Development vs Humanitarian Aid?

The need for a European response

Louk Box

Conclusions as a starter

• Most European donors increasingly face pressure on their structural ‘development’ programmes

• Part of the pressure comes from incidental allocations associated with ‘emergencies’

• If development does not emerge, emergencies will develop or be developed

Main points

1. Concepts: Development and emergency are vague terms, allowing policy drift

2. History: Marshall Plan as basis – which development for what emergency?

3. Europe: shaped by aid – also shaping it?

4. Emergencies & humanitarian aid

5. European int’l cooperation:civilateral

1. Concepts: Development and emergency

• Notion of developmentdevelopment is left undefined in practice: it is food for intellectuals.

• OECD/DAC defines ‘everything’, except development (or humanitarian aid)

• EmergenciesEmergencies are defined in political and media terms

• Better: use specific indicators to operationalise terms

2. History: Marshall Plan as basis

• Marshall Plan first defined the notion of development to counter the emergency after WW2 within a political-economic context

• It also generated the institutional context

• Inspired by a military background

• Leading to rapid success in W.Europe

• Due to very specific circumstances

3. Europe: shaped by aid

• Through the MP Europe became the US prime recipient of aid (OECD)

• Within a US conception of a unified Europe

• EconomicallyEconomically: through an economic community (EEC) and a common market

• PoliticallyPolitically: through North Atlantic Alliance

• DecolonisationDecolonisation: fostered through aid

4. Emergencies & humanitarian aid

• Gradual distinction between ‘structural’ and ‘incidental’ aid programmes

• Increase of emergencies or disasters which could ’undo decades of development’

• Emergence of civil society movements and NGDO’s claiming effectiveness & legitimacy vs state centred aid programmes

• Increasing budgets for ‘humanitarian aid’

5. European int’l cooperation

• What has this meant for European International cooperation?

• Specific case of non-state aid programmes, closely linked to a vanguard aid & trade programme (Lome)?

• EU has become the single largest humanitarian aid donor – how does it compare and link to structural development programmes?

The argument restated …

• A grey zonegrey zone exists between European structural development cooperation and incidental humanitarian assistance

• This zone needs to be acknowledged and reduced because quality of aid may suffer

• Civilateral cooperationCivilateral cooperation needs to find its place along multi and bilateral aid

6. Two forms of aid…?

‘structural’ TYPE AIDTYPE AID ‘incidental’

‘development’ AIMAIM ‘relief’

‘Long term’ TIME SPANTIME SPAN ‘Short term’

‘Economic’ PRIME FOCUSPRIME FOCUS ‘Humanitarian’

‘Poor countries’ TARGETSTARGETS ‘Disaster areas’

OECD Classification of developing countries

Part I: Developing Countries and Territories(Official Development Assistance)

Part II: Countries and Territories in Transition

(Official Aid)Least

Developed

Countries

Other Low

Income Countr

ies (per

capita GNP < $760 in 1998)

Lower Middle Income Countries  

and Territories(per capita GNP

$761-$3030 in 1998)

Upper Middle Income

Countries and

Territories

(per capita GNP

$3031-$9360 in

1998)

High Income Countries and Territo

ries(per

capita GNP > $9360

in 1998)

1

Central and Eastern European Countries

and New Independent States of the former

Soviet Union

Developing Countries and More Advanced Territories

The relative decline of ‘structural’ aid

The declining role of ODA…Source: World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/global/chapter13.html

‘Structural aid’ in Europe

• First and foremost: member state aid programmes – incoherent, uncoordinated

• Second: the EC’s programme – striving to become more complementary, coherent and coordinated (ACP, ALA, Med, Phare ff)

• Europe still first in aid & trade for LDC’s• Europe also first in Humanitarian Aid – at

the cost of structural programmes?

The many meanings of ‘humanitarian’

1. [n]  someone devoted to the promotion of human welfare and to social reforms

2. [adj]  marked by humanistic values and devotion to human welfare; "a humane physician"; "released the prisoner for humanitarian reasons"; "respect and humanistic regard for all members of our species"

3. [adj]  of or relating to or characteristic of humanitarianism; "humanitarian aid"

Source: Hyper-dictionnary

Lack of definition …

“A comparison of bilateral humanitarian aid expenditures of selected countries, their stated definition (if any) and reported values are presented in Table I. In first instance, the table shows that there is a lack of a universal definition. For example, some countries do include rehabilitation measures, other do not. Secondly, by comparing the three sources of data collection, it is clear that there is a difference between DAC reports, Country reports and the Reliefweb reporting on humanitarian aid expenditures.”

Source: http://www.cred.be/centre/publi/164e/ch3.htm

1995 Bilateral Humanitarian Aid Expenditures except emergency food aid 5 (in $ million)

Country Definition (as of 1997) DAC Reliefweb

Country Report

Belgium Prevention of conflicts; emergency aid; rehabilitation 16 9 14

France Not Clearly Defined 138 24 24

UK Disaster preparedness; Disaster Relief; Refugee Relief 182 151 237

Netherlands

Prevention; Emergency Aid; Rehabilitation; Aid for the recipient and displaced people

350 264 276

Luxembourg

Not Clearly Defined 7 5 7

Finland Emergency Aid; Aid to refugees; Aid to democratising efforts; others

23 20 20

Complicating factor…

“Humanitarian assistance is rarely just the concern of a single aid department; other, often more powerful, ministries are involved, and humanitarian aid programmes are at times, linked with a government’s broader objectives and policies. This can lead to disagreement among donors and humanitarian actors as to what humanitarian aid is for, and how performance can be measured. “

Source: Macrae & Harmer 2003

7. Humanitarian aid:EU-EC Regulation

• No specific mention in Treaty• Dependence on general formulation in a

weak article (180) on development cooperation

• Well elaborated in a Council regulation (1257/96)

• ‘Co-decision’ allow EP to have influence

EU Treaty Art 180

The Community and the Member States shall coordinate their policies on development cooperation and shall consult each other on their aid programmes, including in international organisations and during international conferences. They may undertake joint action. Member States shall contribute if necessary to the implementation of Community aid programmes.

And further …

The Commission may take any useful initiative to promote the coordination referred to in paragraph 1.

Regulation of 1996…Article 1 The Community's humanitarian aid shall comprise assistance, relief and protection operations on a non-discriminatory basis to help people in third countries, particularly the most vulnerable among them, and as a priority those in developing countries, victims of natural disasters, man-made crises, such as wars and outbreaks of fighting, or exceptional situations or circumstances comparable to natural or man-made disasters. It shall do so for the time needed to meet the humanitarian requirements resulting from these different situations.Such aid shall also comprise operations to prepare for risks or prevent disasters or comparable exceptional circumstances.

Source:http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexplus!prod!DocNumber&lg=en&type_doc=Regulation&an_doc=1996&nu_doc=1257

Complexities & Ambiguities

“With regard to the two major data collecting systems - DAC databases and OCHA Reliefweb, compatibility of both systems is not the only problem. It is also difficult to get a clear picture of the volume and distribution of humanitarian aid expenditures. The main reason for this is that responsibility for humanitarian aid is dispersed across various government departments and ministries, most commonly defense, development cooperation and foreign affairs. Compounding this problem is the fact that the definition of humanitarian aid expenditure is increasingly complex and ambiguous.”

Source http://www.cred.be/centre/publi/164e/ch3.htm

8. Echo's mandate

The European Union’s mandate to ECHO is to provide emergency assistance and relief to the victims of natural disasters or armed conflict outside the European Union. The aid is intended to go

directly to those in distress, irrespective of race, religion or political convictions.

Echo's mandate- 2

• Speed: ‘get to crisis zones fast’

• Goods & services: broad scope

• Partnership: with affiliated NGO’s

• Coverage: over 85 countries since 1992

• Volume: over E500m/year

• Related activities: studies, monitoring, training, PR, networking

ECHO results 1992-1999…

• Partners: 170• Volume: E4b

- NGO’s: 56% of funds

- UN: 25%

- Others (ICRC): 11%

- ECHO/MS direct: 8%

• Too many? • Too much?

– What limits?– How strong?– New actors?– Which lessons?

ECHO Evaluation

• External Review by consultants in 1999• Generally positive, but critique on:

1. Mission unclear – performance indicators lack2. Institutional learning poor – same mistakes

made3. Staff weak: both in numbers and capacitiesGeneral point: grey zonegrey zone dilemma – development

vs. emergency aidSource: http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/r10001.htm

ECHO – recent trends

• Natural disasters: impacts differ according to population densities – climate change may affect greater numbers

• Man made disasters: increase in wars and refugee numbers (20-25m in 2000) – most located in South (see also J Forster on Conflicts)

• Strategy changes: cover the ‘grey zone’grey zone’ through global partnerships & restructuring to speed up procedures

9. The various costs of humanitarian aid

• The financialfinancial costs are fairly well known, but figures differ – possibly between E 0,5 and E1Billion annually

• The economiceconomic costs are much less known, but have been calculated in the case of ill directed emergency food aid

• The humanhuman costs are often forgotten, both at the donor and the recipient side …

 

YEAR

Vehicle or Convoy Ambush

Stationary Attack

Anti-aircraft attack

Aerial Bombing

Landmine

Transport Accident

TOTAL

01 10 8 1 4 4 12 39

00 29 12 - 2 5 - 48

99 15 12 9 1 - 27 64

98 13 11 14 3  1 8 50

97 14 12 - - - 22 48

10. Conclusions

1. Humanitarian aid is an increasingly large category of aid from Europe to many countries: between E0,5-1B annually

2. The increase is likely to go at the cost of structural aid programmes,especially in times of budget reduction/pollution

3. The delivery is fraught with political and management problems as the ECHO evaluations have shown

Conclusions 2

4. Quality control needs to be certified; this means that institutional investments need to be made (compare case of ICRC)

5. The grey zonegrey zone should be reduced; this can be done by bringing ‘structural’ and ‘incidental’ forms of aid together again (see comments J Forster).

6. Strengthen accountable global professional organisations – start in Europe, link with UN