Humanitarian NGOs as instruments, partners, advocates and critics in the governance of international humanitarian response: complementary or conflicting roles?

Abstract

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play an important role in the governance of international humanitarian response as implementing partners to governments and international organisations, as advocates, and as critics. They face challenges in reconciling their role as implementing partner with their responsibility to promote principles of international humanitarianism, such as humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. But this tension can be managed to ensure effective assistance to those in need. Governments and international organisations should welcome the role of NGOs in the governance of humanitarian response, given the expertise and resources that NGOs provide. To improve integration of effort and overall effectiveness, governments and NGOs should work to establish greater communication and enhanced procedures for coordination, especially given the increased engagement by non-traditional donor governments in the provision of humanitarian aid.

Keywords:

• humanitarian NGOs
• instruments
• governance
• international humanitarian response
• humanitarian imperative
• humanitarian principles
• China
• Iraq
• Syria
• United States
• Vietnam

Notes

1. The focus of this discussion and the examples used result largely from my former experience as a practitioner who, in the course of a professional career that began in 1985, has held positions addressing human rights and humanitarian responses at institutions such as Human Rights Watch, the US National Security Council and State Department, and the United Nations Secretariat. While most of the examples relate to US government experience, I believe the conclusions drawn may offer broad lessons on humanitarian policy for other donor governments, international NGOs, public international organisations, and stakeholders in aid-receiving countries.

2. I was on the staff of the National Security Council during the Kosovo conflict in 1999, and had responsibilities for international humanitarian affairs when Kosovars were fleeing into Macedonia and Albania and NATO was engaged in the humanitarian response. While the humanitarian imperative certainly informed decision-making, there is no question that an effective humanitarian response to the crisis was seen by senior officials as critical to the overall effort to win the war with Serbia. Failure to provide adequate refuge to those fleeing Kosovo would have raised additional questions about the wisdom of the NATO air campaign and would have undermined international support.

3. It is clear that governments providing those funds do influence the operations of the international humanitarian organizations. The PRM Bureau that I led had an ongoing policy dialogue with the UNHCR on priority issues and concerns; and, for example, heavy UNHCR engagement in Iraq after 2003, when the US had strong interests in addressing humanitarian issues, was largely funded by the US (Financial Tracking Service, 2015a). In sum, one cannot avoid completely the issue of government connection with NGO activity by arguing that public international organisations operate with complete independence from donor governments – though, as I suggest below, public international organisations can still play an important role in promoting the integrity of humanitarian aid delivery.

4. For a detailed description of this distinction between life-saving relief and other forms of aid, see Barnett and Snyder (2008).

5. Here I draw on experience during two assignments in the US government. Much of my work involved refugee issues in general, and refugee resettlement in particular, so the cases I discuss concern those issues. Of course, there are thousands of examples of broad and deep NGO engagement with the US government in the humanitarian sphere, so conclusions emerging from the cases I describe remain tentative. Nonetheless, they do illustrate patterns that exist throughout civilian institutions of the US government that address international humanitarian response.

6. This is known as “third country” resettlement, whereby governments, working largely with the UNHCR, make decisions to facilitate the entry and permanent residence of individuals who have a well-founded fear of persecution, have fled their countries of origin, and have been residing in countries of temporary refuge.

7. As of August 2015, there were nine US national resettlement agencies with local affiliates. They include Church World Service, the Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, HIAS, the International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops/Migration and Refugee Services, and World Relief (UNHCR, 2015d).

8. In the case of the reception and placement grant, my own perspectives were certainly influenced by the views of the non-governmental community, but were also informed by the information provided to me by my own staff, and by my own interactions with resettled refugees and with stakeholders in local communities. That is as it should be.

9. This case concerns one of my first experiences in incorporating an NGO proposal into government policy, while I was serving on the staff of the US National Security Council. It is discussed in greater detail in Schwartz (2002).

10. For background on these issues, see the Congressional Record of the Joint Hearing of the Subcommittees on International Operations and Human Rights and Asian and Pacific Affairs (Congressional Record, 1995).

11. As a relatively young NSC staff member, I was deeply influenced by the experience, which has over some 20 years informed my own perspectives on the creativity and talent in the NGO community and its value to officials in government.

12. As a practitioner, I often considered these factors in my own engagement with NGO stakeholders. For example, in 2011, at a time when the US Congress was considering action that would reduce US overseas assistance significantly, I authored a public note to NGO partners and others, noting that I found “myself deeply concerned – even heartbroken – by the prospect of proposed humanitarian aid reductions of historic and devastating proportions” (Schwartz, 2011b). I went on to describe the programmes that would be sacrificed with the cuts in a not-so-subtle effort to help garner NGO support for efforts to thwart them. But frankness also requires a willingness to share information about bad news, as I sought to do in a subsequent newsletter, when I attempted to be frank about how security screening procedures were limiting our capacity to move quickly to resettle Iraqis in the US (Schwartz, 2011c).

13. This challenge became particularly apparent to me in the context of the Asian tsunami response, when I served as the UN Secretary General’s Deputy Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Out of a US$14 billion aid effort, private contributions constituted some US$5.5 billion (Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, 2006, p. 14). There was an enormous proliferation of NGO organisations in affected countries, far beyond the capacity of the UN to coordinate them easily.