PM2ch45.pdf

The International Humanitarian Response System and the US Military

Chapter 45

THE INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN

RESPONSE SYSTEM AND THE

US MILITARY

ANDREW S. NATSIOS, MPA

INTRODUCTION

PRIVATE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND THE US MILITARY

PROFILE OF THE PRIVATE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION CULTURE

Goals and Personnel

Types

Funding Pressures

Chain of Command

Security Issues

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS

Mission

How It Operates

Staff

THE UNITED NATIONS

Organizational Structure

Humanitarian Relief Operations

Constraints on Reform

DONOR-GOVERNMENT AID AGENCIES

WORKING TOGETHER

Civil Affairs

Who Is in Charge?

The Military’s Capabilities

SUMMARY

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Military Preventive Medicine: Mobilization and Deployment, Volume 2

A.S. Natsios, Lieutenant Colonel, US Army Reserve (Retired); Administrator, US Agency for International Development, Ronald Reagan

Building, Washington, DC 20523-1000

This chapter is adapted from: Natsios AS. The international humanitarian response system. Parameters .

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The International Humanitarian Response System and the US Military

INTRODUCTION

The chaos spreading through many countries in

the developing world has drawn together an un-

usual, sometimes incompatible, assortment of or-

ganizations to respond to these multiplying crises.

Each year from 1978 to 1985 saw an average of

five complex humanitarian emergencies, the term

used in the disaster discipline for these crises (see

Chapter 43, Complex Emergencies); by contrast,

there were 17 in 1992, 20 in 1993, and 25 in 1997.

The increase in these emergencies appears to be one

of the few clear patterns in the post–Cold War

world.

Virtually the entire international emergency re-

sponse system is a post–World War II phenomenon;

part of it was in its infancy but most of it was not

even conceived of at the time of the Marshall Plan.

For those who work in the relief discipline, it seems

a small miracle that the existing system works as

well as it does, given the conflicting mandates of

the responding organizations, the enormous com-

plexity of the problems addressed, and the organi-

zational incongruities that have emerged in the

years since the United States helped Europe recover

from World War II.

This chapter examines the existing humanitarian

response system—made up of private voluntary

organizations (PVOs), the International Committee

of the Red Cross (ICRC), and United Nations (UN)

agencies—through which the international commu-

nity responds to these emergencies. Understanding

the cultures and operational habits of this triad of

organizations and the manner in which each inter-

acts with the others is crucial for anyone who tries

to work with them but particularly for military

personnel. A civilian US government agency, the

Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) in

the US Agency for International Development

(USAID), coordinates US responses to foreign di-

sasters and so is another major participant in these

efforts. Examples of how the US military has fit into

this complex system are taken from missions in the

1990s.

PRIVATE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND THE US MILITARY

What is known in the United States as a PVO is

known in Europe and the rest of the world as a non-

governmental organization. A PVO is a private,

nonprofit organization that specializes in humani-

tarian relief and development work in the Third

World and, increasingly, in formerly communist

countries. American PVOs employ more than

100,000 people in developing countries. In 1996,

they received $4.8 billion in private revenue and

$1.4 billion in public revenue from USAID. 1 They

communicate with the public through newsletters

and magazines whose aggregate circulation is in the

millions.

Most American PVOs, although private by

charter, accept grants of federal money from the

USAID. For a PVO to remain eligible to receive

such grants or food aid, it must by law raise at

least 20% of its total income from private sources.

While the proportion of a PVO’s income from the

US government, whether in the form of cash

grants or food aid, varies according to its corporate

strategy, some PVOs raise so little private funding

that they are dangerously close to this 20% limit.

A few PVOs accept no USAID money so they can

maintain their distance from the government,

whose policies they find objectionable.

The PVO suspicion of US government influence

extends to the military as well. When President

Bush ordered US military forces to Kurdistan in

June 1991, several PVOs, particularly European

ones, refused to cooperate with them. Kurdistan

became a seminal experience for American PVOs

as it showed them that they could work together

productively with US forces in a humanitarian

emergency, something that even organizations not

opposed to close association with the military had

doubted.

To paraphrase management expert Chester

Barnard, the US military and American PVOs are

unalike in every important way. 2 Indeed, it is diffi-

cult to imagine two more dissimilar cultures. The

military is highly disciplined, hierarchical, politi-

cally and culturally conservative, and tough; it has

a mission to defeat the enemy. American PVOs are

generally independent, resistant to authority, po-

litically and culturally liberal (with the exception

of some Christian PVOs), and sensitive and under-

standing; they have a mission to save lives. Because

military missions tend to be explicit and tangible,

the military sometimes fails to appreciate all the

subtleties of humanitarian mission statements,

where objectives can be implicit and intangible.

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Military Preventive Medicine: Mobilization and Deployment, Volume 2

PROFILE OF THE PRIVATE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION CULTURE

Goals and Personnel

public policy before their workers and programs are

threatened by government officials intolerant of

criticism.

Some PVOs specialize by sector, such as health,

education, or economic development. A few do only

relief work, others only development. Some do

both, particularly the larger PVOs, such as the three

largest in the United States: Care, Catholic Relief

Services, and World Vision. Since the Ethiopian fam-

ine of 1985, a body of scholarship has developed

suggesting that well-conceived relief work should

be designed with developmental components and

that good development work should include disas-

ter prevention and mitigation measures to reduce

the need for relief in disaster-prone areas. Agricul-

tural development programs in drought-prone ar-

eas, for example, should include drought-resistant

crop varieties and water conservation measures. 3

Although most PVOs of US origin employ indig-

enous staff to manage their programs, some remain

Western in their leadership, culture, and standards.

In most developing countries, there is an array of in-

digenously organized and managed PVOs that do

relief and development work, sometimes forming

partnerships with Western PVOs to meet common

objectives. While many of these indigenous groups

run fine programs, some are suspect in their opera-

tional capacity, professionalism, and accountability.

Their reputation, good or bad, usually precedes them.

The assumption that Western PVOs can be

trusted and Third World PVOs cannot is both un-

fair and simplistic. Such an assumption, all too easy

to make during planning, can endanger a mission

if it is used to support operational decisions. In So-

malia in the early 1990s, the UN and, before it, the

United States gave short shrift to Somali PVOs, with

unfortunate consequences. When the battle was

joined with General Aideed, Somali PVOs might

have rallied support for the international presence

in the country. Instead, the UN received little help

from the more responsible elements of Somali soci-

ety that were represented by local PVOs.

All PVOs have ideologies and missions based,

to some degree, on each organization’s private do-

nor base and institutional history. Many are firmly

on the ideological left, others are more centrist, still

others are on the right. PVO comfort levels in work-

ing with the US military decline as one moves from

right to left on that spectrum. Nearly all PVOs share

a devotion to the concept of sustainable develop-

ment in any country or region in which they oper-

ate. They share an aversion to quick fixes, which

they believe military operations tend to emphasize.

Their own painful experiences through 4 decades

in the field have taught them that real development

is a slow, difficult process. One political value all

PVOs share is a robust internationalism; there are

no isolationists in these organizations.

PVOs tend to recruit former Peace Corps workers,

religiously committed activists in the faith-based

PVOs, and young people with graduate degrees in

development economics and public health. Most get

the bulk of their operational training on the job;

there are few equivalents to military doctrine or

field manuals to describe how a particular program

is to be run. Where PVO doctrine does exist, it is

developed from generally shared experiences and

responses, is seldom written down, and is not al-

ways followed uniformly. Field experience in the

culture of PVOs is comparable to combat experi-

ence in the military: a badge of honor, accorded the

highest respect.

Types

PVOs are a diverse group and may be divided

into those that attempt to influence public policy

and remain focused on advocacy work and those

that manage projects in the field and remain focused

on operational issues. Most large PVOs do both

because they have realized that thoughtless or per-

nicious behavior (whether government policy, do-

nor attitudes, or developing country demands) can

quickly undo generally well-conceived and well-

implemented community development work.

Advocacy and operational groups both have

their weaknesses. PVOs that only advocate tend to

have a limited understanding of field realities in

the developing world. They tend to be governed

by ideological preconceptions rather than pragmatic

appraisals of what works. PVOs that exclusively op-

erate in the field can go only so far in criticizing

Funding Pressures

The fundraising imperative, which provides insight

into their sometimes curious behavior, operates to

some degree in all PVOs. PVOs must communicate

with the American people, either through electronic

media or direct mail solicitation, to raise funds. In-

come increases significantly when paid advertise-

ments are combined with coverage of the PVO’s

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The International Humanitarian Response System and the US Military

work on national television and radio news pro-

grams. The more dramatic and heart-wrenching the

scenes and reports of disaster in the developing

world, the more income PVOs can expect from their

solicitations. As well, the donors to the PVOs ex-

pect to see public recognition of their role in media

reports of the success of “their” PVO.

In spite of their nonprofit nature, PVOs need to

compete—less so than private businesses, perhaps,

but compete they must. The quality of their field

programs affects their capacity to win government

grants, and their public visibility affects their pri-

vate contributions. The interest of PVOs in telling

their stories to the news media is not so much a case

of large ego (though that is sometimes there, too)

as it is of survival. US government personnel who

take public credit for a response to a complex

emergency must understand that PVOs find that

annoying; an organization’s financial health can

be affected by military or other government public

affairs announcements. Conversely, a carefully tai-

lored series of such announcements, emphasizing

the teamwork involved in success, would go a long

way to reassuring many PVOs, their workers, and

their donors that young Americans, in and out of

uniform, were together helping those in need.

ing conditions so they can alleviate suffering and

save lives.

Security Issues

PVOs will likely already be anywhere in the

world where a humanitarian crisis exists when US

or other military forces arrive and will generally be

there when military forces depart. (Kurdistan in 1991,

which did not have any PVOs, was an exception to

this rule.) Military action can create animosity in

the indigenous population that will eventually af-

fect the PVOs, who have little or no security and so

are very vulnerable when conflict erupts. The PVOs

can be perceived at worst as Western or at best as

foreigners from the same tribe or clan that produced

the troops. The World Vision headquarters in

Baidoa, Somalia, was bombed in February 1994 by

a Somali militia leader annoyed with UN peace-

keepers over an issue unrelated to World Vision

policies or operations. And in an example of why

PVOs are suspicious of military efforts, when the

staff injured in the bombing needed UN peace-

keeper help to get to a medical facility, the help was

late and hesitant.

PVOs do not rely on guards (whom they seldom

employ) or on weapons (which they virtually never

carry themselves) for their security. They rely on

two aspects of their culture to keep them safe from

violence. The first is the importance of the work they

do for the community. Even after Somalis as a group

had turned violently against the UN presence in

Somalia, they continued to request expansion of

foreign PVO programs in their country. The second

is their perceived nonpartisanship. Many PVOs find

it difficult to remain neutral in conflicts that are in-

herently political (eg, the Cambodian or Rwandan

genocides), but it is essential to their security in such

conflicts. So when military forces, whether under

the flag of the UN or the United States, are perceived

to be supporting one side in a conflict, PVOs are at

increased risk of violence. 4

Chain of Command

PVOs have chains of command just as the mili-

tary does; the chains are not as disciplined or ex-

plicit, though, and they inevitably contribute to ten-

sions between the PVO field staff and the central

staff at headquarters. Differing policy or operational

concepts within the same PVO usually occur because

each level in the hierarchy responds to a different

agenda and a different set of pressures. Headquar-

ters considers donor concerns, budget limitations,

and the worldwide institutional consequences of a

given policy. The field staff focus on the human need

in a particular village, where they struggle daily to

overcome operational difficulties and chaotic work-

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS

The ICRC, founded in 1863, is by far the oldest

humanitarian relief organization. It is also the

largest such organization, with 6,300 employees

worldwide and a budget of $608 million in 1993. 5 It

specializes in conflicts and it and UN Office of the

High Commissioner for Refugees are the only re-

lief organizations with a mandate under interna-

tional law, a fact which ICRC’s managers, called

delegates, frequently cite. Of all humanitarian in-

stitutions, it is the most doctrinally developed. It

has an elaborate system of rules for functioning in

conflicts, which work well most of the time and

which its delegates can recite in their sleep.

While the ICRC is part of the International Red

Cross movement, it has a tenuous and sometimes

acrimonious relationship with the International

Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societ-

ies, the “United Nations” of the Red Cross national

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