Since 1980, the humanitarian sector has been confronted with several major geopolitical upheavals. Some of these have literally made humanitarian aid take off, while others have kept it going.

And today, what is the trend and how will humanitarians act? In this latest issue of Défis Humanitaires, we’d like to thank the authors of our articles and interviews for their contributions, and take a closer look at the issues and challenges in a number of distinct fields, whose impact on humanitarianism will undoubtedly shape it – if it hasn’t already!

 

The butterfly effect in the geopolitics of conflict.

On February 24, 2022, Russian military aggression in Ukraine brought war back to Europe. It’s a high-intensity war on a vast front, with the decisive stakes of defeat or victory being set for the long term. What changes with Vladimir Putin’s decision is that war is once again a model for resolving border conflicts, and there is no shortage of them in the world.

This is the background to Azerbaijan’s attack, which in September 2023 drove the Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh. Likewise, the war in Gaza and its victims are part of a regional dimension with global implications. Finally, these tensions and conflicts often and increasingly pit the democratic model against that of autocracies, if not neo-totalitarianism.

In this issue, we publish an interview with Grégoire de Saint Quentin, a former army general with extensive international experience. A regular contributor to LCI and the media, he explains the changes, the challenges and the risks of this epochal change.

The scissor effect between needs and means.

In Paris on April 15, France, Germany and the European Union organized an international humanitarian conference for Sudan and affected neighboring countries. As Kevin Goldberg, Executive Director of Solidarités International, puts it so well in his article, “it was more than urgent to act” before the lean period between two harvests at the time of the rainy season, which will soon paralyze humanitarian logistics at a time when 27 million Sudanese are in need of humanitarian aid, including 6.8 million internally displaced persons and almost 2 million refugees.

This conference has raised 2 billion euros out of the 4 billion dollars requested by the United Nations! While this conference is welcome, it also highlights the great fragility of the humanitarian ecosystem and its chronic and worsening funding shortfall.

At the European Humanitarian Forum in Brussels on March 18 and 19, Cindy McCain, representative of the World Food Program, declared that it had been forced to make heartbreaking choices due to a lack of resources: “In Afghanistan, we have cut aid to over 10 million people, in Syria we have cut aid to 4 million, and in Somalia we have cut aid to 3 million”. The verdict is dramatic! Humanitarians beware: we are not only actors in the humanitarian response, but also in the mobilization of resources!

 

The costly and paralyzing bureaucratic effect.

At the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul, as part of the “Grand Bargain”, it was decided that there would be a shock to simplify the administrative management of humanitarian aid. According to actors and observers, not only did the shock never materialize, but on the contrary, the complexity has increased for humanitarian organizations.

According to the testimony of Olivier Routeau of PUI, published in Défis Humanitaires, when a donor, who used to ask for two interim monitoring reports a year, requests a formalized monthly report for each of the 7 intervention sites, this obligation increases the number of reports to be submitted from 2 to 84! How can we describe this? Bureaucratic overload, systemic self-protection, sickly mistrust?

Don’t get me wrong. Accountability is not the issue here. The funds implemented by donors are public assets made up of citizens’ taxes, and it is right in principle and in practice to account precisely for the use of these funds. I would even go so far as to add that, if auditing once helped humanitarian action to progress, we may now be tipping over the edge into a bureaucratic zeal disconnected from the very purpose of humanitarian action, which is to help populations in danger.

In this review, an audit expert takes the floor and makes proposals. Ludovic Donnadieu, chartered accountant, statutory auditor, graduate in development economics, founder of the international audit firm Donnadieu&Associés. He draws up a diagnosis and makes proposals, including the simple and pertinent one of linking financial and operational auditing, which are currently disconnected from each other.

Instead of taking a wait-and-see attitude, humanitarian NGOs and their coordinating bodies could get to grips with this problem and propose an alternative audit model that meets the requirements of accountability, simplification and greater relevance. The risk of doing nothing is undoubtedly an increase in bureaucracy and auditing costs, as well as mistrust and a disconnect between the actual implementation of the project and its financing.

 

What alternative is there between universalism and the rights of peoples and sovereignties?

If I raise this subject, it’s because, among other questions, it was put to me during a dialogue with the Nutriset Group, organized by Fatima Madani, with journalist Christian Troubé, well known to humanitarians.

We are all witnesses, if not players, in this debate, which frequently pits universalism against sovereignty. How many times have we heard that we should promote our values, without defining them, except in a general way as a catchword, whatever respect these values may inspire in us.

On the subject of sovereignty, which is a highly connoted term, I’d prefer to hear people talk about their right to self-determination in a country, a nation, a state that can legitimately expect to be respected as sovereign in its own right, which does not preclude free and voluntary alliances.

So I suggest another path. My conception of the universalism of humanity is not opposed to the recognition of another human reality, that of the diversity of languages, cultures, religions, peoples, histories and ways of life. A French diplomat who has served in China, Great Britain and Germany recently declared that “others don’t think like us” and “a German is not a Frenchman who speaks German”. Universalism is not the opposite of the plurality of identities and sovereignties, but their complementarity. Of course, it all depends on where you place the cursor, and some people place it at opposite ends of the spectrum.

It seems that this third way of understanding universalism and sovereignty corresponds well to the experience of humanitarians around the world. The universalism of aid, of relief, of solidarity in distinct civilizational universes, but all participating in humanity.

However, we also know that this pluralist universalism will not put an end to the various forms of conflict, power struggles and the human phenomenon of war, whose justifications are never lacking. But it could enable us to better understand and accept each other, and thus choose negotiation rather than confrontation. Nor will it replace politics (polis in Greek and civitas in Latin), which every human community needs to live together.

Conclusion

So, is humanitarianism on pause, in retreat, or is it starting to take off again? It’s too early to say, but the question is being asked, and it’s already an indication that we’re talking about it. I invite you to read (links at the end of this editorial) the interviews and articles in this new edition, which will enable you to delve deeper into each of the challenges facing the humanitarian sector.

Among the factors of change discussed here, there are some that organizations can act upon, and others to which they must above all adapt, even if they can make their voices heard and exert as much influence as possible on their evolution where they are legitimate.

There are many other challenges facing the humanitarian sector, to which it must respond: disasters, epidemics, failed states, climate change, the environment, biodiversity, demographics, innovation, coordination, pooling, training, and many more.

One of the most pressing challenges is that of funding, since it is the key to meeting the vital needs of populations in danger, which we have pursued with conviction since the inception of Défis Humanitaires.

And we now have a tool, a real lever, in the form of the European Union Council’s recommendation that member states devote 0.07% of their Gross National Income (GNI) to humanitarian aid. Today, only 4 countries have reached or exceeded this target, but more than two-thirds of the others allocate only 0.01% or less! 0.07% should become a target, but not a maximum, since some countries are already doing much better. And this recommendation could be extended to all the other countries that have the means – and there are many of them! That’s also why we hope that France’s announcement to devote one billion euros to humanitarian aid will be kept and implemented by 2025! We’ll see to it.

If the spirit that inspired the pioneers of humanitarian aid is still there, then we can all hope for the best, provided we want it and do it. That’s our mission too.

Alain Boinet

Alain Boinet is President of the association Défis Humanitaires, which publishes the online magazine www.defishumanitaires.com. He is the founder of the humanitarian association Solidarités International, of which he was Managing Director for 35 years. He is also a member of the Groupe de Concertation Humanitaire at the Centre de Crise et de Soutien of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and of the Board of Directors of Solidarités International, the Partenariat Français pour l’Eau (PFE), the Véolia Foundation and the Think Tank (re)sources. He continues to travel to the field (Northeast Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh and Armenia) and to speak out in the media.

Thank you for supporting Défis Humanitaires with your donation (make a donation).

I invite you to read these interviews and article published in the edition :

• Geopolitics of defense: interview with General (2S) Grégoire de Saint-Quentin
• Sudan: it was more than urgent to act – an article by Kevin Goldberg
• Humanitarian aid: a shock to simplify procedures – interview with Ludovic Donnadieu of Donnadieu&Associés
• When Nutriset talks to the humanitarian community: an interview with Alain Boinet by Christian Troubé