Humanitarian Intervention

An article by Frank    2 Comments

Note: In this article we are not referring to humanitarian intervention where the definition relates to armed intervention into one state by another state as a means to address human suffering, we are referring to the recognition of extreme poverty and it being addressed by agencies outside of those affected by the poverty.

As the world of international development continues to increase its understanding of the practice of humanitarian intervention through many years of trial, error and success, ideas of when and how such intervention should be implemented are many and varied. For those looking to support agencies active in this area, trying to move past the usual fundraising slogans and tear-jerking images to a much deeper and informed understanding can be a daunting task. Allow me to allay that frustration somewhat – there is no definite right answer and best way to implement and carry out humanitarian intervention – everyone is still learning, though there are some really bad ways to carry it out.

One of the fears of practiced humanitarian intervention is the creation of dependency. This is an extremely valid concern. The idea is that when a problem is faced by a group of people, if the problem is solved by an outside force of some sort (an international development agency for example) then dependency grows because when that problem comes again, if an outside force has simply solved the problem, the victims of the problem will simply look outside for help again, unable to solve the issue themselves. Thus best practice where intervention occurs involves empowering troubled communities to develop their own solutions to the issues faced and move them towards implementing those solutions.

Some poor practices within the spectrum of intervention/aid involves approaching it with a saviour mentality that almost looks down upon those being worked with. This outworks itself through lack of research and impact analysis (researching the flow-on effects of any intervention), poor relationship building and listening and assumptions about what a community might need. The problems this can lead to are very obvious – solutions can be implemented that ultimately turn into a hindrance.

There are a couple of examples of poor humanitarian intervention that spring to mind:

I heard of a village that was accessing its water from one dirty well. A well meaning agency decided to do something about it and sent a team in to install taps around the village that were drawing the water from a clean source. They set up a makeshift area for their workers to stay in some distance from the village and spent their days laying the pipe work and installing the taps. They never spoke to the villagers. Once the work was complete, they left. The village now had shiny taps around the place delivering multiple sources of clean water when they turned the taps on.

There were a number of problems. The original access to water was on the chief’s land and thus a social order was maintained by that. The taps had been placed in other parts of the village, so overnight the social order of the village broke down and shifted. Alongside that, the villagers had no idea where the water was coming from or how it got to the taps – they had not been shown. As they went about their usual work, digging gardens etc, the main pipe leading in got burst and so the taps stopped working – the social order changed again very quickly, they went back to accessing the dirty water and the taps stayed as strange edifices dotted around the village.

Research, impact analysis and communication with the village, drawing them in and empowering them to solve the problem could have made for a completely different and better intervention in that situation.

Another example of poor humanitarian intervention that is extremely well known is the continuous free food aid that pumps its way into Ethiopia and has created a dependency that has crippled Ethiopia’s agricultural industry.

In the 80′s Ethiopia experienced a famine that ravaged the nation. Naturally the world was moved to help and Live Aid was born. The world gave generously to a country in need and aid was pumped into at a great rate. It was needed and did what it was meant to. The problem was, the aid never ended and there was no exit strategy from the major contributors that would empower the country to meet its own needs. Free food aid kept pumping into Ethiopia (and still does) out of the excess of the subsidized agricultural industries in the U.S and Europe who need a place to dump their unneeded produce. The local agricultural industry in Ethiopia can’t compete with free product so their local industry has been decimated. Thus Ethiopia cannot feed itself and has become dependent on foreign aid. Trade laws exacerbate the problem for Ethiopia and many other nations, causing a situation where their own industries cannot compete with the subsidized industries of other nations. We have anything but a free global market.

Good humanitarian intervention by the way of international development is a complex task where good theory is still being established, but there are organisations committed to doing it well. Thankfully, TEAR Fund is one of them.