The Humanitarian Precautionary Principle, Part 2

Am asking people I respect a tremendous amount to weigh in on some of the more contentious humanitarian issues, everything from the costs and benefits of advocacy to the question of neutrality and legitimacy.

The first posts are from Michael Keizer, who writes the phenomenal blog A Humourless Lot: Where Health, Logistics and Aid Work Come Together.  Michael has been an aid worker since 2001, working for various aid organizations - including UNICEF and MSF - in logistics and program management.

Michael's post below looks at the question of whether aid organizations should engage in advocacy.  Part 1 is here. For other musings this week, see here.

The humanitarian precautionary principle: complementary action as a better alternative

In the first part, I introduced the humanitarian precautionary principle as a means to simplify intractable dilemmas about advocacy versus field operations. I finished with an open question: is the principle a good one? Is it really the best resolution for our discussions?

I think that the humanitarian precautionary principle in this form confuses aims on the one hand, and ways and means on the other. We are not pursuing our “programs on the ground” as a goal by itself, but as a means to ameliorate the situation of the population we serve. In the final analysis, we will have to do whatever will improve the population’s lot most effectively (and most efficiently).

This is nothing new: politics has had to deal with these issues since the start of civilisation, and over the ages it has come up with the notion of complementary action: in almost all cases, it is not a question of which single action to pursue, but of which mix of actions is most effective – taking into account that there is almost always a mix of actions to be found in which the total is bigger than the sum of the parts.

For the issue of advocacy versus operations, I would suggest in a similar vein that there is no ‘versus’ here: advocacy and on-the-ground operations can almost always be used in mutually reinforcing ways.

Advocacy is hardly ever a threat to aid operations. This is already true on an organisational level: very few aid projects have ever been stopped or even severely hampered by the repercussions of advocacy. However, it is even more apparent on a humanitarian-systems level.

These days, there is hardly any conceivable crisis in which only one aid organisation is active; more likely, scores of programs are aiming to alleviate the situation, and even if (and that is already a big ‘if’) one organisation is expelled for being too loud about the issues it confronts, others would usually be able to jump in and fill the gap.

In fact, in a cynical way it could even be seen as a positive development: it frees the expelled organisation to speak out as loud as necessary (even using the expulsion itself as an argument), while field operations still continue. I have seen examples of this myself and I am aware of other cases.

I also know of cases in which organisations actively agreed in advance (informally and very secretly, of course) that one of them would pursue an active advocacy strategy, while others would prepare to step in if the advocating organisation were to be expelled. (As an aside: I think it is telling that in none of the cases of which I am aware, the advocating organisation was expelled and the contingency plan had to be activated.)

What happened recently in Darfur is not proof of the opposite. Keep in mind that most (all?) of the groups that were expelled or had to stop their operations had a policy of non-cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and had not advocated for an indictment. Furthermore, neither were the groups with the highest advocacy profile being expelled; e.g., whereas the Dutch and French sections of MSF were expelled, other MSF sections, which had been at least as vocal, were allowed to continue.

[Note that I am not saying here either that the ICC took the right decision when issuing the indictment. This article is talking about advocacy as an activity and its effects on field operations, not about the relationship between international (criminal) justice and these same field operations. However, also note that some of the same principles might be applied, although possibly leading to different conclusions.]

Advocacy and field operations are both valid, necessary, and (most importantly) mutually reinforcing tools towards our humanitarian goals. Proponents of the humanitarian precautionary principle do themselves, their operations, but most of all the populations we work for a disservice.

[Photo of a girl in Zam Zam camp, Darfur from Reuters]