Ed Cairns Oxfam’s humanitarian policy adviser, sets the scene for next month’s World Humanitarian Summit as we publish our curtain raiser for the event.
After years of preparation, and a roller coaster of expectations plunging and soaring, it is almost upon us. One month from tomorrow, dozens of world leaders will gather in Istanbul for the World Humanitarian Summit. The UN has finalised the commitments it hopes world leaders will agree, and NGOs and think tanks have been busy offering their views.
One of the most challenging came from the Humanitarian Policy Group at ODI, whose Time to let go says that ‘the humanitarian system is simply not doing a good job in the eyes of the people it aims to help.’ While accepting that humanitarian agencies are ‘caring for more wounded and more hungry people in more places than was conceivable even a generation ago,’ it judges years of humanitarian reforms as ‘rearranging the deck chairs’ rather than tackling the ‘fundamental assumptions, power dynamics and incentives’ that deny affected people and local organisations influence over the workings of humanitarian aid.
Oxfam came to similar conclusions in last year’s Turning the Humanitarian System on its Head, calling for greater support for local NGOs. Over a hundred NGOs, including Oxfam, have endorsed the Charter for Change ahead of the Summit, which commits them to, for example, pass 20% of their humanitarian funding to local and national NGOs by May 2018. In fact, Oxfam has promised to hit a target of 30% by that date.
But I think the ODI report falls short, failing to draw all the logical conclusions from its analysis. It argues that it’s the starkly unequal power dynamic between affected people, local and international organisations, and donors that’s at the heart of the problem, and that previous humanitarian reforms have done nothing to change that. True.
But it also argues that humanitarian crises are more frequent and affect more people because of a host of human factors from climate change to the conduct of conflicts. ‘Civilian suffering in conflicts in Syria, South Sudan and Yemen,’ it says, ‘is a sobering reminder of the international community’s failure to translate legal obligations around the conduct of war into tangible benefits for civilians.’ In other words, political choices cause humanitarian crises and the human suffering in them.
Time to let go offers no solution to that, and like much of the debate ahead of the Summit, puts the emphasis on changing the ‘humanitarian system’, rather than changing the policies and politics that are driving up humanitarian needs in the first place. Simon Maxwell wrote last month that a great risk at the Summit is that political issues, such as the causes and conduct of conflict, would ‘overload the humanitarian system with responsibilities that it cannot, indeed should not, assume.’ But I suspect the two greatest risks are very different.
The first is that governments, UN agencies and NGOs turn up and make broad statements rather than practical 
commitments to change – or that some heads of state or government don’t even turn up. The second is that the only major progress is around the ‘Grand Bargain’ proposed by the UN Secretary-Genera’s High Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing in January, whereby donors and aid agencies collaborate to increase multi-year funding, reduce duplication, and improve financial transparency. That is vital but somehow misses the big picture.
The World Humanitarian Summit will take place not only in the shadow of Syria’s terrible conflict and the greatest refugee crisis of our age – but weeks after its host, Turkey, and the EU struck a refugee deal that may trade human beings for political concessions. If anyone ever doubted that politics drives humanitarian crises, they know now.
The Summit will also take place in a world in which warring parties kill civilians without consequence, in which El Niño highlights yet again the rising tide of disasters affected by climate change, and in which most governments do everything possible to keep the world’s displaced people from their doors. Even the most generous donors are becoming less humanitarian about welcoming refugees. Only three countries – Canada, Germany and Norway – have met their ‘fair share’ towards Syria’s crisis in terms of both aid and resettling its refugees.
If the World Humanitarian Summit does not begin to address that, that truly would be a failure. That’s why Oxfam is publishing a rather unusual paper today, Commitment to Change, which not only sets out our own commitments to change, but our calls to world leaders to make commitments themselves.
For it is governments that must commit to tackle the toll of civilian death and displacement as warring parties violate International Humanitarian Law – and too many governments around the world, in effect, permit them to do so through their continued military support, including the transfer of arms.
And it is governments that must take a fair share of the responsibility for the world’s most vulnerable people, which, for almost all wealthy countries, means welcoming far more refugees than they have – and far greater international support to host countries who themselves must do more to give refugees a future with dignity, livelihoods and education.
In some ways, those are all part of far longer struggles. Almost 70 years since the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the struggle to ensure respect for International Humanitarian Law goes on. More than 60 years since the 1951 Refugee Convention, the struggle to uphold it is more vital than ever.
We should not expect the World Humanitarian Summit to switch on a new world in which international law is strenuously upheld. But it would equally be wrong to think that nothing can change. Governments see the unsustainable cost of the rising tide of disasters. They see the destabilising contagion of conflicts that drive millions of people from their homes. They, well some of them at least, see the political cost of failing to help resolve the world’s crises. And – I hope – they see the World Humanitarian Summit for what it is: a chance to make the strongest possible commitments to make the profound, tangible changes that are so vitally needed.