Recent Trends in the International Relief System

Recent Trends in the International Relief System

JOHN BORTON

Since 1991 the international relief system has been undergoing a process of rapid and fundamental change associated with the end of the Cold War period. The principal changes concern (i) the international community’s approach to national sovereignty and the ‘right’ of armed intervention in support of humanitarian objectives, and (ii) organisational changes aimed at improving the coordination and effectiveness of the response by donor organisations and the United Nations. This paper describes these changes and attempts to place them in the context of earlier trends within the international relief system, notably the enhanced role of non-governmental organisations, which occurred during the 1980s.

THE INTERNATIONAL RELIEF SYSTEM

The international community responds to humanitarian emergencies through the international relief system.’ The principal types of organisation within the international relief system and the direction of resource flows between them circa 1990 are shown in Figure 1.’ Donor agencies of the richer countries play a crucial role within the system providing the bulk of the relief and rehabilitation resources flowing through it. Thus, in responding to humanitarian emergencies, UN agencies, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs are heavily dependent, though to varying degrees, upon the response by donor agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Commission of the European Community and the UK Overseas Development Administration to their funding appeals and requests. How the donor agencies ’channel’ their resources

through the system largely determines the role played by the various organisations.

What is the scale of resources that flow through the international relief system? Unfortunately this question is not easily answered. Usually the best source of data on aid flows is the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which gathers detailed information on the overseas aid programmes of its 24 member governments through annual questionnaires and presents the results in its annual reports (e.g. OECD 1992).3 Whilst the DAC questionnaire separately identifies non-food emergency aid, unfortunately it does not currently distinguish emergency food aid from other categories of food aid. Consequently, a substantial proportion of the resources provided in humanitarian relief programmes is omitted from the DAC ‘emergency aid’ category. Similarly, whilst DAC does collect data on assistance

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- General public (recipient

Government countries)

----

Local NGOs

r Affected population

FIGURE 1 The international relief system circa 1990

provided by NGOs based in DAC countries, it does not distinguish between categories of NGO assistance and thus the important relief contributions by private donors are not identifiable.

As part of its mandate to coordinate international relief assistance, the former UN Disaster Relief Organisation (UNDRO) and its successor the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA, see below) request and encourage donor agencies to provide information on all relief assistance provided in response to disasters. The reporting by some donor agencies is not complete, however, and the aggregate information is considered to contain so many gaps that it is not currently published by DHA (M. Warms, March 1993 - personal communication).

Since 1964 the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) has collected information, not only on the value of relief assistance provided by agencies of the US

Government and US Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs), but also on the reported value of contributions by the rest of the international community. Information on assistance provided by the rest of the international community is gathered from UN sources and from enquiries made within the affected countries by staff of the local USAID Missions. The information is published annually in the OFDA Annual Reports and the ‘Disaster Relief Assistance and Related Data’ series (e.g. OFDA 1992).

Caution is needed in using the OFDA data as they appear to contain a degree of both double-counting and under-counting . The former arises principally through the double counting of assistance provided by donor organisations which are ’channelled’ through either UN agencies or NGOs and which may appear in both the ’Government’ category and either the ’International Organisations’ category or

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Recent Trends in the International Relief System 189

the ”on-Governmental Organisations’ category. The under-counting arises from two principal sources. First, the value of in- kind donations from non-US sources for which a cash value is not provided by the donor are usually omitted from the estimation of the value of contributions by the international community. Second, OFDA’s data relate principally to so-called Declared Disasters, i.e. those which are officially declared by the Government or the US Ambassador to the country. Data for Non-Declared Disasters or relief operations which continue into subsequent years after their official declaration cover only the US Government contributions, thereby omitting contributions from the rest of the international community. Thus, the non-US contributions to Ethiopia in 1988 do not appear in the OFDA publications because the disaster was ‘declared’ in late 1987 and was not re-declared during 1988. During 1988 the value of emergency food aid and non-food emergency assistance to Ethiopia from non-US sources was roughly US$400 million. Furthermore, the effects of several important conflicts occurring in the years since 1964 do not appear in the OFDA data, partly because US Government assistance to refugee populations is administered by the separate Bureau for Refugee Programs within the Department of State and partly because the conflicts were not included in either the Declared or Non-Declared Disaster categories. Thus the massive international response to the large Afghan refugee populations in Pakistan throughout the 1980s are not included in the data, neither are the cross-border programmes of relief and rehabilitation assistance undertaken from Pakistan territory into Muhjahideen-held areas of AfghaN~tan.~

Despite its imperfections, the OFDA data are currently the only available source of information which is able to convey a sense of the scale of resources flowing through the international relief system. The omission of a significant proportion of the

in-kind assistance provided from the OFDA data would appear to more than cancel out the double-counting that occurs in the data. Moreover, if humanitarian assistance provided in those zones of conflict not currently included in the data were to be included and if assistance provided to protracted refugee operations were also included, it would appear that total values suggested by the OFDA data would be significantly higher.

Figure 2 shows the trends in total relief expenditures indicated by the OFDA data.5 The dotted line shows the values in current prices. To allow for inflation, the values have also been calculated in constant prices (the bold line) using industrial country export unit values as the deflator, taking 1985 as 100. The peak in 1972 is largely attributable to the response to the effects of the War of Liberation in Bangladesh, that in 1985 to the famine emergencies in Africa and in 1991 to the Kurdish refugee crisis and the effects of the Bangladesh Cyclone.

Whilst it is recognised that the OFDA total includes assistance which is not classified by the OECD as Overseas Development Assistance (oda),6 the recent rapid rise in the OFDA totals occurring in the context of total oda from the OECD countries which has been stagnant for the last few years, suggests a significant recent shift in the balance between ‘development’ and humanitarian assistance categories within donor country Aid budgets. Whereas the OFDA total for 1988 was equivalent to less than 2 per cent of total oda from the OECD countries, that for 1991 was equivalent to more than 6 per cent.

This trend is supported by trends within the UK and EC Aid Programmes. In the early 1980s, total emergency aid expenditures by the Overseas Development Administration (including emergency food aid and the UK share of the European Community’s ‘Community Action’ emergency aid) accounted for between 2-3 per cent of the UK Aid Programme. By

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.- ..... -. Current Values I - Constant Values (1985=100); Deflated by Export Unit Value for industrial Countn'es

L

Source: 'Disaster Relief Assistance & Related Data, Summary Tables 1964-92', OFDA

FIGURE 2 World disaster relief assistance: current and constant dues

1991-92 this had increased to 11 per cent.7 Humanitarian aid expenditures by the

EC during the period 1986-91 are shown in Table 1. Since the mid-19809, humanitarian aid has formed a larger proportion of the total EC development expenditures than is the case for ODA, principally as a result of the substantial allocations of food aid to refugee populations. The combination of dramatically increased expenditures on emergency food aid as a result of the 1991 Special Programme for Africa and the substantial EC role in the response to the humanitarian needs created by the Gulf War resulted in an 88 per cent increase in total humanitarian aid expenditures in 1991. As a result of the continuation of the Special Programme for Africa during 1992 and the EC's substantial funding support to the

humanitarian operations in the former Yugoslavia, these high levels of expentirue are likely to increase once the figures for 1992 become available.

The increase in relief needs over the last few years associated with the Gulf War and the process of political and economic change in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics has clearly been an important factor contributing to this recent trend. However, other factors may also be involved. For instance it may be the case that some donor agencies are deliberately increasing their expenditures on high profile relief operations in order to improve their profile among domestic electorates which are generally more supportive of their taxes being spent on humanitarian relief rather than lower-profile, longer-term development activities.8 Deepening



TABLE 1 Expenditure on humanitarian aid by the EC (f millions)

Category 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Refugee and Emergency food aid 103 108 94 106 91 228 Refugee and Emergency non-food 72 67 94 95 156 228

Central and Eastern Europe 3 27

Total 175 175 188 201 250 469

Total development aid expenditures 1,138 1,154 1,486 1,604 1,777 2,252 Humanitarian aid as % of total 15.3% 15.2% 12.7% 12.5% 14.146 20.8%

Note: This table is a modified version of that appearing on page 6 of 'Humanitarian Aid and the European Community', Europe Information DE 70, Brussels 1992. Information provided by the DG WI Food Aid Department on refugee food aid has been used to differentiate what can justifiably be termed 'humanitarian aid' from more developmental uses of free food aid such as food-for-work programmes.

poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa may be rendering countries more vulnerable than previously to the effects of comparatively minor 'shocks' such as rainfall reductions and political instability. Another trend which has been suggested is that the international relief system is being transformed into a system for the provision of international public welfare (Duffield, 1992).

TRENDS IN THE INTERNATIONAL RELIEF SYSTEM DURING THE 1980s

A significant development within the international relief system over the last 10-15 years has been the dramatically enhanced role played by NGOs within the system. Increased support from private sources has been an important contributory factor to this trend, but of much greater sigruficance has been the increased use of NGOs as channels for the provision of relief assistance by donor agencies. Whilst USAID has consistently relied upon Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) such as

CARE and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to channel much of its food aid for free distribution as part of relief and development programmes, European donor agencies have, since the 197Os, substantially increased the proportion of their relief assistance being channelled through NGOs. The trend is particularly clear in the case of the UK Overseas Development Adminis- tration (ODA) and the EC Commission. From 1977/78 to 1980/81 less than 0.5 per cent of total allocations by the Disaster and Refugee Units within the UK ODA9 were channelled through NGOs. Even within a substantially larger budget (Figure 3) the proportion channelled through NGOs had increased to 28 per cent over the period 1988189 to 1991/92. For the emergency aid provided by the ECl' the trend has been even more pronounced, the proportion increasing from 0 per cent in 1976 to 40 per cent by 1982-83 (Table 2).

What factors have contributed to this increased use of NGOs by donor agencies? The number and capacity of NGOs involved in development activities in


John Borton 192

.-- I I

Collaled bf Nigal Nrholds 001 Dapsnmnl Dubunamnl

FIGURE 3 O D A Emergency Aid Department: summary of disbursements by agency type

TABLE 2 EC emergency aid disbursement by agency type

1976 1982 -83 1990

Governments 95.2% 12.3% 5.9% UN agencies 0.15% 24.3% 10.5% ICRClRed Cross 4.4% 20.1% 16.2% NGOs 0.0% 39.7% 37.0% EC Commission and others 0.25% 3.4% 30.4%

N.B. The UN share - over 40% in 1982, less than 8% in 1983 - fluctuates considerably from year to year, depending mainly on the existence and scale of new refugee situations.

The high proportion under 'Commission and others' in 1990 is attributable to the Gulf repatriation exercise implemented by the Commission, in liaison with the International Organisation of Migration.

Source: EC Commission, 1992.



developing countries increased substantially during the 1980s, in part encouraged by western donor agencies, thereby providing the donors with an alternative channel to government agencies when allocating emergency aid. The poor economic performance of many development countries, particularly in Africa, during the 1980s weakened the capacity of state structures. The comparative flexibility and speed of response shown by NGOs and their greater accountability to the donors served to increase their attractiveness as a channel.

The political instability and numerous conflicts in areas of Africa and Asia during the 1980s also contributed significantly to the trend because the ‘channelling’ options available to donor agencies were much more constrained in such areas. Political instability reduces the efficiency of government agencies and conflict introduces the risk of diversion of assistance from their intended beneficiaries by the combatants. Where sovereignty is disputed and large areas are beyond the effective control of government agencies, alternative channels are needed to reach those in need of relief.

The respect for national sovereignty which is central to the UN Charter and the constitutions of the principal UN specialised agencies and programmes involved in humanitarian assistance, limits their ability to provide assistance in areas of political instability and conflict. Where internatonal security is threatened the UN Security Council may override the provisions relating to national sovereignty. But, throughout the Cold War period the capability of the Security Council was virtually paralysed by the veto powers, or threat of their use, by the five permanent members (China, France, the UK, USA, and USSR). From 1945 to May 1990 a total of 279 vetoes were cast in the Security Council. During that time an estimated 100 conflicts around the world resulted in the death of

some 20 million people (Boutros-Ghali 1992).

Among the UN agencies UNICEF has a unique mandate which allows it to provide assistance without the prior permission of the government and in areas where the government is not recognised by the General Assembly. UNICEF has thus been able to play an important role in a number of major relief operations including the Cambodian operations of 1979-81 where it shared lead-agency status with the ICRC. The agency has also been at the forefront of efforts to devise methods to distribute assistance in such areas, for instance through the establishment of temporary cease-fires and ’corridors of tranquillity’ in southern Sudan as part of Operation Lifeline - Sudan. However (as shown by the problems experienced by that operation since its initial success in 1989) such approaches, which rely on negotiated agreements with the parties to the conflict, are vulnerable. Withdrawal by any one of the parties may prevent the delivery of relief.

As a result of the limitations on action by UN agencies during the Cold War, often the only available channels for relief in such situations were the ICRC and NGOs. In many internal conflicts however, the ICRC was unable to obtain the agreement of all parties to respect its neutrality and mission and so was delayed from commencing relief operations or prevented from undertaking them altogether. For instance in the case of Afghanistan, agreement was withheld from one or more parties to the conflict for a period of 8 years. As a result NGOs, often with a less rigid attitude towards impartiality than the ICRC, have often been the only channel available to donor organisations wishing to provide relief assistance in areas of conflict and disputed sovereignty. In Ethiopia, for instance, as much as 80 per cent of the relief assistance provided between 1984-1991 in the Government-held areas and those areas


194 John Borton

controlled by the Eritrean and Tigrayan liberation movements (through cross-border operations mounted from the Sudan) was channelled through NGOs, or some combination of NGOs in conjunction with agencies of the UN, Ethiopian Government or liberation movements. The ability of NGOs to operate in such areas, often at considerable risk to their personnel, substantially enhanced their role in the international relief system during the 1980s.

CHANGES IN THE INTERNATIONAL RELIEF SYSTEM SINCE 1991

The Kurdish refugee crisis of April 1991 proved to be a catalyst for a number of important changes within the international relief system. The crisis involved the movement of 1.9 million people fleeing repression by Iraqi Government forces. Seventy per cent of the refugees were able to cross into Iran where they were comparatively well cared for by the local authorities and the Iranian Red Crescent, but most of those who moved towards Turkey were prevented from crossing the border by the Turkish authorities and were stranded on exposed, high altitude sites on the Iraqi side of the border. The principal elements of the response by the international community were:

- the passage of Security Council Resolu- tion 688 on 5th April which insisted 'that Iraq allow immediate access by international humanitarian organisations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq';

- action by US, British, French and Dutch forces, to establish safe havens within northern Iraq to enable the Kurds to move down to more sheltered sites within Iraq where they were protected from attack by Iraqi government forces; and

- the mounting of a massive relief operation in which military forces (principally

transport aircraft and helicopters) played a crucial role in delivering assistance, together with the UN agencies and international NGOs.

The Kurdish operation established the important precedent that, under certain circumstances, the international community is prepared to use force in support of humanitarian relief operations. In addition, the response sharply exposed the weaknesses in coordination mechanisms and in the ability of the system to deliver assistance rapidly in areas where agencies of the host government could not be used and where few international NGOs operated prior to the intervention.

This operation created precedents because of the context in which it occurred. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War witnessed a convergence of US and Russian interests on many foreign policy issues, simultaneously reducing the need for Russia to use its veto powers in the Security Council and increasing the costs to it of doing so. This has radically enhanced the capacity of the Security Council to address and act upon international security and humanitarian issues. The coalition of military forces assembled to repel Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was the strongest expression to date of this new-found power.

Other factors also contributed to the intervention to assist the Kurds. Some western leaders had exhorted the population of Iraq to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein and it was the failure of the Kurdish uprising and the resultantIraqi campaign of repression that caused the exodus, exerting considerable moral pressure on those same leaders. The proximity of western military forces in Turkey (a member of NATO) and in West Asia generally as a result of the Gulf War, provided the capacity to intervene and to create the safe havens. Finally, western public opinion was heavily influenced by


Recent Trends in the lnternational Relief System 195

the extensive media coverage of the harrowing scenes from the TurkishlIraqi border.

CHANGING ATTITUDES TO ARMED INTERVENTION

Whilst Resolution 688 established an important precedent, subsequent events indicate a continuing struggle between those favouring a more interventionist approach and those arguing against it on the grounds of national sovereignty. Within the General Assembly the former group have faced considerable opposition. Thus, initial drafts of General Assembly Resolution 461182 of December 1992 aimed at improving the UN’s coordination of the international relief system (see below), sought to sustain the impetus for the more interventionist approach resulting from Resolution 688. However, that part of the text relating to intervention was watered down before its adoption by the General Assembly. Many in the Group of 77 (the developing countrylnon-aligned grouping within the General Assembly) expressed concern at the threat to national sovereignty posed by interventions taking place without the permission of the national government but sanctioned by the Security Council. The final text of General Assembly Resolution 461182, aimed at improving the UN’s coordination of relief, states:

The sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of states must be fully respected in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. In this context, humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country and in principle on the basis of an appeal by the affected country.

The text leaves some r0011-t for humanitarian intervention. Its use of the phrases ‘should be’ and ‘in principle’ allows for instances when assistance can be provided without an appeal by the affected state or even without its consent.

For the most part the balance between the interventionists and those wishing to preserve national sovereignty is being determined on a case by case basis within the Security Council. The principal test cases for military intervention in support of humanitarian objectives that have arisen since the Kurdish operation have been Somalia and Bosnia.

Somalia

Here the Security Council was slow to recognise the severity of the problem. Despite the need for international humanitarian action in Somalia since early 1991 the Security Council did not discuss the situation until January 1992 when it adopted Resolution 733. The weaker stance of this Resolution with regard to sovereignty contrasted starkly with 688, for it asked for a commitment from the warring factions to permit the distribution of humanitarian assistance, urged that they ensure the safety of relief workers and called upon the Secretary General to ’undertake the necessary actions to increase humanitarian assistance’. At the end of July 1992 the Security Council approved the dispatch of 500 security personnel with a narrowly defined mandate. Only in November when the US offered to make 30,OOO troops available for an intervention under UN auspices (but on condition that they were under US command) was there a convincing commitment to use force in support of the severely hampered and dangerous relief operations being undertaken largely by the ICRC and intemational NGOs supported by some UN agencies.

Bosnia

Here the Security Council and its members were noticeably quicker to commit military forces to protect UN relief convoys, but aware of the greater military and political


196 lohn Borton

difficulties involved i6 this case, they have been more cautious in giving those forces a mandate to use force to deter attacks on civilians, relief convoys and UN peace- keeping troops. An aspect of both cases has been the extent to which the UN, without standing military forces of its own, has been dependent upon the outcome of diplomatic, military and domestic political considerations in a handful of member states, principally the five permanent members of the Security Council.

ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES

The performance of UN agencies involved in the provision and coordination of relief during the Kurdish operation was criticised by some western governments, during and after the operation. Such criticisms focused upon the slow response of the principal UN agencies to the opportunities created by the passage of Resolution 688, the lack of inter- agency coordination and the lack of leadership provided by the UN system to the numerous other agencies (donor, NGO and intergovernmental) involved in the response.

Coordination of relief assistance within the UN system had long been recognised as being problematic. The UN Disaster Relief Organisation (UNDRO) was created in 1971 to 'mobilize, direct and coordinate' the relief activities of the UN system and to coordinate UN assistance with that from other sources (i.e. bilateral donors and NGOs), essentially by providing an information-clearing house. However, throughout its 20 years of existence UNDRO was beset by problems including an uncertain mandate, inadequate staffing and funding, lack of in-country capacity, lack of support from other UN agencies (and on occasion the Secretariat), a long- running dispute over whether or not it should be operational, and poor credibility within the donor community. Its performance was regularly criticised in

reviews by UN and external reviewers. Perhaps the most fundamental of all of UNDRO's problems was that it was always the 'poor relation' to the other, larger UN agencies who were directly involved in the relief operations. Because UNDRO did not itself control a major share of the resources being channelled to the affected population, or indeed have a substantial field presence during the response, it is questionable that it could ever have been expected to play an effective coordination role.

In an unprecedented move, the G7 Summit held in London in July 1991 indicated those areas where it felt the UN system should be strengthened, namely: the designation of a 'high level official answerable only to the UN Secretary General' to be responsible for coordinating the international response to emergencies; and more effective resource mobilisation arrangements within the UN and the international community for responding to urgent humanitarian needs.

The impetus created by the G7 Summit was maintained by the preparation of a joint Anglo-German draft resolution for the General Assembly Meeting in late 1991, which with some modification (notably on the issue of sovereignty and the right of intervention) was passed as Resolution 461182 in December 1991. The principal innovations in the Resolution related to the appointment of an official to improve coordination and the creation of a Central Emergency Revolving Fund (CERF) of US$50 million to facilitate the rapid and coordinated response by the UN system. The Resolution did not s p e c 9 the rank of the official, this being the prerogative of the Secretary General.

In the event a new UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) was created absorbing UNDRO." It is headed by an Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (currently Mr Jan Eliasson, a Swedish diplomat who took up his post in April 1992). Whilst the Under-Secretary-



General and a small staff are located in the Secretariat building in New York, the bulk of the staff are currently located in the former UNDRO offices in Geneva under a Director for Humanitarian Affairs. Since the establishment of DHA a number of new coordination mechanisms have been created between UN agencies, the ICRC and the larger international NGOs. The system of consolidated UN Appeals has been strengthened to make the planned activities and funding requirements of all UN agencies more transparent. In addition to these changes within the UN system, donor agencies including the EC Commission and the UK ODA have also made organisational changes.

THE UK’S OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION (ODA)

During the initial response period in northern Iraq, specialist advisers within ODA felt that the capaaty of NGOs and UN agencies on the ground was insufficient. ODA therefore decided to recruit skilled volunteers to assist in the provision of clean water supplies, sanitation, health care and shelter. 165 people were recruited and organised into Relief Teams which worked in Turkey and northern Iraq during May and June 1991. The bulk of the funding for the Relief Teams was provided by the EC’s Emergency Aid Service within DG VIII. At no time in the past had ODA been directly operational in a relief operation, so the Relief Teams represented a significant innovation in ODA’s approach to the provision of humanitarian assistance.

ODA then decided to have a standing operational capacity to respond to disasters. This formed the main component of ODA’s Disaster Relief Initiative (DRI) announced by the Minister for Overseas Development in August 1991, the principal points of which were:

-initial assessments of need would be

undertaken by ODA assessors despatched to the affected area from London;

- ODA would take a more active role in coordination, possibly by sending its own field coordinator to provide on-the- spot management of ODA’s own relief effort and provide reports on the progress of the efforts and changes in needs;

- where necessary, skilled personnel would be deployed to work in ODA Relief Teams; a register of such available personnel was set up and training programmes instituted; the separate Disaster and Refugee Units within ODA were merged to form a new Emergency Aid Department with a staff of twelve.

Following the announcement of the DRI, UK NGOs expressed concern that their autonomy and level of relief funding available from ODA would be threatened. They were assured that ODA would both continue to rely heavily on NGOs (long- term emergency operations in the Horn of Africa were cited as an example of where this reliance would continue) and seek to involve NGOs in decisions leading up to the deployment of Disaster Relief Teams.

The first test of the DRI came in March 1992 when an earthquake struck eastern Turkey killing approximately 500 people and making tens of thousands homeless. ODA made immediate grants to the Red Cross Movement and despatched an Assessor who reported that the immediate relief needs were already being well covered by the Turkish authorities, the Turkish Red Crescent and other international and local NGOs and that there was therefore no need to mobilise a Relief Team. Since then ODA Assessors have been used in Bosnia and Egypt and ODA has fielded its own fleet of lorries with British drivers in the former Yugoslavia to transport relief supplies under the supervision of the UN.


John Borton 198

THE EC COMMISSION

Before 1992, the EC‘s emergency aid activities (emergency aid, emergency food aid and refugee aid) were spread between different parts of the Directorate General for Development, DG WI (responsible for Africa, Caribbean and Pacific signatories of the Lome Conventions) and the Directorate- General for External Relations, DG I. Responses involving DG VIII were generally funded from the Lome Budgets and those involving DG I from the main budget of the Commission.

Following the EC‘s experience during the Kurdish refugee crisis and the Bangladesh cyclone disaster, a Task Force was established within the Commission to examine ways of creating a unified framework for managing and financing the EC’s emergency aid activities and enhancing their ‘visibility’. The report recommended the creation of what became the EC Humanitarian Office (ECHO). ECHO began functioning in April 1992 with an initial core of personnel and responsibilities based largely on the former DG VIII Emergency Unit. Additional staff and responsibilities have subsequently been added. The current Director is Sr Santiago Gomez-Reino. It is planned that the substantial emergency food aid component of the EC Food Aid Programme will eventually be transferred to ECHO, though this transfer has yet to find full approval within the EC Commission and among Member States.

Since ECHO‘s creation, concerns have been expressed by some Member States and European NGOs about ECHO’s reporting structure, the criteria to be used for allocating assistance and the extent to which it will undertake a directly operational role in relief operations. The plan announced in January 1993 to merge the development assistance part of DG I with DG VIII’s responsibilities under Commissioner Marin may go some way to resolving the reporting

structure issue. ECHO’s allocation criteria is seen by NGOs as hampering an effective EC response to chronic, complex emergencies, such as those in the Horn of Africa, Liberia and southern Africa, which require a closer operation of relief, rehabilitation and development activities.

ECHO’s increasingly operational role is seen by some NGOs and the ICRC as a threat to their own role in relief operations. The clearest example to date of ECHO undertaking a directiy operational role is within the former Yugoslavia. In January 1993 ECHO began a programme to distribute 325,000 ‘family parcels’ to Muslim refugees in the Republics of Serbia and Montenegro. The parcels contain food items intended to complement the rations being provided by WFP and UNHCR. On the face of it this development does raise the possibility of ECHO supplanting the role of ICRC, Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies and NGOs involved in the provision of relief assistance. However, care should be taken in trying to predict ECHO’s role in other contexts based upon its developing role in the former Yugoslavia, as the inadequacy of the European Community’s political response to the situation has led to increased pressures upon ECHO to be seen to be active in the humunitat.ian field. In addition, the recent faltering of the progression towards closer economic and political union among EC member states is likely to serve as a brake upon the Commission giving itself new roles and powers.

A PROVISIONAL ASSESSMENT OF THE RECENT CHANGES

The changes which have occurred within the International Relief System since 1991 may be seen as the adaptation of the international relief system to the ending of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union - events which have simultaneously enhanced the capacity of the Security



Council to undertake armed intervention in support of humanitarian objectives, removed the capacity for central control over a host of newly unleashed ethnic tensions and opened up new roles for armed forces built up during the Cold War period. Within this new context the power of the richer western governments to influence the pace and direction of change within the international relief system has been significantly increased, by virtue of their central role in resourcing the international relief system and, in the case of France, UK and USA, through their membership of the Security Council. The enhanced role of the Security Council increases the likelihood that relief assistance will be provided to civilian populations in zones of conflict. However, an apparent lesson from the cases of Somalia and Bosnia is that armed interventions in support of humanitarian relief objectives are likely to be crucially dependent upon the prevailing attitudes and concerns of the richer western governments, especially the US.

Many of the changes stem directly from the experience of these governments in responding to the Kurdish crisis of April 1991. One of the lessons was that they could not rely on NGOs to serve as channels in areas where they did not have a well- established presence. Consequently, donor organisations such as the ODA and the EC Commission have been developing their own directly operational relief capacity. In terms of Figure 1, such changes would need to be reflected by an arrow going directly from the ‘Donor Organisations’ box to the ’Affected Population’ box. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union it would seem unlikely that international NGOs will be called upon by donor organisations to play more than a complementary role to the activities of the principal UN agencies and donor organisation Relief Teams or their equivalent. In parts of Africa, where international NGOs have played a central

role in large scale relief operations since the mid-l980s, their role is unlikely to change significantly although a closer, more professional, working relationship with UN agencies and, in some cases, military intervention forces, will probably be required.

It is still too early to assess the effectiveness of the new arrangements involving the Under-Secretary-General and DHA but the prospects are not encouraging. Central to the approach recommended by the G7 was the notion of a supremo with sufficient status to force greater cooperation amongst the various specialised agencies and programmes of the UN system. This implied an appointment at the Deputy Secretary-General level. However, the first head of DHA was appointed at the less senior Under- secretary-General level, the same status accorded to the erstwhile Head of UNDRO.

The G7 proposals also appear to have taken insufficient account of the fundamental problems of inter-agency coordination within the UN. The main barriers to more effective coordination have long been identified to be the related problems of: the substantial degree of autonomy of the principal agencies; the substantial overlap in their mandates; and the reliance of the agencies upon voluntary contributions to resource their relief operations which has served to increase competition between agencies. Yet none of these problems were addressed by the G7 approach. The presumption that control over funding would strengthen DHA- UNDRO’s ability to coordinate and mobilise assistance was correct, but the $50 million within CERF is not sufficiently large in relation to the overall resource flows to the principal UN agencies and NGOs to have much impact. Thus far it appears that agencies such as UNHCR, WFP and UNICEF first seek funds directly from donor agencies with CERF serving only as a fall-back source of funds. Thus DHA


200 Iohn Borton

remains the poor relation of the donors and principal agencies, and its capacity to achieve much in the way of coordination is severely limited.

In the longer run, more effective relief coordination is likely to require more fundamental reforms. These could include merging UN agencies with substantially overlapping mandates, reducing their overall autonomy and making them more amenable to central direction. Ensuring greater responsiveness to such direction may require locating the coordination responsibility within one of the principal UN relief agencies, such as WFP or UNHCR. Another important requirement is to make the UN system and its interactions within member states more transparent and accountable. The extent to which theteform process initiated by Mr Boutros-Ghab is able to address these problems remains to be seen.

Notes

This article is a revised version of the Overseas Development Institute’s Briefing Paper ’Recent Changes in the International Relief System’ January 1993, London. Christian Aid supported the preparation and dissemination of the Briefing Paper. The paper draws on an ongoing research study funded by the UK Overseas Development Administration on the role of NGOs in the international relief system as well as on papers prepared in March 1993 for the Disaster Policy Department of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and for the Study Group on the Future of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Thanks are due to these various sources of support. Any errors or omissions remain those of the author who would also welcome any comments on the paper.

1. Some, notably Kent (1987) prefer the term ‘network’ to ’system’ because the latter implies an overall coherence, whereas the reality is often that of autonomous organisations functioning without reference to, and often in competition with, each other.

2.

3.

4.

It is recognised that Figure 1 is a highly simplified representation of the International Relief System but this is felt to be justified on the grounds that a more accurate representation would be so complicated as to confuse many readers. For instance, a more accurate representation would need to differentiate between the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the National Societies. Similarly, a separate box would be required for organisations such as BandAid and Comic Relief which raiselraised funds from the public which were then allocated to international and local NGOs for use in relief operations. The 24 members of the OECD are Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Whilst aggregate data on official development assistance provided by non- OECD sources are included in the OECD Annual Reports, the data are not disaggregated by category of assistance and so it is not possible to use OECD data to estimate the emergency aid proportion of such assistance. Members of the Organisa- tion of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) often provide substantial amounts of relief assistance in response to humanitarian emergencies occurring in predomi- nantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Sahelian Africa. It is interesting to note that the non- inclusion of conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Cambodia throughout the 1980s and in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the 1960s and early 1970s results in a substantial under-recording of death caused by conflict in the OFDA Disaster History series. Whereas, OFDA data indicate approximately 500,000 deaths from civil strife during the 1980s, a collation of deaths contained in Sivard (1991) suggests the total number of military and civilian deaths during that period to have been approximately 4.8 million.



5. The totals were obtained by adding the values recorded in the ‘Total USG Assistance’, ’US Volags’ and ’International Community’ categories.

6. Contributions by voluntary agencies are not included in the oda category by the DAC, and come instead under the DAC’s broader ’total flows‘ category.

7. My estimation is that total humanitarian aid expenditure in 1991-92 was f208 million, of which f93 million was accounted for by the Emergency Aid Department, f31 million by emergency food aid and f84 million by the UK share (18 per cent) of the EC’s humanitarian aid expenditures. By way of ’

rough comparison, ODA contributions to the World Bank Group (IBRD, IDA, IFC and MIGA) in 1991-92 were f228 million.

8. It is interesting to note that the lobbying against proposed cuts in the UK Aid Programme emphasised the humanitarian relief aspects of the UK Overseas Development Administration’s activities, even though these account for a comparatively minor, though growing, proportion of the Aid Programme.

9. The resources provided by the Disaster and Refugee Units are principally cash grants, material aid (blankets, vehicles, medicines, etc.) and services (technical assistance, airfreighting, etc.) Though the provision of small amounts of supplementary foods is funded by the Disaster Unit, cereal food aid is administered by a separate Department within ODA - the European Community and Food Aid Department. The figures referred to here do not include cereal food aid, even though emergency food aid forms the bulk of the UK bilateral Food Aid Programme.

10. These figures relate only to the assistance provided by the former Emergency Unit within DGVIII. Emergency food aid, assistance to protracted refugee operations and emergency aid to eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics are administered separately and information on trends in the channelling of these other

types of assistance is less readily available. 11. Until the end of 1992 it was titled DHA-

UNDRO, but has recently switched fully to DHA.

References

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros (1992) A n Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping. United Nations, New York.

Duffield, Mark (1992) ‘Famine, Conflict and the Internationalisation of Public Welfare’, in Martin Doornbos et al. Beyond Conflict in the Horn. ISS The HaguelJames Currey, London.

EC Commission (1992) Humanitarian Aid from the European Community. Document DE 70, Brussels, Luxembourg.

Kent, Randolph (1987) Anatomy of Disaster Relief: The International Network in Action. Pinter, London.

OECD (1992) Development Co-operation Report. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris.

OFDA (1992) ‘Disaster Relief Assistance and Related Data: Summary Tables FY 1964 - FY 1991, Washington DC.

OD1 (1993) Recent Changes in the International Relief System. Briefing Paper, January, Overseas Development Institute, London.

Sivard, Ruth Leger (1991) World Military and Social Expenditures. World Priorities, Washington DC .

John Borton Relief and Disasters Policy Programme Overseas Development Institute Regent’s College Inner Circle Regent’s Park London NW1 4NS UK.


Documents

Recent Trends in the International Relief System