Our notion that humanitarian governance must be understood as the interplay of different actors tallies with theories on governance. However, writing about humanitarian governance tends to overly focus on the international humanitarian system, neglecting local and national actors’ involvement. Also, governance theories of the 1990s show that state power is layered and fragmented, and that attaining collective purposes is not solely the domain of the state. The shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’, showed how “the state becomes a collection of inter-organizational networks made up of governmental and societal actors with no sovereign actor able to steer or regulate”.
A similar shift could be witnessed concerning development and humanitarian operations. Kahn and Cunningham highlight how prior to the 1990s, “the aid system had been dominated by the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC), and bilateral aid, with only a handful of [international non-governmental organizations] routinely providing humanitarian assistance”. Following the cold war, non-governmental organisations (NGOS) came to be considered more effective and intrinsically more inclined to make communities and participatory development the starting point of their endeavours, as opposed to the state. After acclaim for NGOS (at the expense of the state and large humanitarian organizations), it is now more common to understand aid processes as resulting from interactive governance, which is defined as “the complex process through which a plurality of social and political actors with diverging interests interact by means of mobilizing, exchanging, and deploying a range of ideas, rules and resources”. This results in different governance arrangements involving multiple types of actors.
Concerning disaster governance specifically, there is a marked difference between literature dealing with ‘everyday’ disaster governance and literature dealing with large scale humanitarian disaster response. In the case of major disasters leading to declarations of states of emergency, the state has typically been seen as the paramount actor. Yet, international aid flows which used to be channelled via government in the 1970-1980s largely bypassed governments in the 1990-2000s. This explains why in the more recent humanitarian aid literature, governance has rarely been analysed in relation to the state in crisis-affected countries. Only very recently has the notion of humanitarian governance expanded to encompass national authorities and other national institutions shaping humanitarianism praxis. Today, disaster management is increasingly seen as an arena of co-governance where different actors engage in responding to (the risks of) disasters, departing from the conceptualization of disaster response as an emergency form of politics in a military top-down style. The central role of the state is also highlighted in key texts, such as the Sphere guidelines settings standards for humanitarian response, and the framework for Action.
Another way to frame discussions on humanitarian governance is to distinguish between normative and empirical angles. The normative angle stems from acknowledging the role of national authorities and aid providers in the international policy discourse on aid, and focusing on policy. Interactive governance designs acknowledge the roles of actors inside and outside government, but also point to the blurring of roles and responsibilities, the interdependence of actors’ actions and the relative unimportance of command and imposition. Empirically, we need to look beyond the design of governance to question how this works out in practice-what some authors refer to as ‘real’ governance. There may be large discrepancies and contradictions between formal and practical norms.
Furthermore, different layers of complexity are involved in multi-actor governance; it includes actors who represent different types of institutions, and governance is understood as always negotiated and subject to multiple interpretations. Studying humanitarian governance requires the development of an ‘antenna’ for these different interpretations and how they stagnate, promote or change programmes in the course of implementation. Furthermore, there is a great deal of diversity within the categories that make up governance arrangements, such as grouping NGOS With different mandates and operating styles, local government officers who perform different practices than the central state, or organised community leaders with different views from more marginal community members. Although we acknowledge that this may lead to infinite and impossible levels offine-tuning of our understanding of humanitarian governance, we maintain that it is important to be cognisant of potential diversities and to bring them into the analysis when they are significant. Therefore, this analyses how multiple state and non-state actors involved in aid respond to disasters in different conflict-affected situations.
The research study confirmed the assumption that the types of challenges that practitioners encounter in their disaster aid programs differ significantly per conflict scenario. Likewise, the types of projects that are most effective also differ per conflict setting, as do the strategies that practitioners use to create and run successful programs. These findings largely overlap with the findings from fieldwork in high, low and post-conflict scenarios.
The intersection between disaster and High-Intensity Conflict (HIC) has received little scholarly attention, and empirical case-studies are rare. Here, we present major findings on disaster response and disaster management vis-à-vis the conflict in the High-Intensity Conflict (HIC) settings of South Sudan and Afghanistan.
In the High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) scenario, reducing the risk of, responding or recovering from disasters is hindered by conflict. As a result, disaster response usually only occurs at the local level, carried out by the affected population, local authorities with relevant limitations, and lateron by NG0S. Large-scale response, including that of international actors, only occurs when the number of casualties or the threat of people affected reaches high levels (e.g. in cases of drought-induced famines).
The High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) scenario present a set of specific challenges for humanitarian aid providers and disaster responders. The most obvious include insecurity, reduced access, or the difficulties of reaching people in need. On top of those, high levels of bureaucracy, complex logistics, and corruption are also commonly present in High-Intensity Conflict(HIC). As a result of these challenges “UN agencies and International Non-Governmental Organization (INGOS) are increasingly absent from field locations, especially when there is any kind of significant security or logistical issues”.
Most aid actors, despite the difficulties of providing humanitarian aid and responding to a disaster, are not primarily concerned with the question how to do it but where, when and for whom. Negotiating access, overcoming dangerous situations, reaching remote communities, airdropping food – all these are practices which aid actors have been implementing and improving for decades. However, the main challenge they face is that needs exceed funds and capacities available to aid everyone and every need. As mentioned by an aid actor in South Sudan, ‘we cannot aim to help everyone like in other places, here that will mean to help the whole country and beyond. We have to choose where ‘we go and what we do’.
Interestingly, most of the research participants, when asked about the main challenge of responding to disasters or delivering humanitarian aid at HIC, did not say safety issues first, but the complexity of the logistics and obtaining funds. It is commonly agreed that High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) settings are the most expensive places to provide humanitarian aid and disaster response. Security issues and the lack or poorly maintained infrastructures, such as roads, electricity or potable water makes the logistics of any action highly complex. Likewise, in vast regions of High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) affected places many services are not available, such as health, transportation, or business to buy supplies. It is not only a matter to reach places affected, but also how to maintain the response and cover the basic needs of the affected population and aid actors responding to the events.
To overcome these difficulties usually involves expensive solutions, including the payments of aeroplanes or helicopters, generators and fuel, and to build essential infrastructure from scratch. All the previous makes that, beyond the regular coordination of the delivery of aid, extra layers of logistics and costs need to be included, creating a ‘logistics nightmare’, as defined by one international NGO manager in Afghanistan and one UN manager in South Sudan.
Lack of security is an important challenge for disaster risk management, for both aid and society actors. Everyone, albeit with different degrees at different moments, is exposed to robbery, illegal check-points, ambush, landmines, bombs, shootings, or kidnapping, to name a few. Afghanistan and South Sudan, every single participant mentioned feeling unsafe. In the case of aid actors, the lack of safety of High-Intensity Conflict (HIC) settings is one of the main challenges when it comes to getting access to places affected and during the distribution and provision of aid. Apart from issues of physical safety of aid workers and the populations served, this has a number of secondary effects. Due to the insecure environment, people travel to different locations leaving disaster risk reduction, or recovery projects paused or cancelled. When it comes to disaster response, displacement also makes difficult to know the number and profile of the affected population in a specific affected locality.
Access to recipients, or rather the lack of it, is a complex and dynamic phenomenon in the High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) Scenario, for multiple reasons. The first one is the risk of moving around for the lack of security depicted before.
Secondly, access is hindered seasonally, especially during the rainy season where vast regions of the country ended up flooded or snowed in. Seasonal access’s constraints can be present in any country, but in High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) settings it turns into a sustained problem when infrastructure is not maintained or destroyed because of the conflict, and alternative ways of access are dangerous or non-existent. For example, getting access by vehicle is impossible in many locations and, therefore, depending on the country, the only viable alternatives are flying or sailing, and even those alternatives are not always available. Landing strips can be damaged or compromised, and navigating through the river can be unsafe for similar reasons. The access’ restraint affects both aid and society actors, restricting the movement of all of them.
In the High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) scenario, the complexity of multi-actor governance systems is not only based on various and sometimes unknown systems, but also from the lack of knowledge that could enable a way of manoeuvring through them. Due to the social conflict, state-contesting or non-state armed groups present highly nuanced governance structures, as visible in few of countries. The vagueness or disconnection between the central and district levels of governance creates a blurry governance map.
Because permanent or stable peace agreements have not been reached at High-Intensity Conflict(HIC), for aid actors in High-Intensity Conflict(HIC) the challenge of complex systems multi-actor governance systems entails having to negotiate with state-contesting or non-state armed groups, besides the negotiations with central and district levels of governance. Fieldwork shows that these negotiations are generally driven by political interest from both the groups controlling territories and from donors, national governments and the international community, which may wish to have a say in allowing or participating in negotiations. For instance, international aid actors see these negotiations as an opportunity to pursue other agendas, like peace building, by imposing conditions on aid. At the same time, local actors – both responders and aid beneficiaries – also pursue their agendas and interests in the negotiations with humanitarian players.
It was found that disaster relief was considered to some extent to be outside of the normal politics of conflict-related relief operations. This gave international actors more room for manoeuvre to operate, at the same time that makes operations more complex or difficult to set up by the lack of clear roadmaps to act.
In few countries, this has evolved in a growing attention to disaster risk reduction activities. In the midst of many gaps of services and needs of the population, a number of agencies have opted to focus on Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) programming. In few countries, a number of agencies try to maintain livelihood programmes that seek to make communities more resilient, also for drought and other disasters. For example, food security program are trying to reduce the impact of drought, and small scale Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) projects were found aiming to reduce the risk of floods due to river’s overflowing.
Two challenges stand out in these approaches. Firstly, at the local level, disaster response and Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) is affected by local-level social tensions or conflict. These local conflicts may or may not be informed by the conflict at large, but when they escalate they are more likely to get intertwined with the larger, violent conflicts. This makes conflict-sensitivity of paramount importance. In a few countries, agencies are starting to adopt this, whereas in few countries the approach is still based on working around conflict by avoiding areas where the larger conflict plays out. Secondly, starting-up processes are long and tedious and require careful networking and processes of gaining trust. This means that Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) and/ or livelihood programmes are having a larger timeline. In addition, it results in a situation where agencies cannot easily move their programmes to other areas where perhaps a more immediate risk is emanating.
Although Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) constitute the largest share of conflicts worldwide they are less studied than high-intensity conflict settings.
Many challenges are common to high- and low-intensity conflict settings. However, they play out differently and may require different approaches from disaster responders. A major difference is that in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, some conflict-induced challenges cannot be discussed or resolved openly. Given the lesser intensity of the conflict, it is easier for the disaster to overshadow conflict dynamics, that may tend to be ignored even though they affect the disaster response. Access is hampered in different, more duplicitous ways
Within the country, access to certain zones is not so much restricted by the danger of getting caught in a cross-fire or destroyed infrastructure. Rather, access may be regulated by checkpoints, blockades and separation walls. Control of certain areas by state contesting parties, such as the territories held by guerrilla movements in Colombia, should not be underestimated. Operating in Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) environments, local to international aid institutions often have no choice but to work hand in hand with the established local authorities. In past history, there were Sri Lankan areas under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE). This authority would for instance have been the extremely professional Tamil Relief Organization, which was termed the “humanitarian arm” of the LTTE by Flanagan. But barriers can also be of legal and bureaucratic nature, such as strict rules applying to aid actors’ registration, activity plans, data collection and dissemination practices and funding. These everyday politics are a less visible manner of restraining humanitarian independence. It thus emerged that Ethiopia, although often regarded as a humanitarian success-case where the government has a strong drought response system, co-funds and leads emergency response in close cooperation with international actors, presented a highly limited independent decision-making and operational space for both local and international disaster response actors. Government authorities, especially at the federal level, held a monopoly on information.
According to Pelling and Dill, “disaster shocks open political space for the contestation or concentration of political power and the underlying distributions of rights between citizens and citizens and the state”. Disaster response can become the very conduit through which the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) is played out, leading to further antagonism or even conflict escalation. Population groups are always vulnerable to different degrees, depending on their economic status, social networks and many more. Flanagan, however, selectively increases vulnerability to disaster at a more pronounced level. The conflict fault lines further exacerbate existing structural inequalities, affecting already marginalized and discriminated communities. This may be spatial and visible in some parts of the country or spread throughout the area in pockets of vulnerability. In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, for instance, the government pushed for the 2015 cyclone relief to be distributed in terms of cash grants. These irremediably ended up in the hands of the local Buddhist elite, who are not structurally discriminated from operating local businesses, as is the case for Muslim minorities.
Marginalization can even stem from conscious political decisions by the more powerful conflict parties. The state can directly marginalize population groups in the response, delegitimizing disaster victims as citizens as they are not deemed worthy of support. This, for instance, occurred for the Rohingya minority when cyclone Komen struck Myanmar in 2015: according to reports from diaspora media (Burma Times Editor 2015), Rohingya were not allowed into government-hosted disaster displacement camps, unless they signed documents identifying them as Bengali – which would, in turn, allow the government to expel them from the country. Similarly, some protest hotspots in the Ethiopian region Oromiya were side-lined from the 2016 government-led drought response as punishment.
All actors may seek to engage in disaster response to enhance their legitimacy. Non-state actors such as political opposition parties can increase legitimacy and in turn political support and new members, as occurred following the 1999 earthquake in Turkey or the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. Conversely, inadequate disaster response can quickly (further) delegitimize actors. In the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, state and societal actors are especially likely to contest each other’s legitimacy, capacity and will to protect all disaster victims. After all, the decision not to help a population group can less be grounded in practical arguments (costs, security, capabilities). It can more easily be framed as stemming from a wish to harm than in high-intensity conflict. Aid in these contexts may thus be particularly prone to accusations of being uneven and partisan.
Concerning political tensions at international level, Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC)-structured disaster response rests on a contradiction: Large-scale disaster events usually cry out for international aid – when the LIC discursive logic is more often to keep all ‘foreign influences’ out. State sovereignty is proclaimed particularly loudly in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, where state unity is perceived as ‘under threat’. The ever-present debate on (unwished) interference of the international community and aid actors in national state affairs is thus exacerbated in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario. More possibilities, but also pitfalls, of a local disaster response. Local actors will play a stronger role than in high-intensity conflict areas, where social networks and structures are destroyed or at least significantly altered. In the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, local actors rely on invaluable knowledge in comparison to international emergency responders. They are more familiar with the local nuances of the conflict, may be confronted with fewer regulations than ‘international visitors’, and know to navigate authority structures which vary across time, place and scales. In Myanmar for instance, civil society actors are well versed at the politics of silence’ and other strategies which allow manoeuvring even in the smaller interstices left open by authoritarian state structures, building on decades of accumulated experience. Yet, it is also difficult for local actors to be perceived as neutral. Some are clearly positioned on one or the other side of the conflict constellation. That can be a difficult and restrictive situation for local responders who face local state or community retaliation for their relief activities. It can also be deterring for international funders, who would like to channel support via local actors with better knowledge of the local context and needs, following the global call for an increasing ‘localized humanitarian response’. In the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, local aid actors can be party to the conflict themselves, making it difficult for humanitarian response to be both impartial’ and ‘local’. This was the case during the 2015 cyclone Komen response in Rakhine State, Myanmar. International humanitarian actors usually rely on local NGOS to carry out response operations in Myanmar’s peripheral ethnic States. In Rakhine however, they described local actors as ‘not principled’, and largely had to find their place in the tense local networks so as to carry out the very sensitive operations themselves.
Disaster responders have to balance reputational risks and navigate complex actor constellations International disaster responders themselves face positioning difficulties of higher level. In strong sovereignty-asserting states where actors instrumentalize the disaster response to harm others, they are faced with a difficult dilemma: speak out and safeguard an independent humanitarian space, at the risk of being sidelined, or remain present and to support communities in country whatever the compromises? Many organizations chose to self-censor in words and in actions. Organizations who self-describe themselves as ‘loud’ kept quiet in Myanmar. In Ethiopia, INGOS refrained from visiting areas they knew to be violently Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) affected so that the government would ‘not know that they know’.
It follows that in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario, state, societal and international disaster responders will thus not only be busy with the technicalities and governance of the actual response – from information gathering to resource allocation – but also the governance of how this response is perceived in the local to international political context. This emerged strongly in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where international organizations and INGOS have to
gain acceptance by both authorities and communities to effectively carry out their relief operations. They do not only depend on various Union-level and State authorities for memoranda of understanding and travel authorizations, but also on the acceptance of Buddhist communities, who felt provoked and did resort to violence as Muslim communities got international relief in 2015. As a result, all aid actors invest a lot of efforts in perception monitoring and visibility guidelines, both in the field and online. In essence, disaster risk governance in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario can be termed a balancing act. That applies to the sourcing of information (e.g. which impact numbers are the correct ones?), targeting decisions (e.g. if I provide aid to this most disaster impacted community group, will this not increase tensions?), to partnership decisions (does an aliance with this
actor not burn bridges with this other actor, or the state?). It also applies to the state itself, who has to balance the expectations of distinct domestic and international audiences in their multiplicities.
As Pelling and Dill argue, a disaster opens a “space for negotiation on the values and structures of society”. It creates political space for contestation of political power. State and non-state actors renegotiate their power in this vacuum. In a post-conflict scenario, these political processes are even more complex as this space for negotiation coincides and affects ongoing institutional changes in the transitional period. While in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario this tension is primarily seen in the negotiation and contestation between the state and its citizens, in a post-conflict scenario these power struggles are more clearly seen between the different state institutions in charge of the disaster response. As the state is still in formation and fluid, different departments can be seen to use the disaster to engage in competition over authority, mandates, and financial control.
When the 2015 earthquake hit Nepal, the new constitution had not yet been promulgated and local elections not yet held. This meant that governance structures were still strongly centralized. However, as transitional decentralization processes were already underway, local districts were also in charge of the disaster response. The roles and responsibilities of each institution on both levels were not always clear. Local authorities and political parties on the village level used their power in aid allocation and distribution, both attracting aid to their preferred places and blocking aid by making it difficult for organizations to access other places, strengthening their legitimacy. The ambiguity between the central and district levels of governance also created a space for decisions to be taken at both levels irrespective of each other. This was often used by aid agencies as an approval from either level would be sufficient to operate. While the transitional politics of the post-conflict scenario created confusion among various actors, it also opened space to manoeuvre. In Sierra Leone, the main state institutions in charge of the response were created at the end of the civil war. After the 2017 mudslide and floods, the government institution in charge of the coordination (the Office of National Security, or ONS) and the ministry in charge of the registration of affected people (the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender andChildren’s Affairs) were contesting each other roles in the response. Internal power politics between different ministries and state institutions determined legitimacy of the lead authority in charge. Accusations of mismanagement were made to delegitimize the other and strengthen their own position. Only after the intervention of the president’s support to the ONS, other government institutions accepted their authority.
These struggles for legitimacy and the contestation between the state institutions often impact the response directly and mostly result in delays or unresponsive bureaucracy. Other aid actors acknowledge these challenges in their collaboration with the various state institutions, but they also believe the state should be responsible coordinate the response, according to the Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) frameworks. However, many aid actors also by-pass the state institutions, or creatively comply with the state’s approach, as a way to deliver aid more effectively, which creates another challenge in the post-conflict scenario.
The post-conflict politics and the space created by the ambiguity of the transitional period both pushed, and allowed, aid actors to find ways to manoeuvre around the state. In scenarios where the density of aid actors is higher, this dynamic will be more strongly present. Both state and non-state actors employ strategies to regain more authority as the response progresses. Unlike in Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) settings, in post-conflict settings the international actors have more power to influence the implementation of the response in different ways. In Nepal, the government was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the disaster and relied on international aid for the emergency response. Many aid agencies did not participate in the national or local coordination mechanisms and implemented directly. In the first phase of the response, much duplication was reported, while other areas were under-serviced. As the response progressed, the government increased its control. It proclaimed a one-door policy and restricted International Non Governmental Organisations(INGOS). They also pushed for a blanket approach to aid distributions, while most International Non Governmental Organisations(INGOS) advocated a targeted approach. The International Non Governmental Organisations(INGOS) continued to operate through creative framing and flexibility. For example, when taking a blanket approach, they would target the most-hit areas. Also, they did not always try to get approval on all government levels. However, during the reconstruction phase, the long term recovery efforts were mostly integrated, or added to, existing programs. The struggle for legitimacy between the state and non-state actors is strong in post-conflict settings, where the state often depends on international aid, while also being responsible for the response. As many post-conflict states are still dependent on external aid actors, these actors exercise more power over the government than in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario. However, this is in contrast to the agenda of most of these actors to shift the power to the local actors. When the state increases their authoritative resources and pushes for stricter control, aid agencies manoeuvre around the state with their material resources to continue their response. And while the discourse revolves around the (in)capacity of the state to legitimize their role, the space to manoeuvre has been created by the transitional power politics of the post-conflict institutions themselves.
It is known that disaster is co-shaped by conflict; just as conflict is affected by disaster. The setting in which a disaster strikes will significantly impact disaster response strategies, including Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR), and humanitarian interventions. Yet at present little is known about the exact ways in which conflict, disaster and aid may impact each other. This holds particularly true for the dynamics that go beyond policy level: the everyday politics of disaster risk governance in practice.
Considering the relevance of the interlinkages between disaster, conflict and aid, it seems necessary that any agenda on disaster management and risk reduction needs to include insights on the type of conflicts affecting the places where the initiatives are implemented. However, disaster literature tends to lump together different types of conflict, which is especially problematic if it informs disaster policies for responders. While academic literature already offers relevant information about the differences in responding to quick-onset versus slow-onset disasters, knowledge on differences to responding to disasters in different types of conflict seems low. Linking disasters and conflicts without recognising the nuances between the type of conflict and disaster could result in ill-equipped policies and practices.
For all the above reasons, it appears relevant to distinguish different conflict scenarios in research and policies for disaster response, including Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR). The research shows that specific challenges for aid actors, as well as specific aid dynamics, occurred in different conflict settings. We have proposed a categorization of three scenarios (high, low and post-conflict). Even though there is much empirical overlap between the scenarios, analytically distinguishing them may help intervening actors to attune to specific challenges in their area of work. The distinction between high intensity, low intensity and post-conflict was also considered relevant for a panel of humanitarian actors that participated in a Delphi study.
One challenge that we identified in all three scenarios was the complexity and multi layeredness of disaster governance. The power balance between actors and the room of manoeuvre that different humanitarian actors had, differed significantly per scenario. For example, in the post-conflict scenario, internal power politics between different ministries and state institutions determined legitimacy of the lead authority in charge. The position for the leading institutions was uncertain because of the transitioning and unclarity of this period. In contrast, in the (authoritarian) low-intensity scenario, the power play was not so much occurring between the different government institutions, as there often was a clear lead. Resultantly, state structures behaving differently from the political centre’s instructions would be considered traitors or sabotagers – these actors had very little room of manoeuvre. In each case, a disaster opened up political space for contestation of political power, with state and non-state actors renegotiating their power. Often humanitarian aid was the tool or the medium through which to do so. But while in the Low Intensity Conflicts(LIC) scenario this tension is primarily seen in the negotiation and contestation between the state and its citizens, and state and international actors, in a post-conflict scenario these power struggles are more clearly seen between the different institutions in charge of the disaster response.
The high-intensity scenario is different again, in that most of the power struggles between actors involved in humanitarian governance were not so much taking place on the level of disaster policies, but in gaining access, and subsequently in navigating power struggles at the local level. Because of the costly use of helicopters, air dropping aid, or remote techniques, the financial power of humanitarian actors is a dominant factor in these scenarios in deciding who will be included or excluded from services.
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