Humanitarianism & War Project

	\|\|\|\| Status Report #31: April 1999
	THIS IS ANOTHER in our series of reports designed to keep the stakeholders of the Humanitarianism and War Project and its increasingly wide circle of users current on our work. This report covers the period since November 1998.
	CONTENTS:
	Research Completed Research in Progress Other Activities and Publications Upcoming Events Interview: Ian Smillie

	RESEARCH COMPLETED
	Relief and Development: The Struggle for Synergy by Ian Smillie has now been published. The new study, which served as a basis for discussion with NGO officials in New York last November, explores the evolution of thinking about relief and development from the continuum concept to more holistic approaches. Smillie examines constraints against synergies imposed by rigidities of timing, funding, and understanding. His text can be downloaded directly from our website or obtained by contacting the Project. Smillie himself is interviewed at the end of this Status Report.
	We are now putting the finishing touches on three monographs on human rights. A Humanitarian Practitioner's Guide to International Human Rights Law by William G. O'Neill reviews the framework for humanitarian action provided by human rights, humanitarian and refugee law. O'Neill provides a non-technical overview of key legal instruments in the interest of equipping busy practitioners to identify and respond to violations. This resource, which should become available by early summer, responds to input from practitioners at various points in a more than two-year process.
	Protecting Human Rights in Complex Emergencies by Diane Paul, Mark Frohardt, and Larry Minear reviews the dilemmas and opportunities in the post-Cold War environment for humanitarian actors. Particular attention is devoted to practical strategies for providing protection and to the special challenges of working in settings where criminals and belligerents are present. In Assistance and Protection: The Gender Connection, Julie Mertus provides a framework for applying a gender perspective to humanitarian action, drawing in particular on experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Judy Benjamin expands the focus to include recent experience in Afghanistan as well. Both volumes are slated for publication in late summer.
	The Project has also been involved with the CARE network of agencies in its effort to make its assistance activities more responsive to human rights concerns. James Ron, a Watson Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow in Human Rights, carried out a review of CARE's experience in the Goma camps in Zaire where international relief efforts as a whole strengthened the position of the Rwandan leadership implicated in the genocide. Ron's case study was one of four reviewed by CARE staff from the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom at a meeting in England in January, also attended by Project Director Larry Minear.
	\| return to top ^ \|

	RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
	Responding to growing international concern about the interrelationships between relief assistance and human rights, we have teamed up with the International Human Rights Trust to launch a study in which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed interest. Spearheaded by Karen Kenny, work has begun on an examination of the extent to which human rights considerations have been integrated into the activities of the United Nations system as a whole. Agencies and departments being selected for particular review are UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, the Departments of Political Affairs and Peacekeeping Operations, and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Having completed an initial round of interviews in New York, Kenny plans additional discussions in Geneva, Rome, and New York before finalizing her study for publication late this year.
	The Project's various activities related to human rights are facilitated by a recently announced grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This builds upon an earlier Mellon contribution and reinforces grants from the Ford Foundation and the Netherlands Government as well.
	Work is also going forward in areas described in the previous Status Report. This includes a study by Marc Sommers and Larry Minear examining the dynamics of coordination at the operational level and reviews by S. Neil MacFarlane of several major intersections between humanitarian action and politics. Ian Smillie is leading our review of the experience of international humanitarian actors in strengthening local institutions. Drawing on a series of country case studies now being planned, we hope to identify innovative contributions by international agencies to indigenous institution-building, keeping in mind the different levels of institutional development in the countries experiencing crises.
	\| return to top ^ \|

	OTHER ACTIVITIES AND PUBLICATIONS
	In keeping with our commitment to the widest possible dissemination of our research, Greg Hansen and Larry Minear did a briefing on their Caucasus conclusions and recommendations for the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and other senior officials at OCHA in New York in early January. The session provided an opportunity to share highlights of seven strategy sessions in Russia and the Caucasus held late last year. A Russian translation of Humanitarian Action in the Caucasus: A Guide for Practitioners is now available on the web and from the Project office. This translation is being circulated within the region to those who participated in the series of workshops.
	Recent research on human rights issues also formed the core of a background paper prepared by Minear for a UNHCR conference on protection partnerships with humanitarian and human rights NGOs held March 11-12 in New York and hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. Minear will serve on the Steering Committee being set up to orchestrate further discussion of the issues at the regional and international levels. His paper, which also reflects his participation in the third of a series of protection workshops convened by the ICRC in Geneva in January, is available on our website.
	A recently published collection of essays by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention, includes one by Larry Minear, "The Morality of Sanctions." Edited by Jonathan Moore, Hard Choices reviews the complex humanitarian issues associated with national sovereignty, arms transfers, the prosecution of war crimes, post-conflict reconstruction, and the role of the media, as well as specific experiences in settings such as Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti.
	The current issue of Ethics & International Affairs features an article by Thomas G. Weiss, "Politics, Principles, and Humanitarian Action." Building on remarks by Weiss at the 1998 Wolfsberg Humanitarian Forum, this article is the subject of commentary from Cornelio Sommaruga, Joelle Tanguy, and David Rieff. Formerly a co-director, Weiss, now Presidential Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, remains the Project's principal consultant.
	\| return to top ^ \|

	UPCOMING EVENTS
	During the coming months the Project will be involved in several conferences and meetings examining issues of particular interest to humanitarian practitioners and policy-makers.
	In collaboration with the Population Training and Studies Center, also based at Brown University, we are facilitating a discussion in late April among practitioners, policy-makers, and academics, "Toward Understanding the Social Dimensions of Forced Migration, Practitioner Needs, Policy Sensitivities, and Social Science." The discussion will explore the benefits of closer collaboration among these distinct communities. Papers prepared for the meeting and a summary of the discussions will appear in a Watson Institute Occasional Paper in the fall.
	Our ongoing dialogue with NGO officials continues with a session in New York on May 7. Agency experience with developing practical protection strategies and gender-linked protection programming will be reviewed. We will also be involved, following the ICRC's annual Wolfsberg session in late May, in facilitating another in our series of dialogues between ECHO and the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), this one held in Brussels.
	Thanks to generous support from the Howard Gilman Foundation, we are convening a workshop in late May on "Assisting and Protecting War Victims: Transatlantic Perspectives on Humanitarian Operations and Research." Participants include North American and European relief and human rights NGO officials, policy analysts, and researchers. Prepared papers will set the stage for hammering out a joint future agenda for humanitarian action and policy research to support it.
	\| return to top ^ \|

	INTERVIEW: IAN SMILLIE
	Below are excerpts from an interview with Ian Smillie, author of the Project's most recent publication, on Relief and Development: The Struggle for Synergy.
	H&W: In a recent oped [see attachment], it is mentioned that you were once a teacher in Sierra Leone.
	IS: Yes, I was a CUSO volunteer there in the late 1960s. CUSO is the Canadian version of the Peace Corps.
	H&W: How did that experience spark your interest in what you are doing now?
	IS: Well, I intended to come back to Canada and study law. That was my plan, but I was offered a job as a CUSO coordinator in Nigeria and I went there for what I thought was going to be two years—it turned out to be three. This was during the Biafran War; it was very intense and I guess I sort of got the "bug" in terms of development. I came back to Canada briefly for a year after that to work in the CUSO head office and then applied for a job with CARE in Bangladesh. So I went off to Bangladesh for two years. My career was more or less set by then.
	H&W: You were doing mostly development work?
	IS: Yes, though Nigeria was at war most of the time I was there. Bangladesh was coming out of a war and was very seriously damaged psychologically as well as physically when I arrived. Although the work was development, much of it was in war or postwar situations.
	H&W: What are the origins of your relationship with the Humanitarianism and War Project?
	IS: I was invited by Tom and Larry to attend a couple of workshops. Then I was invited to participate in Tom's project on the devolution of UN tasks to regional organizations and NGOs that resulted in a special issue of the Third World Quarterly and a book published by Macmillan. I contributed a chapter and we got to know each other in the process.
	Then they asked me if I would like to get involved in their longer term efforts to identify the "Dynamics of Learning by Humanitarian Organizations." It appealed to me for a couple of reasonsnot just because I respect the work that the Humanitarianism and War Project is doing but because in a way the circle of my career is coming around to where I startedSierra Leone. I am including a case study of Sierra Leone as a chapter in our monograph on Strengthening Local Capacity during complex emergencies. Your first assignment is often your most important one. I learned a lot there and made good friends in Sierra Leone. So the country's collapse over the past few years—a tragedy for Sierra Leoneans—is personally very wrenching for me.
	A number of us Canadians, Sierra Leoneans, and Canadian Sierra Leoneans formed a small working group here in Ottawa about a year ago to think about what we might do about the crisis. The group includes Flora MacDonald, a former Foreign Minister, who has also been associated with various aspects of the Humanitarianism and War Project. We have been urging the Canadian government to get more actively involved. The opportunities for this are not bad because Canada is a member of the Security Council this year. In February, when Canada chaired the Security Council, it did raise the issue of Sierra Leone, and we feel that we are making a bit of progress. In fact the current Canadian Foreign Minister has recently provided support for the West African peacekeeping force, he sent a political delegation to Sierra Leone, and has held high level consultations in Canada to explore ways in which we might be able to go beyond standard types of relief assistance. This is something new for Canada. I think they are seriously considering what to do and they want to know as much as they can. Our group has been actively consulted in all this, and in a way, it seems that my career has come in a full circle.
	H&W: One goal of the Project is to encourage and challenge organizations to think through practical implementation of their activities. That sounds like what you are doing right now on Sierra Leone. How has your monograph, Relief and Development: The Struggle for Synergy, been received so far?
	IS: Well, of course it's easy to say what should be done; it's easy to be critical, especially when things are falling apart all around us. Staying with the Sierra Leone example, it is so easy to call for negotiations, it's the Pavlovian reaction to any kind of crisis, especially for outsiders. "These people should stop fighting, get to the table, and if we sit with them long enough, we can get them to work out whatever their differences are." Well, sometimes these differences are really intractable. In the case of Sierra Leone you have bandits and murderersthere really isn't any other name for the RUF. They have diverse interests but they don't have any political agenda other than power. The way they deliver their message is through attacks on civilians, murdering children and pregnant women, cutting off hands, and so on.
	This is a long way of saying that when you are really in a position to advise, either through writing or actually going to a meeting and talking to people who have to make serious decisions, it's not as easy as it sometimes seems at a distance. People obviously would prefer a negotiated settlement over having to send troops, committing not only money but people's lives. Trying to advise on what to do in a highly complex situation is extremely difficult. Again, when it's on paper, it's easy enough to be critical, and there is a place for criticism in terms of getting the ball rolling. But when policy makers start taking an issue seriously, sometimes you have to put your thinking cap back on and consider the full implications of your advice.
	H&W: You have begun the research on Strengthening Local Capacity. Can you describe what you see on the horizon for this work?
	IS: Well, capacity-building is one of those buzzwords in the development business that have come to mean almost everything, and because they mean almost everything they don't mean much at all. Empowerment is also one of these words, sustainability is another.
	There are so many words that we have managed to corrupt or misuse that they don't really mean very much. Capacity-building has been taken by a lot of the development community to mean training—essentially teaching people how to manage things better, how to do things more effectively or more efficiently. I think in complex emergencies it's a lot more difficult. It's not very hard to teach someone a skill through the provision of information. Knowledge, however, is different from information. It involves information, but it also includes experience and practice. Building knowledge takes time. Changing people's attitudes or behavior takes even more time. The more ambitious you are in your capacity-building effort and the more difficult the situation, the longer it's going to take and the more difficult it's going to be. Training may not be enough.
	In the emergency business, because people are in a hurry to get things done, capacity-building can fall low down on the agenda and sometimes focuses on things like building people's ability to deliver food, rather than on their longer term capacity to deal with broader aspects of the crisis.
	As I said, we have started our research on capacity-building in Sierra Leone. We have a case-study writer, Thomas Turay, who was trapped there during the insurgency in early January and who is still there, trying to find his family. He has feared for his life on more than one occasion. The irony of it is that we are working on theory and ideas and so on, and we're caught in a very real and tragic situation. This is where the rubber hits the road.
	\| return to top ^ \|