Humanitarian Aid, Conflict, and Politics - Research Paper Example

Humanitarian Aid, Conflict and Politics Aid donors often want to ensure that the aid they provide reaches and supports the target population in countries affected by war. However, with civilians working as both strategic targets and “militarized” actors targets in the modern-day conflicts, the issue of humanitarian organizations providing relief services in war-torn areas has increasingly been politicized. Factions targeting the civilians in war torn regions see any aid to civilians as “opponents” supporting the enemy. The factions view the provision of assistance and resource to the civilians as materially supporting hence supporting one side involved in the conflict. This viewpoint goes against humanitarian relief organization’s “provide aid but take no side” credo. Worse, the politicization of relief or aid may cause those representing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and agencies on the ground to be turned into strategic targets by opposing factions in the conflict. Hostile factions attack representatives of the agency, local and international Non-governmental organizations in the field with a view to obtaining goods and services and to prevent aid from reaching the targeted civilian population by that faction. Besides, destruction of aid infrastructure and robbery of supplies, NGO and agency representatives may be killed or terrorized in an attempt to dissuade aid providers from continuing to operate in the region and drive out such organizations from operating in the conflict zone. In certain conflict regions, foreigners are automatically targeted. For most war torn areas, staff and local organizations suffer from violence more when it comes to violence targeting humanitarian workers. When examining the roles of humanitarian agencies on the ground in conflict zones, questions emerge specifically about the relationship between humanitarian aid, politics and conflict. This study utilizes the existing research on the role of humanitarian aid, politicization of human aid conflict, conflict, and impact of attacks on relief organizations to investigate and outline major challenges faced confronted by the humanitarian aid agencies. Of particular concern is the relationship between humanitarian aid, politics and conflict. Research indicates that policy and power structures may shape the roles of aid and can lead to attacks on NGOs and agencies, while cultural, political, ethnic, and socioeconomic motives and realities can influence both the choice to target and the decision to attack. This study focuses on one case of violent, one involving politically motivated attacks on humanitarian agencies: the Sri Lanka case. The study concludes with a review of selected relevant policy suggestions, which may be important to humanitarian organizations operating on war torn areas. Methodology In this paper, qualitative research methodology will be employed to find out how politicization of humanitarian aid can influence the conflict and interfere or promote the humanitarian activities of providing and distributing aid in the war torn areas. This methodology is used to ascertain the interference of politics in the provision of aid by humanitarian organization in the Sri Lanka conflict. A brief history of Sri Lanka conflict will be provided. The case will then be examined with a view to determining whether the humanitarian aid has been politicized, and how if this politicization has had an impact on conflict. The paper will further explore other cases to ascertain whether there is a similar trend across the world. Finally, the paper will provide policy recommendations to these effect. Background The most recent example of violent attacks on workers of humanitarian organization can be found in Sri Lanka. For years, Sri Lanka has been involved in prolonged bloody civil war. The basis of this civil war arises from the history of extreme structural violence and oppression. Both the majority Singhalese ruling elites and the British have discriminated against the Tamil-speaking minority people of Sri Lanka since the end of 19th century. The civil war has been between two key parties: the Hindu Tamil rebel group, Tamil Tigers also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eulam (LTTE), who are the minority, and the majority Buddhist Singhalese government. Several peace talks have been attempted, and many cease-fires signed, but war still continues till today. It has claimed an estimate of about 65,000 lives for the past 30 years. Currently, research shows that more than one million people are internally displaced because of this conflict. It is indicated that the Tamil diaspora has spread across the world. After the failure of the cease fire that was signed in 2002, the conflict resurged between 2005 and 2006 as the government and Tamil forces intensified their battle for the control of districts and towns. This has resulted in widespread displacement of civilians. It has also led to a surging number of civilian casualties. In 2006, 17 Tamil-speaking staff belonging to an international NGO Action Center La Faim were executed in Mutter after the town was turned into a Centre for battle between the government troops and LTTE. This attack surprised the world just because it was revealed that the government forces perpetuated the attack. A discredited investigation by the government of Sri Lanka reached an inclusive conclusion. Further assassination of the staff member of ACFIN brought to the fore the subject of government impunity and NGO security. Humanitarian aid agencies and donors and NGOs were forced to question their collective and individual capacities and to look at their security issues in an effort to avoid tragedies. Hard questions were posed about the wherefore and why of the killings. No satisfactory answers have been provided to this effect. Politicization of the Humanitarian Aid in Sri Lanka Traditionally, humanitarian work is said to be politicized whenever it becomes supported for various other reasons other than to simply help individuals who are in need. Such reasons may include winning the minds and hearts of those in need, pursuit of political and security goals, pursuit of military, or to projecting a certain image to those in need. Humanitarian work may also be politicized when a government considers it its sovereign right to control of all activities within its borders in the course of a humanitarian crisis. In doing so, the government may not necessarily want to control humanitarian activities for its own ends. However, there can present a risk of undermining the key principle of impartiality for upheld by a humanitarian organization. In this case, those political force with particular relevance for the national or local elections may have an upper hand in receiving aid and protection. In the case of Sri Lanka, the government established strategies and policies which shaped the aid donors’ policy options. The government of Sri Lanka has and still retains a strategy for solving conflicts, which is built of three primary elements: (a) using the government military to the LTTE’s fighting capability to make the group yield to pressure to negotiate for the peace settlement of the conflict and to isolate the LTTE group from the mainstream Tamil population (2) designing and negotiating a political solution that is based on greater power devolution to provinces and regions alongside other reforms that allow for respect for human rights and equal opportunities, and (3) providing for economic reconstruction and rehabilitation in areas affected by the conflict attaining peace. With respect to the international assistance, the government’s policy has been shaped by other concerns such as the conflict and the wish to reduce or avoid internationalizing the conflict in order to limit the international aid agencies’ presence in the conflict zones. However, since the support for this agencies was still needed, the government came up with restrictions barring humanitarian aid organizations from carrying out activities on the conflict zones. Secondly, the government considered ostracizing the LTTE and reducing the level of international involvement that could otherwise be interpreted as a way of seeking recognition. Thirdly the government of Sri Lanka applied a double policy with reconstruction and development in the east and Jaffna. This expressed the state’s interest to reconstruct with a view to winning the “minds and hearts” of its populations while at the same time using strict military sanctions and controls to help reduce such opportunities. Fourth, all the humanitarian and development activities in the east and the north, in LTTE, and the government controlled regions have been restricted. The emphasis has been accorded the security and military concerns. The government has, however, maintained its operations and presence in the areas occupied by the LTTE. It has maintained government-funded districts, provisional admirations managed and headed by government agencies, and provides basic services such as water engineers, local road, health centers and schools. These employees of the government receive that pensions and salaries from the government. More importantly, the government provides foods for those civilians who are internally displace and those who lack a livelihood. Those who are internally displaced are often temporarily in temples, public buildings, and schools. The government supplies food to them. In 1998, it was indicated that the total government expenditure on the internally displaced person was about $60 million. This was almost two times the assistance provided by the international humanitarian. On the other hand, the LTTE has been fighting the government with the aim of forming a separate state separate to be occupied by the Tamil-speaking community. LTTE has ensured the Tamil political opponents are eliminated. This way, the group, conducted an ethnic cleansing in regions that fall under their control. The reality of war and the interference by the government and the LTTE group made it difficult for humanitarian organizations to operate in Sri Lanka. The aforementioned policy issues made it challenging for the donors to reach their target population. The major issue raised was whether the aid provided by these groups directly or indirectly supported the war efforts. Many aid donors were concerned about to what extend the aid programs could support and influence the government efforts towards a peaceful process. The target choice Some stark trend showed using the HPG report involves the particular precarious situation of local or national staff members. The recent data that is available between the year 1997 to 2005 shows that the absolute numbers of the attacks on the humanitarian aiding workers did double for the past nine years. This was attributed to the high increase in the personnel of the field. In other cases, the relative number for the assaults did raise to six from five in every ten thousand aid workers. In about seventy nine percent of the attacks, the victims consisted of the countries’ citizens where the incident happened. As per the HPG, the risk in respect to the international staffs was increasing for the contexts that were violent. The trend is due to the high use of the nationals within the countries in which it is considered extremely dangerous for the staff expatriates to function the missions. There exist a number of war zones such as Iraq in which the foreigners happen to be vulnerable to the political reason attacks. For this places, the members of the international staff did run the help programs from the neighboring countries that are safe by the help of the local staff in executing the onsite project. This method is referred to as a remote control. The key logic is the fact that the locals were expected to easily blend thus not suffer from the targets that can be seen internationally by the staff. This direction of reason is flawed since the combatants did attack the local workers aids. Another study showed that there existed a bias towards the national staff attacks. The study showed that the case leads to two hundred and seventeen deaths for the expatriates having the unknown nationality. These numbers were not reliable enough for determining the relative percent of the attackers that were violent to the national members of staff. The attackers who were violent attacked the humanitarian workers for different reasons. The reasons why the members of staff did suffer increased attacked may not be understood exclusively and the motives may be different. One of the reason could be due to the international aid workers mostly administering their aid to the zones considered being the danger zones by using the local staff in the zones. This means that the national aid workers would be the remaining targets. The expatriate members of staff may benefit from increased arrangements of security in the urban cities, in comparison to their local workmates. The international organizations, on the other hand, ignore the security requirements of the local colleagues. They come up with the plans of evacuation for the expatriate workers and equipment leaving out the nationals and give only the international staff field having the personal security resources. For instance, farahnaz Karim identifying the large figures of the Afghani aid casualties asserted that the security level resources are invested in the protection of the expatriate staff. These resources were considered being disproportionately higher hence misplaced. This is one of the reasons that can explain why the local relief workers attacks have dramatically increased in relative and absolute figures over years, whereas the incident rates for the expatriate staff in reducing. Policies. Different policies have been formulated and implemented to branch the attack tide on the humanitarian aid staff. According to the HPG report, even as the attacks of the humanitarian relief workers rise from five to six in comparison to the 10000 worldwide workers, seventy nine percent of the affected were national aid staff. Considering the six regions in the world having increased attack levels to the humanitarian workers, the attack to the local staff is high in all absolute and relative cases if compared with the causalities of the international staff that is reduced. This is attributed to the long held perception that the nationals might be safer than the international aids while operating in a certain dangerous place. An increasing risk towards the NGOs than the intergovernmental institutions like the United Nations endured high quantity of the incidents in the relative and absolute proportional terms. Even as the field risk increases for the humanitarian aid worker, the nationals and the NGO functioning in the origin country are expected to suffer the attacks. The Sri Lankan together with the Afghanistan cases are examples where the local employed aid workers hired by some NGO were involved. Some recent attacks depicted the same conclusions. The suggestions of the policy highlighted the focus on the NGO for the major reason that the personnel in the field such as the national staff happen to be extremely vulnerable in comparison to the inter-governmental agencies like the United Nations. Another challenge involves the questions behind the motives. Why is it the humanitarian workers like those employed by some NGO in their origin countries who experience the attacks? In the Sri Lanka and Afghanistan cases, there were insufficient reliable eyewitnesses illustrating the manner in which the motives may be obscured by missing information or lies. In other situations, it may somewhat challenging for one to identify the real offenders in an attack. It is one challenging problem in determining the drives behind the perpetrator behavior of attacking an innocent being. In all the cases, the context of the case could give some hint or clue of the possible reasons that drive the attacks. Despite having these clues, the motive of the attacker is still hidden and remains elusive factor that relates to the field of humanitarian security staff. For the community of the humanitarian, different procedures and policies have been made and implemented to hinder the attackers thus increasing the total safety of the worker aid in the field. The derived reward of the policies has increased mostly to the international workers. Measures of security can be divided into three categories. These include protection, deterrence, and acceptance. All of these measures consider some different approaches to the field staff safety. These activities have attempted to minimize the vulnerability of the workers of NGO through widening the local acceptance for the organization, the employees, and work. The management of the image, building relationship together with the local communities and leadership and a solid awareness of the economic, socio-cultural, and political contexts will establish the backbone of the different policies of acceptance. The suggested activities would directly address the motive question and the complex reasons why the aid workers are the targets. These are done in order to make sure that the armed factions are not considered as the NGO legitimate targets of the military hence minimum reasons of attacking the field staff. In addition, the activities of protection fail to address the motive attacks on the NGO aid workers. They apply the procedures of the field and the devices of protection in order to minimize the vulnerability. Materials like body armor, armored cars, helmets, convoys, use of national staff for the regions where the international workers are at a high risk of attack, and housing the foreign staff in defensible and secure compounds are some of the strategies of protection that may be useful for the humanitarian workers. In many cases, the local workers may be expected to protect themselves. The strategies of protection may not enhance long term security for the staff in the field rather their main focus is on doing away with the immediate threats to safety. The demand for the dedicated staff to establish, revise, and put into implementation the wide security array of strategies and policies has resulted into a significant increase in the coordinators, officers, and the security persons in the international agencies for relief. These people may be based on the region or regularly travel to the countries and regions in which the organisation is operational. They track the conditions of security; collaborate with others in sharing information and ensuring that the given organisations do implement the required procedures while in the field. This role is vital in establishing the better understanding of the vulnerability of the staff and the motives of the attackers. Even with the high level of security, policies, guidelines, and procedures, the numbers of humanitarian field attacks still is on the rise. There can be no silver bullet that can perform the miracle of keeping the aid workers safe. Similar to the different individuals in war, the field staff shall always face some level of n=vulnerability. Some NGO accepts some level of risk as part of the job. Nevertheless, not all the NGO workers are subjected to the attacks. The foreign staff enjoys the benefit of security over the local, national aids. Policy recommendations There are different policy recommendations that have been suggested for the humanitarian workers. The first recommendation is that there is a need for an improved organization, collection, and information sharing regarding the attacks of the aid staff and the motive context that influence the target choice. The NGO need to protect their field staff by getting full information regarding the contexts and attack reasons for the field staff especially in the areas where there exist a high target for the national staff. This is vital in the implementation for the strategies of acceptance that would address the issue of the motives of the attack on the humanitarian workers. The second recommendations involve prioritizing and getting the deep knowledge regarding the socioeconomic, cultural, and the political realities for the different regions that could provoke an attack to the humanitarian workers. A sound understanding of political, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts is vital in helping the aid workers avoid some targeted attacks while in the field. The third recommendation is that the NGO should work on increasing research on the vulnerable subgroups of the different aid workers and the establishment of the security procedures that are meant for protecting them. In this regard, the national together with the NGO staff need to receive specific attention in some new arrangement of security. There is a need for equal protection for both the international and the national workers in the humanitarian organization. The national NGO staff experience particular risks and the stress that the international workers may not experience. This is so because they operate in most dangerous places and are mostly evacuated in times of conflict peak. Research should be conducted to find out why the national NGO field workers fall prey of the attackers. The last recommendation involves the NGO ensuring that the prevailing security policies and procedures protect all the field workers. With no detailed information of the attacks cause on a certain subgroup of the field workers, it is hard to give the policies that may guarantee the reduction of the heightened vulnerability of the staff. The report of HPG highlights the fact that, in cases of heightened insecurity, the international staff may depend on high security policies that are made to have the foreign staff protected. Read More