Dilemmas of aid delivery in the midst of conflict

Defying the odds, people survive while conflict rages round them. How do they do it? In situations of chronic conflict and political instability (SCCPIs) can livelihoods analysis complement a political economy approach? What kind of aid channels are best suited to efforts to support livelihoods?

A paper from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) traces the development of livelihoods approaches taken by relief agencies and how they define and react to ‘crises’ and ‘emergencies’. It warns that the provision of aid in SCCPIs challenges existing aid structures and institutions. Traditional frameworks for analysis and intervention – in both the humanitarian and development paradigms – are inappropriate in the context of the ‘new wars’ and the evolving global order.

As it moves away from a focus on ‘complex emergencies’, the relief community is realising that SCCPIs can exist without an ‘emergency’ of the kind that attracts immediate humanitarian attention. These are characterised by weakened or non-existent public institutions, withheld or contested external legitimacy, a vibrant extra-legal economy, high susceptibility to violence, forced displacement, exclusion of sections of the population from enjoyment of rights and a high vulnerability of livelihoods to external shocks.

The report notes that:

• The relief-development continuum is now discredited as an inappropriate conceptual approach in SCCPIs.
• Many of the concepts involved in gauging the severity or the extent of threats to life and welfare (such as numbers affected and vulnerable people) lack any common definition or precision in practice.
• Expansion of the humanitarian agenda embraces aims other than those associated with humanitarianism: the ‘political’ aims of conflict reduction and peace building are not necessarily compatible with humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence of action.
• The rhetoric and practice of agencies are complex: branches of the same organisation may take different positions on operational procedures and the importance of maintaining neutrality.
• While donor policies invariably include a commitment to poverty eradication, their policies and criteria often exclude chronically unstable, violent and poor states.
• Many intervention models that seek to promote self-reliance do not take sufficient account of structural constraints.

As humanitarian agencies are asked to step into the vacuum left by declining development aid – and to make relief assistance more ‘developmental’ – they are exploring the scope to do more than simply provide material support. In order to operationalise support to livelihoods, donors, policy-makers and NGOs should:

• recognise that states do not accidentally fail but do so as a result of efforts of vested interests to produce, sustain and make crises even worse
• not allow organisational divisions to lead to an over-rapid switch from relief to development programming
• ensure that staff working in conflict situations have a programming background, rather than simply a logistics background, and that they maintain a long-term presence in conflict zones in order to maximise information gathering
• ensure that livelihoods approaches do not make extravagant claims about their capacity to bring about needed policy and institutional changes
• revise policies which lead to neglect of potentially worthy approaches in the ‘grey area’ between relief and development and those which prevent beneficiaries from  being consulted in defining entry points
• encourage research and learning to develop a synergy between livelihoods and political economy approaches.

 

Source(s):
‘Supporting livelihoods in situations of chronic conflict and political instability’, Livelihoods and Chronic Conflict Working Paper Series, Working Paper 183, Overseas Development Institute, by Jessica Schafer, December 2002 Full document.

Funded by: DFID (Sustainable Livelihoods Support Office and the Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department)

id21 Research Highlight: 17 November 2003

Further Information:
Jessica Schafer
School of Child and Youth Care
University of Victoria
PO Box 1700, L-Hut Room 75
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada BC V8W 2Y2

Tel: +1 250 721 6299
Fax: +1 250 721 8977
Contact the contributor: schaferj@uvic.ca

School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria

Other related links:
Rethinking principles of assessment in complex emergencies: the food economy alternative

More on effective and efficient approaches to aid in SCCPI's

Centre for International Development and Conflict Management

Picking up the pieces in Kosovo: understanding post-conflict livelihoods