conflict and Humanitarian AffairsDepartment (CHAD), retained significant programmaticresponsibilities, acting as the de facto desks for majoremergencies in Sierra Leone, the Balkans andAfghanistan.

In March 1998, George Foulkes, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DFID, made a speech outlining theBritish policy on conflict and humanitarian assistance.The speech was important in laying out answers toquestions that had dogged the sector, particularly sincethe Sierra Leonean crisis. Appealing to more than adecade of experience and evaluation of crises such asthose in Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia, it suggested theneed for a ‘radical reappraisal of the humanitarian idea’,and sought commitment to the new humanitarianism.

The elements of this ‘new humanitarianism’ included:

• Recognition of the risk that aid could domore harm than good.

• A shift from needs-based humanitarianismto rights-based humanitarianism, to includepolitical advocacy in which the UK publiccould be asked to play an important role.

• A more active humanitarianism requirestaking sides with the oppressed against theoppressor.

• Humanitarian assistance is now expectedto contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. This implies the application ofconditionality.

In April 1998, the Secretary of State made a speechlaying out in more detail the principles that would beused to guide DFID’s ‘new humanitarianism’. Theseprinciples are laid out in Box 3.1.

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Box 3.1 DFID principles of the newhumanitarianism

1 We will seek always to uphold internationalhumanitarian law and human rights law

2 We will seek to promote a more universalapproach in addressing humanitarianneeds. People in need, wherever they are,should have equal status and rights toassistance

3 We will seek to work with others whoseefforts are also aimed at tackling theunderlying causes of the crisis and buildingpeace and stability

4 We will seek to work with other committedmembers of the international community,and in particular seek partnership acrossthe North/South divide to secure betterinternational systems and mechanisms fortimely joint humanitarian action

5 We will agree ground rules that preventdiversion of humanitarian goods andcollusion with unconstitutional armedgroups

6 We will be impartial — our help will seek torelieve civilian suffering withoutdiscrimination on political or othergrounds, with priority given to the mosturgent cases of distress

7 We will seek the best possible assessmentof needs and a clear framework of standardsand accountability for those who work todeliver DFID’s assistance

8 We will encourage the participation ofpeople and communities affected by crisesto help them find long-lasting solutionswhich respect their rights and dignity

9 We will, where possible, seek to rebuildlivelihoods and communities, and buildcapacity so that communities will be lessvulnerable to future crises

10 We recognise that humanitarianintervention in conflict situations oftenposes genuine moral dilemmas. We willbase our decisions on explicit analyses ofthe choices open to us and the ethicalconsiderations involved, and communicateour conclusions openly to our partners

Source: Short, C. (1998) ‘Principles for a New Humanitarianism’,keynote speech delivered at the ODI/ECHO conference,Principled Aid in an Unprincipled World, London, 8 April

Importantly, within this broad-ranging set of principlesthere is scope for some of these principles to conflictwith each other, or at least for there to be differinginterpretations of them, as DFID’s first ‘experiment’ inthe new humanitarianism was to demonstrate.

3.3.3 Sierra Leone: an experiment in the ‘newhumanitarianism’

The statement of the new humanitarian policy waspreceded by a policy ‘experiment’ that was to provecontroversial and to define subsequent interpretationsof coherence. The chronology of events is potentiallyconfusing because of the inevitable time lag betweenthe definition and implementation of policy and itsevaluation. Thus, in the case of DFID, the keyexperiment in the new humanitarianism took place in1997, while the policy framework was not articulateduntil 1998.

Thus, the ‘new humanitarianism’ was controversial evenbefore its official start. The first signs of controversywere apparent within DFID’s humanitarian policy onSierra Leone in 1997, thus also pre-dating the formalestablishment of CHAD. DFID’s response to Sierra Leoneafter the March 1997 coup which ousted the electedgovernment has been the subject of intense and publicscrutiny (see, for example, ActionAid 1998; Hoffman1999; International Development Committee 1999a;1999b) and remains a sensitive episode within thedepartment, the British NGO community and to anextent among other donors and internationalorganisations.8

At issue was whether the UK was withholdinghumanitarian assistance from NGOs on political groundsor those of aid effectiveness. DFID argued variouslythat humanitarian need was unproven; that to providehumanitarian aid would have legitimised and reinforcedthe military junta; and that NGOs lacked the securityand monitoring capacity to enable effective delivery ofhumanitarian aid. Many NGOs rejected these argumentsand argued that DFID was placing politicalconditionalities on humanitarian assistance, thusviolating humanitarian principles.

There are a number of generic aspects of its responseto Sierra Leone that continued to be raised with regardto DFID’s humanitarian policy throughout 1998 and1999. One is the extent to which humanitarian assistanceis seen as an integral part of the UK’s international policyto conflict management. In other words, whether Britishhumanitarian assistance is subject to politicalconditionality, so compromising the principle ofimpartiality.

The Conflict Reduction and Humanitarian Assistance:Policy Statement published in February 1999, seemedto cement the new humanitarian commitment tointegrate humanitarian aid within a wider internationalpolicy response to conflict.

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Conflict presents many complex challenges.Clearly we have a responsibility to do what wecan to help the victims of war. We cannot standaside and allow people to starve or be subjectedto abuse. At the same time, it is essential thatthe humanitarian response takes into accountthe wider context. In some circumstances,intervention may not help resolve the problemor may even prolong conflicts. Whenconsidering its humanitarian response, DFID’spolicy is to look at the conditions that havebrought about the conflict, and assess what canbe done to reduce violence and build lastingpeace (United Kingdom 1999:2).

As such it expanded on the earlier statement of principles(in particular 3, 5 and 9) and, in line with the WhitePaper emphasises that DFID’s role in responding toconflict is not confined simply to the provision of aid.Instead, DFID’s role is increasingly in defining andimplementing a much broader international policy.While the objectives of DFID’s international policy maydiffer from those of its diplomatic sister, they are notnecessarily mutually exclusive. Thus, the ‘newhumanitarianism’ does not distinguish between aid andpolitics, and indeed actively challenges those who claimthat such a distinction is meaningful.

This approach draws on a critique of ‘old ’humanitarianism (often known by the more banal termof ‘relief’), that has been made by academics, NGOsand UN agencies and has come to form what might bedescribed as a new orthodoxy whereby it is bothlegitimate and desirable for humanitarian aid tocontribute to conflict reduction and development goals(Macrae 1998).9 In other words, rather than being anend in itself, humanitarian assistance is a means todevelopmental and peace-building ends. The formationof CHAD and the policy statements that have cementedDFID’s humanitarian approach were contingent uponcollapsing the aid–politics distinction, and that betweendevelopmental and relief goals. In principle, the newhumanitarianism appealed to an orthodoxy shared bymany of its partners. In practice, it has strained DFID’srelations with them.10

The second generic point raised by the Sierra Leoneancontroversy was the extent to which it is desirable andlegitimate for a donor government to involve itself indetailed decision-making regarding humanitarianoperations in conflict-related emergencies. In particular,the question has been raised whether a bilateralgovernment should seek to prevent NGOs and UNagencies from operating in a particular country? The‘bilateralisation’ of humanitarian response is seen bymany to threaten the independence and neutrality ofhumanitarian action. Chapter 5 examines in further detailthese issues in relation to British (and Dutch) strategiesin the recipient country case studies.

3.3.4 A new, new humanitarianism?

The strains put on DFID’s relations with its donorgovernment partners, the UN and British NGOs11 byevents in Sierra Leone and subsequently in Afghanistanhave resulted not so much in a re-analysis of therelationship between aid and politics, but of thepresentation of that relationship. Thus, for example,almost coinciding with the publication of Conflict andHumanitarian Assistance Policy Statement (UnitedKingdom 1999) — which had emphasised thathumanitarian aid, like all aid, was a political process —at a meeting convened with the chief executives ofBritish humanitarian NGOs, the Secretary of State soughtto establish clearer, bluer water between aid and politics.

In her opening statement, Ms Short emphasised that:

The dangers of the humanitarian response beingperceived as part of, or linked to, the overallpolitical agenda must not be overlooked. Thiswould directly and disastrously compromise theimpartiality and universality of humanitarian aid.... Whilst humanitarian aid must always takeaccount of the political context in which it isgiven, it should never be used (throughwithholding or granting it) as a lever in anattempt to achieve political aims or manage aconflict. There is a clear need for an open, on-going and constructive dialogue betweenourselves (and the Foreign and CommonwealthOffice) and NGOs to explore the potential ofpolicy coherence, and the respective boundariesof, and differences between, humanitarian andforeign policy objectives (Department forInternational Development 1999: 3).

The approach where humanitarian aid is integrated intoconflict management, has thus been replaced by oneconcerned to establish the conditions for effectivehumanitarian assistance. The conflict-handling part ofthe department has been separated out from thehumanitarian response function, which concentrates onfunding and providing relief according to DFID’s 10principles. Thus, in a sense the department has gonefull circle.12

But this apparent return to an approach that emphasisesseparation rather than coherence in fact retains asignificant political edge. This ‘new, new ’humanitarianism focuses on increasing access andincreasing accountability. In a move that parallelsevolutions in the development aid sphere, the use ofconditionality is replaced by selective engagement.Rather than withhold resources in an attempt to forcethe authorities to alter the conditions for humanitarianaction, no assistance is provided until the political andeconomic conditions are in place. However, as withdevelopment assistance, deciding whether and if the

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conditions for humanitarian effective engagement arein place is in fact a highly political process. Given theconsiderable scope for interpretation of the rules, i.e.the 10 principles, decisions are dependent not only upona ‘technical’ assessment of project viability, but also abroader judgement of the legitimacy and competenceof the incumbent authorities. Decision-making abouthumanitarian action in a particular context is thus stillopen to factors other than the purely humanitarian.

Although the humanitarian principles should provide aframework for consistent decision-making, in practicethey do not. As outlined above, and in common withthe NGO/Red Cross Code of Conduct, there isconsiderable scope for conflict between the differentprinciples. More profoundly, there appear to be differentinterpretations between DFID departments in terms oftheir implementation. For example, CHAD emphasisesits role in securing humanitarian access. It argues thatsuch a role in political advocacy is necessary in partbecause conventional diplomatic tracks (bilateral andmultilateral) are as yet not sufficiently engaged in thehumanitarian agenda, and by default aid actors aretherefore required to create their own political space.DFID’s objectives thus become, in the words of oneofficial:

to meet the criteria to enable conditions for aiddelivery to be met, not to give financialassistance per se. For example, in Sierra Leone,if the peace process is going down the pan, wehave to catalyse concern.

There remain differences of opinion between differentdepartments within DFID regarding the division of aid/politics labour, with some advocating a moreconventional split between DFID and the FCO — i.e. amodel of complementarity not integration — than others.

In short, there are questions about the consistency ofthe application of principles across departments, andtherefore between different complex emergencies. Inparticular, there appear to be no rules, and even nostanding forum,13 within DFID for resolving the questionraised by the Secretary of State as a more public debate,namely the scope and limitations for coherence ofhumanitarian action with political action.

These differences between several departments in termsof strategy are reflected in their different tactics.Reflecting its concern for accountability, as well asaccess, CHAD has pioneered the development of DFIDfield offices.14 The emergency resource teams that staffthese offices have a range of roles that extend fromlogistics, to small grant giving to partner NGOs, tomonitoring to representational roles in humanitariancoordination bodies.

The increased operationality of DFID is seen by someto be an encroachment by a governmental actor intothe space previously occupied by independenthumanitarian actors, and thus constitutes part of the

‘politicisation’ of humanitarian space. The findings ofthis study (see Chapter 5) suggest that, in the cases ofboth Afghanistan and Macedonia, at least at present,there is no evidence that the field offices provided ameans of exerting political leverage through influencingfunding decisions or participating in negotiationsregarding access or conditionality. Rather, the terms ofreference and management structures deployed in thesetwo cases confined these offices to a surprisingly narrowand managerial interpretation of humanitarian action.This is not to suggest that field offices might not presentdifficulties of perception in terms of the proximity of agovernment to particular complex emergencies, onlythat this remains an empirical question to be verifiedby further research and evaluation across a largernumber of cases.15

Increased operationality does take on significance whenit is seen as only one aspect of a broader phenomenonof so-called ‘bilateralisation’. This means, rather thandevolving full responsibility for operational decision-making to partner UN agencies and NGOs, bilateraldonors take a more proactive approach to analysingthe context in which humanitarian aid is being delivered,and define the conditions and procedures according towhich DFID funding must be used. In terms of thelatter, CHAD has also initiated Institutional StrategyPapers (ISPs) with key humanitarian partners, as doesother parts of DFID with its partners. These are designedto govern the use of unearmarked, ‘core’ funds to keypartner organisations, such as those in the Red CrossMovement, WFP, UNHCR and OCHA. ISPs areessentially contracts between DFID and a partner agencyborn of a lengthy and intense process of negotiationand evaluation. They lay out mutual obligations,mechanisms for review and indicators of performance.Like the field offices, they indicate a more proactivestance towards ensuring the accountability of recipientagencies.

Raynard (2000) has analysed why the accountabilityagenda has gained increasing prominence in thehumanitarian sphere in recent years, identifying acombination of external and internal pressures withinhumanitarian agencies to demonstrate effectiveperformance. He also highlights the link betweenaccountability and principles; by enhancing mechanismsof accountability, adherence to stated principles can bemonitored and assessed. Arguably, what this leavesout is the peculiar political economy of the accountabilityagenda, in other words, the issue of how legitimatemechanisms to improve accountability might alsobecome a means of exerting political influence.

For example, a real question emerges as to the capacityof DFID to measure the quality of humanitarian spacein any particular emergency. As the head of CHADpointed out, there are efforts under way to move towardsmore rule-based, objective methodologies for measuringaccess in order to inform such decisions. However,while the application of existing methodologies appearsselective, and in particular is applied to those countries

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where the British government’s political strategyobviously complements the humanitarian position, thereis a degree of suspicion that arguments aboutaccountability are re-bottling the previous integrationisthumanitarian policy of 1997–8.

3.3.5 DFID, the new humanitarianism and theUK NGO community

The ability of operational agencies to challenge theseaspects of the government’s humanitarian policy isdiminished by their own weaknesses in a number ofareas. One observer has noted, for example, that whilethe British government’s withholding of funds to NGOsworking in Afghanistan on security grounds mayconstitute little more than a thinly veiled politicalconditionality, the fact that NGO security arrangementswere so weak meant that these concerns were notunfounded. Similarly, widespread poor practiceregarding monitoring of food aid distributions globally(Leader 1999), means that it is not difficult to argue thatin some cases, the withholding of aid might be theprincipled thing to do.

Equally striking is that while humanitarian corridors echoto whispers that humanitarianism is being ‘politicised’,with important exceptions humanitarian agenciesthemselves have invested relatively little time and effortin documenting and analysing these trends to provideconcrete evidence to support advocacy with DFID. Thisproblem is reinforced by the lack of inter-agencystanding fora to discuss such issues.16 Furthermore, asimplied above, British agencies have been among theleading advocates for a more politically informed anddevelopmental approach to humanitarian assistance. Inaddition to commissioning path-breaking research inthis area (see, for example Duffield 1991), UK NGOshave been active in hosting conferences that haveinfluenced international debates on aid–conflict links(see, for example, Hendrickson 1998), and inestablishing international networks for discussion of thehumanitarian and aid/conflict interface (e.g., CODEP).

As the evidence of a number of NGOs sent to theInternational Development Committee clearlydemonstrates, many currently involved in relief do notsubscribe to conventional definitions of humanitarianprinciples, eschewing the concept of neutrality inparticular, and arguing for a more politically shrewdand developmental approach to relief. Many of thosewho raised concerns regarding the politicisation ofDFID’s humanitarian assistance also found it difficult todistinguish between the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ type of‘political humanitarianism’ in terms of their ownprogramming. One agency reported, for example:

To be frank, we are all over the place aroundrelief–development aid relationships. Ourstarting- point is that it is artificial to distinguishbetween the two, but we have adoptedhumanitarian principles. [Country X] is anappalling example of where we were mixing

political and humanitarian stuff. London waspressing for an impartial approach, but [localstaff] were much more pragmatic, and manycame from the same, ethnic, [capital]-city basedculture as [one side], so they were supporting apolitical line.

High levels of dependence on official aid funding wasalso seen by many to circumscribe their willingness toscrutinise donor policy.

3.4 The Netherlands: merchants, priestsand coherence

3.4.1 The framework of foreign policy

The concept of ‘good international citizenship’ (seesection 3.2.1) is a familiar one in Dutch internationalrelations. The synthesis between realism and liberalinternationalism is embodied in the idea of ‘dutKoopman dominee’ — Dutch society abroad as bothmerchant and priest. As a relatively small trading nation,the Netherlands has a strong interest in the creationand maintenance of a stable world order, underpinnedby strong institutions to uphold international law(Netherlands 1995).

Thus, Dutch foreign policy, and by extension itsdevelopment cooperation policy, have combinedconcern with maintaining liberal economies and traderegimes with that for human rights and adherence tointernational norms of behaviour. The 1995 review offoreign policy (Netherlands 1995), known as ‘Heriking’, articulated the core values that were to guide Dutchinternational policy in relation to developing countriesas follows: promotion of a mixed economy; support forwelfare systems to create a safety net; promotion ofpluralist democratic system.

Promotion of these values was not uncontroversial; inother words globalisation did not imply the adoptionof a ‘monopolitical’ culture (Pronk 1991). In advocatingthe diffusion of Western values, maintaining a self-criticaleye was therefore encouraged (ibid). This meant beingaware of the Netherlands’ geo-political position, and inparticular its close relationship with both the US andthe EU. The realist ‘merchant’ accepted the compromisesthat this entailed in terms of the independence of Dutchforeign policy.

In the 1990s, a sophisticated analysis was put forwardby the Dutch government of the implications ofglobalisation and the end of the Cold War and itsimplications for the conceptualisation and managementof foreign policy (Netherlands 1995). This analysisidentified three broad areas of international policy (op.cit.:46–7):

• internationalised domestic policy — forexample, refugees, narcotics etc.;

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0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

��

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1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997

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• policy on international organisations, forexample with regard to international legislationemanating from EU and UN fora; and

• activities abroad.

Disaggregating these different dimensions ofinternational policy implied a rethinking of the strategiesused for its management. In particular, it meantovercoming the traditional boundaries that had definedministerial and inter-ministerial structures. This meantin particular:

that a greater amount of coordination andintegration is needed, both in policy terms andin an organisational sense. Policy instrumentscan no longer be grouped along the conceptualdividing lines of the Cold War. In some waysnew instruments are needed, but oldinstruments are frequently deployed in freshways (Netherlands 1995).

Examples of these ‘fresh ways’ included the deploymentof military assets in humanitarian emergencies, and theuse of aid to underpin the Middle East peace process.The report emphasises that what is at issue is less thevariety of intruments available, but ‘to a greater degreethan hitherto on the correlation between them’. Thisneed for coherence between different aspects ofinternational policy is emphasised particularly in relationto the perceived growing number of conflicts inspiredby ethnic and other differences (Netherlands 1995).

Significantly, the government recognises that:

the desire to increase cohesion in policy doesnot mean ... the disparity or tension which canexist between different policy aims and thedifferent interests and values that they expressare being passed over. ... This conflict can nolonger be avoided as was formerly done bystrictly separating policy fields and instruments... cohesion must be achieved through teamwork (Netherlands 1995:42).

Alongside conceptual reasons, important pragmaticarguments were also put forward in favour of coherence.In addition to ensuring value for money — an importantfactor driving the pursuit of joined-up government inWestern democracies — the implication is also that, asa small country, the Netherlands’ ability to influencepolicy will be conditional upon its efficiency as aninternational public policy advocate.

This re-analysis of the nature of international policyshaped the reform of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in1995/6. In the context of this study, it was particularlysignificant that the new structure absorbed theDevelopment Cooperation (aid), foreign affairs(diplomatic) and Economic Affairs regional sections intoconsolidated regional structures. In other words, aidand politics were reunited.

A second important strand of these reforms was thedelegation of responsibility for the implementation ofmuch of the Dutch aid programme to the embassies.Humanitarian assistance alone was retained as a centralfunction in The Hague.

Figure 3.2 shows the growth in emergency aid spendingfrom 1971 to 1988.

Figure 3.2Dutch emergency aid spend 1971-1988 (real terms)


3.4.2 ‘Decompartmentalisation’ : war, politicsand relief

Under the leadership of Jan Pronk, during the 1990s,the Dutch government was at the fore of internationalpolicy developments that sought to enhance the linksbetween aid and conflict reduction. It is hard not to bestruck by the weight (literal and metaphorical) of thedocuments designed to guide development policyduring the early 1990s. The publication of A World ofDifference (Netherlands 1991), was followed by A Worldof Dispute (Netherlands 1993) and Aid in Progress(Netherlands 1995). The first of these documents setthe stage for later developments, arguing in particularfor the ‘decompartmentalisation’ of Dutch policy inrelation to developing countries. Initially drawing largelyon arguments regarding economic and environmentalmanagement, by 1993 such decompartmentalisation wasseen to be a sine qua non for responding to the threatof continued instability in the Third World (Netherlands1993).17

Decompartmentalisation meant a redefinition of povertyto include its social and political determinants, alongsidemore traditional economic indicators. It thereforeimplied a broadening of ministerial responsibility fromone of technocratic management to embrace a new set

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of political responsibilities. There was widespreadconsensus among those interviewed for this study thatde facto Minister Pronk assumed the responsibilities ofa Minister of Foreign Affairs for non-strategic countries,particularly in Africa.

The minister’s ability to deliver on the complex agendaoutlined in successive policy documents was criticallydetermined by the instruments at his disposal. Thesewere limited by two factors. The first was the processof concentration of development assistance, particularlybilateral assistance, which had started in the mid-1980s(Netherlands 1991).18 This made it difficult to providebilateral aid to some of the very countries where conflictprevention and resolution interventions were mosturgently required.19 Second, the devolution ofresponsibility for aid management to the embassiesmeant that from 1996 onwards, officials in The Haguehad relatively little ability to direct the use of funds. Inthis context, the humanitarian aid budget became anincreasingly important source of funds to supportconflict-management initiatives developed by Pronk.20

Thus, for bureaucratic reasons there was a reworkingof the coherence anticipated in A World of Dispute fromone that anticipated development assistance contributingto a process of conflict prevention, to the use ofhumanitarian assistance in peace building.

What can be seen as bureaucratic pragmatism was givena conceptual underpinning by a concern, first voiced in1983, that humanitarian aid could reinforce regimes andauthorities responsible for widespread violations ofhuman rights (Schoo 1983). This had led to thegovernment identifying the conditions required for thedelivery of effective humanitarian assistance,21 and inparticular a preference for using non-governmentalchannels for delivering relief. A decade later, a policypaper went further, posing the question as to whether,rather than just not doing harm, relief might be usedactively to influence the course of conflict (Netherlands1993).

The paper explores the scope for greater integration ofrelief within the scope of broader peacekeeping asproposed in An Agenda for Peace (see Chapter 2). TheDutch government during its EC presidency proposedthe resolution creating DHA which, among other things,had argued that disaster prevention measures must becoupled with a coherent policy on economic growthand sustainable development. In this way, it was activelysupporting the integrationist interpretation of coherenceemerging within the UN in the early 1990s.

At the same time, the potential costs of this model werealso recognised. Thus, the 1993 policy paper onhumanitarian aid outlined the concerns raised byorganisations such as MSF and ICRC regarding theblurring of the boundaries between relief, military andpolitical interventions. The paper concluded thatresisting the politicisation of humanitarian assistanceimplied by integration may be desirable, but that it maynot always be achievable. This ambiguous position

provided for case-by-case analysis of the interpretationof the rules according to which humanitarian assistanceis allocated.

The genocide in Rwanda prompted much soul-searchingin the Netherlands’ development cooperation circles,as it did elsewhere. In its aftermath, and after the JointEvaluation (Eriksson 1996) published in early 1996, anydoubts regarding the integrationist interpretation ofcoherence appear to have receded. Speeches atPrinceton University in July 1996, and to the UN SecondCommittee in October that year, called for a new formof development cooperation that could be deployedwhile conflict was ongoing to sustain conflict preventionand peace-building measures of a more political nature(Pronk 1996a; Pronk 1996b).22

The realisation of this integrationist strategy, however,has not been unproblematic.

The expansion of the remit of the humanitarian aiddepartment throughout the 1990s to include conflict-management objectives has relied upon a correspondingexpansion in the type of agencies and activities it hasfunded, not on integrating political action within theconfines of relief programming per se. While at thelevel of policy the Dutch government has been a leadingadvocate of an integrationist agenda, it is striking thatthose opposed to the integration of UN operations, suchas MSF, remain sanguine that Dutch humanitarian aidprogramming has not become ‘politicised’.

This may be explained by the fact that Dutch aidplanners have respected the independence ofhumanitarian organisations, recognising the value ofneutral and impartial action in situations of open conflict.Defence of these principles is seen as part of the widerDutch concern to respect international legal standards.While this works at the level of individual projects, lessclear is whether the overall policy framework andprogramme portfolio of the humanitarian aid departmentactually enables a comfortable reconciliation betweenthe objectives of conflict management and adherenceto humanitarian principles.

This tension was highlighted in the controversial reportby the Advisory Council on International Affairs ,published in 1999. This concluded that the wide rangeof projects managed by the Conflict Management andHumanitarian Aid Department, funded from a unifiedhumanitarian aid budget, was diluting the concept ofhumanitarian action. The report recommended anarrowing of the definition of humanitarian aid toexclude conflict reduction and rehabilitationinterventions, and so protect humanitarian principles.

This recommendation was rejected by the governmentand the majority of Dutch NGOs on a number ofgrounds, not least the weakness of evidence on whichit was based. Whatever the limitations of AIV’smethodology and technical capacity, it raises animportant question. The report suggests, and this study

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would concur, that one cannot have one’s integrationistcake and eat it. Either humanitarian objectives are beingsubsumed within a wider political strategy, in whichcase humanitarian principles will be compromised;23 orwhat is emerging is a strategy that relies upon distinctstrands of intervention, implemented by different typesof organisations in conflict situations, includinghumanitarian, political and human rights. These distinctstrategies may (or may not) be complementary, but theydo not constitute the integrated approach to conflictmanagement envisaged by earlier policy documents.

3.4.3 From integration to managerialism?

The change of minister in mid-1998 has not ended theambiguity regarding which model of coherence —integration or complementarity — guides Dutch policyin this area. Government officials and NGOs alike seemcomfortable with this ambiguity because at the level ofprojects it has not given rise to major conflicts, unlikethe integrationist experiments of the British governmentin countries like Sierra Leone.24 This ease stems in partfrom an assumption regarding the essentially benignnature of Dutch foreign policy: Holland’s lack of a geo-political agenda is seen to protect the aid programmefrom politicisation.

This assumes, however, that because the Dutch foreignpolicy framework represents a liberal set of Westernvalues these are shared globally. As A World ofDifference cautioned such an assumption is problematicnot only because of emerging pluralism of world values,but because it is also often adopted uncritically. Twosenior Dutch diplomats expressed concern that from aglobal, as opposed to the project perspective, theincorporation of humanitarian aid into a more integratedforeign policy framework was compromising thehumanitarian agenda. They stated:

We are worried by the perception of non-Western countries. There is an idealism builtinto Dutch foreign policy, but it is also guidedby realism and pragmatism and relies uponinternational alliances, such as that with the US.Sometimes you have the feeling in the US thatthere is a double agenda. There is a risk thatwe will be associated with this view.

The arrival of Minister Hefkens has signalled aredefinition of the political quality of humanitarian actionaway from a grand vision of conflict reduction to onemore concerned with accountability and performanceissues. This has happened for three main reasons.

First, the new minister comes with a primary goal topromote aid effectiveness. This personal concern, hasbeen amplified by the coming into play of newlegislation that demands greater transparency of publicexpenditure. This context militates against the almostinfinitely flexible interpretation of what constituteshumanitarian aid spending adopted by her predecessor.While the previous Minister was widely regarded for

his innovation, in terms of accounting and accountabilityit was very difficult to track funding and impact. Stricterand more numerous budget lines have been brought inthat distinguish between humanitarian aid, rehabilitationand conflict-management items.25

A second key factor influencing the interpretation ofcoherence since mid-1998 is the intensification of thetrend towards selectivity and concentration of the Dutchaid programme. The new minister has introducedtougher conditions for countries to qualify for bilateralassistance, limiting its scope from 80 countries in 1998to 20. While the Netherlands continues to providesupport to a broad range of countries through itsmultilateral programme, the sharp reduction in thenumber of countries qualifying for bilateralprogramming, and the fact that by definition those mostaffected by conflict are largely excluded, limits the scopefor connectedness between both relief and developmentprogrammes. Because humanitarian aid programmesare run by a thematic department, rather than throughthe integrated regional desk system, the links betweenaid and political engagement are also weakened.

Finally, the trend towards an emphasis on aideffectiveness has resulted in a more modest set ofobjectives regarding humanitarian aid–politics links. Inparticular, within the humanitarian aid department thereis seen to be a concentration on ensuring accountability.In addition to rigorous attention to financial reportingand the specification of the policy frameworks(Netherlands 1999), in recent years the emphasis appearsto be on advocating adherence to codes of conduct,soliciting views of beneficiaries and support forinternational accountability initiatives (Pauwels 1999)26,all of which variously contribute to aid doing less harm,but are not geared to an active programme of conflictreduction.

3.5 A comparative analysis of trends

In both the UK and the Netherlands, the search forgreater coherence between humanitarian and politicalaction has resulted in substantive change in theobjectives and organisation of humanitarian policy. Inboth countries, the need to enhance the connectednessbetween these different dimensions of internationalpolicy has been driven by a redefinition of internationalrelations in the post-Cold War era of globalisation, andby broader public policy pressures emphasising cost-effectiveness and accountability.

However, the original conception of coherence laid outin policies such as An Agenda for Peace, the DFID WhitePaper and the Dutch A World of Difference does notappear to have been realised. Rather than aid playinga supportive role in a new integrated political strategyof conflict prevention and resolution, aid bodies arenow primarily responsible for implementing a new formof international policy. The reunification of aid andpolitics has provided for a re-division of international

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political labour, such that aid is no longer a substitutefor political action (Eriksson 1996), it is the primaryform of international policy at the geo-political periphery(Macrae 1998).

The concentration of development aid to a tightlydefined number of countries means that humanitarianis the only aid or international policy instrumentdeployed in many of the most vulnerable, conflict-affected countries. Thus, humanitarian aid departmentshave been given considerable influence in shaping notrelief operations, but broader international responsesto conflict. Adoption of this role has been encouragedboth by the withdrawal of other diplomatic anddevelopmental actors, and by an increasing awarenessof the potential impact of humanitarian relief on conflictdynamics.

In the mid-late 1990s, it was thought by many policy-makers and academics that humanitarian aid could exertsignificant leverage over the course of conflict, it wastherefore legitimate to calculate this potential net benefitand to subsume humanitarian assistance into a widerpolitical strategy. This ‘new humanitarianism’, as it wascalled in the UK, assumed an integrated model ofcoherence, with humanitarian aid a part of an agreedpolicy framework that included other foreign policyand military actors.

By virtue of its greater resources and internationalpolitical clout, the UK has been able to pursue thisintegrated model both multilaterally, notably throughsupport to OCHA, but also by developing tools forincreased bilateralisation. In contrast, the Netherlandsappears to have turned more to diversifying the rangeof organisations it supports. Its particular foreign policyculture appears to have militated against an integratedapproach where this would imply withholdinghumanitarian aid and in principle resists the trendtowards bilateralisation. These differences in tactics,combined with the different international positions ofthe two countries, have resulted in very differentinternational perceptions of their respective policies.The UK’s interpretation of humanitarian coherence hasattracted the accusation of politicisation, while the

Netherlands’ stance, which on paper at least is muchmore openly integrationist, has passed virtually withoutcomment.

Interestingly, despite these different initialinterpretations, in both countries, the complex andambitious vision of coherence laid out by ministersinitially has now been cut down to more modest goals.Rather than promising to play an active role in conflictreduction, the new new humanitarianism is moreconcerned with aid effectiveness. Importantly, this moretechnocratic mode, with its emphasis uponaccountability, will not necessarily dissipate accusationsthat humanitarianism is the fleece under which a moresinister Western wolf is hidden. It will not do so fortwo reasons.

First, the distinction between the technical conditionsrequired for effective humanitarian action has not beensystematically distinguished from political conditionality.The ease with which they are confused has not beenlost on belligerents in conflict situations, nor on Westernpolicymakers. Selective scrutiny of conditions fuelssuspicion that the accountability agenda is being co-opted to enhance control over humanitarian action andto justify cost-cutting.

Second, humanitarian actors, official and non-governmental, have as yet failed to define the type ofpolitics in which they are engaging. This lack of clarityregarding the fundamental purpose of humanitarian aid,and in particular the extent to which it is or is notexpected to contribute to developmental and conflict-reduction goals, provides significant room formanoeuvre for political actors at home and abroad. Ata time when conventional diplomacy is weakened bythe new political economy of war, the promise madeby aid agencies that aid can contribute to conflictreduction invites diplomatic co-option of these assets.At the same time, the casual renunciation of neutralityon the grounds that it implies complicity, has shiftedthe actual and perceived political position of aid actorsin conflict zones. This, coupled with the proliferationof aid agencies, has contributed to the erosion of thesecurity and scope of humanitarian space.

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4.1 Introduction and chapter overviewThe rationale for examining how the UN conceptualisesand realises the concept of coherence betweenhumanitarian and political action was twofold.

First, the UN has proved an important mechanism forinternational legitimation of emerging norms regardingaid–politics links. Starting with An Agenda for Peace, anumber of key initiatives have taken place within theSecurity Council, ECOSOC and the General Assemblyas well as within the UN Secretariat and specialisedagencies that have informed the basis for the neworthodoxy which has emerged regarding aid–politicslinks, particularly in conflict-affected countries. Thesedebates have been particularly important since they areglobal (rather than national or regional) in scope, andtake place within the context of a UN governed bothby its Charter, which commits the organisation to upholdhuman rights, and its status as an internationalorganisation that must also uphold the principle ofequality of sovereignty. The inevitable tensions thathave emerged also mean that the UN has been theplace where dissent regarding how to reconcile theseoften competing priorities has been most evident.

Second, UN channels remain the key mechanismthrough which donor governments support politicalhumanitarian action. The interactions between donorgovernments and multilateral actors are thus revealingin terms of the coherence of member states ’representation.

It is important to note that the study’s focus on the UNwas very much secondary, and the findings reportedhere therefore necessarily more tentative than thosefor other aspects of the research.

The remainder of the chapter is divided into foursubstantive parts. Section 4.2 focuses on the SecurityCouncil and its increased involvement in humanitarianissues. Section 4.3 examines the 1997 reforms putforward by Kofi Annan and their implications for thecoherence agenda. Section 4.4 looks at the way inwhich the British and Dutch governments articulate theirdealings with the UN. Section 4.5 concludes the chapter,highlighting a series of issues emerging from thepreceding analysis.

4.2 The ‘human’ Security Council?Until 1991, the Security Council (UNSC) interpreted itsmandate within the confines of traditional diplomaticand military concerns for the maintenance ofinternational peace and security. As outlined in Chapter

2, this relied upon the permanent members of the UNSCusing their influence with their respective allies, andwhere necessary drawing upon internationalpeacekeeping forces to police political agreements. Theending of the Cold War radically altered the leveragepermanent members of the UNSC could secure overwarring parties. This left the UNSC in the position ofhaving responsibility for the maintenance of security,but with relatively few levers to exert its influence over‘new’ security threats.

Resolution 688 in relation to Iraq in April 1991 markeda watershed in that, for the first time, the UNSCrecognised massive and systematic violations of humanrights and international humanitarian law as a threat tointernational peace and security, and therefore as withinits domain of concern (Annan 1999). This andsubsequent resolutions27 signalled two related shifts: one,a softening of respect for state sovereignty; and two,the protection of the rights of civilians.

These shifts in the scope of the UNSC’s work to a muchbroader definition of what constitutes ‘security’ wereunderpinned by The Agenda for Peace (see Chapter 2).In common with the trend seen in bilateral governments,within the UN the revised model of security haseffectively broken down the divisions between thepolitical aspects of the organisation’s work and thosethat were the traditional concern of other departments.The UNSC began to host debates on topics as diverseas HIV, the environment and, of course, humanitarianassistance. This has meant a re-division of labourbetween the different organs of the UN, with the UNSCincreasingly treading into territory that had been thetraditional preserve of ECOSOC and the GeneralAssembly. Some countries interpret this as an over-concentration of power in the UNSC.28

At the same time, the UNSC’s new-found interests haveseen important changes in its working methods, and inparticular increasing exchanges with non-state and non-diplomatic actors. Thus, for example, since 1996 theUNSC has received an increasing number of briefingsfrom NGOs, ICRC and specialised agencies.29 Thesechanges in the content of the UNSC agenda, and itsstyle of executing this agenda have required changestoo in the way which its members prepare and respondto briefs, and in particular, their ability to link traditionaldiplomatic concerns with broader international policy(see, Section 4.4).

Throughout the 1990s, a series of precedents were setregarding the UNSC’s interpretation of the difficultbalance between respect for sovereignty and theupholding of civilians’ rights on the grounds of peace

Chapter 4Coherence and the ultimate multi-mandate organisation:

the case of the United Nations

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and security. By 1997, these had reached sufficientcritical mass to have promoted a systematic debateregarding the role of the UN in the protection ofhumanitarian assistance for refugees and others inconflict situations (United Nations 1997a). In February1999, the agenda took a more radical turn. Under theCanadian presidency of the UNSC, the emphasis shiftedfrom the protection of aid to the protection of people.Just over month before NATO began its bombardmentof Serbia in order to protect the civilians of Kosovo, thepresident issued a statement that signalled a newwillingness to go beyond its role in affirminginternational norms, and to operationalise this concern(United Nations 1999a). It stated:

The Security Council expresses its willingnessto respond, in accordance with the Charter ofthe United Nations, to situations in whichcivilians, as such, have been targeted orhumanitarian assistance to civilians has beendeliberately obstructed.

It concluded by calling on the Secretary-General toreport back to the UNSC outlining ways in which theUN’s capacity to protect civilians might be enhanced.This report, submitted to the UNSC in September 1999(Annan 1999), had to tread carefully along the line thatdivided its members: namely the conditions under whichthe international use of force was legitimate to protecthuman rights. China and Russia, in particular, arguedthat while it was important to protect these rights, itwas more important to maintain the stability of theinternational system; in other words conserving theprinciple of respect for sovereignty (United Nations1999b). This view was adamantly opposed by theCanadians and the Dutch (both non-permanentmembers) and the UK. The US took a notably measuredstance, reflecting its own, Congressional divisions onthe issue (see, for example, Albright 1999 for the USview on humanitarian intervention).

The Secretary-General’s report of September 1999(Annan 1999), was endorsed by the UNSC in itsresolution (1999b). It might be described as a ‘business-as-usual-plus’ approach. It maintains the traditional UNbalance between sovereignty and rights. However, itprovides scope for closer integration of humanitarianissues in the political domains of the UNSC andpeacekeeping operations, and affirms the legitimacy ofUN involvement to enforce adherence to human rightsand IHL standards. The humanitarian circle is squaredwith sovereignty by mapping out criteria that woulddetermine this legitimacy.30 These criteria are importantin that they aim to prevent selective intervention on‘humanitarian’ grounds.

This remains the rub. The majority of Western countriesremain resistant to codification of criteria that wouldtrigger ‘humanitarian’ intervention, cautious of the costs(political and financial) that this might entail. Failure

to codify means sustained allegations of selective andpolitically motivated intervention. The degree of dissentremains such that as of November 1999 at least,agreement could not be reached on how even to discussthe redefinition of sovereignty and the legitimacy orotherwise of ‘humanitarian’ intervention. Thus, withinthe General Assembly and ECOSOC the issue remainsextremely sensitive, characterised by mutual suspicion.Inevitably, as intervention becomes packaged inhumanitarian terms, so the broader humanitarian agendahas become the subject of increasingly close scrutinyand dissent.31

Thus, far from being the focus for universal values, asthe humanitarian agenda has become incorporated intothe political agenda of the post-Cold War era, so it hasbecome associated with an interventionist agenda, basedupon particular values and interests that are not sharedacross the UN.

In some instances, the UNSC’s increased interest inhumanitarian issues has proved a double-edged sword.On the one hand it has provided new opportunities tomobilise political and military resources to defendhumanitarian space. On the other hand, as the label‘humanitarian’ becomes incorporated into the UNSC’slexicon, so its meaning is becoming obscured amid ‘high’political debates regarding the conduct of internationalrelations in the post-Cold War era.

4.3 One UN: the 1997 reforms

If Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace provided theconceptual framework for a coherent UN approach toconflict management, the 1997 Programme for Reformlaid out by his successor provided the managementstrategy to realise it (Annan 1997). Three aspects ofthese reforms are of relevance to this study:

• The unification of all UN agencies under acommon flag and under the ResidentCoordinator or the Special Representative ofthe Secretary-General (SRSG);

• The reform of the Department of HumanitarianAffairs (DHA) and the creation of the Officefor the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs;(OCHA).

• The establishment of executive committees tofacilitate cross-departmental, cross-agencywork on common themes. Most important inthe context of this study are the ExecutiveCommittee on Humanitarian Affairs (ECHA),chaired by OCHA, and the ExecutiveCommittee on Peace and Security (ECPS),chaired by DPA.

Each of these is discussed in turn.

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4.3.1 One UN – but whose?: SRSGs andhumanitarian operations

In a paper prepared for the Secretary-General in thelead up to the 1997 reforms, Margaret Anstee, the formerSRSG to Angola, wrote:

The process of peace-building is in fundamentalways different from the kind of activitiessubsumed under the heading ‘development’,although these form a highly importantcomponent. The main distinction is thatdevelopment activities naturally have to operatein a political context, this is not their primarypurpose, whereas in the case of peace-buildingpolitical considerations take centre stage. Insuch situations, developmental andhumanitarian programmes must contribute tothe overall purpose of consolidating peace andpreventing renewed conflict, as well as servetheir normal function of improving conditionsof life and relieving hardship. Thus, the politicalobjectives should always prevail (Anstee 1996).

The 1997 reforms codified and consolidated the trendtowards an integration of aid and politics, recommendedAnstee. Most importantly, they consolidated the roleof SRSGs in the field where multi-dimensionalpeacekeeping operations were under way. As the UNexpands the number of SRSGs, with between 20 and30 deployed at any one time, so their relationship withaid actors — and particularly humanitarian aid actors— has become more pressing. At issue is the extent towhich humanitarian assets are subject to the authorityof the SRSG. The relationship between aid and politicsis particularly pressing in situations of active conflict,and where the UN has become a belligerent in theconflict under a Chapter VII enforcement. It is in thesecontexts that the UN’s neutrality is most obviouslyquestioned.

The tensions arising between humanitarian and conflict-resolution measures have become very real. In relationto the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example,humanitarian agencies were deeply concerned that the1999 Lusaka accords, negotiated in part by the SRSG,implied deploying humanitarian field staff who wouldserve multiple mandates, and that it committed the UNincluding humanitarian agencies to certain activitieswithout any prior consultation with them. There havebeen similar tensions between humanitarian agenciesand SRSGs in relation to Burundi, Sierra Leone andTimor, to name only three examples.32

These tensions have been recognised and debated forat least three years. A paper for the IASC dating backto 1997 (United Nations 1997), for example, argued formaintaining a certain degree of independence from UN-authorised political or military activities. The issue wasreopened by a forum on the role of SRSG’s in peaceimplementation, the findings of which were reportedin the delightfully titled ‘Command from the Saddle’

(Fafo Peace Implementation Network 1999). Given thepredominance of SRSGs at the conference, it is perhapsunsurprising that it concluded by recommending that:

Given the inevitability that disagreements willarise between an SRSG and UN agencies, fromtime to time the Secretary-General will need tointervene with the heads of agencies in supportof the SRSG. Such interventions should reinforcethe priorities of the organisation in the missionarea, particularly when agencies are pursuingobjectives that are at odds with or riskundermining efforts to achieve the political goalof the mission (recommendation xviii, emphasisadded).

In other words, the SRSGs promoted an integrationistview of coherence, one in which humanitarian agencieswere subjugated to the UN’s political mandate. Thedebate continued to simmer throughout the latter halfof 1999, culminating in a paper prepared by ECHA,based on earlier discussions of the IASC. In commonwith the earlier IASC paper, the note of guidance agreedby ECHA, and submitted to the Secretary-General, clearlyadvocates an approach in which the political andhumanitarian are mutually informed, but ensures thathumanitarian responses are not driven by politicalobjectives (United Nations 1999c). It distinguishesbetween two models. The first has the HumanitarianCoordinator structurally independent of SRSG, butreporting to the SRSG as well as to the RC. The secondhas the Humanitarian Coordinator in charge ofhumanitarian coordination in the office or operationheaded by the SRSG and may also perform the deputyhead of mission function as appropriate. Critically, thisnote argues that the choice of model should bedetermined by the context: in situations of active conflict,where operational neutrality and impartiality arepriorities for humanitarian organisations, the loosermodel should prevail. Where there is a peace agreementin place to which parties have acceded, the moreintegrated model may be more feasible and desirable.

This more context-specific approach to the managementand objectives of the aid–politics relationship wouldseem to offer important insights for other multi-mandated bodies, including bilateral governments. Itovercomes the simplistic aphorism33 that all actors areworking for the same ends and should therefore besubsumed under one structure. At the time of writing,the Secretary-General has not endorsed ECHA’srecommendation and the UNSC continues to press forintegrating humanitarian components into peacekeeping(United Nations 2000).

4.3.2 DHA to OCHA: not just old wine?

The 1997 reforms provided for the creation of a ‘leanerand meaner’ Department for Humanitarian Affairs(DHA), focusing on three core functions: policydevelopment and coordination, including coordinationwith DPKO and DPA; advocacy of humanitarian issues

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within the UNSC; and coordination of humanitarianresponse at field level. To enable it to do so, many ofthe operational roles played by DHA, such as de-miningand disaster prevention and mitigation were transferredto UNDP. This change of mandate was reinforced bychanges in leadership. Sergio di Mello was appointedUnder-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in late1997, and in guiding the redefinition of DHA’s mandatesought to promote the department’s political role,strengthening its hand in negotiating with warring partiesin specific conflicts, and in advocating humanitarianissues in key political fora. These new roles were to beperformed by the new Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs (OCHA) created in January 1998,which replaced DHA.

Without the benefit of a detailed evaluation it is difficultto assess the impact of these reforms on both thedefinition of humanitarianism within the UN and itsrelationship with ‘politics’, and on coordinationstructures on the ground. The task is made more difficultstill by the fact that the implementation coincided soclosely with a change in leadership, seen by many asthe primary determinant of OCHA’s more recentsuccesses. The most important of these successes hasbeen the re-establishment of confidence in OCHA as acoordination body, and as a humanitarian advocate,particularly among donor countries. Diplomats in NewYork look to OCHA to provide not only or primarilyoperational leadership in complex emergencies, but asa source of political briefing, often superior to thatprovided by sister departments such as DPKO and DPA.

An internal UN memo (Bakhet et al. 1998) that sketchesout the roles of different departments in conflictsituations quickly indicates why it is that OCHA isenjoying unprecedented access to the UNSC and otherinternational diplomatic fora. While OCHA has beenable to innovate in terms of its strategy — at field leveland internationally — DPA and DPKO have remainedrelatively constrained in their scope for action. Lackingfield presence, DPA has only limited capacity forintelligence gathering and, within the UN frameworkof respect for sovereignty, only limited ability toformulate independent political analyses to guidedecision-making. DPKO is only engaged when apeacekeeping operation has been agreed by the UNSC.This current and rather awkward division of labourmeans that OCHA has unparalleled access in chronicconflicts where other bodies of the Secretariat remainunder-represented and under-resourced.34

This access means that OCHA and operationalhumanitarian agencies are much closer to the conflictand engage more routinely with belligerent parties. Inthe era of human security it is unclear what is expectedfrom such engagement. In a recent statement to theUNSC, the Secretary-General argued that humanitarianassistance had a role in contributing to peace andsecurity (Annan 2000). This raises the question ofwhether OCHA’s role is to contribute to peace andsecurity, or whether it has a more traditional

humanitarian objective — to relieve suffering anddistress. In other words, what are the objectives ofOCHA’s new-found political clout, and according towhat principles will it realise these objectives?

At present, the model put forward by the Secretary-General refuses to concede a distinction betweenpolitical and humanitarian objectives and mandates;instead it sees both as necessary in order to achievepeace and security. Once again, this assumes ratherthan proves, the consistent complementarity betweenthe demands of humanitarian action and those of conflictresolution. Experience to date suggests that in fact thedemands of political and humanitarian action haveconflicted in important ways. It suggests further (andsee Chapter 5 for further details) that while currentmodels of coherence within the UN imply a hierarchy,with political actors nominally responsible for directingthe whole of the UN’s operation, in practice these actorsare the least well resourced and have least access tothe conflict.

Furthermore, neither the humanitarian nor thediplomatic department seems to have reached aconsensus within or between themselves regarding thepotential trade-offs between principles of impartialityand neutrality, and situating humanitarian action firmlywithin a political framework of conflict management.This becomes particularly problematic when, by default,humanitarian actors constitute the major UN presenceon the ground, or when military and diplomaticinterventions remain circumscribed by convention interms of their analysis and scope for action. Theappointment of the head of OCHA as his SRSG in EastTimor by the SG further confuses the picture. Therevision in the concept of security has not resulted in adramatic shift in the conceptual or operational basis ofDPA or DPKO35, instead it has given them theoreticalauthority over a tool (humanitarian assistance) whosefiner workings and principles they seem disinclined tounderstand.

4.3.3 The Executive Committees

The Executive Committees established by the 1997reforms represent one potential set of fora for fosteringgreater mutual understanding between the disparatetraditions of aid and diplomacy both generically and inrelation to specific conflicts. Of the five committeesestablished under the reforms, the two of most relevancehere are: ECHA and ECPS.36 ECHA meets monthly fortwo hours, and is chaired by the Under-Secretary-General (USG) for Humanitarian Affairs. ECPS meetsfortnightly for one and one-half hours, and is chairedby the USG for Political Affairs.

The precise relationship between ECHA and the IASCremains an issue of debate within the UN. Membershipof the two committees does not overlap precisely,37

unsurprisingly the agendas do, however, and there havebeen questions as to how the two fora interconnect. Inorder to facilitate closer working, the same small group

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in OCHA provides the secretariat for both committees.On occasion, as for example, with the issue of therelationship between SRSG and HumanitarianCoordinators, positions developed through the IASChave been tabled at ECHA, which has a more directline to the Secretary-General.

The chairmanship of ECPS was given to DPA inrecognition of its role as lead agency in post-conflictpeace building. ECPS was seen to provide a mechanismfor the:

review of humanitarian, economic, social anddevelopment imperatives and actions in orderto ensure consistency with political and securitystrategies aimed at ending hostilities andestablishing a favourable environment forreconciliation and recovery (United NationsDepartment of Political Affairs 1997).

The original design of the Executive Committees seemsto have assumed a continuum of responsibility with aclear division of labour between the DevelopmentGroup, ECHA and ECPS taking account of differentcountry as they proceed along the peace-war-peace-building-peace continuum. In practice, this division oflabour does not appear to have been realised, and thereare no criteria to indicate when a country becomes theconcern of a different group. Furthermore, there isconsiderable diversity in the working styles andemphases of the committees such that overlap in termsof countries would not necessarily be problematic.

Interviews with UN staff indicated that there wasconsensus that the Executive Committees had made asignificant contribution to breaking down the barriersthat previously existed between different agencies. Asone informant explained, previously heads of agenciessaw each other relatively rarely, now such meetingsare routine. The culture of more regular informationexchanges across agencies and departments is ‘tricklingdown’ through the system, encouraging greatercooperation between staff working for different agencieson the same issues and countries. This in itself wasseen as an important outcome of the reform process.

In terms of the contribution to decision-making,however, the verdict among UN staff consulted seemsto be more mixed. On occasion both ECHA and ECPShad lived up to the vision of UN cabinet committees,bringing together key agencies and enabling them totable proposals for the Secretary-General to consider.38

On the whole, however, there was a sense that thecommittees were primarily mechanisms for informationsharing, rather than strategic decision-making bodies.

The reasons for this minimalist reality of the executivecommittees are undoubtedly complex, but seem in partto be explained by the sheer overload of meetings withinthe system, which makes it difficult for substantivepreparation to be dedicated to any single one. Reallyjoined-up thinking, let alone action, requires a lot of

time and work. Interestingly there appeared a particularbarrier with respect to humanitarian issues — namelythat they were not seen to be high ranking in theinternational pecking order.

It was striking in this respect that one senior OCHAofficial argued that an important benefit of ECHA wasthat it placed the office on the same level as DPA andDPKO. Another senior DPA official could not recallwhether or not his department was in fact a member ofECHA. This seemed to reflect a more general rule that‘political discussion and stature float above humanitarianconcerns’. In other words, while humanitarian actorsmay be more welcome in political fora, their presenceremains conditional upon political actors defining aproblem in humanitarian terms.

4.4 Realising coherent multilateralism:The UK, the Dutch and the UN

Definition of a political problem in humanitarian termsis of itself an important innovation in internationalrelations. As described Chapters 2 and 3, this reflects awider process whereby political interest is beingredefined in the post-Cold War era. Of interest in thissection are mechanisms through which the case studydonor governments seek to operationalise this agendain the multilateral fora of the UN. In other words, howthis new form of politics is represented by donorgovernments. Again, resources prohibited an exhaustiveenquiry into this area of the study, however, the limitednumber of interviews the team was able to conduct didyield a number of insights.

Most important of these is perhaps that the paradigmaticshift in the definition of security has not beenaccompanied by a fundamental change in the divisionof labour responsible for implementing it. As oneinformant put it, in the permanent missions in NewYork and Geneva, as well as at headquarters level, thesense remained that:

Within the Mission we fail to bring together thehumanitarian and the political. The structure isthat the Security Council team deals with DPAand the Security Council. On humanitarianissues, the line comes from the humanitarianaid department. ...the political and SecurityCouncil team here do not really know aboutOCHA (interview, diplomat, New York, 1November 1999).

What has changed is that aid officials have more directcontact with ‘political’ fora, such as the UNSC andpolitical departments such as DPKO and DPA. In thecase of the UK, these direct contacts had been facilitatedby its separation from FCO, which has meant that‘humanitarian messages’ could be sent more directlyfrom DFID to relevant UN fora and officials, than hadbeen the case under ODA. Indeed, CHAD has recentlyappointed a humanitarian specialist to the UK mission

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in New York. However, there remains little optimismthat the increased involvement of humanitarians in theseinternational political fora is necessarily an indicationof its increased priority on the diplomatic agenda. Astwo Dutch officials explained:

‘On the one hand, humanitarian aid is politicallydriven. On the other hand, it is provided whereotherwise there is political disengagement(interview, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6December 1999).

In both case study countries there was a sense that itwas precisely because the humanitarian agenda wasconsidered ‘low politics’, that those responsible for aidmanagement were entrusted with policymaking in thisarea. Thus, in the case of the UK, the UN departmentin the FCO was seen to play a very limited role inproviding policy briefs to diplomatic missions onhumanitarian issues, with this coming instead from DFID.Thus, it was not so much a case of the UK developinga cross-departmental strategy with respect to a particularconflict that embraced political and humanitarian issues,than DFID taking the lead in formulating positions inrelation to both these aspects of policy. A similar logicappeared to apply in relation to the Netherlands.39

Instead, the new division of political labour outlined inSection 3 was replicated at international level. Forexample, in relation to Sierra Leone, DPA reported that:

The UK is extremely interested in Sierra Leone.But it is a one-man crusade by ... DFID, not byFCO. When DPA talks to the UK it talks to DFID,not to the FCO (interview, DPA, New York, 2November 1999).

This re-division of labour is reflected in new ways ofworking. In the case of the UK it was reported to bebecoming more common for DFID to send its own staffto represent the UK position on humanitarian issues,rather than relying exclusively on the diplomatic staffin the mission. This begs the question of the appropriatecomposition of permanent mission staff: in the era ofglobalisation, where portfolios from agriculture to aidall have an international dimension, organisingrepresentation that can accurately reflect technical detailrelies on specialists, not generalists. Potentially thissuggests that missions and embassies become theskeleton upon which different departments in the homecountry then contribute specialist representation. Ineffect, this is what the Dutch structure of decentralisationof aid decision-making to embassies has sought toachieve in those countries where it has bilateralprogrammes. In relation to humanitarian issues, whichremain centralised in The Hague, however, this patternis not replicated.

More generally, a number of mission staff recognisedthe need to adjust the skills base within missions toallow more effective representation of humanitarian

issues within key political fora. A number of informantscommented positively, for example, on the Canadiangovernment’s strength in this respect and how itsdedicated humanitarian capacity enabled it to progresseffectively the issue of protection of civilians in armedconflict.

A second key issue that emerged from a review of UNpolicy in this area was the importance of informal andbilateral mechanisms in governing relations betweenbilateral donor governments and the UN. Formal,multilateral fora, such as the Humanitarian LiaisonWorking Group (HLWG) meeting in New York andGeneva, attracted near universal criticism. The group’ssize and its inclusion of representatives of countriesthat were not major donors, and the fact that thoseattending the meetings often lacked any experience ofhumanitarian issues, combined to lead one informantto describe the group somewhat undiplomatically as:‘pretty gormless’, while others emphasised that theHLWG had no role in policymaking, rather representinga forum for information exchange.40

The perception that fora such as the HLWG no longeract as effective fora for the communication of keymessages between donor governments and UNhumanitarian agencies has resulted in the emergenceof a number of informal coalitions that have formedaround particular institutions, issues and countries.These ‘Friends of...’ and ‘Support’ groups have beenvery important in driving particular reforms. Forexample, the ‘Friends of DHA Group’ wanted to securea more service-oriented DHA and to prove the addedvalue of an additional layer of coordination in thehumanitarian sphere. The Swiss, Swedish and Britishgovernments were central, not only in sustaining fundingfor DHA at a difficult time, but also in adding to thedesign of the reforms that were to result in the creationof OCHA (interview, OCHA, Geneva, 23 November1999).

What is striking about these groups is that it is here,rather than in the formal bodies such as ECOSOC andthe executive boards, that real bargains about real moneyare tabled. As one diplomat argued:

We need the informal structures, as the formalstructures can’t be trusted to get it right.

This process necessarily places multilateral organisationsin a difficult position. On the one hand, they are to beheld accountable to all member states. On the other,these governance mechanisms have proved problematicin reaching a working consensus, and have not alwaysyielded fundable decisions. The existence of parallelinformal mechanisms of consultation with donorgovernments becomes problematic if it brings intoquestion the legitimacy of the UN institutions concerned,and in particular if the messages that are sent to themare not purely humanitarian, but rather are concerned

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with domestic state interests. It is this scenario that hasbeen highlighted by some in relation to the decision ofUNHCR to work with NATO in Macedonia in responseto the refugee influx, and the rationale and impact ofthe Afghanistan Support Group, both cases are reviewedin further detail in Chapter 5.

4.5 Chapter summary

For nearly a decade, the UN has been a crucial forcedefining and legitimising the coherence agenda. It hasadvocated and sought to implement an integrationistinterpretation of this agenda, embodied in the conceptof human security. In this it has met with mixed success.

The UN has always struggled to balance the demandsof its political function as an organisation comprisinggovernments with its role in defending human rights.These tensions between the UN’s political andhumanitarian role have become more pronounced sincethe advent of the post-Cold War era. Efforts by UNagencies to clarify these tensions, and in particular toprotect humanitarian action from undue politicalinterference, have not received adequate support fromthe UN leadership or its political bodies. In this context,there is a risk that the UNSC’s new-found interest inhumanitarian issues is misunderstood by the widerinternational community, and that SRSGs are giveninappropriate control over humanitarian assets.

Bureaucratic politics have prevented the full realisationof the integrationist vision. While the 1997 reforms didinstitutionalise the process of increased cross-departmental working, on the whole this remainsconfined to the level of information exchange, notcommon programming. At present, there is insufficientcapacity within the UN, and in particular in DPA andDPKO, to provide adequate political analysis to informcommon programming, even were bureaucratic cultureto encourage it. As was remarked with regard to donorgovernments, there is the appearance that humanitarianorganisations, and in particular OCHA, are carrying alarge share of the burden of international policy inrelation to conflict-affected countries at the periphery.This is raising a question with regard to their primarymandate: is it alleviation of poverty and suffering or isit a broader function of conflict resolution?

Finally, there is a widely held view that donor countriesare seeking greater influence over the organisation ofhumanitarian operations than has been so in the past.This ‘bilateralisation’ of policy is evident not only in theincreased earmarking of donor contributions to UNbodies, but also in the proliferation of informal lobbyingmechanisms with regard to particular countries andissues. Reflecting the division of international politicallabour in their home countries, these engagementsappear to be driven largely by humanitarian aiddepartments, rather than reflecting a coordinated, inter-departmental view in donor capitals.

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5.1 IntroductionThis chapter reports on the four case studies conductedto examine how the issue of ‘coherence’ was translatedinto field practice. These four mini-studies were:

• The international assistance to the energysector in Serbia during the winter of 1999/2000.

• The negotiation of asylum for Kosovarrefugees into Macedonia in April 1999.

• The Afghanistan Support Group and its linkswith the Strategic Framework.

• Security and withdrawal of internationalhumanitarian workers from Afghanistan.

A brief overview of each case study is provided below.

5.1.1 Energy in Serbia41

The winter months are harsh in Serbia, withtemperatures below zero for an average of 63 daysbetween October and April. Meeting the country’senergy needs has become increasingly difficult in recentyears. The economic crisis in the country makes itdifficult to procure the necessary electricity, gas and oilfrom outside, and to maintain the energy infrastructure.NATO bombing during March–June 1999 damaged theenergy infrastructure, particularly transmission lines andsome generating capacity. In addition, the majority ofOECD countries have applied sanctions that prohibitthem from exporting to Serbia, with the exception ofconsignments designated as required for ‘humanitarian’purposes. In the summer and early autumn of 1999,there was an emerging consensus within theinternational community that a potentially seriousshortage of energy could emerge, with potentiallysignificant consequences for the civilian population.42

For the international community, the question waswhether the energy crisis was likely to be serious enoughto qualify as a humanitarian problem, indicated by excessmortality and morbidity. If so, then there was animmediate operational problem: how to provideassistance without strengthening the Milosevic regime.This was particularly difficult since the energy sector inFRY is nationalised and intimately linked to the currentpolitical hierarchy. If the situation was not consideredsufficiently serious to constitute a humanitarian crisis,did this preclude there being a significant energy need?The question then became: What obligation if any didthe international community have to meet this energyneed, and how could it be met without violating thesanctions regime?

The answers to these questions by donor governmentshave been determined less by independent assessmentof energy need than by international politics. While theUS was unequivocal in rejecting the case for theprovision of ‘humanitarian’ energy; the views of EUmember states varied widely between those, such asthe Greeks, who argued against maintaining sanctionson oil imports and in favour of allowing humanitarianintervention in the energy sector, and those such as theBritish and Dutch who argued for maintaining sanctionsand against the provision of ‘humanitarian’ energy.These differing positions resulted in a twin-trackapproach that embraced humanitarian and politicalinterventions in the energy sector.43

The Swiss government was alone among Western donorsin arguing both that the crisis in the energy sector wassufficiently serious to constitute a potential humanitariandisaster and in intervening in the electricity sector —the primary source of energy for domestic and industrialuse. It sought to overcome the problem of directengagement with the FRY authorities by channellingsupport for the rehabilitation of the electricityinfrastructure through the UN. Other donorgovernments concluded that the energy crisis could havehumanitarian effects, but were reluctant to provide anysupport that could be seen to constitute rehabilitationand thus reinforce the regime. Those taking this positionprovided support through multilateral organisations suchas the UN agencies, ECHO and NGOs to provide oil tospecially targeted institutions, such as refugee receptioncentres, maternity hospitals and orphanages.

The second, political track was initiated by the EUthrough its Energy for Democracy (EfD) programme.Proposed by the Dutch and Greek governments44 as apolitical compromise between EU member states, EfDwas designed to mitigate the effects of sanctions, andto provide a basis for EU engagement with theopposition in Serbia. The rationale for the project wasthat, by providing heating oil direct to municipalitiesrun by opposition parties, the population wouldrecognise the benefits of closer proximity to the Westand so be convinced of the advantages of a change ofregime. The project suffered from a number of set-backs, initially because of delays in identifying a sourceof funds that could be disbursed at a sufficiently rapidrate, and then as the Serb authorities held up the firstshipment of oil at the Macedonian-FRY border inNovember 1999.45

Initially, the European Commission had madeconsiderable efforts to maintain a clear distinctionbetween EfD and the humanitarian energy supplies itwas funding. For example, rather than relying on thehumanitarian exemption to the embargo on the exportof EU oil to Serbia, a special amendment to the sanctions

Chapter 5Coherence in practice

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regime was adopted exempting EfD oil.46 Furthermore,the EfD shipments were to be treated as commercialshipments, with no request made for the FRY authoritiesto exempt them from commercial taxes. Significantly,the project was not funded by ECHO, but by a specialfund for the rehabilitation of Yugoslavia: the Obnovafund.

It is significant that in the UK, DFID resisted FCOpressure to provide additional contributions to EfD,arguing that it failed to meet the technical standardsrequired to justify using humanitarian assistancebudgets.47 However, it proved more difficult to curtailthe presentation of the project by UK politicians as botha humanitarian and political intervention. The evidencegiven by Minister Peter Hain to the InternationalDevelopment Committee in this vein was not publiclycountered by DFID officials, for example (InternationalDevelopment Committee 1999d).

However, this sharp distinction between a ‘political’ anda ‘humanitarian’ intervention rapidly broke down. Inparticular, when Serb authorities refused to admit theshipments, European and US politicians were quick toargue that these delays would result in unnecessaryhumanitarian suffering.48 These responses exposed thepotential contradiction of EfD. On the one hand, itwas argued that there was sufficient need for energy tomerit the use of aid funds and that these would make asignificant political impact. On the other hand, EUgovernments denied that shortages existed of suchsignificance as to warrant a humanitarian response. Thisconfusion led to it being argued by some that EfD couldbe at once a political and a humanitarian programme.For example, in evidence to the InternationalDevelopment Committee, British Foreign Office MinisterPeter Hain argued that:

[EfD] is a humanitarian effort, but we are ableto deliver it because of the added opportunityof a political bonus and a political factor too inthat we are not giving support to Milosevicand the regime that surrounds him; we areactually rewarding those who are opposed tohis brutal rule (International DevelopmentCommittee 1999d).49

A combination of factors meant that the winter monthsdid not see the worst-case scenario unfurl. An unusuallymild winter, a windfall of cash from the Chinesegovernment, the fact that the sanctions provedexceptionally leaky, and the investment by theauthorities and by the Swiss government in repairingthe infrastructure, meant that while there was an energyshortage, the prolonged blackouts anticipated wereaverted. This is not to suggest that there was no excessmortality or suffering,50 only that these were not on thecatastrophic scale anticipated. Importantly, however,the factors that averted disaster were not predicted ornecessarily predictable by Western donor governments.The important question therefore emerged whether ifmore widespread need had existed, the political

positions of these governments (and for this study, ofthe British and Dutch in particular) would haveprecluded an effective and principled humanitarianresponse.

5.1.2 Negotiation of asylum for Kosovarrefugees into Macedonia

On 24 March 1999 NATO began its aerial bombardmentof Serbia, ostensibly designed to secure Yugoslavagreement to the terms of the Rambouillet peace plan.Rather than securing the rapid victory anticipated bythe allies, the air strikes served to intensify the conflictwithin Kosovo, provoking massive populationmovements out of the country. Within nine weeks ofthe beginning of the air strikes, nearly 860,000 KosovarAlbanians had fled the country, of whom 344,500 soughtfirst asylum in neighbouring Macedonia. This was oneof the largest and most rapid population movements ofthe 1990s, comparable only with those associated withthe Gulf War in 1991 and the genocide in Rwanda of1994 (Suhrke et al. 2000).

In contrast with Albania and Montenegro, where theborders remained relatively open, the Government ofMacedonia (GOM) was extremely reluctant to grantasylum, fearful for its internal stability and of beingpulled into a wider war with Serbia. Between 30 Marchand 4 April, several thousand refugees congregated atBlace — the border crossing between FRY andMacedonia. The GOM instructed its border guards tocheck meticulously the papers of the refugees, effectivelyblocking the border. Within days a backlog of tens ofthousands of refugees had built up in a muddy field,trapped between Serb authorities and the ‘closed’ border.At this critical and early phase of the world’s first‘humanitarian’ war, the question for the allies was howto avert a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in frontof the world’s media.

Under usual circumstances, UNHCR would have takenthe lead for negotiating safe asylum with the hostgovernment. In the case of Macedonia, however, thisrole was assumed by NATO governments, in particularthe US, who also constituted the primary donors to thehumanitarian operation. Bilateral negotiations did leadto the GOM agreeing to open the border, and to theirgranting leave to remain, rather than refugee status tothe Kosovar Albanians. In return for opening the border,the GOM achieved a number of concessions from theinternational community:

• That a significant proportion of the refugees betransferred to other countries in the region (theHumanitarian Transfer Programme, HTP), andevacuated outside the region (the HumanitarianEvacuation Programme, HEP).

• That NATO military assets based in Macedoniabe deployed to construct camp facilities toreceive the refugees.

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• In the background there were also discussionsregarding promises of long-term developmentassistance to Macedonia, and to keep the issueof Macedonia’s membership of the EU on theagenda.51

Each of these components of the deal, and the processby which they were negotiated, are of obvious relevanceto this study. Diplomatic and military resources weredeployed in support of the humanitarian objective ofproviding safe refuge. At the same time, responding tothis humanitarian agenda quickly and effectively wasclearly of vital importance, not only to reassure domesticpublic opinion in NATO countries, but to ensure thatNATO was in a position to continue its militaryintervention and to reduce the ‘threat’ of major anduncontrolled population movements outside theregion.52

In reviewing this experience of political/humanitarianinteraction, the study focused on four key issues:

• Issues of protection. In particular, refugee lawand current practice (as advocated by UNHCR’sExecutive Committee)53 is based on theprinciple of unconditional first asylum. I nother words, host governments should grantasylum without assuming that a refugeewill be resettled elsewhere. The protectionimplications of the negotiation of this principle,specifically through the HTP and HEP, aretherefore important to explore.

• Issues of impartiality and neutrality. Theperception that the humanitarian response washighly politicised was further deepenedby the fact that military assets were deployedto construct and run refugee camps inMacedonia and Albania. These constituted partof the same military forces involved in theNATO bombardment. The relationship betweenhumanitarian agencies and the military hadbeen a fraught issue between UNHCR andNATO allies in the lead up to and in the daysimmediately after the air strikes started, withUNHCR arguing that such cooperation wouldcompromise its impartiality. The question israised, therefore,whether cooperating with themilitary forces of one belligerent in a warnecessarily compromises humanitarianprinciples, and if so whether this matters.

• Bilateralisation of response. UNHCR’s capacityto conduct the negotiations necessary to securesafe asylum for the Kosovar refugees inMacedonia in April 1999 has been widelycriticised in recent evaluations of response(International Development Committee 1999c;Suhrke et al. 2000), and in the course ofinterviews conducted by this study. Theindependent evaluation of its responseconcludes that while the weakness of the

multilateral response provided donorgovernments with a convenient rationale toengage bilaterally, even had the UN provedstrong, states' interests would have dictatedheavy bilateral involvement. Thisbilateralisation of response has political andoperational implications that merit review.

• Effectiveness and viability of political-development-aid linkages. This was not aprimary focus of this study, but at issue wasthe question as to whether long-term aidresources had been pledged to Macedonia asa bargaining tool, and whether these had bornefruit.

5.1.3 Afghanistan

Unlike Kosovo and Serbia, Afghanistan has beeneffectively abandoned by the international politicalsystem. With the partial exception of the US, the Westhas effectively disengaged, leaving only regional powersand the UN involved, the regional power oftenconcerned more about continuing the conflict thanresolving it.54 Despite, indeed because of, this theStrategic Framework in Afghanistan has been one ofthe most ambitious attempts to develop a structuredcoherence between aid and political action yet seen.The Afghanistan case study examined the experienceof the Strategic Framework in general, and its links withthe Afghanistan Support Group (ASG), a group of donorgovernments, in particular. It also looked at the specificcase of the withdrawal of UN staff and the subsequentbanning on security grounds by the UN of British andUS passport holders visiting the country. This wasreinforced by DFID withdrawing funds from any NGOthat sent international staff to the country.

The aid/politics relationship has a long and complexhistory in Afghanistan. The country’s geo-strategicposition has been its misfortune since the late nineteenthcentury, and aid has been linked to foreign policy ofdonors for almost as long. From 1956 to 1978 the Sovietsgave a total of $1.26bn in economic aid, and the US toogave substantial amounts in the 1950s. The Sovietinvasion lead to the outflow of millions of refugees intoPakistan and Iran. Pakistan, a key US ally in the regionand seen as a bulwark against Communist expansionand a base for the Mujihadeen, received much moreaid. Many NGOs too had explicit ‘solidarity’ agendas,and ‘delegated’ distribution of aid to Mujihadeen politicalparties. This resulted in a fairly uncritical aid provisionmechanism; issues such as gender, neutrality orimpartiality were not discussed. The US was givingStinger missiles as well as food aid; ‘...not only werethose who masterminded refugee assistance motivatedby geo-political agendas, but the work of NGOsresponsible for implementing the aid policies was, eitherconsciously or unconsciously, often heavily politicised’(Fielden 1998). In this sense, for the Western donors,particularly the US, aid and political agendas were

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obviously ‘coherent’ in that both supported the overallpolitical goal of defeating the Soviet Union.

After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the war became acivil war between competing groups of Mujihadeen,steadily drawing in regional powers concerned thatAfghanistan should not be ruled by a groupunsympathetic to their interests. Aid flows declinedsignificantly and it became much harder for agencies toget money for projects with refugees in Pakistan.55 Forthe US, the decline in aid flows was paralleled by adiplomatic abandonment as well after 1989.56 However,the US remains, even in its absence, the only externalpower with sufficient clout to influence the conflict andthe neighbouring powers and thus remains central.

In 1994 the Taliban emerged as a serious political force,as did the possibility of an oil pipeline through westernAfghanistan from Turkmenistan. The emergence of theTaliban has been linked to the desire of Pakistan toopen secure links with the new central Asian republics.The Taliban initially received tacit US support and activesupport from US allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. USinterest was heightened by the involvement of theAmerican oil company Unocal. By 1998, however, thecombined impact of the blaming of Osama Bin Laden,then a guest of the Taliban, for the embassy bombingsin Kenya and Tanzania, and the Taliban’s treatment ofwomen in Kabul, which became a cause celebre forAmerican feminists, had turned the US against them.By 1999, rather than playing a role in resolving theconflict, ‘getting Bin Laden was Washington’s primarypolicy objective’ (Rashid 2000: 177).

Throughout this period, UN attempts at mediation hadbeen a succession of failures, and a series of SRSGsresigned in disgust and frustration, blaming theintransigence of the parties and the persistentprovisioning of the different groups with arms by theneighbouring powers. This despite the members of the‘6+2’ group, a group of Afghanistan’s neighbours plusthe US and Russia set up by the UN, formally declaringnot to do so. This is indeed the overwhelming reasonfor the UN’s failure. But the various UN missions havebeen consistently understaffed, and, according to manydiplomats and aid actors, of indifferent quality, thoughrecently the office has been in the process of beingstrengthened. The UN receives expressions of supportfrom donor governments for its efforts,57 but little inthe way of substantive back-up and politicalengagement. More recently of course, the UNSC hasimposed sanctions on Afghanistan, in part to pressurethe Taliban to hand over Bin Laden. Indeed, the Talibanare unusual in that they have managed to antagonisefour out of the five permanent members, France beingthe only one not hostile.58

In political terms, Afghanistan was initially a ‘survival’issue for the West, but dropped off the map after thewithdrawal of the Soviets. It has crept back up theagenda, but this time the interest is driven by verydifferent political objectives. Conventional definitions

of security, have been replaced by domestic concernsto guard against terrorism, contain the flow of refugeesand narcotics and the protection of women’s rights.59

The narrative of Afghanistan in the West has changed,from heroic freedom fighters to brutal, sexist bandits,despite the fact that the cast of characters remains largelyunchanged.

The conflict between India and Pakistan, and the futureorientation of central Asia, are more important regionalpriorities for Western governments than Afghanistan.Although many donor governments share theseconcerns, terrorism is primarily an issue that affects theUS and the UK; other governments are more concernedabout drugs, refugees and regional stability. Essentiallystrategies range from disengagement and uninterest todeliberate isolation, although for many donorgovernments there is in fact no serious Afghanistanstrategy. Political muscle to end the conflict, especiallyfrom the US, has been noticeable only by its absence.

The Afghanistan Support Group and the StrategicFramework

In January 1997 the aid community met in Ashkhabadto try and revitalise assistance work in Afghanistan, aprocess which was to lead to the Principled CommonProgramme (PCP). An ad hoc donor group was formedto support this process and coordinate the policy; thiswas known as the Afghanistan Support Group (ASG).This field-led process paralleled a UN initiative that wasintended to unite UN assistance, human rights andpolitical initiative in a single country into one coherentand mutually supportive strategy. Afghanistan wasselected as the first test case for this approach.

The purpose of the Strategic Framework for Afghanistanwas to:

• enhance the synergy between the UN politicalstrategy in Afghanistan and the internationalassistance activities; and

• promote greater effectiveness and coherencein the international assistance programme.

The ‘overarching goal of the UN in Afghanistan is tofacilitate the transition from a state of internal conflictto a just and sustainable peace through mutuallyreinforcing political and assistance initiatives’. Whenthe Strategic Framework was developed, there was someprospect of a peace settlement; this has since vanished.

The ASG met first in Geneva in May 1997, and hassince met twice yearly in different donor capitals, chairedby the relevant host. It is a donor forum and the agendais dominated by donor issues, although it is attendedby agencies, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-Generaland others. The ASG has been important in pushingthe Strategic Framework on to the somewhat reluctantUN operational agencies. In the London ASG forinstance, the UN agencies were given an ultimatum by

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the donors: ‘sign up to the Strategic Framework or fundswill be cut’. The Dutch and British governments wereparticularly proactive in their support for the StrategicFramework.

Security and the withdrawal of humanitarianworkers from Afghanistan

Security for aid workers in Afghanistan has long been aproblem and this has continued under the Taliban. In1998 a series of security incidents culminated in thewithdrawal of most international staff of humanitarianagencies, including that of the entire UN. A UN officialin Kandahar had, according to accounts, either a teapotor some furniture thrown at him by a senior Talibanofficial; two UN national staff were murdered; and finally,an Italian member of the UN observer mission wasmurdered on the streets of Kabul after the Americanbombing in August. This had come after a long periodof growing tension between the aid agencies and theTaliban, in particular over their gender policy, duringwhich Emma Bonino, the ECHO commissioner, wasbriefly imprisoned in Kabul in September 1997. Manysuspect these confrontations were deliberatelyprovoked, and that the withdrawal of foreign aidworkers was the goal of some hard line Talibanmembers.

In August 1998, shortly before the bombing, the FCOreceived information on specific security threats to USand UK nationals. Release of this information to theagencies coincided with the bombing, and internationalstaff withdrew from the country. Initially, DFID tookthe position that short trips by UK staff would beacceptable. However, the policy evolved into a positionthat DFID would not fund, and would withdrawcommitted funds to, any NGO that sent any internationalstaff to Afghanistan, even if these aspects of their workwere funded by other donors.

The situation was complicated by the UN pull-out andthe ongoing negotiations with the Taliban over its return.At the Tokyo meeting of the ASG, the UK and USpersuaded other donors to support the head of OCHA’srequest that NGOs not go back as this would underminetheir negotiating position with the Taliban.60 In otherwords, the concern had moved beyond just securityconcerns to the broader issue of conditions of work.The continued withdrawal of internationals was seenby some in the UN as a lever to gain concessions fromthe Taliban. When the UN did go back in February1999, the UK and US approached the Secretary-Generalpersonally to request him not to allow US and UK UNstaff to go back given the specific security threats againstthem. This was accepted and, at the time of writing,these restrictions remain in place. Most NGOs havedeveloped alternative sources of funding to sustainprogrammes and allow UK nationals to work. DFIDmaintains that conditions , notably human rights issues,

are such that it is not time to encourage refugee return.As a result of this and the security policy DFID’s fundingof programmes within the country has fallen to bereplaced by funding more programmes with refugees.

DFID has consistently maintained that their concernwas exclusively motivated by threats to UK nationals,but the move was widely interpreted by agencies andother donors as part of a US-inspired political strategyto pressurise and isolate the Taliban. The British PrimeMinister had after all publicly supported US air-strikesagainst suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan. As withSierra Leone, the attempt to obtain leverage over otherdonors caused resentment as well. For example, anNGO coordination body, ACBAR, which had a Britishdirector, was funded more by other donors than DFID.Yet DFID’s restrictions meant he could not travel, thusaffecting all donor programmes. The restriction on UKand US UN staff travelling, apart from being highlyunusual for the UN, also affected their ability toimplement the Strategic Framework; the acting head ofUNSMA, for example, was British, as were a number ofother key UN staff.

5.2 Coherence of analysis: the politics ofinformation

A frequent refrain contained in evaluations and analysesof humanitarian operations is the political ‘blindness’of relief. The accusation runs that aid agencies fail toinvest in good political analysis, and that this naïveneutrality leaves them vulnerable to politicalmanipulation by warring parties. Access to accuratepolitical information regarding the dynamics of a conflictcan be seen, therefore, as a pre-condition for ensuringeffective and principled humanitarian action.

One obvious area of complementarity between thehumanitarian and political spheres is in terms ofinformation exchange. A key function of diplomaticdepartments of governments and internationalorganisations is to collect and analyse politicalinformation and to communicate it effectively. At thesame time, within the humanitarian sphere, informationcollection and analysis systems are becoming moresophisticated. A priori, it would seem therefore, thatsharing these resources might be useful to ensure apolitically informed humanitarian response, and apolitical response informed by humanitarian concerns.

The findings from this study suggest that there havebeen some gains in achieving this most minimal levelof information exchange between the humanitarian andpolitical spheres. However, a number of significantobstacles remain to enhancing ‘coherence’. Some ofthese obstacles are structural, others are moremanagerial.

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5.2.1 Political early warning and preparedness

The Macedonia example is insightful in terms of thestructural obstacles to a coherent approach to thecollection and analysis of information in two respects.The first concerns access to political and militaryinformation to enable preparedness of the humanitarianresponse. The second relates to the UN’s capacity forpolitical analysis immediately prior to the refugee influx.

A striking feature of accounts about decisions to deploythe military to construct and manage the refugee campsis the consensus between diplomatic and humanitarianagencies that only the military had the capacity torespond at the speed and scale required. This responseis premised on the assumption that the size of therefugee influx could not have been predicted insufficient time for other strategies to have been put inplace.

There remains significant dispute as to whether theevents of late March, in particular whether the size andpace of refugee flows into Macedonia, were predictable.A number of humanitarian organisations claim that theyhad foreseen the scenario that later unfolded.61 Ofinterest here are the political constraints on officialconsideration of the scenario that unfurled, and to usingsuch information to inform disaster preparedness. Thesewere threefold.

Officially the GOM refused to countenance planningfigures of more than 20,000 refugees, althoughunofficially figures of 70,000 were discussed (Suhrke etal. 2000). This severely hampered contingency planningand preparedness activity, precluding detailed planningfor camp sites, for example, until refugees were alreadyat Blace.

The tensions between the political and operationalimperatives of planning for a major refugee inflow withinMacedonia were echoed externally. The independentevaluation of UNHCR’s response notes that the majorityof NATO allies made the mistake of believing their ownpropaganda (Suhrke et al. 2000). They underestimatedthe impact of the bombardment on the dynamics ofconflict and ‘ethnic cleansing’, and assumed that theirvictory would be swift. The report indicates that therewere quiet warnings issued by the US that the refugeecrisis might intensify in March 1999, but these wentunheard by UNHCR and others amid the noisierinsistence of NATO’s humanitarian and militarycredentials. In the context of this study, it is notablethat not only UNHCR was unprepared for the outflux,but so too, were the majority of NATO governments.Striking, therefore, are the apparent limitations ofexisting political information sources. Since these areshaped by political interests nationally andinternationally, their usefulness as reliable sources forhumanitarian planning remains compromised.

The final factor shaping the political economy of earlywarning information available was the extent to which

systems existed to facilitate exchange across diplomaticand aid lines. Time precluded detailed collection ofprimary research on this issue, but such information aswas available suggested that while there had been someimportant innovations, such as the DFID-led ‘Vereker’group in the UK62, difficulties remained in terms oftranslating such high-level discussions into field-leveldecision-making. Interviews with DFID officials workingin other regions also indicated that while their accessto information from other departmental sources, suchas the FCO, had improved in recent years, the scope towhich this information was shared with operationalpartners was limited by the constraints ofconfidentiality.63

Humanitarian agencies themselves remain ambivalentas to whether and how to engage with sources ofpolitical information. For example, UNHCR declinedinvitations from NATO to engage in joint contingencyplanning (Suhrke et al. 2000).64

What the above indicates is the need for independentpolitical analysis that is connected with operationalhumanitarian capacity. In theory, the UN would appearto satisfy many of these conditions. Its universal mandatemight be seen to commit the organisation to theestablishment of information systems able to collect andanalyse information impartially and to inform its different‘arms’ — political, humanitarian, developmental. Thereality was somewhat different.

In Macedonia, the UN had deployed a conflictprevention and monitoring team (UNPREDEP) inDecember 1992. Following Macedonia’s recognitionof Taiwan, China vetoed the renewal of its mandate inearly 1999, forcing UNPREDEP to withdraw fromMacedonia three weeks before the NATO bombingstarted.65 Just when political analysis would have beenmost useful to the UN, its political mandate waswithdrawn. This left UNHCR, later with somereinforcement from OCHA, alone in carrying the mantlefor negotiations with the GOM.66 In other words, theUN’s capacity to engage in a political analysis on behalfof the system is contingent upon states’ consent. Thissuggests little space for generating messages likely toprove unpalatable to the state concerned or that questionthe international consensus on a particular issue.

In Afghanistan, international political analysis has beenfurther complicated by the nature of the Taliban, itssecrecy, sheer strangeness to Western observers andrejection of many of the rules and norms of internationaldiplomacy. The unimportance of Afghanistan and itsstrangeness have combined to produce simplistic andoften confrontational attitudes in Western policymakersand journalists often directed more at gaining supportfrom other Western lobby groups, such as feminists inthe US, than initiating any dialogue for peace. As oneBritish diplomat put it: ‘we get no letters on the failureof the 6+2 process, only the women's rights issue’.

In the early 1990s, the US ended its considerable

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missions, is unlikely to be affected by much that aidactors can do. The World Bank for instance estimatesthe value of the transit trade to be about $2.4bn, whilethe CAP raises in the region of $100m. Assistanceactivities are also, quite rightly, focused on the poorestand least powerful groups in society. As has beenpointed out,

unless peacemaking can appeal to the interestsof powerful economic actors and transformthem into agents of peace, it will be limited atbest to halting fighting in one place before socialand economic forces provoke it once againelsewhere in this dangerous region (Rubin,1999).

The Strategic Framework approach, however, whichconcentrates on the one hand on mediation betweenarmed groups, and on the other, on relief to the poorestcompletely ignores these actors. Thus, how the twoelements might be ‘coherent’ and mutually supportiveis left unaddressed.

5.2.2 The politics of need

The Serbian case demonstrated how the definition ofneed is shaped by national and international politics.As detailed in Section 5.1, the question in this case waswhether or not the likely shortages of energy in thewinter of 1999/2000 were serious enough to constitutea humanitarian crisis. If the term ‘humanitarian’ wasapplied, then this would imply an obligation to respondunconditionally; while the label ‘rehabilitation’ signifiedwaiting until a change of regime had taken place.68

Labelling the energy problem in Serbia as humanitarianwas particularly problematic because agencies lackcommonly accepted standards in this domain. It is notsimple to transfer experience from tropical emergencies,where needs are assessed in terms of anthropometricand health indicators, to contexts such as that in theBalkans. There is a lack of consensus within thehumanitarian community regarding how to definevulnerability and need in developed country contexts.This lack of clarity regarding what constitutes thehumanitarian caseload creates more room for politicalinvolvement in the definition of need. This suggeststhe need for humanitarian agencies to develop morerobust indicators of need and of standards in non-tropicalemergencies; for example, the development of Spherestandards relating to fuel and heating.

A second striking aspect of the Serbian energy case isthat while the EfD project invested considerable energyin seeking to link aid to the energy sector with a politicalstrategy, from a political perspective it missed the keyissue. The emergence of a strong parallel economyaround fuel and other goods as a result of sanctionsand shortage constitutes an important threat to thestability of Serbia and to the emergence of representativeand democratic institutions. The EfD project representeda relatively simplistic model of political change, based

investment in intelligence gathering against the Soviets,reducing the scope of information available as the warevolved post-1989. It is arguable that much of both theUN’s as well as Western government policy towardsAfghanistan has been based on ‘wrong assumptions’.The initial support of the US for the Taliban for instance,and their subsequent ’one-club’ policy on Bin Ladenrevealed misunderstandings and misconceptions of thenature of the Taliban and its support base. Informationgathering and analysis by all donors tends to be under-resourced and relegated to those concerned with aid.For the UK, of course, the ban on travel has furtherreduced its ability to analyse the situation, though routineinformation flows between DFID and the FCO appearto be reasonable. The problem, of course, is the lack ofany substantive political strategy driving it.

The UN’s mediation approach too has been argued torest on a number of misconceptions about the natureof the conflict in Afghanistan. While accepting that theUN could do little in the face of regional powerscontinuing to support factions, and great powers withlittle interest, Maley (1997d) argues that, part of theUN's failure rests on flawed analysis. This has includeda series of misreadings of the balance of forces, butmore fundamentally, a failure to realise that ‘The crisisconfronting Afghanistan runs deeper than the merecomposition of government. It turns more significantlyon the nature, function and structure of the state’ (Maley,1999, p. 196; emphasis in original). Part of the reasonfor this lies in pre-conceived notions about diplomacyand mediation, but part also in what many aid actorssee as the chronic weakness and under-staffing ofOSGAP and DPA over the years.

One of the results of the Strategic Framework has beenimproved information sharing between UN assistanceand political actors (Wiles et al. 1999). In the past, thepolitical side, according to one UN diplomat, ‘did notwant to be contaminated by the humanitarian’, thefeeling was that ‘they cannot be trusted and they donot understand politics’. The Strategic Frameworkprocess has helped to break down these barriers, atleast in terms of information exchange. This has beenin part spurred by the admission on the political sidethat ‘in many ways the humanitarians know more thanwe do’, about realities in the ground. However, theextent to which the Strategic Framework has resultedin a shared analysis of the situation and thus the possiblecoherence of assistance and political activities isquestionable.67 The Strategic Framework, for example,is noticeably silent about how this coherence or synergyis likely to be achieved and contents itself withstatements to that effect, assuming that the case forsynergy is obvious. It has thus not yet worked throughany kind of detailed strategy, based on a shared analysis,that might demonstrate the case.

One reason for this is that there is still an analyticalproblem at the heart of the Strategic Frameworkapproach. The political and economic dynamic of thewar, and the reason for the failure of subsequent UN

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��

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�� +�� ,��-Total bilateral odafor emergency and

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Total multilateral oda forhumanitarian assistance spent

through the EuropeanCommission

Total multilateral oda forhumanitarian assistance

spent through UNAgencies

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Multilateral oda spent onhumantiarian assistancethrough UN agencies

Bilateral oda spent onhumanitarian assistance

Figure 5.2Bilateral and multilateral humanitarian aid spending1988


In a recent report, Randel and German (2000) note thestrong trend towards bilateralisation of humanitarianresponse. In terms of financial flows, this is indicatedby donors earmarking their contributions to multilateralorganisations more tightly than in the past, and theirbypassing multilateral bodies such as UNHCR and WFPand contracting NGOs directly. In organisational termstoo, there have been a number of important changes inthe role of donor organisations in humanitarianresponse. No longer confined to the role of the‘chequebook’ for the humanitarian system, donorgovernments are now seeking greater involvement inhumanitarian decision-making, in some cases increasingtheir proximity to the field, in part to ensure thecoherence of donor governments’ response to conflict.This section focuses on these organisational dimensionsof bilateralisation.

5.3.1 Bilateralisation of aid coordination: theAfghanistan Support Group

Two mechanisms coordinate external political andassistance activities in Afghanistan. The ‘6+2 Group’, isconvened by DPA and comprises Afghanistan'sneighbours with Russia and the US. Aid, and its role inpeace building, is ‘not on its radar’, perhaps an indicationof the importance of aid in the political calculations ofthose closest to the conflict.

The ASG is a Western donor group, convened by arotating chair. Its primary focus is aid and the StrategicFramework, but it also discusses political, peace-buildingand human rights issues. The Stockholm 1998 ASG forinstance ‘called upon the Taliban to cease providing asafe haven for such individuals [international terrorists]’(ASG, 1998). A regular feature on the ASG agenda isnarcotics control. It discusses broad policy issues andis supposed to bring some coherence to donorapproaches and provide ‘guidance’ to implementingagencies.

upon assumptions regarding the political behaviour ofthe electorate. However, it was implemented amidcontinued sanctions that, in addition to alienating asignificant section of Serb public opinion,69 were alsoserving to reinforce the political positions of the verygroups Western governments opposed. In this context,the ‘politicisation’ of humanitarian space, entailed bycontesting need and the confused presentation of EfD,yielded only marginal political gains, but entailedsignificant costs to the credibility of the humanitariansystem.

In Afghanistan, the absence of comprehensive andagreed indicators of need have also allowed factors otherthan impartiality to determine funding. It has alreadybeen noted that after the war against the Soviets finished,funding declined steeply, despite the fact the fightingcontinued. Indeed the destruction of Kabul and theoutflow of refugees occurred mostly after the end ofthe war.70

On 8 December 1998, at a time when DFID was refusingto fund NGOs to send expatriates to Afghanistan, in awritten answer to a parliamentary question, Clare Shortasserted: ‘The humanitarian situation inside Afghanistan— in terms of basic needs — is under reasonable controlat the present time’. She did admit need might getworse if the winter was bad. Reliable and comprehensivestatistics are hard to come by in Afghanistan, but giventhe high rates of maternal mortality, rising malnutritionamong children in Kabul and other indicators,71 todescribe the situation in Afghanistan at any time in thepast 20 years as ‘under control’ might be seen assurprising.

5.3 Mechanisms for coherence: the trendtowards bilateralisation

Figure 5.1Multilateral and bilateral humanitarian assistancespending 1988


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The US is the only country on both groups. There areno European powers on the 6 + 2, despite the fact thatEuropean states individually, and through the EU,provide the majority of aid to Afghanistan: a structuraloddity that could be said to mitigate against coherence,but may in fact be symptomatic of the relativeunimportance of aid in the political process.

The primary success of the ASG has probably been tokeep the pressure up on the UN system to accept theStrategic Framework, which, for all its weaknesses, doesrepresent a significant step forward for the UN, at leastin terms of coordinated assistance strategies (Wiles etal., 1999). While the ASG and the Strategic Frameworkare separate initiatives, and not formally related, thetwo mechanisms have developed a close relationship.

In other ways, the role of the ASG has been moreambivalent. As a mechanism for mobilising funding ithas been decidedly equivocal — funding in 1998particularly was very low and to some extent also in1999 (the overall figures are pushed up by a substantialrise in US funds). There are a number of operationalreasons for this, but by having a broad agenda includinghuman rights and peace, the ASG seems to have servedto reinforce among donors a feeling that they do notwant to spend much money in Afghanistan while thecurrent situation continues.72 This is too loose a policyto be called conditionality, which would imply thatspecific conditions have to be met, but it probably hasthe same impact in terms of reducing available fundsand introducing criteria other than need in determiningfunding. Because there is little to spend money on interms of building peace, ‘coherence’ here seems to haveserved to reduce available funds, not increase them.

In terms of assistance coordination, the UN has investedconsiderable effort in moving the Consolidated AppealProcess in Afghanistan away from the usual shoppinglist and towards a more coherent programme. Onecomponent of the Strategic Framework was acommitment from donors that they would only fundprogrammes that were part of it. Donors, however,continue to cherry pick, ignore the Coordinator’srecommendations, and reserve the right to fund outsideit, thus undermining the UN Coordinator’s ability todevelop a coherent strategy. Food aid, emergencyassistance and demining regularly get funded but longerterm projects and rights-based programmes do not attractthe required level of funding, despite regular rhetoricalsupport at ASG meetings. The original proposal of acommon fund for the funding of the Strategic Frameworkwas opposed by some donors as well as by UN agencies.Indeed, the ASG, by bringing the donors closer to theprogramme design process, seems to have arrived at aposition where at the Ottawa 1999 ASG:

UN agencies and donors stated that donorintentions seemed to trigger programme designrather than the actual needs on the ground.ACBAR suggested that donors were tooinvolved in programme design and

implementation (OCHA (1999) ‘AfghanistanSupport Group, Highlights of Ottawa Meeting,8–9 December 1999’, New York).

There has also been disagreement between donors overpolicy issues, such as capacity building of the authoritiesand over the security issue. As one donor representativeput it ‘...coordination does not mean we have to agreewith each other’. The irony of course is that that isexactly what coordination, as pushed by the donors inthe Strategic Framework, does mean. No conditionalitycan be applied to donors who break the rules. Overtime there has also been a growing distance betweenthe British and US position and other donors, particularlyover the security issue, which has reduced consensus.Despite UK protests to the contrary, the restriction onUK nationals is still seen as support for America’sisolationist approach.

The ASG has also been used as a forum for some donorsto push to the fore concerns that are not necessarilyvery high on the aid agenda,73 such as the US in regardto drugs, and which often move into territory moreusually thought of as political. Peace building, narcoticsand human rights all figure large at the ASG, but becausethe ASG is to all intents and purposes an aid coordinationbody, the solution to these problems becomes aprojectised aid approach rather than a political one.Instead of aid becoming an adjunct to a politicalapproach, it becomes the sole approach. Although theASG and the Strategic Framework are not formallylinked, the explicit ‘coherence’ of aid and politics inthe Strategic Framework has provided the excuse forthis. This represents in effect a delegation ofresponsibility for political action on to the assistancesphere.

Perhaps most importantly though, by redefining aid aspolitics through making it part of a ‘coherent’ strategy,donors have come to believe, and to argue, that theyare doing something for peace building through theirsupport for the Strategic Framework, even if it is justfunding assistance.74 Thus the post-Rwanda lesson thataid cannot deal with political problems is squared incountries where Western donor governments have nopolitical interests but are prepared to provide aid. Aidis simply redefined as politics and so, by funding theStrategic Framework, donors are taking political action.This parallels the way, pointed out earlier, in whichproviding public moral and official support for the UNmission allows donors to do very little actual politics.

5.3.2 Bilateralisation of negotiation

Involvement by NATO governments, particularly theUS, was critical in securing refuge for Albanian Kosovarsin Macedonia in April 1999. This case is one wherepolitical and military actors had a comparative advantageover humanitarian actors and their involvement securedhumanitarian objectives. Political and military actorshad at their disposal important assets and bargainingchips that a body such as UNHCR clearly does not.

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These include: the ability to provide political legitimationin the international community; access to key decision-makers in the host government; diplomatic infrastructurein the shape of embassies; and significant stand-bycapacity for logistics and engineering works. In thecase of Macedonia, a further important incentive thatdiplomats could offer was with regard to burden sharing,under the HEP, which relied upon agreement fromministries of the interior in the respective homecountries.

The Macedonia case was unusual in attracting this sortof political engagement, which, as indicated above, wasmotivated by a combination of humanitarian, politicaland military concerns. The evidence suggests that,despite the multiplicity of agendas driving thesenegotiations, in the short-term, the outcome was positivein humanitarian terms. Not only was the borderunblocked, the deployment of the military enabledcamps to be constructed at a pace and to a standardthat civilian organisations could not have achieved inthe time available.

While concerns have been raised about the protectionimplications of the HTP and HEP in relation to bothMacedonia itself and in terms of future refugeeemergencies75, overall the involvement of political actorsin the negotiations did not seem to entail significantcompromise on protection standards. While theprinciple of unconditional asylum was violated, thereappeared to be consensus among those interviewed inSkopje and elsewhere, that compromising on thisprinciple was necessary in order to protect thoserefugees at Blace.

Suhrke et al. (2000) conclude that UNHCR was effectivein providing information regarding protection andinternational law to the diplomatic community in Skopjeand elsewhere with information, and that this was usedby diplomats in the course of negotiations with theGOM. This view is contested by some of thoseinterviewed by this study, who portrayed a much morechaotic and unstructured process of negotiation withlittle room to discuss legal niceties. The presence ofstandards and benchmarks, however, was seen by manyto have been useful. They reminded the GOM of itsobligations under international law. Adherence tointernational norms is increasingly a condition ofinclusion in international society and thus internationallegitimation (Donnelly 1998).

The presence in the region of a very large media corp,that could refer to international legal standards, wasseen by some informants to have kept the politicalprocess ‘honest’. Thus the idea of a ‘feedback loop’,whereby political intervention is regulated by publicopinion in donor countries, informed by a media thatcan scrutinise standards seemed important in theMacedonian context. One informant described this as‘democracy at work’, whereby Western publics couldpressure their political representatives to act for theinternational good. This suggests the need for sustained

advocacy and public information in order to generate astrong constituency for humanitarian action, and indeedprotect it from unwelcome political encroachment.

Even in the Macedonian case, where the political stakeswere high, political support for protection declined oncethe immediate crisis over asylum was over. The capacityof the diplomatic machine to sustain politicalintervention for humanitarian purposes seems to havebeen limited.76 The lack of investment in protection inthe camps meant that there remained persistent securityproblems with NGO camp managers able to call onlittle support from UNHCR or others.77

In Afghanistan, in many ways the reverse is the case.Donor governments have little contact with the Talibanor much to do with Afghanistan at all. Western embassiesin Islamabad typically have someone with responsibilityfor Afghanistan, often, as with the British and the Dutch,this post focuses on aid not diplomacy. DPA too hasben understaffed at both the Islamabad office and inNew York, and in Afghanistan itself. There is littlecapacity to do analysis or engage in diplomacy. Thisputs the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator in an awkwardposition as he becomes the international community'sde facto representative.78 Again, this is a form ofdelegation of political responsibilities to thehumanitarian sector. Perhaps surprisingly though, theUN Special Mission in Afghanistan (UNSMA) escapesthe level of scrutiny and censure at ASG meetings thatdonors direct at some of the agencies.

5.3.3 Direct contracting and field presence:bilateral contracting, embassies and fieldoffices

Closer donor involvement in humanitarian decision-making has required a number of organisationalchanges. These relate to the contractual environmentand to the structures available for representation.

While in Macedonia some NGOs, such as Oxfam,advocated for investment in, and respect for, multilateralcoordination through UNHCR, other NGOs seem to havebeen more open to cutting out the ‘middle-man’ in thehumanitarian contractual chain. One NGOrepresentative, disappointed by UNHCR’s performanceas operational coordinator, described the organisationas a ‘speed-bump’ in NGO response. He contrastedthe one day it could take to secure a contract from theUS government, compared with the 6–8 weeks requiredto access the same resources when channelled throughUNHCR. In other words, the trend towards directcontracting of NGOs is driven by demand, as well assupply.

The extent to which donor governments becamethemselves operational in the Kosovo crisis is probablyunparalleled. It was British and American diplomats,for example, who took the lead on identifying sites forthe construction of refugee camps, not UNHCR. Nationalcontingents were deployed to construct and manage

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camps, although in positive contrast to Albania, inMacedonia they actively sought to relinquish this roleas quickly as possible to the UN and NGOs.

The UK set up a DFID field office in Skopje.Interestingly, despite the UK’s early enthusiasm forpolitically coherent humanitarian action (see Chapter3), the field office did not serve as a basis for linkinghumanitarian action with a broader strategy of conflictreduction. Rather, it took a logistics-driven, relief-oriented approach, with the primary function of theoffice being to facilitate rapid disbursement of fundsand provide accessible briefings to London on a rapidlyevolving situation. As a mechanism for enhancingaccountability, the office seems to have added relativelylittle. While undoubtedly a field presence enabled DFIDquickly to identify opportunities and threats to theinterventions it was funding, it lacked capacity forextensive monitoring of implementation, and was notroutinely involved in ex post evaluations, such as thatof UNICEF’s programme. Evaluation of the role of suchfield offices and their added value would be insightful.

In contrast to the UK, the Dutch government has largelyresisted the bilateral route, emphasising the need forconstructive engagement with its multilateral partners,particularly UNHCR in the Macedonian case.79 Incommon with the UK, the Dutch deployed militaryforces to support camp construction. Reflecting theorganisation of the Dutch aid programme moregenerally, where the aid programme is managed atembassy level, there is closer integration between theaid and diplomatic work of the embassy than is thecase with the UK. However, this appears to be morefor long-term development assistance than forhumanitarian aid.80

The Serbian case represented very different conditionsfor bilateralisation, and thus demanded a differentresponse. The US has no diplomatic relations withBelgrade, while the UK and Dutch governments haveonly limited representation. This ‘politics by omission’mode prohibits the use of the direct aid interventionstrategies, such as direct contracting with NGOs andthe establishment of field offices. Instead, donors relyupon influencing the operation of multilateral andinternational organisations. Thus, for example, theBritish and Dutch governments relied heavily upon EUchannels to deliver aid to Serbia, specifically ECHO andthe Obnova fund for EfD. The existence of multilateralchannels enabled these governments to argue that theywere able to meet humanitarian need, while maximisingtheir own distance from Serbia.

5.4 Blurring the lines: conditions andconditionality

Increasingly, humanitarian aid is portrayed as part of acoherent strategy of conflict reduction, in part becauseit is seen as able to mitigate the effects of political andmilitary action undertaken by donor governments

themselves. Thus, for example, in Serbia, the EfD projectgrew out of a need to quell anxiety among southernEU member states regarding the impact of sanctions.In Macedonia, the outpouring of aid sought to salvethe costs of the NATO-hastened mass expulsions ofKosovar Albanians.

At the same time, there was a strikingly strong sentimentin some quarters that humanitarian aid might alsoundermine political strategies designed to force a peacesettlement. The problem is that, whereas the politicalversus humanitarian distinction is in fact relatively clear,at least in terms of intention, because of the ethical ruleof impartiality imposed on humanitarian action, thedistinction between ‘good’ or altruistically driven politicalaction and national interest is much harder to define.This is particularly hard in an era of ‘ethical’ foreignpolicy, when foreign policy is assumed to have a moraldimension as well.

Thus the US and UK restriction on UN personnel andthe UK restriction on funding of NGOs was widelyperceived as an attempt to isolate and pressure theTaliban through the withdrawal of the UN. While theresearch did not focus on the US, in the case of the UKhowever, the ‘politics’ of the UK approach are probablymore to do with the domestic bureaucratic politicsbetween DFID and the UK NGOs, in which who isresponsible for security, agency or funder, has played arole, a distaste for the Taliban and what they stand for,and a concern that aid was likely to be manipulated bythem for their own ends. Thus the second, but largelyignored, element the DFID regulations to NGOs thatcontained the security conditions, imposed severerestrictions on any form of ‘capacity building withministries or technical departments. The coincidenceof interest with a traditional Security Council partnerwould not have been missed of course, especially byother actors and is revealing of the shifts in the natureof ‘politicisation’. Thus what from a DFID point of viewwas seen as a ‘principled’ stand, both on security andrelations with the Taliban, was perceived by many theUK’s partners, donor government and agencies, as acynical political ploy. The UK position was ‘politicised’,but not for the reasons many took it to be.

A further problem is the apparently selective use ofprinciples. In both Serbia and Afghanistan, that the‘conditions’ for effective aid were not in place was usedto justify minimal giving. This strategy necessarily riskscreating some contradictions. For example, the UK hasargued that the conditions do not exist for the deliveryof effective and principled aid to Serbia, and queriedthe extent of humanitarian need in the country. At thesame time, the UK provides funding to Serbia throughECHO and the UN. Avoiding such contradictionsinvolves active engagement with implementing partnersto define closely the conditions under which support isprovided. This has been the tactic that the US amongothers has pursued with regard to WFP. Others use theYugoslav Red Cross (YRC) as an implementing partner.Following allegations that the YRC is uncomfortably

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close to the current government, it has been subject towhat one senior UN official described as: ‘...a level ofscrutiny not seen elsewhere, for example regarding its$70/tonne overhead on delivery of food aid’.81

Responding to these concerns has demanded that UNand Red Cross officials spend considerable time briefingofficials and congressmen in Washington.82

Arguably, what this type of scenario represents isincreased donor scrutiny of the accountability ofhumanitarian agencies and closer monitoring of theiradherence to basic principles of impartiality andneutrality. What is telling, however, is that theseconcerns are not raised consistently across emergencies.It is the selectivity of this scrutiny that makes it difficultto resist the conclusion that the accountability andprinciples agendas are being co-opted to justify a newform of political humanitarianism.

The research suggests further that the use ofhumanitarian aid as a lever in conflict management isalso problematic technically. In the case of Serbia, theEfD was designed to meet humanitarian need, but forpolitical reasons. Not only were the decision-makingand implementation procedures of the EUoverwhelmingly complex, limiting the timeliness andscope of the programme, but the model also provedflawed in terms of the politics it used. In particular,politicians and diplomats have sought to anchor thelegitimacy of the project in Serb civil society, in particularthe independent opposition group, G17, that providedthe initial EfD concept.83 At the same time, the disunityof the opposition, combined with bureaucratic concernsregarding accountability, meant that the implementationof EfD was undertaken without the direct involvementof Serb opposition groups, but rather as a straightforwarddelivery of goods, monitored by an international logisticscompany. In this sense, it did not constitute an effectivemeans of building the capacity or legitimacy of theopposition. This mechanism for implementation furthercompromised the political legitimacy of the project itself,which could no longer establish a direct link with the‘good Serb’, resembling rather a crude piece of Westernpolitical engineering in a sovereign state.

Part of the reason why politicians and diplomats lookedto aid budgets, and initially humanitarian aid budgets,to finance this sort of initiative is that they complainthat ministries of foreign affairs lack funds to operate apolitical strategy.84 The financial benefits of coherenceto the diplomatic strand are therefore evident. At thesame time, despite an emerging orthodoxy within aidcircles that aid should be used as part of a strategy forconflict management, in relation to the case studiesreported here, aid bureaucrats resisted the incorporationof humanitarian aid funds into the political strategiesproposed by their diplomatic counterparts.

So, for example, one of the reasons why EfD remaineda small, pilot project was because the EC was unable tosecure additional voluntary contributions from aidministries in EU member states. The Dutch government

actively resisted the use of ECHO funds to finance EfD,while DFID refused to contribute additional resources,despite FCO encouragement.85

In Afghanistan, the scale of aid resources are dwarfedby the quantities of military aid provided by the country’sneighbours and the revenues gained from the drugsand transit trade. Furthermore, the Taliban’s goals havelittle to do with administration or welfare, but are ratherconcerned with the creation of an Islamic state,withholding aid is thus unlikely to be an effectiveapproach.

In this context, it is difficult to avoid the conclusionthat in the absence of any major innovation in the toolsof diplomacy, particularly in non-strategic countries,there is likely to be increasing political pressure on aidbudgets to contribute to the new security agenda. Atpresent official aid agencies seem ill-equipped to resistsuch pressure. They are treading an increasingly blurredline arguing that conflict reduction is a legitimate goalof aid, including humanitarian aid; and that conditionalityis legitimate in order to ensure aid effectiveness, whilealso seeking to maintain humanitarian principles.

One tool that does appear to have proved effective insharpening these lines is legislation. A significant partof ECHO’s argument against the use of aid funds tofinance EfD was that it would have violated theregulation governing use of its funds.86 This states that:

the sole aim [of humanitarian aid] ... is to preventor relieve human suffering [and] is accorded tovictims without discrimination on the groundsof race, ethnic group, religion, age, sex, age,nationality or political affiliation, and must notbe guided by, or subject to, politicalconsiderations. (Official Journal of the EuropeanCommunities 1996)

This argument seems have been persuasive, forcing theEuropean Council and Commission to look elsewherefor funds.87

5.5 Chapter summary

The evidence from the four case studies reinforces thefindings of the analysis of global trends in internationalpolicy. In particular, it suggests that the model ofcoherence promised in the early 1990s of renewedpolitical engagement and integrated management ofpolitical, humanitarian and developmental initiatives inconflict-affected countries remains largely elusive.Whereas the humanitarian part of the equation hasundergone significant structural and conceptual shiftsin order to accommodate coherence, the political parthas not. The Macedonian case was exceptional insecuring a high level of political engagement to promotea humanitarian end, and it is unlikely that similarcircumstances will recur. What it demonstrated,

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however, is that where there is a convergence of politicaland humanitarian interests, significant assets can bemobilised that secure positive humanitarian gains.However, the costs of this exercise to the multilateralsystem and to long-term protection regimes remainuncounted.

More commonplace is a much more messy interpretationof ‘coherence’ characterised by:

• The delegation of responsibility for politicalanalysis and management from the sphere ofdiplomacy to that of humanitarian action.

• In the absence of other effective tools, anincreasing interest within diplomatic circles inusing (or withholding) humanitarian assets as

part of a political strategy. Such strategies notonly jeopardise humanitarian principles, buttheir political yield would also seem marginal.

• Increasing overlap and confusion between thetechnical conditions required for effectiveaccountability of humanitarian action, andpolitical conditionality on humanitarianassistance, largely because operating conditionsare perceived to be scrutinised more or lessintensively in different countries depending onthe particular political relations between donorand recipient countries.

• Increased information exchange, but a lack ofclear leadership and sufficient capacity totranslate robust political analysis into commonprogramming tactics.

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6.1 Coherence and liberal peace

6.1.1 ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’

In common with other policy fashions, such asparticipation and sustainable development, the conceptof coherence risks losing its meaning. Unravelling thespaghetti-like strands of the coherence debate exposesa melange of expectations and meanings. A range ofdifferent types of coherence are embraced by the term:between aid and politics (political coherence); betweendifferent humanitarian actors (relief coordination); andbetween relief and development aid. Common to thesedifferent strands of debate is a concern to break downconceptual, institutional and budgetary boundaries inorder to enhance the coherence of response.

What such discussions fail to appreciate is the idea thatcoherence is a process not an outcome. Of itselfcoherence is value neutral, it is as easy (if not easier)to be consistently wrong than right. The portrayal ofcoherence as good in itself is perhaps not as guilelessas it first seems. Seen from another perspective, glossingover the issue of who is defining the content of coherentpolicies and assessing their ‘rightness’ is symptomaticof a particular hegemonic order. As such, even the actof questioning their legitimacy is beyond the pale.

Dillon and Reid (2000) have described this order asresting on the idea of a liberal peace that is shapingglobal governance. Tracing its ancestry back to theformation of consensus on policies such as structuraladjustment,88 this new order seeks conformity to normsof economic and political behaviour, ranging from tradeliberalisation to democratisation. To paraphrase Jackson(1990), membership of the international community isno longer defined purely or primarily in juridicalsovereignty, but is contingent upon states delivering itsempirical elements.

This study is concerned with international policy towardsthose states that are either unwilling or unable toconform to international norms of statehood. Bydefinition, humanitarian assistance in complex politicalemergencies89 is delivered in contexts characterised byextensive abuses of human rights by state and non-state actors; breakdowns in public authority andadministration; an absence of democratic institutionsand processes; and strong parallel economies. It is inthese contexts that the dominant liberal peace paradigmhas most difficulty in engaging.

The liberal peace framework is reflected in an emergingconsensus towards selectivity of development aidprovision. Embodied in the idea of partnership, theUK White Paper, the Netherlands’ aid policy under

Minister Herfkens, the World Bank’s ComprehensiveDevelopment Framework and the UN’s UNDAF, are thebasic conditions that are assumed to be required fordevelopment to take place and for developmentassistance to be effective. Importantly, each of theseinitiatives assumes that these parameters are under thecontrol of states, in other words, that the achievementof a liberal peace is a matter of internal policy choice.

The humanitarian caseload increasingly comprises thosecountries that have fallen off, or rather have beenexcluded from, the geo-political and the developmentassistance map. Historically, humanitarian aid has beenexempt from the conditionalities applied to developmentassistance. The unconditional character of humanitarianaid was a two-way street: the absence of politicalconditions reflected the fact that, unlike developmentassistance, it did not signify international legitimationof state and non-state actors under whose controlrecipients live.90

In diverse quarters, and for diverse reasons, theunconditional character of humanitarian assistance isnow under thorough review. This is being driven by acomplex range of factors, including:

• The recognition that conventional diplomacy,which relied on an appeal to states’ interests,is proving ill-equipped to deal with ‘post’-modern conflicts. New leverage points are thusbeing sought. The withholding, or selectiveprovision, of humanitarian assistance isemerging as one potential tool in post-modernconflict-management techniques.

• The rewriting of the lessons of 1994 crisis inRwanda: namely that because aid fuels conflict,aid interventions require political management.(This is in contrast to the findings of the JointEvaluation of the International Response thatconcluded that it was the absence andineffectiveness of the political response thatcompromised protection of and assistance tothe victims.91)

• The perception that unconditional humanitarianassistance is not effective. Certain minimumconditions must be in place if aid is to beeffective in aiding and protecting victims ofconflict. These include: consent of warringparties; security; independent access forassessment; and monitoring of needs anddistributions.

• That independence of humanitarian action hasbecome an excuse for unaccountablehumanitarian action. Working outside thecontrol of state structures, and with weak links

Chapter 6Conclusions and recommendations

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to the communities they serve, humanitarianagencies are often hard pushed to quantify theirimpact and to justify their allocation ofresources.

These political and operational critiques are increasinglyconflated to justify the integration of humanitarianobjectives within a wider international policy framework,and appeal to values of peace and of value for money.Less clear is precisely who is charge of this integratedagenda.

The answer to this question necessarily varies accordingto the location of the specific crisis. As argued in Chapter3, the conventional division of labour between foreignministries and departments and aid agencies has beenreworked over the past decade. As the distinctionbetween aid and foreign policy has broken down,replaced with the idea of international policy, soresponsibility for implementing the liberal peace hasbecome divided between respective departmentsaccording to the strategic (un)importance of a conflict.Within this division of labour, departments responsiblefor humanitarian policy are simultaneously at the bottomof the diplomatic pecking order, but in relation to thecountries for which they are responsible, they areassuming considerable power and influence.92

Such an analysis suggests that it would be wrong toconceive the ‘politicisation’ of humanitarian aid simplyas politicians/diplomats coercively directing aidoperations. Something more subtle and sophisticatedthan this is taking place. Aid agencies themselves areassuming responsibility for political engagement, indoing so they are filling the space largely vacated bydepartments and organisations with a political mandate.Thus, humanitarian aid is no longer a substitute forpolitical action (Eriksson 1996), it is the primary formof political engagement responsible for delivering aliberal peace (Macrae 1998).

At first sight, the politics of good international citizenship,embraced by the UK in its Third Way foreign policy,and in similar terms by the Netherlands, appears tocomplement humanitarian values with its commitmentto human rights. However, there are two problemsthat emerge with it.

First, why don’t all states subscribe to these values of aliberal peace? Second, what should be done when statesdo not subscribe to them?

The first question is clearly complex and space(intellectual and otherwise) precludes a detailed anddefinitive answer across countries. What is clear,however, is that current policy emphasises the internalcauses of conflict, locating responsibility for theirresolution within states (Macrae 1996). The assumptionthat these causes can be addressed by changes in states’behaviour is what sustains current discussions regardingthe use of aid as an incentive and disincentive for peace.

Yet such an approach sits awkwardly with history andthe emerging emphasis on globalisation. Not only hasexternal intervention complicated and fuelled internaldynamics, but the political economy of conflict extendsbeyond national borders, relying upon transnationalnetworks (European Council 1997), driven in part bythe forces of globalisation (Duffield 1998). The liberalpeace model therefore risks fundamentallymisunderstanding the nature of conflict, and is thereforeill-equipped to design solutions to it.93

As indicated in Chapter 3, this has important implicationsfor the legitimacy and feasibility of the idea ofinternational community, embodied in Third Way foreignpolicy. Specifically, the effectiveness of selective politicaland aid engagement marginalises pariah states, it doesn’tdeal with them. As humanitarian aid policy becomesintegrated into this paradigm, so it becomes positionedwithin a particular set of values. In the process of thispositioning, the principles that have guidedhumanitarian action for over a century — impartialityand neutrality — are necessarily compromised.

Neutrality — in other words, not taking a politicalposition with respect to a conflict — is increasinglyseen as unethical position.94 By implication if one isnot neutral, then one has a position, and increasinglythis position is defined by the mono-ethics of the liberalpeace. Importantly many humanitarian actors,particularly those who have their roots in development,share the tenets of this model. What is being slowlyrecognised, however, is that in claiming that aid canand should be used as part of a strategy of conflictmanagement, the quality of humanitarian space is beingsacrificed. Thus, some of the most prominent advocatesof the ‘new humanitarianism’ are now revising it.

6.1.2 Beyond coherence: defining acomplementary ‘politics’

The idea that humanitarian action is apolitical is clearlynot sustainable. The political impact of humanitarianaction on conflict has been well documented,particularly over the past decade (see, for exampleDuffield 1994; Keen 1991; Macrae & Zwi 1994). Asargued above, less important than the process ofcoherence, is its content. Specifically, what constitutesthe ‘right’ type of political framework to informhumanitarian action. Few of those interviewed had aclear answer to this question. Many recognised,however, that the failure to define this meant thathumanitarian agencies were confused when their callsfor ‘political action’ were answered, but answered‘wrongly’.

In his history of the ICRC, Forsythe (1977) distinguishesbetween three types of politics:

• Realpolitik competition among actors in worldpolitics for power, prestige and resources.

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• Partisan politics, that is factional politics,competition among groups within a nation forwhat there is to get.

• World politics, in other words ‘the competitionand struggle to make and implement publicpolicy’.

He argues that ICRC, perhaps the embodiment ofhumanitarianism, tries to avoid action motivated by adesire to help one actor win some sort of victory inworld politics over another, or to help one factiontriumph over a rival within a nation. But this does notmean that ICRC does not affect these forms of politics.Instead, what ICRC tries to engage in is ‘world politics’.If the ICRC wishes to promote respect for IHL in armedconflicts, if it wishes to improve the internationalprotection of political prisoner, it must engage in astruggle to get these values implemented in the publicpolicy of nations.

Freyomon (1972, cited in Delorenzi 1999) sheds furtherlight on the distinctions between different types ofpolitics:

above all we should recognise that humanitarianaction cannot be isolated from its political

context and that it therefore has a politicalcontent. This means that all humanitarianorganisations must define a long-termhumanitarian policy based on a serious analysisof several actors — this humanitarian policy inturn implies a humanitarian strategy distinctfrom tactical moves imposed by the variety ofcrisis. Neglect of this work of reflection leadsto contradiction, confusion and what is worse,the degradation of humanitarian action to thelevel of an instrument of political actors(emphasis added).

In other words, that those involved in humanitarianaction need to be clear regarding the terms under whichthey engage with public policy actors in conflict-affectedcountries themselves and elsewhere.

Figure 6.1 builds upon Forsythe’s categorisation ofpolitics. It shows how securing humanitarian space iscontingent upon an active process of negotiating withother forms of politics within a particular conflict settingand internationally. Table 6.1 unpacks these categoriesfurther, identifies the key players within this politicalsystem and what drives them to respect or underminehumanitarian space.

Figure 6.1 The relationship between ‘humanitarian politics’ and other forms of politics

‘Politicisation’ of humanitarian assistance = where humanitarian politics overlaps with other forms of politics

DOMESTICDONORPOLITICS

POLITICS OF NATIONALINTEREST OF DONOR

STATESPOLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL

SOLIDARITY OF DONORSTATES

POLITICS OF ACONFLICT

BUREAUCRATICPOLITICS

PARTIALFUNDING

PROMOTION OF IHL,

FUNDING AGENCIES,

PEACE BUILDING,STRATEGIC

FRAMEWORK

STRATEGICFRAMEWORK

SECURITY

REFUGEES

GENDER

DRUGS

DIVERSION,DENIAL OFACCESS etc

HUMANITARIANPOLITICS

(OR ‘SPACE’)

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Table 6.1

Forms of politics affecting humanitarian ‘space’

lanoitaNfotseretni

setatsronod

lanoitanretnIdoog

pihsnezitic

citsemoDfoseicilop

setatsronod

tcilfnoCscitilop

nairatinamuHscitilop

citarcuaeruBscitilop

sreyalP setatSlanoitan-snarT

snoitaroproc)NU(

NU,setatS)sOGN(

seitraplacitiloP gnirraW,seitrapssenisubdetseretni(

)setats

gnirraw,seicnegA,NU(seitraplanoitanretni)ytinummoc

ronod,seicnegAseirtsinim

sekatS lanoitaN,htlaew,rewop

lavivrus

,ytiruces,ecaeP,tnempolevedsthgirnamuh

tnemnrevoG ,etatsehT,secruoser

elpoep

LHIroftcepseRseitrapgnirrawyb

,gnidliuberipmEycilop

noitatnemelpmi

/seigetartSycilop

stnemurtsni

,ycamolpiD,edart

raw

tnempoleveD,ecnatsissa

,ytilanoitidnoc,snoitcnas

'nairatinamuh',raw

'ecnerehoc'

,noitubirtsid-eR.ctenoitaluger

cinhtEnoitalupinam

,noitaderpsthgirnamuh

,esubanoitalupinam

diafo

,noisausreP,noitanimessid

ecnatsissa)noitanmednoc(

,gnirutcurtseRgnidnufronod

,smsinahcem,ytiruces

noitasilaretalib

anerA ,seissabmElanoiger,secnailla

ytiruceSOTW,licnuoC

dlroW,NUFMIdnaknaBtnempoleveD

,CAD,seirtsinimyraicifeneb

setats

,tnemailraPaidem

,yrtnuoClanoiger

sretroppus)NU(

gnirraw/ycnegAytrap

,NU,snoitaitogen)sserpeht(

,sPAC,mroferNU

cigetartSkrowemarF

yeKstnempoleved

morftaerteR'cigetarts-non'

tfihs,setatsraWdloCmorf

otseixorp'ytrap-driht',noitnevretni

noitinifed-erlanoitanfo

,ytirucesytngierevos

'retfos'

noitartnecnoC'doog'no,seirtnuoc

nisnoitcuder,adolabolg

fonoitarapesmorfDIFD

OCF

pu-denioJ,tnemnrevog

'yaW-drihT',scitilop

gnisaercniotytilitsoh

seegufer

fohtworGraw'

,'seimonocesetatsdeliaf

dnagninedaorBfogninepeednairatinamuh

,adnega'ecnerehoc'

,ytilibatnuoccAgniworg

citarcuaerubnimodeerf

saeracigetarts-non

seluRdnalagel()'lamrofni'

lanoitaNtseretni

,eulavemerpus:tub

lanoitanretni,walLHI

namuH','ytirucesdnaecaep

tnempoleved,llarofdoog

mret-gnol'doogretaerg

-trohsseifitsujmret

,'sesimorpmocsthgirnamuh

LHI,seitaert

waLlanoitaN :ytilanoitnevnoC,ytinamuh

,ytilaitrapmi,ytilartuen

,)noitercsid(rednutubmorftaerht

adnegaecnerehoc

dnaycneiciffE,ssenevitceffe

,ytiralugerlaicnanif'elursetadnaM'

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Mapping categories like these against the findings ofthis research suggests that the shifting definition anddynamics of political interests is resulting in newopportunities and threats:

• In the sphere of realpolitik, foreign policy actorsare making increasing claims on humanitarianaid. This was evident in the case of Energy forDemocracy. More broadly, there is evidencethat foreign policy actors are seeinghumanitarian assistance as a potentially usefultool in conflict management and that they wishto institutionalise this, for example, by securingresources and defining a hierarchy of politicalmanagement, with politicians in charge.95 To asignificant extent, these actors have beenencouraged in this view by those aid actorswho have claimed that aid can and should bepart of an integrated political strategy.

• At the same time, the potential value of thepolitics of good international citizenship is thatits commitment to principles provides a seriesof benchmarks that can be used to ensure thatdiplomatic interventions support rather thanundermine humanitarian objectives. In the caseof both Serbia and Macedonia, humanitarianactors used the law to remind political actorsof their obligations in the affected country andelsewhere.

• This process of accountability is enhancedwhere there is a strong public constituency,reinforced by media exposure.

• Building this constituency is difficult, however.Different members of the humanitarian ‘system’send different messages to the media, politicalactors and indeed to each other, regarding theterms under which they are engaging incomplex emergencies. This fuelsmisunderstanding and suspicion, and furtherweakens the ability of these actors to sustainhumanitarian space internationally and inrelation to specific conflicts.

• Important gains have been made in overcomingsome of the bureaucratic divisions that existedbetween aid and political organisations.Contacts have become routinised, enabling staffto familiarise themselves with differentorganisational cultures and to exchangeinformation.

• The extent to which this has translated intojoint planning, however, remains very limited.The strategic framework process is an obviouscase where the objective of integrated planningwas quickly relegated to the establishment ofa complex aid management process. Thistestifies to the difficulty of working acrossbureaucratic lines, and to the difficulties of‘projectising peace’ within an aid framework.

• Amid these shifting alliances and interests, theperceptions of the warring parties are rarelyanalysed, and this study has not been able tofill this gap substantively. Such evidence asdoes exist suggests that belligerents are keenobservers of the conduct of humanitarianoperations and very sensitive to any changesin the rules by which the humanitarian ‘game’is played. The origins of the principles ofneutrality and impartiality lie in a process ofnegotiation with military forces, notphilosophers. They are highly pragmaticprinciples designed to achieve access andsecurity. The erosion of respect for theseprinciples within the international system itselfwas seen by many informants to havecontributed to the increasing insecurity of aidstaff.

• Thus, assuming that humanitarian aid mightbe used actively as a tool for conflict reductionis likely to prove counterproductive. This formof political humanitarianism seems more likelyto provoke the withdrawal of consent bybelligerents for even the most minimal deliveryof relief.

This analysis militates against interpreting coherenceas an integration of foreign policy and humanitarianobjectives. Collapsing the boundaries between theobjectives and operation of these two spheres isextremely problematic in theory and in practice. Instead,what is required is improved understanding betweenthe different players regarding the rules of the game,and to define where their objectives and resources arecomplementary in terms of regulating potential conflicts.

The remainder of the report maps out a number ofrecommendations to donor governments, the UN andNGOs. These focus in particular on how to clarify theaid–politics relationship in law and in terms ofinstitutional arrangements.

6.2 Recommendations to donorgovernments

These recommendations are based on the findings ofthe two donor government case studies and are thereforedirected primarily at British and Dutch humanitarian/foreign policy actors.

6.2.1 Investing in politics

Effective engagement in conflict-affectedcountries at the periphery requires not only well-managed aid programmes, but investment indiplomacy.

Such investment is required not only to generateaccurate political intelligence and analysis, but to define

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effective strategies for engagement. The relative povertyof diplomacy in this domain is recognised by aid andforeign policy actors alike. An interpretation ofcoherence that relies upon aid actors assuming theprimary burden for conflict reduction and resolution isnot only very unlikely to prove ineffective, but representsa tragically disingenuous interpretation of the lessonsof the Rwanda genocide.

6.2.2 Investing in new forms of aid

Part of the reason why humanitarian assistance hasbecome the primary vehicle for international policy isthat the conditions do not exist for the re-establishmentof conventional, bilateral development aid relations. Inthe context of a concentration of development aidrelations to countries that are performing well, in poor-performing countries, relief aid is now required to fulfiladditional, developmental roles, for which it was notdesigned. This suggests that rather than overloadingrelief and relief-type aid instruments with additionalobjectives,

• a thorough, system-wide review of aidinstruments that can be deployed in poorperforming countries, particularly those wherethe state is a belligerent in an active conflictand responsible for widespread abuses ofhuman rights.

6.2.3 Codifying principles: the role of law

A striking feature of humanitarian policy in bothcountries is that it lacks a statutory basis. Such definitionas does exist rests upon an analysis of content, not ofprinciples, nor does it codify the political distinctionbetween relief and development assistance.

In both the UK and the Netherlands, changes in politicaland bureaucratic leadership have prompted innovationand experimentation in humanitarian policy. Whileimportant, potentially problematic is the lack ofsystematic evaluation and scrutiny of these experimentsto inform future policy.96

Of particular concern in this respect is the conceptualand institutional integration of humanitarian aid andconflict reduction/prevention policy. The potential forsignificant tensions between these two objectives hasbeen a constant theme of this report. The integration ofthese objectives compromises principles of impartialityand neutrality. Evidence from this study and others(see, for example Uvin 1999) suggests that suchintegration is unlikely to be effective. This is particularlythe case in situations of active conflict. It is thereforerecommended that:

• Donor governments should codify in domesticlaw their commitment to impartial andindependent humanitarian assistance. Theobjective of such assistance should be to:prevent and alleviate human suffering; to

protect life and health; and ensure respect forthe human being.

• In the UK, the proposed InternationalDevelopment Act would provide an importantopportunity to enact such a definition.

• Ensuring consistency across countries in theinterpretation of the conditions required foreffective humanitarian action will be central toits defence against charges of ‘politicisation’.In the case of DFID, decentralisation ofhumanitarian decision-making implies aparticular need to monitor the definition ofhumanitarian response across departments.

• The OECD-DAC should encourage a commonstandard of definition of humanitarian aid,which could be reflected in reporting on aidstatistics. The redrafting of the DAC Guidelineson Conflict, Development and Peace in autumn2000 might present an opportunity for suchdebate.

Such a definition, which rests upon principle rather thancontent, would reflect international humanitarian lawand be in line with the definition of ‘humanitarian’provided by the International Court of Justice in 1986.97

Useful examples of such legislation include theregulation governing the use of ECHO funds (OfficialJournal of the European Communities 1996) and thatgoverning Swiss Disaster Relief (Swiss Federal Council1997). Both these bodies have used this legislation toinform their humanitarian aid programming in complexpolitical contexts, such as Serbia, and, in the case ofECHO to stave off pressure to use humanitarian aid forpolitical purposes.

Such legislation would consolidate the emerging trendin both countries towards institutional separationbetween humanitarian aid and conflict-reductionprogrammes. This trend is to be encouraged, signalledby: departmental restructuring (DFID); budgetary clarity;and ministerial-level commitment to safeguardinghumanitarian principles.98

6.2.4 Bilateralisation of humanitarian assistance

There is a strong trend towards bilateralisation ofhumanitarian assistance. This is evidenced by:

• bilateralisation of funding flows — such asearmarking contributions to UN agencies anddirect contracting with NGOs;

• increasing proximity of donor governments tooperational decision-making through the useof donor coordination bodies, and directlobbying of individual agencies regardingparticular interventions;

• the ‘professionalisation’ and institutionalisationof donor government relations with theirimplementing partners through, for example,

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‘Friends of ...’ groups, bilateral lobbying, andin the UK the development of InstitutionalStrategy Papers; and

• the establishment of field offices.

This trend has been driven by legitimate concernsregarding the accountability of humanitarian action, butis easy to confuse (intentionally or otherwise) withincreasing political interference in humanitarianoperations. This trend risks compromising theindependence of humanitarian action. Thisindependence is fundamental to the legitimacy ofhumanitarian intervention. If humanitarian organisationsare seen to be part of governments’ foreign policyobjectives, then their right to operate as ‘humanitarian’actors is compromised in law and in practice (seejudgement of the International Criminal Court 1986).

In a number of cases,99 governments’ concerns regardingwhether the conditions exist for the delivery of effectiveand accountable aid have been conflated with foreignpolicy interests, resulting in a de facto politicalconditionality on humanitarian assistance.

This study concludes that while it is legitimate andimportant for donor governments to be concerned withpromoting the conditions for effective humanitarianaction, the introduction of political conditionality onhumanitarian aid is inappropriate and is unlikely toconform with public expectations of humanitarianism.100

The UK’s position on this issue is particularly importantto clarify, given both the rate of policy evolution in thisarea and its more prominent political position on theinternational stage through its permanent membershipof the Security Council and its increasing willingness toengage militarily in internal wars, most recently in SierraLeone.

The study therefore recommends that:

• Donor governments, in partnership with theUN, review the trend towards bilateralisationof financing of multilateral agencies. This mightusefully be coupled with a discussion regardingthe channels through which donorgovernments seek to influence multilateralpolicy. The proliferation of ‘Friends of ...’groups, and the apparent increase in bilateralapproaches to multilateral bodies tends tocreate the impression of policy beingintroduced through the back door, politicisingmultilateral institutions, and undermining stillfurther the value of mechanisms such asECOSOC.

• In consultation with its partners, in due courseDFID should review its experience ofInstitutional Strategy Papers, focusing inparticular on the issue of whether the modelof conditional unearmarked funding it lays outprovides the balance required betweenaccountability and independence of

humanitarian action.

• The Dutch government continues in its effortsto promote common reporting standards todonors for official humanitarian aid spending,and that these reporting guidelines includereference to humanitarian principles and howimplementing agencies seek to implementthese.

• Donors support a system-wide discussionregarding the minimum conditions required tobe in place for effective and accountablehumanitarian action, that these are madeexplicit and that innovative mechanisms beintroduced to promote independent scrutinyof these conditions in conflict situations.101

• As donors seek to enhance the accountabilityof their partners, and increase their operationalreach in order to achieve this, so mechanismsfor enhancing their own accountability meritreview.

• Donor governments, in consultation withimplementing partners, and particularly OCHAshould review the experience of donor-ledcoordination bodies and other mechanismssuch as field offices, to assess their added value.Of particular importance is the question as towhether these have yielded opportunities foreffective, complementary political interventionto support the creation of humanitarian spaceor whether they undermine multilateralcoordination efforts.

• Evaluations of donor-funded emergency reliefoperations are to be encouraged, in particularwhere they promote analysis of the systems ofdecision-making and monitoring performancewithin donor agencies themselves. In order tomaintain the independence of the evaluation,and to enable cross-departmental scrutinywhere necessary, it is likely to be moreappropriate for such evaluations to be managedby a body external to the aid department itself,such as the UK National Audit Office.

6.2.5 Proportionality of humanitarian spending

A key indicator of the impartiality of humanitarianassistance is that it is given in proportion to need, notgoverned by political considerations. At present, noaccepted methodology exists that correlates need withhumanitarian expenditure. Until such methods areadopted, as a crude indicator, donor governments shouldtherefore:

• Report annually on the per capita humanitarianaid spending in those countries assisted. Oncea common methodology has been adopted,these statistics could usefully be reported to theDAC.

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6.2.6 Human resource and representationalissues

As foreign policy becomes reconfigured as internationalpolicy, so this raises the issue of the skills andmanagement structure required to represent the aid andpolitical interests internationally. This is a complex area,and one that fell outside the detailed scope of this study.It is an issue that was raised, however, by a number ofinformants, and their comments are reflected here.

• UK permanent missions to the UN receiveprimary guidance on humanitarian issues fromDFID, with FCO making relatively little input.This raises the question of whether DFID orFCO staff should be occupying these posts.The deployment of a DFID humanitarianadviser to New York is to be welcomed in thisrespect.

• Diplomatic staff seemed intuitively to interpretcoherence to require a hierarchy ofinternational interests, with traditional foreignpolicy interests legitimately occupying the toplayer. Increased exposure of these staff tointernational humanitarian law and theprinciples guiding the use of humanitarianassistance would promote greater consistencyof donor governments’ positions abroad andensure that it reflects these laws.

6.3 Recommendations to the UNAs in the bilateral sphere, the past decade has seen anumber of important innovations within the UN systemwith regard to the principles guiding internationalresponses to complex emergencies, and changes in theorganisational capacity to deliver these. As indicatedin the introduction, the UN was a secondary ‘case study’,however, it is possible to draw the following conclusionsfrom the evidence reviewed.

The UN is being increasingly sidelined as a politicaland humanitarian actor. This is resulting in a viciouscycle whereby poor performance deters bilateralinvestment so further diminishing its performance. Thecosts of such a strategy in terms of global governanceare self-evident, and at a global level it is difficult todefine more than platitudinous recommendationsregarding the need to reverse this trend.

Enhancing the effectiveness of the UN’s humanitarianresponse in complex emergencies might usefully benefitfrom consideration of the following recommendations.

6.3.1 The division of political and humanitarianlabour: the role of OCHA and SRSGs

The reform of DHA to create OCHA in 1998 has beenwidely welcomed throughout the UN system and amongdonor governments. The shift from operational to

strategic coordination, and from operational agency toadvocate has yielded important benefits in terms of theoffice’s credibility internationally (its field-level impactwas beyond the scope of this study). One indicator ofthis is the increased demand for OCHA to contributebriefings to political bodies, including the UNSC anddonor groupings such as the HLWG. These briefingswere widely seen to be more useful than those providedby departments with an explicitly political mandate.

In this context, there is a risk that OCHA could becomea victim of its own success. In common with a trendbecoming evident in the donor government sphere,there is a risk that OCHA becomes (or is seen to become)the body for defining and implementing a new politicalhumanitarianism. This suggests the need:

• for OCHA to focus its advocacy work oninforming political actors of the humanitarianimplications of their actions, and to advocatingrespect for the impartiality, neutrality andindependence of humanitarian action, asopposed to proposing particular politicalcourses of action.

It is also recommended that:

• the Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General approve the ECHA-drafted guidanceregarding the relationship between SRSGs andHumanitarian Coordinators.

This outlines clearly a framework for complementarityof humanitarian and political action, rather than for theirintegration. Interviews conducted with officials in theUN system and partner NGOs at headquarters and atfield level highlighted the very significant risks for theUN of losing its humanitarian credentials if it pursuesthe line proposed in the Fafo report (Fafo PeaceImplementation Network 1999). This issue merits urgentresolution.

6.3.2 Capacity for political analysis and repre-sentation

The current division of labour between DPA and DPKOappears to many anachronistic, reflecting a Cold Waranalysis of the political continuum from war to peacenegotiations to the deployment of peacekeepers. Thedivision potentially also stretches scarce resources stillfurther, particularly duplicating geographical expertise.Restructuring this arrangement might free resources toundertake more field-based missions.

More generally there is considerable scope for:

• Conducting independent evaluation of UN-ledpolitical intervention and its capacity foranalysis in order to identify its strengths andweaknesses. Study II of the Joint Evaluationof the International Response in Rwandaprovides a model for such an analysis.

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• Examining the scope for secondment ofpolitical staff to humanitarian agencies in orderto boost capacity for political analysis to informhumanitarian aid programming. This couldboost the humanitarian system capacity forpolitical negotiation and the UN’s politicalpresence where a mandate for a politicalmission was not forthcoming from the UNSC.The humanitarian function of such asecondment must be maintained, limitinginformation flows into the political track.

6.3.3 The strategic framework

The original design of the Strategic Framework (SF)represented an integrationist model of coherence. Thismodel has proved flawed conceptually, and extremelydifficult to implement for a variety of operational andbureaucratic reasons. The bitterness surrounding theSF experience is baffling and depressing to those outsidethe system, further denting the organisation’s credibility.There is widespread fear that the impetus behind theSF initiative has been lost and that it will founder onceagain in Sierra Leone.

The original rationale behind the SF process remainsvalid: namely the need for the different elements of theUN system to work together effectively in order toachieve peace and security. However, the modelproposed generated significant tensions. These havebeen located largely in the sphere of bureaucratic politicsand the depth of these battles has obscured the perhapsmore fundamental set of tensions that are now beingrevealed. These are between the goal of conflictreduction and humanitarian principles — and betweenhumanitarian and developmental goals. Addressingthese tensions will imply:

• Revitalising the political track, which has largelyfallen out of the Strategic Framework process.This track should be seen as complementaryto that pursued by humanitarian actors, ratherthan driving it.

• Clarifiying the terms under which the UNengages with the Taliban to undertake bothhumanitarian and development initiatives.

6.4 Recommendations to humanitarianorganisations and NGOs

6.4.1 Defining ‘humanitarianism’ and politics

As the quote in the frontispiece suggests, NGOs havebeen quick to call for political action, but then frequentlybeen uneasy when it has arrived.

In the UK, in particular, there is a widespread uneasethat humanitarianism has become politicised. The year

of 1998 represented a particularly low point in UK NGOsrelationship with DFID in this respect, a situation thathas improved somewhat since their meeting with theSecretary of State in February 1999. What is striking inboth case study countries is the lack of a commonposition between NGOs in terms of their expectationsof the relationship between official aid and ‘politics’.This problem is exacerbated by the fact that officialdonors have deployed many of the same argumentsoriginally tabled by NGOs and academics to informtheir own rethinking on the aid–politics relationship.This suggests that:

• There is a need for NGO fora to debate(confidentially if necessary) current key issuesin the humanitarian domain, such as theirrelationship with international political actorsinvolved in conflict management, aiming for atleast a minimum level of consensus. VOICE,ICVA and Interaction provide international forafor such a debate, while BOAG and the DisastersEmergency Committee have a more specific rolein terms of UK policy.

Despite constituting a significant share of NGO‘business’, the majority of UK NGOs at least lacksubstantive in-house capacity for policy analysis in thehumanitarian sphere. This weakens their ability torespond to emerging policy trends and requiresstrengthening. Such policy capacity might usefully beinvested in:

• NGOs developing more consistent and crediblepolicy and operational guidelines regarding theirown engagement with political actors in conflict-affected countries and internationally. Onceagain, the strain between the moredevelopmental, solidarity approaches thatcharacterise many large agencies and thehumanitarian principles of impartiality andneutrality are in particularly urgent need ofreview in this respect.

Smaller NGOs are likely to need to buy into a commonpool of analysis, rather than be able to afford their owndedicated policy analysis capacity.

6.4.2 Operationalising principles

In a recent paper Stockton (2000)102 argues that thedevelopment of the NGO/Red Cross Code of Conductcan be seen as a ‘deal’ between NGOs and official aidagencies. The terms of this deal were: ‘we (the NGOcommunity) will adopt a more principled approach tothe implementation of humanitarian operations; in returnyou respect our independence’. The same paper,together with other recent research (Leader 1999; Slim& McConnan 1998) suggests that the majority of NGOshave been quicker to subscribe to principles than toimplement them. The problems lie both in the potentialcontradictions inherent in the codes themselves, poor

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training and management structures to support staff intheir implementation, and, of course the difficulty ofdelivering principled aid in conflict settings.

This policy-implementation gap undermines NGOs’claims to unconditional and unregulated access to publicfunds, and legitimises closer donor scrutiny of NGOperformance and operational decision-making. In thisregard, the report therefore recommends that:

• NGOs review their commitments to existingcodes of conduct and their capacity to adhereto them, assess the continued relevance andappropriateness of these codes and developplans, including peer review and independentmonitoring, to enhance adherence to them. Oneparticular initiative that deserves wider supportfrom the NGO community in this regard is theHumanitarian Ombudsman.

6.4.3 Creating and maintaining a constituencyfor humanitarian action

The research suggests that public opinion and publicscrutiny of international political action can be a potentforce for ensuring that the ‘right’ kind of politicscomplement humanitarian action. Equally, this partiallyinformed public opinion can undermine humanitarianaction. This suggests the need for sustained advocacy,to inform the general public in donor and recipientcountries regarding humanitarian principles and theneed for political actors to respect them. NGOs are ina powerful position to develop such advocacy positions.Such investment requires sustaining a minimum levelof independent funding in order to enable effectiveadvocacy with regard to donor government behaviour.

6.5 ConclusionsBy its very nature, humanitarian action is political. AsMark Duffield has argued, it is a remarkably radicalform of political action, seeking to defy the logic ofwarfare, as well as the more authoritarian calls for self-help smuggled in under a ‘developmentalist’ banner.This study was concerned to chart the nature of thishumanitarian politics and its changing relationship withother forms of political action.

What it suggests is that the primary failure ofinternational policy towards conflict remains in thepolitical realm, not the humanitarian. This meanslearning the lesson of Rwanda (and the rest), whichwas not that aid should resolve conflict and genocide,but that prevention of massive abuse of human rightsrequired timely and effective political and militaryintervention. This is the responsibility of politicians anddiplomats, not aid actors. By sleight of hand thecoherence called for in the aftermath of events in 1994has been rewritten such that aid actors aresimultaneously blamed for having a negative politicalimpact, while assuming the mantle of diplomats andsoldiers. Humanitarian actors thus need to becomemore aware not only of the political economy of thecontexts in which they work, but of the aid processesof which they themselves are a part.

The study does not suggest returning to a halcyon periodof ‘pure’ humanitarianism, if such ever existed. Ratherit advocates a more articulate division of political andhumanitarian labour, based upon comparative advantageand mandate, where the boundary between the two ismarked, and where the rules for their interaction areclearly articulated.

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Annex 1

List of Interviews

London

Terry Alloway, Asia Dept, FCO, 15 February 2000,London

Matthew Baugh, Head, Kosovo Section, Conflict andHumanitarian Aid Dept, DFID, 8 February 2000, London

Sarah Beeching, Head, Conflict and Security PolicySection, CHAD, DFID, 7 October 1999, London

William Benson, Professional Adviser to theInternational Development Committee, 16 November1999, London

Matthew Carter, Head, Emergencies Section, CAFOD,30 November 1999, London

Roger Clarke, DFID, CHAD, 14 February 2000, London

Sarah Collinson and Jeff Chinnock, Northern AffairsUnit, Action Aid, 22nd November 1999, London

Will Day, Executive Director, CARE UK, 2 December1999, London; 14 February2000, London

James Downer, United Nations Department, Foreignand Commonwealth Office, 2 December, London

Tony Faint, Head, International Division, DFID, 15December 1999, London

Dylan Hendrikson, CDS, 4 November 1999, London

Rob Holden, Conflict and Humanitarian AffairsDepartment, DFID, 27 October 1999, London

Mukesh Kapila, Head, Conflict and Humanitarian AffairsDepartment, DFID, 29 November 1999, London

Simon Mansfield, Greater Horn of Africa Department,DFID, 7 October 1999, London

Peter Marsden, BAAG, 21 February 2000, London

Jonathan Marshall Head, Former Yugoslavia Section,Eastern Adriatic Department, Foreign andCommonwealth Office, 8 February 2000, London

Dianna Melrose, Policy Planners, Foreign andCommonwealth Office, 19 October 1999, London

Sally Morpeth, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 19October 1999, London

Chris Musgrave, Macedonia Desk, Eastern AdriaticDepartment, Foreign and Commonwealth Office 8February 2000, London

Alistair Newton, Head, Economic and Political Section,Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2 December 1999,London

David Sand-Smith, Head, Aid Policy Department, DFID,15 December 1999, London

Frances Stephenson, Head of Programmes, MedecinsSans Frontières UK, 29 November 1999, London

Cathy Welch, Aid Policy Dept, DFID, 15 February 2000

Elizabeth Winter, BAAG, 28 February 2000, London

Geneva

Francois Bugnion, Diplomatic Adviser, 23 November1999, Geneva

Ernest Chipman, OCHA, 23,25 November 1999,Geneva

Sanda Cohen, Dutch Mission, 25 November 1999,Geneva

Dr Bruce Eshaya-Chauvin, Head, Health and ReliefDivision, 23 November 1999, Geneva

Martin Griffiths, Director, Henry Dunant Centre, 24November 1999, Geneva

Marion Harroff Tavel, Political Adviser to the Directorate,23 November 1999, Geneva

Joanne Kalley, UKMIS 25 November 1999, Geneva

Pirrko Korula, UNHCR, 24 November 1999, Geneva

Rene Kosirnik, Deputy Director of International Lawand Communication, 23 November 1999, Geneva

Nicholas Morris, UNHCR, 24 November 1999, Geneva

Peter Walker, Head, Disaster Policy Unit, IFRC, 25November 1999, Geneva

The Netherlands

Austen Davies, Executive Director, MSF-Holland, 8December 1999, Amsterdam

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Margot de Jong, Senior Policy Adviser, United NationsDepartment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 December1999, The Hague

Frederique de Man, Director, Political AffairsDepartment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 December1999, The Hague

Jacques de Milliano, former General Director andPresident of Medecins Sans Fronteries, Holland, 8December 1999, Amsterdam

Marion Kappeyne van de Coppello, Director, ConflictManagement and Humanitarian Aid Department,Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 December 1999, The Hague

Joop Nijssen, Political Affairs Department, Ministry ofForeign Affairs, 7 December 1999, The Hague

Carlijne Pauwels, Donor Liaison Officer, MSF-Holland,8 December 1999, Amsterdam

Peter Potman, Deputy Head, United NationsDepartment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 December1999, The Hague

Mariett Schurmann, Humanitarian Aid Department,Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 7 December 1999, The Hague

Ferdinand Smit, Deputy Head, Humanitarian AidDivision, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 7 December 1999,The Hague

Jan Timmer, Dutch Red Cross, 7 December 1999, TheHague

Dr Oda van Cranenburgh, Leiden University, 6December 1999

Carli jne van Dullemans, Advisory Council onInternational Affairs, 6 December 1999, The Hague

Jacques Willemse, Dutch Inter-Church Aid, 8December 1999, Amsterdam

New York

David Angell, Counsellor, Canadian Mission to theUnited Nations, 1 November 1999, New York

Martin Barbour, UNOCHA, 3 November 1999, New York

David Bassioni, UNOCHA, 5 November 1999, New YorkMark Dalton, UNOCHA, 1 November 1999, New York

Claude Bruderlein, Harvard University, 3 November1999, New York

Chris Coleman, Head, Policy Division, Department ofPeacekeeping Operations, 4 November 1999, New York

Stewart Eldon, Deputy Head of Mission, UK PermanentMission to the United Nations ,1 November 1999, NewYork

Bradley Forester, UNOCHA, 4 November 1999, NewYork

Helena Fraser, UNOCHA, 3 November 1999, New York

Andrew Gilmour, Department of Political Affairs, 3November 1999, New York

Michele Griffin, UNDP, 2 November 1999, New York

Mona Hammam, WFP, 3 November 1999, New York

Masood Hyder, Secretariat, United Nations DevelopmentGroup, UNDP, 5 November 1999, New York

Bruce Jones, UNOCHA, 1 November 1999, New York

Sylvie Junod/Patrick Zahnd, International Committeeof the Red Cross, 5 November 1999, New York

Nils Katsberg, Head Emergency Operations, UNICEF, 5November 1999, New York

Michael Keating, United Nations DevelopmentProgramme, 3 November 1999, New York

Prof. Semakula Kiwanuka, Ugandan Perm Rep, NewYork

Amb. Kwanuka, Uganda Permanent Mission to theUnited Nations, 4 November 1999, New YorkPhilip O’Brien, UNICEF, 3 November 1999, New York

Alan March, Counsellor (Development), AustralianPermanent Mission to the United Nations, 4 November1999, New York

Jamie McGoldrick, UNOCHA, 3 November 1999, NewYork

Michael Moller, Department of Political Affairs, UnitedNations, 2 November 1999, New York

Bacre N’Diacre, Head of Office UNHCHR, 3 November1999, New York

Vassily A Nebenzia, Federation of Russia, PermanentMission to the United Nations, 5 November 1999, NewYork

Babu Rahman, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1November 1999, New York

John Renniger, Asia Division, Department of PoliticalAffairs, United Nations, 4 November 1999, New York

Mark Runacres, Counsellor, UK Permanent Mission tothe United Nations, 1 November 1999, New York

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Laurie Shesteck, USAID, US Permanent Mission to theUnited Nations, 5 November 1999, New York

Luc Shillings, Royal Netherlands Permanent Mission tothe United Nations, 1 November 1999, New York

Belgrade

Lorenzo Amberg, Counsellor, Embassy of Switzerland17 February 2000, Belgrade

Robert Dann, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, OCHA, 15February 2000, Belgrade

Robert Gordon, Head of Section, British Interests Sectionof the Embassy of Brazil, 15 February 2000, Belgrade

Kayoko Gotoh, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, OCHA,17 February 2000, Belgrade

Hugo Klijn, Deputy Head of Mission, Royal NetherlandsEmbassy, 15 February 2000, Belgrade

Jasna Kronja, Project Officer, Care International,Yugoslavia, 16 February 2000, Belgrade

David Lythgoe, Head of Office, ECHO, 16 February 2000,Belgrade

Hannu Mantyvaara, Ambassador, Embassy of Finland,16 February 2000, Belgrade

Suzana Mrgic, Project Officer, G17, 17 February 2000,Belgrade

Juha Ottman, Second Secretary, Embassy of Finland,16 February 2000, Belgrade

Robert Painter, Head of Office, OCHA, 15 February2000, Belgrade

John Roche,Humanitarian Assistance Coordinator, ICRC17 February 2000, Belgrade

Marina Skuric-Prodanovic, FRY ProgrammeRepresentative, Oxfam, 17 February 2000, Belgrade

Peter Stocker, Head of Delegation for the FRY, ICRC,17 February 2000, Belgrade

Veerapong Vongvarotai, Assistant Representative(Programmes), UNHCR, 16 February 2000, Belgrade

Skopje

Amin Awad, Representative, UNHCR, 21 February2000, Skopje

Mark Dickinson, Ambassador, UK Embassy, 23 February2000, Skopje

Zola Dowell, Oxfam UK, 21 February 2000, Skopje

Nick Ford, Country Director, CRS, 23 February 2000,Skopje

Ataul Karim Head, UNMIK Liaison Office, 21 February2000, Skopje

Zoran Jolewski, Presidential Adviser, 21February 2000,Skopje

Eddie McLoughney, Country Representative, UNICEF22 February 2000, Skopje

Stephan Nikolovski, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22February 2000, Skopje

John Penny, Office of the European Union, 22 February2000, Skopje

Jan Plantinga, First Secretary, Royal NetherlandsEmbassy, 22 February 2000, Skopje

Francois Stamm, Head of Delegation, ICRC, 21 February2000, Skopje

MA Stibbe, First Secretary, Embassy of the Netherlands,22 February 2000, Skopje

Stephan Tanic, ECHO, 23 February 2000, Skopje

Tony Winton, Head of Office, DFID Support Team, 21February 2000, Skopje

Islamabad

Umar Daudzi, UNDP Afghanistan Deputy, 23 February,Islamabad

Eric de Mull, UN Coordinator Afghanistan, 17 February,Islamabad

Antonio Donini, UNOCHA, 24 February, Islamabad

Anne Freckelton, British High Commission, 24 February,Islamabad

Stephen Green, Head of Evaluations, WFP Rome, 17December, Rome 1999

Ruedi Hager, Resident Rep, SDC, 23 February 2000,Islamabad

Chris Johnson, Country Rep, Oxfam, 19 February 2000,Islamabad

Chris Kaye, UNOCHA, 18 February, Islamabad

Mikael Lindvall, First Secretary, Swedish Embassy, 25February 2000, Islamabad

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Dr Zareen Naqvi, World Bank, Islamabad

Samantha Reynolds, UNHCS, 17 February, IslamabadMichael Sacket, WFP, 18 February 2000, Islamabad

Claire Smith, Political Counsellor, High Commission,24 February 2000, Islamabad

Koichiro Tanaka, Political Affairs Officer, UNSMA, 23February 2000, Islamabad

Dr Lowry Taylor, Office of Political Affairs, US Embassy,Islamabad, 25 February 2000, Islamabad

Govert Visser, Afghanistan Prog, Dutch Embassy, 24February 2000, Islamabad

Andrew Wilder, SCF US, 24 February 2000, Islamabad

KabulGeorges Dutreix, MSF, Head of Mission, 20 February2000, Kabul

Brig Gen Jan-G Isberg, Senior Military Adviser, UNSMA,19 February 2000, Kabul

Jolyon Leslie, UN Regional Coordinator, 20 February2000, Kabul

Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister, 20 February 2000,Kabul

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Annex 2

The Advisory Group

Chaloka Beyani, London School of Economics andPolitical Science

Michael Clarke, Centre for Defence Studies, KingsCollege

George Frerks, Clingendael

Martin Griffiths, Henry Dunant Centre forHumanitarian Dialogue

Marion Harroff-Tavel, International Committee of theRed Cross

Bruce Jones, UN Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs

Mukesh Kapila, Department for InternationalDevelopment

Dianna Melrose, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Caroline Moorehead

Sally Morphet, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Lewis Sida, Save the Children Fund UK

Ferdinand Smit/Peter Knoppe, Ministry of ForeignAffairs, the Netherlands

Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam GB

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Endnotes1 For a review of the literature on the changingconceptualisation of sovereignty in the post-Cold Warera see: Dixon, R. (1999) ‘Post-Cold War sovereignty: acritical review of the literature in International Relations’,mimeo prepared for the Humanitarian Policy Group,ODI, London.

2 Section 3.2.5 (bilateralisation of humanitarian response)and Section 4.4 (articulation of UN and donor memberstates) describe the mechanisms by which Westernpolitical actors also exert influence over the paradigmsand practice of international organisations.

3 Randel ( 1994), for example, estimated that in 1993,97 per cent of relief aid provided by the EuropeanCommission (soon to become the world largest singledonor of relief aid) was allocated to complex politicalemergencies. Similarly in 1994, the World FoodProgramme (WFP) spent only $19 million on meetingthe primary effects of natural disasters, compared withmore than $1.5 billion in conflict-related emergencies(Webb 1996).

4 Such as the EC’s (1996) ‘Communication to theEuropean Parliament and Council on Linking Relief,Rehabilitation and Development’, March, Brussels; andthe Development Assistance Committee (1997)Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and DevelopmentCooperation, OECD, Paris.

5 A Foreign and Commonwealth Office note (‘FRY/Kosovo: The Way Ahead. UK view of the legal base forthe use of force’, 7 October 1998) cited in Roberts (1999)thus argued that:

‘There is convincing evidence of an impendinghumanitarian catastrophe ... We judge on theevidence of FRY ’s handling of Kosovothroughout this year that a humanitariancatastrophe cannot be averted unless Milosevicis dissauded from further repressive acts, andthat only the use of force will achieve thisobjective. The UK’s view is therefore, that, asmatters now stand and if action through theSecurity Council is not possible, militaryintervention by NATO is lawful on the groundsof military necessity.’

6 Emphasising that aid was not to serve foreign policyinterests was particularly important in light of the factthat the previous year the High Court had found againstthe government in its judgement on the Pergau Damscandal. While the Court had found no legal groundsfor a priori preventing the use of aid for a politicalpurpose, it concluded that aid funds must pass tests ofdevelopmental and economic soundness. Thus, if theUK investment in Pergau had both served a politicalinterest and satisfied tests of developmental soundnessthen it would have been lawful; as it did not pass thelatter test, it was unlawful.

7 See, for example, evidence of Barry Ireton to theInternational Development Committee 9 June 1998.

8 This is confirmed by interviews conducted during thecourse of this study. DFID’s approaches to other donorgovernments, in which it emphasised the potentialdangers of providing aid and the negative politicalconsequences of aid being abused by the junta, wereseen as an attempt to discourage them from providinghumanitarian assistance during this period, and werecriticised and resented. A number of representatives ofBritish NGOs thought that the episode signalled thebreakdown of mutual trust that had previouslycharacterised their relations with EMAD.

9 See, for example, Maxwell and Buchanan-Smith(1994); evidence by International Alert to the IDC (1998)which argues that: ‘There is no such thing as neutralaid, it is all political, if not in motivation, then certainlyin impact’; also the evidence given by Mikael Barfod ofECHO to IDC, 20 October 1998, in which he argued:

‘The other model (of humanitarian aid) wherewe are actually moving to now is much morestrategic. There you would actively say thereis no way that we can handle a situation withoutlinking up with human rights issues, withoutlinking up with development to understand thereal impact. We have to be part of the politicalprocess leading up to peace, that is what weare there for really; it is not to save someonetoday so he is killed with his brother tomorrow.’

10 This was recognised by the Secretary of State, whonoted in February 1999 that:

‘In recent months there has been activedisagreement and different interepretationsbetween DFID and a number of NGOs aboutthe linkages between humanitarian life-savingobjectives and longer-term conflict prevention/management objectives.’

Opening statement to the DFID-NGO Roundtable onhumanitarian issues.

11 For example, the Chief Executive of one of the UK’slargest NGOs involved in relief wrote to the PermanentSecretary on 9 December 1998, seeking clarification ofDFID’s interpretation of its humanitarian principles. Inparticular it queried whether DFID was committed tothe principle of impartiality, and was deliberatelyreducing the value of its humanitarian assistance budget.It also highlighted concerns that the implementation ofthe tenth principle laid out by DFID — namelytransparent and explicit discussion with partners — wasnot being realised in practice.

12 See also, Leader, N and J Macrae (2000) ‘Terms ofEngagement: Conditions, Conditionality and

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Humanitarian Action. Report on an ODI/Henry DunantCentre working meeting 3–4 May’, HPG Report No 6,Overseas Development Institute, London.

13 For example, following the publication of the IDCreport in 1999, there appears to have been nomechanism established to discuss its findings with regardto DFID policy, and its implications, for example, withrespect to DFID ’s involvement of the Kabbahgovernment in exile, and allegations regardingconditionality on humanitarian aid. The Aid PolicyDepartment does not act as a focal point for mediatinginter-departmental differences in this respect, in part,one imagines because CHAD is responsible for policyoversight. Like other policy coordination bodies, thisrole is potentially complicated by its own operationality.

14 Field offices are established according to needs andpriorities and are often deployed to meet the short-term demands of operations, thus in November 1999there were as many as seven, but by July 2000 this hadreduced to one.

15 The Humanitarian Policy Group has designed such aresearch study on various aspects of bilateralisation,which is planned to start in Autumn 2000.

16 The planned expansion of the DEC into a policy forum,as well as a fund-raising mechanism, has yet tomateralise. The British Overseas Aid Group (BOAG)remains divided on humanitarian policy.

17 Importantly, this document added to the objectivesof the Dutch aid programme that of ‘...achieving peaceand dealing with violence conflict, including those of anon-economic character, whether within or betweenstates’ (page 124).

18 This limited the number of countries to which bilateralassistance was given according to the degree of poverty,the existence of progressive social and economicpolicies, the extent of unsatisfied aid requirements, andfinally the extent of respect for human rights.

19 For example in 1993, Angola, Bosnia and Cambodiaqualified only for relief or rehabilitation assistance (seeA World of Dispute).

20 Interview, Ferdinand Smit, at Humanitarian AidDepartment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague, 7December 1999.

21 These were that relief should be: targeted on clearlydefined population groups; take the form of goods thatmeet basic needs; fund only additional activities thatotherwise would not be funded; adequately superviseaid expenditures and channels.

22 Interestingly, in his speech to the UN SecondCommittee Minister Pronk prefigures the reformsintroduced by Kofi Annan a year later, advocating forunified representation within the UN.

23 As is recognised in successive policy documents,including most recently in the 1998 ‘Dutch Policy onEmergency and Rehabilitation Aid ’ , http://www.minbuza.nl/english/OS/c_fsemergy.htlm

24 It was striking that Dutch officials and NGOs wereextremely critical of the UK’s stance in relation to SierraLeone, seeing it as an example of the ‘wrong’ type ofpolitics informing humanitarian action and socompromising humanitarian objectives. Precisely whatrules were preventing a similar controversy playing outin the Netherlands was not articulated, however, otherthan a sense of intuitive morality.

25 Thus, de facto the AIV recommendation for clearerdefinition of humanitarian assistance has beenimplemented, albeit for bureaucratic rather than ethical/programmatic reasons.

26 Also, interviews with officials in Ministry of ForeignAffairs and NGOs.

27 This was followed in September 1994 by one inrelation to BiH that recognised ethnic cleansing a s athreat to peace, as were major violations of IHL inRwanda that same year (resolution 955). Most recently,in Kosovo, UNSC resolution 1203 affirmed that thesecurity situation within the country constituted a threatto international peace and security, paving the way forthe June 1999 resolution mandating the UN to restoreand maintain security in the territory

28 See, for example, the statement of Cuba to the UNSC,21 May 1997; interview, UK diplomat, New York,November 1999.

29 See, for example, Open Briefing to the SecurityCouncil, 1999 at which UNICEF, UNHCR, ICRC amongothers gave briefings on their view of the role of theUN in the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

30 These are: the scope of the breaches of human rightsand international humanitarian law, including thenumbers of people affected and the nature of theviolations; the inability of local authorities to upholdlegal order, or identification of a pattern of complicityby local authorities; exhaustion of peaceful, consent-based efforts to address the situation; the ability of theUNSC to monitor actions that are undertaken; limitedand proportionate use of force.

31 One UK diplomat noted that:

‘Negotiating the conclusions in the ECOSOC onhumanitarian issues was the most contentioustime for the whole of ECOSOC. The statementsmade about sovereignty were crawled over bydeveloping countries. Other points made wereabut selectivity and analysis of where the powerreally lay in terms of decision-making. ... evenif the broader humanitarian intervention debates

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go the right way, there will be rearguard actionin ECOSOC.’

Interview, 2 November 1999.

32 In the case of Sierra Leone, tensions arose becausehumanitarian access was seen as negotiable during thepeace talks and in the agreement; in Burundi, viewsregarding sanctions and humanitarian exemptionsdiffered between humanitarian agencies and the SRSG(see, interviews: New York, UNICEF, November, 1999;OCHA, November 1999). In East Timor, there was asituation where the Humanitarian Coordinator wasunder the SRSG, while in West Timor he reported tothe Resident Coordinator. In other words, he wasneutral in Indonesia, but not in East Timor. ‘Where theUN becomes a belligerent, as with Interfet, [one has] toscrutinise the way things are being managed’ (interview,official, international organisation, New York, November1999).

33 For example, the 1999 Secretary-General’s report onimproving coordination which argues both that:

... when appropriate, political representativesof the SG may assist the HC with thenegotiations, but it is essential that the distinctionbetween humanitarian negotiations for accessand security, and negotiations on a politicalsettlement is strictly maintained.

And that:

Assistance strategy should be closely allied withstrategies for peace-making, peace building andthe promotion of human rights to ensure thatall activities are mutually reinforcing. In contextswhere peace negotiations are underway, theearly introduction of humanitarian concerns andreconstruction plans in to the peace process,can help increase the likelihood of effectivetransition. Where a multi-disciplinary peace-keeping operation has been deployed, thecapacity to ensure such coordination has beenreinforced by the Secretary-General’s directivethat the SRSG should have clear authority overall UN entities in the field.

(emphasis added).

34 Reportedly, DPA suffered the most severe cuts of anydepartment in the Secretariat, despite its taking the leadin conflict prevention, the policy priority of the UN.

35 For example, it was only in 1999 that DPKO activelystarted to analyse the implications of war economies inrelation to strategies for conflict. In contrast, it hasbecome part of ‘folk policy’ that humanitarian aid fuelssuch economies, and as such provides a significant leverfor conflict reduction (see, for example, Annan, K (2000)‘Statement of the Secretary General to the meeting ofthe Security Council on humanitarian aspects of issues

before the Council’, 9 March, United Nations, New York.The Secretary-General asks: ‘Is our aid the right aid forthe emergency in question? Is it affecting a conflict in away that may perpetuate it rather than end it?’

36 The other three are: the Development Group (chairedby UNDP); Economic and Social Affairs (chaired by theDepartment of Economic and Social Affairs); and GeneralServices.

37 ECHA includes only UN humanitarian agencies, andalso includes DPKO and DPA; IASC includes NGOcoordination bodies, with the ICRC and InternationalFederation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies asstanding invitees.

38 For example, ECPS put forward the recommendationto the UNSC that it should field a mission to Timor, theUSG for Political Affairs, then pushed for the UNSC tobe convened, against the wishes of its President.

39 So, for example, one of the Dutch Permanent Missionsstated that on humanitarian issues: ‘The Mission is briefedprimarily by the humanitarian aid department, butsometimes there is not clear coordination in The Hague.’

40 This is not to suggest that historically at least, HLWGhas not served an important role, only that it no longerappears to do so. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, forexample, HLWG served as an important vehicle to drivethe reform of UNHCR (interview, OCHA, Geneva, 23November 1999).

41 The scope of the case study was limited to Serbia,which is part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia(FRY). FRY also includes Montenegro, where differentsanctions and aid regimes apply, and these were notinvestigated.

42 See, for example, OCHA (1999) Electricity and Heatingin the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Winter 1999-2000,20 September, OCHA, Belgrade; FOCUS Planning andCoordination Unit (2000) Focus Assessment Mission 2to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Winter 1999-2000, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation,Berne; Reports by EU Heads of Mission on the Energyfor Democracy Initiative, 2 September and 1 October,1999. The US was alone in arguing that there wouldnot be an energy crisis in FRY during the 1999/2000winter. The evidence for this position was neverpublished, however.

43 For a more detailed analysis of these see: Macrae, J(2000) 'Oil ... and Water: Political and HumanitarianIntervention in the Serbian Energy Sector', Relief andRehabilitation Network Newsletter, 16, March, pp26-8.

44 The provenance of the EfD idea is contested. Theopposition group, G17, had circulated proposals for aproject similar in intent to that of EfD, albeit

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implemented by national organisations and using oilchannelled through Bulgaria. As the idea becameincorporated into high-level EU foreign policy channels,so a number of key changes in its form emerged; firstthe demand that it be implemented using internationalorganisations (UK Crown Agents were ultimately chosenas the contractor); also the number of municipalitieswas very small initially - only two towns, Nis and Pirot,were selected - rather than the much broader coverageproposed by G17.

45 See, for example, Bird, C (1999) 'Nis left in cold as oilsent back', The Guardian, 4 December. EuropeanCommission (1999) 'Energy for Democracy: chronicleof events', www.europa.eu.int, 3 December.

46 See, Council Common Position of 22 October 1999on support to democratic forces in the Federal Republicof Yugoslavia, Council of the European Union.

47 It is important to note, however, that the funds wereultimately reported as oda, including UK oda, since EfDwas funded through EC development funds.

48 See, for example, ReliefWeb (1999) 'US regretsblockages of heating oil for Serbia', www.reliefweb.int,3 December; European Commission (1999) 'Externalrelations Commissioner Chris Pattern regrets furtherdelays to delivery of "Energy for Democracy" heatingoil', press release on www.europa.eu.int, 29 November.

49 This position was effectively reiterated when JohnBattle responded to a parliamentary question posed byBowen Wells on Energy for Democracy. See Hansard(2000) Energy for Democracy, col 239WH, where againthe issue of the distinction between humanitarian andpolitical aid was fudged.

50 Importantly, to date there is no epidemiologicalevidence that demonstrates the impact of fuel shortagesduring the 1999/2000 winter. The influenza epidemicthat struck Europe and North America furthercomplicates interpretation of existing data.

51 This latter point is disputed by different informants interms of its significance.

52 Some three days into the bombing, the MacedonianMinister of Foreign Affairs warned NATO that the GOMmight insist on a withdrawal of NATO troops from thecountry (interview, Western diplomat, 22 February 2000).There was growing anti-Western feeling among somesections of the population and within certaingovernment quarters. This was reflected, for example,in the fact that the police 'let' demonstrators burn downthe US embassy in Skopje in March 1999. Suhrke et al(2000) note that the number of refugees seeking asyluminto western countries from the FRY had increased by200 per cent in 1997-9.

53 Suhrke et al. (2000) cite the following extracts fromUNHCR's Executive Committee:

In situations of large scale influx, asylum seekersshould be admitted to the State in which theyfirst seek asylum and if that State is unable toadmit them on a temporary basis ... in all cases,the fundamental principle of non-refoulementincluding non-rejection at the border must bescrupulously observed (ExCom 1981).

Access to asylum and the meeting by States of theirprotection obligations should not be dependent onburden sharing arrangements first being in place,particularly because respect for fundamental humanrights and humanitarian principles is an obligation forall members of the international community (ExComMarch 1999).

54 'Any serious peace process would need much greatercommitment to peace-making in Afghanistan from theinternational community than it has shown so far' Rashid(2000:, p. 215). See also Maley (1998).

55 Despite the ongoing civil war, and the arrival of freshrefugees, UNHCR and WFP announced and began tophase out the general ration for refugees in Pakistan in1995. It was replaced by a targeted ration aimed at the'vulnerable' (Fielden, 1998).

56 After providing billions of dollars worth of arms andammunition to the Mujahadeen, the USA began to walkaway from the Afghan issue after the Soviet troopscompleted their withdrawal in 1989. That walk becamea run in 1992 after the fall of Kabul' (Rashid, 2000, p.175).

57 See for example: Clare Short’s, parliamentary answer,8 Dec 1998. 'We also continue to support the mediationefforts of the United Nations Special Mission toAfghanistan and the UN Secretary General's SpecialEnvoy, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi'. Similarly Maley (1998)argues that for the US 'the presence of the mission[UNSMA] in the field provided a tailor-made excuse forgovernments which wished to distance themselves fromAfghanistan and the Afghans. The US State Departmentfor example routinely covered its lack of any seriouspolicy to help Afghanistan - a country struggling withthe bitter legacy of indirect US funding of such groupsas Heckmatyr's Hezb-e Islami - by reiterating its supportfor the UN mission, even when it was transparentlyobvious when nothing of value was likely to come fromthe Mission's activities' (Maley, 1998, p. 198).

58 Both Russia and China are worried about the spreadof fundamentalism and instability in the region. TheTaliban recently antagonised the Russians by declaringthey would open an embassy in Chechnya.

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59 For example, the most detailed and comprehensivereport produce by the Danish government on thesituation in Afghanistan was produced by its immigrationservice in order to assist decision-making for grantingasylum (Wiles et al., 1999).

60 See the minutes of the Tokyo ASG meeting.

61 Interviews NGOs, Skopje, February 2000; one NGOofficial noted that: 'After two years in Kosovo it wasobvious that there were only two options: empty Kosovoof Albanians; or separation of Kosovo from FRY.' Seealso Fennell, J. (1998) Emergency Assessment andContingency Plan, Albania/Macedonia Report for CAREInternational.

62 This high-level, inter-departmental group, chaired byJohn Vereker, the Permanent Secretary for InternationalDevelopment provided a means for DFID, MOD, FCO,Home Office and Treasury officials, among others, tomeet for regular updates on the unfolding situation inrelation to the Kosovo crisis and report to DowningStreet. However, this group was formed after thebombing started.

63 Interview, Africa, Greater Horn Department, DFID,London. Interestingly, the Framework for Coordination,established by UN DPA to facilitate identification andanalysis of potential political instability was initiallylimited to a small number of UN agencies for the samereasons. However, this group was then broadened.Newer members of the group, noted that the flow ofsensitive information was two way, requiring that allinvolved respected confidentiality.

64 The arrest of three CARE workers in Serbia on spyingcharges in 1999 provoked outrage in the humanitariancommunity. This turned to embarrassment when ittranspired that two of the workers, employed by CARECanada, had been contracted to provide the OSCE withinformation regarding the unfolding political situationin Kosovo. See Davis, G (2000) 'CARE: The SecurityContract', Dateline,http://www.sbs.coman/dateline/coming/htm.

65 The head of UNPREDEP, Ataul Karim, remained inpost to wind down the office, and was therefore ableto act informally. He was later made the head of theUNMIK Liaison office in Skopje.

66 The UN Department of Political Affairs later secondeda political adviser to UNHCR to boost its capacity toanalyse events inside Kosovo and prepare for return.Interviews with this adviser indicated that, from DPA'sperspective, what was important about this post wasthat it enabled them to collect political informationdespite lacking a the mandate and resources to deploytheir own mission.

67 As one particularly long-standing UN aid worker said'I don't know where to put my political analysis'. Seealso a memo from Carolyn McKaskie, the Acting Head

of OCHA, to Sir Kieran Prendergast, the Head of DPA,urging greater political initiative, based on OCHA'spolitical analysis of the situation.

68 See, for example, Gary Streeter's ParliamentaryQuestions to the UK Secretary of State for InternationalDevelopment, 25 June; 6 July; and 28 October; and theresponses.

69 It is notable that the same opposition group thatproposed the original EfD concept also advocated thelifting of sanctions regarding fuel imports.

70 It is striking in this respect that UNHCR and WFPmoved from the provision of general rations to targeteddistributions in the refugee camps, against the adviceof their own internal reports warning that such anapproach was unlikely to reach the most vulnerable.

71 For example, surveys by Action Contre la Faim showincreasing levels of global acute nutrition among 5-59month-old children in Kabul from 1996-8. Accordingto WHO the maternal mortality rate increased from 64per 10,000 live births in 1990 to 170 per 10,000 in 1997.See Wiles et al., (1999, p. 17) for a discussion of theseand other indicators.

72 At the Tokyo ASG the US representative declared 'itshould be made clear that donor response is tied toprogress on Taliban policies and practices'. The ECdeclared that 'Resumption of aid, especially to Kabul,must be done carefully so as not to be misconstrued assupporting the Taliban.' Minutes of the Stockholm, June1998 meeting observe: 'It was recognised that theabsence of national reconciliation in Afghanistan had anegative impact on willingness of the donors to engage';and again 'attention was drawn to the Taliban'scontinued harbouring of international terrorists whichwas negatively affecting the provision of assistance'.

73 According to the US representative at the TokyoASG, '...counter-narcotics was being recognised as oneof several over-arching principles which needed to beintegrated into all non-humanitarian assistance planning'.This is not a view shared by many others.

74 Clare Short in a written answer to a parliamentaryquestion, 8 Dec 1998: 'Our effort to help create a system-wide approach to Afghanistan, and increase synergybetween peace-making and humanitarian assistance, hasbeen underpinned by the provision on £8.5m in 1998.'Quite what this 'synergy' might be is unexplained.Similarly, Jan Eliasson, Swedish State Secretary forForeign Affairs at the June 1998 ASG 'emphasised thatthe lack of commitments by the parties to the Afghanconflict should not be allowed to halt the peace process.He called for renewed efforts to support local peace-building processes, wherever opportunities occurred.Humanitarian assistance and other forms of people-centred aid, he said, could have a great deal of leveragein serving as an incentive for local confidence-buildingendeavours' (ASG, 1998).

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75 With HTP the concern was the extent to whichrefugees were being transferred voluntarily. Theforerunner of HTP was a small transfer of refugees toTurkey, facilitated by the US government, that caused astir in UNHCR and in the media. HTP proved politicallyembarrassing to all concerned and was ultimatelydwarfed by the HEP, which evacuated over 90,000people from Macedonia. HEP led to some protectionconcerns in Macedonia because of competition forplaces; more generally, as indicated above, there wereconcerns that it would ultimately compromise theprinciple of unconditional asylum upon whichinternational refugee law and practice rest.

76 Although one NGO reported that it was USAmbassador Chris Hill, not UNHCR, who was able toquell an angrycrowd of Kosovar refugees attacking Roma in a camp.

77 Interview, NGO Country Representative, 23 February2000, Skopje.

78 'In the absence of political representation inAfghanistan, the Humanitarian Coordinator has beendrawn into issues outside of his mandate.'

79 The Dutch and German Permanent Representativesto the UN in Geneva undertook a rare d�marche to theHigh Commissioner in late March 1999 urging her tosupport the Humanitarian Evacuation Programme andto increase her high-level representation in the Kosovoregion. It is striking that the Netherlands donated $3.36million to UNHCR for the Kosovo emergency between1 January- 2 June 1999, compared with $800,000 donatedby the UK (See, Suhrke et al., 2000). In the financialyear 1 April 1999 to 31 March 2000, DFID's contributionto UNHCR totalled £8 million, excluding in-kindcontributions. The key point of interest here is theDFID contribution at the early stage of the crisis.

80 Because of this, and because of Minister Herfkens'personal knowledge of Macedonia, this would seem tohave enabled the Dutch government to move moreswiftly than its UK counterpart in providing rapid andwell-targeted assistance to Macedonia, such as balance-of-payments support. In contrast, the UK reported thatit had found it difficult to identify well-prioritised projectsfor bilateral funding and thus increase significantly itscontribution to Macedonia.

81 Interview, OCHA, Belgrade, February 2000.

82 Interviews, NGO/UN agencies, Belgrade, February2000.

83 Interviews, DFID/FCO December 1999 and February2000. See also Peter Hain, Tony Faint and Ros Marsdenevidence to the International Development Committee,25 November 1999.

84 For example, interview Foreign and CommonwealthOffice, February 2000.

85 Interviews, DFID and FCO, December/February 2000.

86 Interview and correspondence ECHO; interviewDutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 1999.

87 It is not an uninteresting question whether the useof development aid funds, such as those from Obnova,are legitimately used as part of an explicitly politicalprogramme such as EfD.

88 See, for example, Clapham (1996) who traces theevolution of mono-economics, embodied in structuraladjustment, through to mono-politics (the goodgovernance agenda).

89 Or what Dillon and Reid (1999) have perhaps moreaptly called emerging political complexes.

90 It is precisely the legitimation implied by the provisionof development assistance (as well as its significantlylarger volume) that makes the apparently technical shiftfrom relief to development assistance so fraught withpolitical controversy among warring parties and donorgovernments (see, Macrae, 2000).

91 See, Eriksson et al. (1996) The International Responseto Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the RwandaExperience. Synthesis Report. Joint Evaluation of theInternational Response to the Genocide and Emergencyin Rwanda, Danida, Copenhagen.

92 Thus, the rise of OCHA as the darling of the SecurityCouncil ( post-Kosovo, itself an emasculated institution)providing briefings on conditions in non-strategiccountries. Similarly, CHAD in DFID was seen to havewidespread reach within UN political circles. In theNetherlands, former Minister Pronk used thehumanitarian aid budget as an entry point for politicalaffairs in complex emergencies.

93 The design of the Energy for Democracy project is acase in point: it failed to acknowledge, let aloneconfront, a primary determinant of the violent politicaleconomy of Serbia — the parallel economy, itself fuelledby sanctions.

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94 See, for example, evidence of International Alert andOxfam to the International Development Committee.

95 See also Leader and Macrae (2000) op cit, and inparticular the paper by Mikael Barfod regarding ECHOand the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

96 There has been some, however. See, for example,UK International Development Committee (1999)Conflict Prevention and Post-conflict Reconstruction, twovolumes. House of Commons, London; Advisory Councilon International Affairs (1998) Humanitarian Aid:Redefining the Limits, AIV. The Hague. Importantly,however, both these investigations relied largely on oralevidence from key ‘witnesses’ and did not have theresources to undertake extensive field-work,underpinned by technical expertise.

97 See, International Court of Justice (1986) Nicaraguaversus the United States.

98 See, for example, Short, C (1999) Opening Statementto the DFID-NGO Roundtable on Humanitarian Issues.DFID, February 15, London.

99 For example, British policy with regard to Sierra Leonein 1997, Afghanistan (since 1996) and British and Dutchpolicy in Serbia in 1999.100 See, for example, ICRC (1999) People and War, ICRC,Geneva. This provides a global survey of views ofconflict-affected population and the general public indonor countries regarding humanitarian principles andlaw.

101 See also proposed follow up to the ODI/HenryDunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Leader,N. and Macrae, J. (2000) op cit.

102 This paper is reproduced in Leader, N. and Macrae,J. (2000) op cit.

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