John Holmes - The Politics of Humanity: The Reality of Relief Aid

Standing on Clermont-Ferrand TGV station in early December 2006, I took a call from Prime Minister Tony Blair. After thirty-three years in the Foreign Office, and more than five as ambassador in Paris, there were no obvious diplomatic jobs available for me at that moment. I guessed the prime minister was a little embarrassed about this, since I had worked as his diplomatic adviser for two years after his 1997 election victory.

He came quickly to the point. He wanted someone good to take a senior job in the UN Secretariat. The UK had had no one at under-secretary-general (USG) level for more than a year. Kieran Prendergast, USG for political affairs for ten years (the latest in a line of distinguished Britons holding that post since the legendary Brian Urquhart), had been eased out in 2005. Now the British government wanted the post back and were hoping that the new secretary-general-elect, South Korean Ban ki-Moon, would oblige.

I was not at all sure I wanted to go abroad again after eight years in Lisbon and Paris. And although I had enjoyed a short spell in New York thirty years before, the UN did not have a great reputation as a place to get things done. But when the prime minister asks, particularly one as persuasive as Tony Blair, saying no is not easy. I agreed to think about it. He stressed that Ban was putting his senior management team together and that other countries were also pressing hard for the top spots. I needed to get out to New York in person quickly.

When I saw him, Ban ki-Moon surprised me almost as much as Tony Blair had by making clear that the job of USG for political affairs was not, in fact, available. He did not say so, but he had already promised it to the Americans in exchange for their support for his candidacy. He offered me instead the job of USG for humanitarian affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC), then most recently held by Norwegian Jan Egeland a distinguished humanitarian, though perhaps best known to press and public for supposedly calling the Americans stingy in the immediate aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.

I explained that I knew nothing of humanitarian affairs. Moreover , I was not sure that, being British, I had the right nationality for the job. We were seen by many as military interveners, particularly after Iraq not the best recommendation, even if the UK was a generous aid contributor. Ban was unimpressed by these arguments. In his persistent way, he made clear that he liked British fairness and common sense, and was sure I could do the job well.

I took advice from those who knew the UN. Most were positive. Not only was the task obviously worthwhile, but as ERC you had more freedom of action and scope to make a difference than most USGs. The UK Department for International Development, the givers of British humanitarian aid, swallowed their reservations about my non-existent humanitarian credentials and encouraged me. My long-suffering wife reluctantly gave a green light. So in the end, not without misgivings, I agreed. This was the start of a fascinating and exhausting three and a half years as ERC, and head of the excitingly named UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

I had two months to resign from the Foreign Office, leave Paris in an orderly fashion, become an instant expert on humanitarian issues, and get to New York in order to start work in earnest on 1 March 2007. Meanwhile, some humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had not taken well the appointment of a diplomatic type as ERC and had voiced their disapproval publicly, including in the correspondence columns of the Financial Times. I had to grin and bear it, having nothing much to offer in my defence at that stage. I simply hoped that I would do a good enough job in practice to win them over.

What was I supposed to be coordinating? The international humanitarian set-up is not a system in any recognizable sense. Rather, it is a collection of organizations and groups which have, over the years, been morally impelled to alleviate the worlds misery.

Humanitarianism as we know it today was founded by a Swiss businessman called Henri Dunant, inspired by the desperate plight of the wounded after the Battle of Solferino between the French and the Austrians in 1859. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which resulted was the first organized group dedicated to helping victims internationally. They drafted the First Geneva Convention in 1863, articulating the basic tenets of humanitarian relief: humanity, independence, neutrality, and impartiality.

These principles have remained the guidelines for humanitarians ever since. Their essence is that the unique driving force of humanitarian aid must be the needs of the suffering, based on objective criteria, irrespective of the political, ethnic or religious affiliation of either the people in need or those providing the aid. Humanitarian relief must not be used for political or security purposes, still less withheld for such reasons, or manipulated in other ways. Humanitarian aid is a moral imperative, not part of anyones stabilization strategy. If I emphasize this now, it is because so many of the issues raised in what follows cannot be understood except in the light of these principles.

The ICRC was followed into the field by many other organizations: the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent (IFRC), bringing together all the national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF); the World Food Programme (WFP); the humanitarian arms of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and so on; the increasingly numerous international NGOs, i.e. independent charitable groups not answerable to anyone other than their own governing structures and those who give them money OXFAM, Save the Children, Mdecins Sans Frontires, World Vision, the International Rescue Committee, Care, Concern, Action Contre la Faim, Islamic Relief, and many others; and a further largely unknown and under-appreciated universe of local NGOs and civil society organizations. To call this community fragmented is an understatement, even by British standards. And its fragmentation is if anything increasing, even though there is a more positive side of diversity too.