Humanitarianism, international organizations and state actors: is there common ground?
Statement delivered by Dr. Astrid Heiberg, President, International Federation, at the Nansen lecture, Amsterdam
24 November 1999



Your Royal Highness,
Your Excellencies,
Dear Red Cross and Red Crescent friends and friends of the Red Cross and Red Crescent,
Ladies and Gentlemen,


I am honoured by the opportunity to be here with you in memory of the humanitarian achievements of my countryman, Fridtjof Nansen. My lecture will have three parts:

—I think it appropriate to start this lecture with some words about Mr. Nansen.
—Following that, I will share with you some thoughts about present-day humanitarian action and the relations between state and humanitarian organizations.
—Finally, I would like to explore possibilities for a partnership between state and humanitarian actors in order to respond better to humanitarian crises in future.

Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen was one of those born in a northern country who did not seek to escape to warmer places, but became haunted by the mysteries of even colder ones. Born in 1861, he became a giant among his contemporaries. He had several careers and was distinguished in each. And, even more remarkably, he wove his several careers into a lifework that stands out as an integrated whole.

What, then, was he?

Nansen was a scholar and a scientist with a wide range of interests and knowledge. He began as a zoologist, studied meteorology and the physical configuration of the globe. He became a pioneer in oceanography. His doctoral thesis, which he completed when he was 26, is still considered a scientific classic.

As an adventurer and an explorer, he sought to learn the limits of human endurance before the forces of nature. His expeditions, however, were primarily scientific inquiries in oceanography. At the same time, his dramatic adventures in skiing across Greenland and exploring the polar oceans inspired dreams of adventure in the minds of many Norwegian boys and girls. Norway became independent from Sweden only in 1905, and our polar heroes had tremendous symbolic value for the new nation. Nansen stood out among these. All explorers, I suppose, are individualists with strong egos. So was Nansen. But he was more. While other explorers built their own egos, Nansen built the ego of a nation.

Nansen, however, built more than an example of a hero for his countrymen. He helped to build the conscience of the world for fundamental human rights and values. While he sought some of the world's coldest places as adventurer and scientist, the warmth he sought and cultivated was that of the human heart. In that exploration he came to serve in the 1920s as the League of Nations' first High Commissioner for Refugees. His enduring legacy from that assignment, which included the repatriation of half a million World War I prisoners-of-war then held in the Soviet Union, is the so-called Nansen Passport.

The Nansen Passport is an internationally recognized identity card for the truly lost of this century, those who for all of the well-known reasons of uprooting and dispersion across the face of the earth in these times, no longer have a home or a location anywhere. The Nansen Passport has literally returned hundreds of thousands of such individuals to membership in the human race. It spared many Jewish people, especially, from Holocaust death during World War II and afterwards enabled them to find new homes.

Statelessness, while it continues to exist, is no longer the massive tide of humanity that it once was. Most of us today have long since learnt to keep our papers close and our passports up to date and thus, no matter where we go, have the security of belonging. Thus in order to understand the humanitarian triumph that the Nansen passport was and is, we have to imagine what it would mean if we were to be ejected from our own countries without the possibility to return and had no valid ticket, as it were, to any other place on the face of the earth. Seen in that light, the Nansen Passport is more than a simple card. It is a statement of human compassion and acceptance. It is also a statement to Nansen's own willingness to work hard and long for the rights of others. He offered himself as the guarantor of the Nansen Passport and conducted the negotiations with governments that brought the agreement of more than 50 nations to recognize the passport and accept the refugees who carried it.

Relations between humanitarian and political action

I have been honoured by my home country to be asked to speak with you on the question of humanitarian action, international organizations and state actors: is there a common ground?

One might as well ask: Is there one, common humanitarianism? Over the last decade we have seen military interventions on humanitarian grounds, but with at least questionable humanitarian results. New instruments have been developed for legal intervention for humanitarian purposes, and they are highly promising. Politicians, notably the foreign ministers of Canada and Norway, have introduced a partnership for "human security," placing the security of the individual as a just as important aspect of foreign policy as the security of states. Humanitarian crises have required the full attention of the UN Security Council over the last decade. There are hundreds of NGOs in the humanitarian field, with distinctly different approaches. There are numerous UN agencies striving to co-ordinate their humanitarian efforts. And there is, of course, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement; in itself a complex organism with separate, but inseparable components. We have the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been entrusted by states with a specific mandate to provide protection and assistance in armed conflict. There are the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, that are auxiliaries to the governments and that operate both in times of conflict and peace. And there is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the network of all National Societies. Within our Movement, the ICRC has the lead role in times of armed conflict, but it works together with the involved National Societies, who are in their turn supported in their development by the International Federation. Furthermore, the Federation has the lead role within the Movement in dealing with refugee situations as well as with humanitarian response to natural disasters.

So there is a myriad of actors with humanitarian agendas. The question is whether it is one and the same agenda. In particular, the relationship between political action, military action and humanitarian action has been an uneasy one over the last decade. As a matter of principle and tradition, political action is different from humanitarian action. Humanitarian action is about individuals, their needs and their rights. Political action is, traditionally, about states, national interest and sovereignty. In many ways the distinction is still valid, but in today's world it can be no more than a point of departure for an analysis.

During the cold war, humanitarian action was distinct from politics. The cold war had its hot spots also, but the wars waged were to a large extent ideological: wars about the nature of regimes. In a context of ideological confrontation, the notion of neutral humanitarian action made good sense: humanitarian action belonged to a different sphere than foreign policies based on ideological schemes. One could also say that humanitarian action based on a set of clear principles "matched" the doctrinal order of the cold war. The conflicts we have seen over the last decade, are less of an ideological kind. As we all know only too well, many conflicts are about ethnicity, religion, clans. They are no longer about abstract ideological schemes. Rather, they are related to the identity of the human being itself, such as people's ethnic, clan or religious background. At the core of many conflicts lies the notion of group identity: individuals are seen as representatives of group and are targeted as such. This group thinking is not easy to escape, for while you can always switch political or ideological side, you cannot change your ethnicity.

Thus, the present-day conflicts are closely linked to the individual qualities and situation of human beings, to their way of life and culture, their living conditions, and ultimately - in the most savage wars - to human life itself.
As a consequence, it has fallen to foreign policy makers and actors to deal with humanitarian issues to a far greater extent than in the past: today's armed conflicts have reasons of a humanitarian nature, and they have grave humanitarian consequences. From time to time manmade and nature made causes combine in a vicious circle of violence, such as Somalia. Add to this that most conflicts today are non-international and leave the international community without ability to address them in a political fashion.

On this background, some say that humanitarian action has become politicized. It would probably be more precise to say that politics have become "humanitarianized," but anyway, the situation has raised challenges for humanitarian agencies. It has been said that "the age of innocence" is over for humanitarian assistance, that it can no longer be neutral or be perceived as neutral.

Furthermore, it is being claimed that military forces can perform humanitarian work more efficiently than humanitarian agencies, and that military forces can ensure protection and safety that humanitarian agencies cannot provide. This was, for example, the case for refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia this spring. It was claimed that NATO came to the rescue of humanitarian agencies in setting up and organizing refugee camps. This, in turn, led to questions whether the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence really matter when the challenge is to get things done for the victims on the ground: Is the humanitarian action of military alliances less noble than that of humanitarian organizations? After all, if the aim is to help people in difficult situations, why distinguish?

These are relevant questions, but one should not be blinded. Such questions are asked from a political angle, not a humanitarian. Politics is about taking sides, and military campaigns are about fighting for one side. A military alliance engaged in war has the obligation to spare civilians on all sides of the conflict, but the military alliance would not itself provide humanitarian assistance to civilians on "the other side." And of course, as a military alliance it would not get access either. Humanitarian action is different: it is about providing assistance regardless to which side the victims belong. It is on this basis that the crucial dividing line in international humanitarian law is the line between combatants and civilians, and not between the parties to conflict. Today we see that many tend to divide instead between "we and they" or "the just and the unjust," labelling populations as such terrorists or bandits. There is also a tendency to demonize entire populations for the conduct of their political and military leaders. Regrettably, this tendency is not even totally absent with governments that are normally among the strongest supporters of international humanitarian law.

There is no doubt that military forces can provide assistance to victims in an efficient manner, but such assistance will hardly be based on the humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality, and it may put at risk the independence of some humanitarian organizations. There is also the danger of a grave imbalance, or more bluntly: a discrimination between victims on the one side and the other. On the one side of the conflict, military alliances provide assistance with vast financial, logistical and human resources. On the other side of the front-line, remaining humanitarian organizations are left with far less resources for the victims and the vulnerable, with less financial aid from governments, or even a determined policy of non-support.

Also, the pure humanitarian action cannot be replaced because of the selectiveness of the political and military system. Humanitarian action is needed every day in many parts of the world, not only at the political and military hot-spots. Humanitarian organizations are present, and should be even more present, where the TV cameras are not. From a humanitarian perspective, we should not allow for example the Balkan wars to detract us from other, just as cruel conflicts or disasters. We should not allow the CNN factor to set our humanitarian priorities.
Those taking lightly on politicizing humanitarian action, or even favouring it, rely on the assumption that we have a good international political system. This is a questionable assumption. If we do have something that works rather well, it is humanitarian action - whereas our international political system has shown many weaknesses in dealing with the complex emergencies over the last decade. Humanitarian organizations are normally at work in a crisis situation long before the political actors and/or the military comes in, and long after they have left. But humanitarian action cannot replace political or military solutions in times of conflict.

Let me point out that I am not blaming politics for its very nature, I am merely stressing that we must be aware that the nature of politics is different from the nature of humanitarian action. When political action is taken to its extremes, namely the use of military force, humanitarian considerations can easily be overshadowed by "realpolitik." In such situations, therefore, distinctions between humanitarian, political and military considerations can become blurred. This is why it is crucial to maintain that humanitarian action is based on the principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality. Our Movement can only carry out humanitarian action effectively if the following conditions are met:

—Unrestricted access to the victims of conflict
—Unfettered dialogue with the authorities
—Independence: total control over all stages of the operation and over the resources required.

This implies that aid must be distributed solely on the basis of need, independent of all political, strategic and military considerations. It is of utmost importance that political and military actors understand, accept and support these basic humanitarian principles.

With such a common understanding as a basis, we should explore ways of more concerted action between political and humanitarian action in times of crises. But so far we have few, if any, model experiences for such co-operation.

—There are not many success stories about applying military sanctions, like intervention.

—There is little evidence that economic sanctions have the desired effects, and in addition, they have many undesired side-effects in terms of humanitarian suffering for the most vulnerable parts of the population.

—There is no overall diplomatic formula for preventing conflict.

—It is clear that humanitarian action can save millions of lives that are unfortunately at risk because of the failure of political action. But again, it cannot replace political action and durable political solutions.

It is not my task to present political solutions. Rather, let me speak from the perspective of a humanitarian organizations about how we foresee future co-operation with governments.

One of the key words in the humanitarian field these days, is co-ordination. It is one of these general terms that are easy to use but not easy to apply. Many donor governments stress the need for co-ordination, and they do have a point. But we need to get down to the specifics of what we mean by co-ordination. One should not believe that co-ordination efforts will bring blessings only. For example, co-ordination in the form of a centralizing body can be counterproductive to locally based action and responsibility. It can also create new layers of bureaucracy where there is a need to reduce existing bureaucracies, to take another. As humanitarian organizations we are working hard to get immediate access to victims and to make governments eliminate impediments to this access. So we should not create our own impediments in the name of co-ordination. Co-ordination in the form of division of labour definitely makes sense, but we must not rid ourselves of all fruitful competition that can enhance the quality of our services. However, all players in the humanitarian, political and development spheres must manage crisis in a comprehensive manner, taking due account of the respective responsibilities, mandates and spheres of competence of each party.

Rather than speaking about co-ordination in general terms, I think we should speak about co-operation and performance in more specific terms. An important such co-operation for improved humanitarian performance is the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief, now signed by 184 NGOs. Now we are taking this work further. A wide range of humanitarian agencies are now working on what is called the Sphere project: a humanitarian charter and five sets of ethical and professional standards: in water and sanitation, nutrition, food security, health services and shelter. It sets out precise and quantifiable standards for humanitarian aid against which humanitarian organizations could be held accountable.

Donor governments also have a responsibility in implementing such standards, possibly through codes of conduct of their own. Compliance with the Code of Conduct and Sphere standards could be secured if donors used these as a criterion for funding.

The importance of local and national preparedness for conflict situations

I was last in the Netherlands in May this year, to commemorate the centennial of the Hague Peace Conference. Since then, we have also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. Some would ask whether there is cause for celebration. The 20th century is likely to have been the least peaceful and most deadly of all centuries. More than 120 million people have died from war in this century now coming to an end.

Even though the international community has had limited success in its peace efforts throughout this century, we should have learnt enough lessons by now to make better progress in the next century. It is time to work harder at it. Put another way, I think we must get tough about peace. While we have been hoping and praying for universal peace, some tougher-minded people have been showing us specific ways to peace that we have tended to ignore. In the tumult of the present century many agreements have been made from which we can take proven successful ideas. Among these have been agreements for regional co-operation among nations such as the ASEAN compact in Asia, and the European Union for economic interdependency. Or to take a promising initiative from a presently not peaceful part of the world: the agreed moratorium on small arms transfers in West Africa; an effort to halt the violence stemming from light weapons and ammunition. We need to mine such collaboration and coming together for lessons of peace building that we can apply among all nations and peoples.

And we must sharpen our advocacy and promotion for peace. We must be strong and brave to advocate to our community, region and state leaders action to pull up the roots of civic and group conflict, to deplore and move resolutely to extirpate hates and harassment of minority groups, managing diversity and nurturing peaceful coexistence.

Let me turn now to what I see as a clear, common ground for joint action of states and humanitarian organizations, namely the building and strengthening of local institutions and capacities. Evidence is growing of their impact on development and humanitarian outcomes, not least in terms of preventing, preparing for and responding to conflict and disasters.

What infrastructure will never be destroyed by war or disaster? The infrastructure in people's heads. To give one example, the prime strength of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is our national and local presence through independent National Societies, their branches, and their volunteers. It is time to realize the potentials of local and national preparedness to deal with consequences of armed conflict: The last years we have seen how military and militia campaigns can displace vast populations in few hours and days. We see how social unrest has the potential of developing rapidly into violence. In these circumstances, humanitarian action must be as swift as the events that unfold, and this is why we need to secure the ability to act immediately at local level.
Any society is a delicate network of history, culture, economy, politics, all that shape local or national identity. When this network is threatened with deterioration, because of conflict or disaster, then those living in the society, those that are part of the fabric, are the ones best placed to prevent, limit and repair. International assistance in times of emergency will always be needed, but no international organization or donor government can replace the preparedness on the spot. In some situations the local civil society institutions are often among the few functioning providers of assistance and protection in weak states wrecked by, or emerging from, internal conflicts.

Local organizations can also play an important preventive role. We see how many armed conflicts are no longer international in the traditional sense, but are rooted in complex, national or regional realities, with history, culture and ethnic origins playing an important role. In the traditional conflicts in the past, securing respect for humanitarian values and international humanitarian law was often a matter of negotiating with those holding political power nationally, relying on high-level contacts to promote respect for humanitarian law at the lower levels of the hierarchy. Today's conflicts are different. The worst violations of humanitarian law and principles are no longer necessarily committed by military personnel but often by undisciplined militias. Civilians may be pressed into armed action by groups that represent and fight for a clan, an ethnic community, or a religious faith. Some of these groups may have value systems very much in opposition to humanitarian law: All kinds of fanaticism, be they based on religion, ethnicity or clan, have in common that they define good and bad. There is nothing in-between. What room is then left for neutrality and impartiality? What room is left for humanitarian protection and action for all victims, regardless of ethnicity, religion, class, gender?

In such, extremely complex situations there are limits to what outsiders can do, because the conflicts are so all-encompassing, so intertwined with local realities. This is why I believe we can prevent violence more effectively by promoting humanitarian values in a way that is adapted to local and national reality. I believe local volunteers can play a great role in communicating values of tolerance and participation; values that can prevent conflicts based on group identity, conflicts based on the notions of we and them, good and evil. Let me quote the President of the Somali Red Crescent, Dr. Ahmed Hassan, who said the following at the first periodical meeting on international humanitarian law in January 1998:

"Even in countries which are affected by civil war, or are experiencing situations of the collapse of state structures, basic principles of the international humanitarian law are embedded in the traditional culture, values and religions of the communities of these countries. For this very reason, we find that local organizations such as the national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies are best placed to assist in the promotion of humanitarian values and the dissemination of the principles of international humanitarian law."
A Red Cross society that really managed to operate on all sides during a vicious war, was the Lebanese Red Cross. In 1989, UNICEF, in co-operation with the Lebanese Red Cross Society, organized a holiday camp in Lebanon for young people of all the country's various communities. For a week, the children lived and played together, talked and shared experiences.

Such activities are no less important once the armed conflict has ended and there is a need to prevent the breakdown of the peace-process. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Federation has been running a programme to promote humanitarian values, arranging classes and camps for young people of Serb Orthodox and Muslim background together. This summer, only weeks after the Kosovo war, I visited a Yugoslav Red Cross youth camp in Montenegro, which gathered youth of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Three weeks ago, the International Federation adopted our strategy for the coming decade. In this strategy we have set forth together with our National Societies to take on a more active role in promoting humanitarian values and international humanitarian law. We will do this with an aim to prevent tension to turn into violence, and to prevent scattered violence to turn into full-fledged armed conflict. We will do this also with an aim to enable our National Societies to operate in a neutral and impartial way when conflict has broken out, and as strong partners for ICRC, which has the lead role in our Movement for humanitarian protection and assistance in armed conflict. But we also need the renewed commitment of governments to the humanitarian values enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, and the willingness of governments to draw the practical conclusions from these values.

A common agenda for governments and humanitarian organizations:
A partnership for preparedness

Governments and humanitarian organizations must not limit their co-operation efforts to situations of armed conflict. Local and national preparedness is no less important when natural disaster strikes. Even if war is a killer, nature can be even worse. Over the last decade, natural disasters have on average killed around 128.000 people and affected another 136 million every year.

We may speak of exceptional combinations of drought and flood, we may speak of exceptional hurricane patterns. But what we used to consider exceptional, has become regular. The 1999 edition of The World Disasters Report, published annually by the International Federation, gave some disturbing messages: First, climate change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, but a reality. It does take place. Secondly, the changing climate means changing disaster patterns. We will see far more extreme weather conditions in future, weather patterns that will cause disasters. Indeed, we see it already.

New natural disasters are more complex and more comprehensive than in the past. In Honduras last December, sixty percent of the country's economy was destroyed in just two days. In Indonesia last year, the effects of the El Nino and forest fires may have played a role in leading to the riots which in turn had wider political implications. We see super-disasters that overload the world's emergency response capacity, and drain the reserves of the global insurance industry. In parts of the Caribbean, the insurance industry has stopped insuring – it is too risky even for the industry living from risk.

Natural disasters hit the most vulnerable hardest. Over 90 per cent of all deaths caused by disaster occur in developing countries; and the economic losses are – relative to the size of the economy – 20 times greater than in industrial countries. And outlooks are not good: With almost a billion people now living in unplanned urban shantytowns, with deforestation wrecking ecological defences, and with global warming making the forces of wind, rain and sun ever harder to predict and counter, the poor people of the world are more at risk than ever before. These are alarming predictions. But we must have the courage to move beyond mere statements about the gloomy pictures and depressive statistics. We must look at what solutions we can provide.
The first challenge is to prepare ourselves. Are we prepared?

An evaluation carried out last spring of preparedness and response to Hurricanes Georges and Mitch found that international resources often arrive too late to be of assistance during the immediate post-event phase. And foreign medical teams actually placed "another burden on the health institutions during the most critical time of the response." Aid given was sometimes misdirected, because local communities were not sufficiently involved in needs-assessment or response, and co-ordination between affected countries, international agencies and donors was not adequate. These were general statements. But are we sure they are not also relevant to the Red Cross and Red Crescent? I do not exclude that.

New solutions are needed. More investment before disaster strikes – on strengthening the disaster preparedness and response capacities of hazard-prone countries – would mean fewer lives lost and fewer donor funds wasted in the aftermath.

What does this all tell us?

Disasters can no longer be separated from development. We must stop seeing disasters as disturbances in the steady progress towards greater development and instead see them as part of development. When governments are unable to cope with the burden of disaster, then disasters have become a development challenge. Therefore:Governments, financial institutions, and international organizations must integrate our knowledge about disaster patterns in their development strategies.

What can we do?

We do have the knowledge needed to act. We know that

We can mitigate disasters by taking measures ahead of time to reduce their impact, such as better forecasting and warning systems. Many natural disasters are becoming annual events and can be predicted. What is needed, is to act on these predictions.
We can prepare for disasters by integrating disaster preparedness at all levels, and ensure that the international relief system matches the local system. One important lesson from "Hurricane Mitch" is that local preparedness must also imply being prepared to receive international assistance.
We can respond to disasters by improving systems to release funds more promptly.
We can carry out rehabilitation in a way that contributes to long-term improvements for the vulnerable.

We can do all this, if organizations, governments and international organizations all pull in the same direction. But we cannot deliver if governments continue the trend of the nineties of cutting back on development assistance and emergency aid. Official development aid has the last years been at its lowest level in the history of development aid. And emergency aid has fallen by 40 per cent since 1994.

Negative as it may be, this situation is a reality. So rather than only complaining – everybody does that – I would take the liberty to offer advise on how to spend the limited funds available.

The key advise is that investing in disaster preparedness pays off.

The World Bank and US Geological Survey have calculated that economic losses world-wide from natural disasters could be reduced by as much as 280 billion US dollars by investing around one-seventh of that sum in preparedness, mitigation and prevention strategies.

Or, to speak of gains rather than losses: In China, a recent analysis indicated that 3.5 billion dollars invested in flood control has saved the economy 12 billion dollars of potential losses.Preparedness makes the difference. But what do we mean by preparedness?

That depends on the local reality. Let me give two examples.

In Bangladesh, satellites track typhoon movements in the Bay of Bengal, warning messages are relayed into threatened areas through dozens of dedicated radio stations and up to 30.000 Red Crescent-trained volunteers with loud hailers encourage people to use concrete typhoon shelters. This typhoon and flood early warning system provides a successful model of how technology and community-based action can combine to save lives.
Less sophisticated, but no less important, are the simple signposts put up in the South Pacific, indicating east, west, north and south. When people hear weather forecasts on radio, they will know where the cyclone is coming from and can take precautions accordingly.

So effective preparedness can be high-tech or low-tech, but it must be local. It must be adapted to the realities on the ground. At the end of a decade that has provided a number of tough lessons to the various actors in the humanitarian field, this one lesson about local preparedness stands out. In a humanitarian environment that is ever more complex and challenging, I believe this is a way to ensure an even better working partnership between international organizations and state actors:

Preparing for situations of armed conflict can play a role in preventing and limiting hostilities, but will also facilitate peace-building and reconciliation efforts in the aftermath.

Preparing for natural disasters, similarly, is crucial to mitigate and respond and thus limit human suffering.
This is why governments and humanitarian organizations should unite in a partnership for preparedness. We have the local expertise, because we have the people, in virtually all countries of the world. Governments have resources, however scarce, and they should be invested with a better return. We have common interests and we have the opportunity to act together. For the sake of the victims and the most vulnerable of this world, we cannot afford to wait.

Thank you.