Towards a contagious humanitarian “domino effect” ?

For humanitarian action, the butterfly effect combined with a scissor effect could lead to a chain reaction, a cascading domino effect with dangerous humanitarian, security and geopolitical consequences.

In editorials published in the spring of 2024 in Défis Humanitaires, I first raised the risk of a butterfly effect from the war in Ukraine, which would pave the way for further aggression, as we saw with Azerbaijan’s attack on the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, and as could happen one day with China invading Taiwan, or even in Europe beyond Ukraine.

Any aggression leads to successive reactions, which in turn can lead to ever-widening conflict, as was the case in the aftermath of the First World War. At first, we didn’t know it was a world war!
In another editorial, I also mentioned the economic scissor effect, when resources and costs evolve in opposite directions. This is exactly what we’re seeing now in humanitarian action, where needs are constantly increasing, while the means to meet them have begun and continue to fall! And so I raised this question: is this a passing phenomenon or a lasting trend, and how far could it go ?

The question today is whether the butterfly effect of tensions and conflicts of all kinds that are flourishing before our very eyes, including within a country like the United States, could add to the scissor effect of a decline in the global humanitarian response, causing a domino effect of a chain reaction here and there, leading to a succession of humanitarian, security and geopolitical crises.

Displaced people walk back to the Plain Savo site early in the morning after spending the night with host families in the nearby town of Bulé, Democratic Republic of Congo. ©UNHCR/Hélène Caux

The equation is as follows. Will the increase in crises and the number of populations affected, while the humanitarian response weakens, not lead to imbalances that provoke population movements, despair, radicalization, and a structural deterioration in public services and states, whose weakening could then provoke a domino effect from one to the next, as if by contagion?

My point here is not to say that the drop in humanitarian aid could provoke wars, but rather that the increase in conflictual situations, disasters (particularly climate-related), major epidemics and the depletion of natural resources in a world with a much larger population and growing consumption, the weakening of the UN and of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) could provoke major humanitarian crises which, if the inadequacy of relief supplies were to drive victims to despair and accelerate political crises, could lead to geopolitical crises according to the principle of the domino effect.

Isn’t this the domino effect spreading to the Sahel with Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, with the risk of spreading to the whole region? Is this not the logic that thrives around the terrible conflict in Gaza, which is spreading to Lebanon, Yemen and Iran? Is this not the dynamic that is being expressed from Ukraine to Moldavia, Georgia and Armenia in the South Caucasus?

Is it not this logic that is expressed when Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk declares “A new era has begun: that of the pre-war era”. I personally heard a Polish ambassador tell us at a friendly dinner that if Ukraine was in danger of losing and Poland felt threatened, then his country would go to war with Russia. In fact, Poland is preparing itself by devoting 4% of its GNI to defense, twice as much as countries like France, Germany and Great Britain!

Smoke billows from a site targeted by shellfire in the village of Zaita, southern Lebanon, September 23, 2024. ©UNICEF/UNI649017/Dar Al Mussawir

As we all know, any war leads to destruction and population displacement, requiring humanitarian aid until a political solution to the conflict can be found. This is the famous stabilization triptych: humanitarian aid – return to security – political solution.

If, in the face of the chaos of war, humanitarian aid becomes dangerously scarce, doesn’t this risk exacerbating any conflict and making any political solution more difficult and remote when the populations are the main issue?

So, what do the figures on international aid tell us? Humanitarian aid, which up until now has been increasing to meet the growing humanitarian needs of the population, is not only stagnating but even declining.

According to UNOCHA, international humanitarian aid in 2022 amounted to $30.48 billion, against an estimated need of $51.64 billion, an increase of 27% on the previous year. And yet, although the UN appeal was 59% covered, there was still a shortfall of 21.16 billion dollars in 2022.

But in 2023, to help 311 million vulnerable people, the amount has fallen back, with a budget of $25.13 billion for an estimated need of $56.09, 45% of which was funded, leaving a considerable shortfall of $31 billion.

Family forced to move following evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities, Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, August 2024. ©2024 UNRWA Photo by Ashraf Amra

So, where do we stand this year? UNOCHA’s appeal is for 49.55 billion dollars to help 180 million people in danger. It should be noted that a new methodology is now used for needs analysis (JIAF 2.0), which has considerably reduced the number of aid recipients from 300 million to 180 million! What will become of the 120 million people who will receive no aid in 2024, and what could be the domino effect?

According to UNOCHA FTS, as of November 3, 2024, funds received amount to $18.56 billion out of a budget of $49.95 billion required, i.e. 37.5% of the total with two months to go! This is not only leading to a reduction in humanitarian aid, but also to staff cuts at NGOs such as International Rescue Committee and Save The Children. This is a wake-up call.

It should be noted that, as of November 3, the funds raised in 2024 come from 3 main donors (United States, European Union, Germany), accounting for almost half of the budget, and that the United States represents 36.3% of the overall total. According to his figures, France’s contribution at that date was $548.9 million.

To be frank, as I wrote last month in this magazine to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, we can be very concerned about France’s 2025 Finance Bill which, after an initial cut of 740 million euros in Official Development Assistance in 2024, envisages a cut of 1.3 billion euros in 2025, which will have multiple consequences including a drop in humanitarian aid if parliament and public opinion don’t act strongly to avoid or, at the very least, limit it, whereas France has pledged to devote 1 billion euros to humanitarian aid in 2025.

In the current context, where the number of people at risk is steadily increasing every year, due to war, disasters and epidemics, it would be dangerous for humanitarian aid to decrease, both for the populations at risk themselves and for neighboring countries, which could find themselves dragged down by a domino effect that is increasingly difficult for the international community to stem.

We urgently need to take action.

Alain Boinet.

Thank you for your support (faireundon).

Humanitarian letter to Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs.

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.

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

Lebanon, Gaza, Iran, and now what ?

A personal interview with Antoine Basbous, Director of the Arab Countries Observatory and partner at Forward Global.

International conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon, Paris – 24/10/2024. © Philemon Henry / SIPA for MEAE

An international conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon was held in Paris on Thursday 24 October. What can we make of its outcome and the humanitarian situation?

This conference, convened by Paris, was useful and showed that Lebanon could still count on France’s friendship, which is deeply rooted in its history. But the success of the emergency humanitarian aid cannot mask the geopolitical reality. The keystone of peace in Lebanon lies rather in three decisive calls that have not been acted upon: the election of a President of the Republic, the first cornerstone of the institutions, and above all the handing over by Hezbollah of its arsenal to the Lebanese army and the call for a ceasefire so that Security Council Resolution 17 01 can finally be applied.

The conference could have produced a solemn appeal for the disarmament of the Party of God, co-signed by the Lebanese delegation which included ministers representing this militia. In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini did call for a ceasefire with Iraq, declaring that he was ‘drinking the cup of poison’ to stop the destruction of his country.

What are Israel’s objectives in Lebanon, and what consequences could the war between Hezbollah and Israel have for the communal and political balance in Lebanon?

Tel Aviv says it wants to eliminate the threat of Hezbollah on its border, which has led 80,000 Israelis to leave their homes since October 2023, when this militia declared war on Israel, without any consultation with Lebanese institutions. All it took was an order from Tehran for the Secretary General of the Party of God, Hassan Nasrallah, to declare war on Israel in the name of ‘unity of fronts’. Hezbollah’s demonstrations of strength and the precedent of the tunnels discovered in 2006, and then in Gaza in 2023, served as justification for very severe action by Israel against the political and military commands and installations of the Party of God.

Nasrallah had boosted the morale of his militia by gratifying it with lofty qualifications such as a chosen people and the ‘noblest community among men’. The brutal decimation of the militia in September came as a shock, a bitterness that carries the risk of revenge on Lebanese civilians. In fact, the Hezbollah militiamen, despite being defeated on the military front, have behaved arrogantly towards those who have received and sheltered them since they were forced to leave their villages and seek refuge within their own country. Some of their actions border on aggression, and risk tipping the country into a confrontation between its constituent parts. For example, some refugees have sought to create faits accomplis on plots of land that do not belong to them or that are being contested in the courts, in order to build permanent structures as soon as they arrive. Obviously, if such behaviour is not curbed by the militia leaders or the Lebanese authorities, it can provoke violent reactions and resurrect the old demons of civil/regional war. For the time being, however, the other communities are not prepared to engage in conflict with Hezbollah militiamen.

Joint air exercise between the Israeli Air Force and the Hellenic Air Force July 2022. © Israel Defence Army

Some people are talking about the risk of a regional conflagration, yet the Iranians seem to have reacted with moderation to the Israeli strikes on their military infrastructure. Is this the fault of the United States, or is it a step in a possible escalation?

The United States has no desire to manage a new conflict in the Middle East after the bitter failures it suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Above all, they have no desire to do so in the middle of a presidential election. This is why they have held Israel’s hand by preventing it from taking the lives of Iranian leaders or striking the Islamic Republic’s oil and nuclear facilities. In return, they deployed their THAAD anti-missile system to reassure Israel of their support, and hit the Houthis with B-2s from Missouri to remind the Iranians of the extent of their reach.

While we await satellite images of the damage left on Iranian soil, we can assume that the American instructions were respected by Israel, and that the response was negotiated and scripted to ensure that it did not get too out of hand. Israel even warned Iran of its intention to attack. Tehran had in fact announced that a reasonable attack would not provoke a reaction on its part. For the time being, a form of ‘muscular cohabitation’ has been established at regional level. Iran’s auxiliaries in the Mediterranean are badly damaged, but continue to inflict serious losses on Israel.

Distribution of RTE pracels for IDPs – North and Akkar, 9th of September 2024. ©Solidarités International

Will Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah be the big losers in the war they started? Will the Abraham Accords be back on the agenda? Is there any other solution than the creation of a Palestinian state to establish lasting peace in the region?

The biggest losers will be the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords, which had begun to write off the ‘Sacred Cause’, will return to centre stage and flourish once Tel Aviv has re-established its deterrence on the ground and in the imagination. The Arab states are keen to build a new security architecture that takes account of the (relative) withdrawal of the Americans, which makes the Israelis the key interlocutors in containing Iran’s ambitions.

However, this is counter-productive in the long term, as the best solution for a lasting regional peace remains the creation of a disarmed Palestinian entity (so as not to threaten Israel) whose borders would be protected by the United States and NATO (so as not to be threatened by Israel). Despite everything, this ideal solution is unlikely to see the light of day due to the lack of American will and its massive rejection by the messianic supremacists in the current Israeli government. The latter’s objective is rather to recolonise Gaza and drive the West Bankers from their territory. October 7th only added fuel to their fire, and the lack of action by the United States gives them the opportunity to create faits accomplis to the detriment of the Palestinians.

Antoine Basbous is a political scientist and specialist in the Arab-Islamic world and Islamist terrorism

In 1991, he founded the Observatoire des Pays Arabes (OPA) in Paris, which he has headed ever since. This is a fully independent consultancy specialising in North Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf and the Islamic world in general. In 2021, OPA joined the Forward Global group, which specialises in risk management, economic intelligence, cyber, crisis communication, etc.

Antoine Basbous was born in Lebanon, where he studied law and French literature. In France, he obtained a doctorate in political science and a postgraduate diploma (DEA) in information and communication. He worked as a journalist in Beirut and Paris from 1975 to 1987.

Antoine Basbous has published several essays translated into various languages, including Guerres secrètes au Liban, Editions Gallimard, 1987; L’Islamisme, une révolution avortée? Editions Hachette, 2000; L’Arabie saoudite en question, du wahhabisme à Bin Laden, Editions Perrin, 2002. In September 2004, an updated version of the latter work was published in paperback by Tempus under the title L’Arabie saoudite en guerre ; Le tsunami arabe, Editions Fayard, 2011.

He is consulted by major companies, governments and courts in Europe and North America, and regularly takes part in debates on the crises shaking the Arab and Islamic worlds, on terrorism and on the relationship between Islam and the West.

Discover Antoine Basbous’ former interview in October 2021: The Middle East on fire. – Humanitarian challenges

MEAE text on the International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24 October 2024) : International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24.10.24) – Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères * (in French)

Text from the Elysée on the international conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24 October 2024) : International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon – Elysée Palace

United Nations resolution 1701 on Lebanon

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