WORLD HUMANITARIAN DAY: A COMPELLING REMINDER

Three days before World Humanitarian Day, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon was pleading to the international community to speed up emergency operations to assist 20 million flood victims in Pakistan....

The same monsoon floods triggered landslides in China’s northwest county of Zhouqu, killing 702 with 1,042 still missing, and in the Ladakh region of Indian-administered Kashmir 80% of infrastructure is reported to be partially damaged or totally destroyed. These incidents occurred during the same month that one of the world’s worst environmental disasters was at last temporarily stemmed in the Gulf of Mexico. And in that same month, Russian heat waves and brushfires reduced the country’s wheat harvest to the point where authorities in Moscow now feel compelled to introduce a wheat export ban that will affect the food security of many hundreds of millions throughout the world, particularly the poor.

Two years ago, the United Nations designated 19 August 2010 as the first World Humanitarian Day, the purpose of which was to honor all those humanitarian workers who had lost their lives in the cause of duty and in the promotion of the humanitarian cause. Those sacrifices will be diminished not by anything these “aid workers” had failed to do, but rather by the unwillingness of those who today have humanitarian roles and responsibilities to recognize the real implications of the threats that face human-kind around the world.

As one approaches this first World Humanitarian Day, it is all too evident that the types of humanitarian crises are increasing and that the dimensions and dynamics of conventional crises as well as new types of crises are growing exponentially. The fact of the matter is, however, that these increasingly evident truths are not triggering the sorts of responses that will be needed to meet the challenges of humanitarian crises, now and in the future. To that extent, one must hope that the concerns about humanity that led many to lose their lives in the service of the humanitarian cause will not have been in vain, that the international community will mobilize its energies to protect the increasingly vulnerable across the globe.

A starting point for preparing for these humanitarian challenges is the host of the World Humanitarian Day, itself, namely, the United Nations. The United Nations needs to prepare to meet future humanitarian challenges by making fundamental choices about its value-added and comparative advantages. The former has to do with its potential capacities for ensuring standards and promoting timely crisis forecasts and analysis, and the latter has clearly to do with its unique global position as well as the vast array of technical expertise upon which it can draw. In neither case does the UN show any inclination to take up this challenge.

It is vital for it do so. Humanitarian crises in the foreseeable future will be far more complex and far more interactive than they have ever been in modern history. It is evident that so-called “synchronous failures,” or the collapse of entire economic and communications systems will result in massive loss of life and livelihoods in even the most seemingly well controlled societies. The divide between what one had assumed to be a “hapless” South and “resilient” North is increasingly a fiction, and a growing number of vulnerable people in rich and poor societies in all hemispheres will find themselves exposed to new types of threats as well as more intensive conventional threats. Such new threats will include mass deaths and long-term debilitation from nuclear tailings and radio-active leakages and the collapse of cybernetic systems upon which most economies, major infrastructures and transport depend. Those threats deemed to be “conventional” – ranging from earthquakes and floods to chemical accidents, pandemics and conflicts – will increase in number and impact.

Both new and conventional threats will be more global, their effects crossing borders and continents. The likelihood is that there will be more and more major catastrophic events occurring simultaneously, so the spectre of another Tsunami happening at the same time that an earthquake in San Francisco or flooding in the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan region takes place is ever more likely. All of these will be a painful test for those responsible for dealing with humanitarian crises, but equally as important for those looking for ways to prevent or at least mitigate their effects.

It is, of course, easy though grim to roll out the possible effects of a growing number of humanitarian crisis threats and their plausible consequences. On the other hand, what too often is forgotten is the ways that science, technology and longer-term strategic planning can offset some of the worst consequences of new and conventional humanitarian threats. An increasing number of technologies are already on the cusp of having major impacts in reducing the potential consequences of disasters and emergencies. Satellite remote sensing will soon be able to monitor real-time conditions of crisis affected populations; telemedicine will be able to provide medical assistance on-line; and a seemingly never ending range of mobile technologies is available to determine need, transfer funds to stricken populations and identify missing persons.

Yet, as one anticipates the dimensions and dynamics of plausible threats as well as the potential that science and technology offers to offset such threats, there are three fundamental issues that an ever more vulnerable world will need to consider, and World Humanitarian Day is a good starting point.

The first is the need to understand the possible types of threats for which the international community needs to prepare; the second is the importance of ensuring that the standards required for effective prevention, preparedness and response are in place; and the third is the voice of advocacy to ensure that longer-term threats and opportunities are understood and appreciated by the international community. These three issues go straight to the heart of what the United Nations needs to do to live up to the challenges that underpin World Humanitarian Day.

The United Nations has to devote much more time and energy to anticipating the types of crisis threats and opportunities that may affect the international community than it has to date. This means that the United Nations will have to be far more creative and proactive in identifying the myriad factors that need to be monitored as potential threats and opportunities to offset them. No one is asking the United Nations to predict the future, but rather to be more daring and speculative about suggesting what might be. This in turn will require the UN to use its resources to engage in longer-term strategic analysis focusing on potential vulnerabilities, and to do so in ways that brings together the disciplines and expertise that are available in the more than thirty funds, programmes and specialized agencies that comprise the United Nations.

The expertise upon which the UN can draw should also serve as the basis for identifying the types of scientific and technological innovations that could prevent possible humanitarian threats or at least help government authorities and civil society organizations prepare for them and, if the worst happens, improve their response. Yet, to date the UN continues to be deeply risk averse when it comes to thinking beyond the norm, and shows little inclination to contemplate potential hazards and possible solution. For an organization where expertise crosses almost every major discipline, it is distressing to see how underutilised such capacities are. Stove-piped in the extreme and with little incentive to think holistically, the UN has failed to show the intellectual leadership that future humanitarian challenges demand.

It is all too evident that the increased numbers of emergencies have resulted in what has been called a “humanitarian enterprise” where the plethora of humanitarian actors have no agreed criteria about what constitutes professionalism or what should be acceptable standards for prevention, preparedness or response. Here the United Nations should serve as a “standard bearer” to ensure that humanitarian norms, standards and principles are known, supported and to the extent possible enforced. On the one hand, this role will require the combined technical expertise of individual UN agencies, funds and programmes; on the other it will require the sort of commitment and passion for which World Humanitarian Day should be a living symbol.

The issue of a global standard bearer has become even more important with the emergence of on-line networks, where crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are becoming part of the humanitarian scene. Different coalitions of interests and perspectives are increasingly creating inconsistent and often contradictory “noise” about real and potential humanitarian threats and needs of crisis-affected peoples. Out of this cacophony of ostensibly well- intentioned concern a clear operational reality has to emerge, or else the lives and livelihoods of the threatened will fall prey to uncontrolled informational randomness. Once again the United Nations’ value-added will be to go beyond the noise, and provide the international community with analyses of the affected, needs and impacts that are credible and verifiable.

As one reflects on the sacrifices made by those who are remembered on World Humanitarian Day, probably one of the most consistent features of their work had been the voice that they gave to the needs of the threatened and the affected. Paradoxically the United Nations has been at best a half-hearted advocate in so many ways for humanitarian challenges. The reasons for this are several, some which go to the constraints that are inherent in an organisation that has to balance the contending interests of over 190 member-states. And yet when it comes to the sorts of humanitarian crises for which the international community must prepare, these constraints must be overcome. The United Nations needs to be that voice that mobilises longer-term strategic action to address plausible threats and plausible solutions.

That advocacy can take many forms. A group of “wise persons” can not only take the lead in the UN’s proposed role of standard-bearer, but could also serve as advocates for longer-term prevention, preparedness and response. That group could enhance the UN’s comparative advantage as a uniquely global and relatively trusted institution by adding its voice to the needs for more strategic approaches to humanitarian futures. The UN’s Secretary-General could be asked to issue an annual state of humanitarian preparedness, or there could be an annual Davos-type assembly in which representatives of a wide range of potential humanitarian actors gathered to reflect on practical measures to prevent or prepare for future humanitarian crises.

Whatever form such advocacy takes, it must be heard and understood, or else those for whom World Humanitarian Day was created will ultimately have made those sacrifices in vain.

To read the news release on this story, please click here.