Conflicto y asistencia humanitaria

[Articulos Individuales de la edicion de Intersecciones de Otoño del 2019 se publican en este blog cada semana. La edicion completa puede ser encontrada en MCC’s website.]

Alberto Mosquera, navegando en su bote en esta foto de marzo de 2018, es un agricultor en la región del Bajo San Juan de Chocó, Colombia. Mosquera participa en un proyecto de cacao de la organización asociada del CCM Weaving Hope Agricultural Foundation (FAGROTES / Fundación Agropecuaria Tejiendo Esperanza). A través del proyecto, Mosquera recibió asistencia técnica en el cultivo y procesamiento del cacao. (Foto del CCM / Alex Morse).

Cada año, el CCM responde a docenas de desastres y crisis en todo el mundo que desplazan a decenas de miles de personas. En muchos casos, las personas que necesitan asistencia han sido desplazadas por el conflicto. En su informe más reciente de tendencias mundiales sobre el desplazamiento forzado, el Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (ACNUR) informó de un número récord de personas desplazadas de sus hogares a fines de 2018 como resultado de persecución, conflicto, violencia y violaciones de los derechos humanos, incluyendo 25.9 millones de personas refugiadas y 41.3 millones de personas desplazadas internamente, con 37,000 nuevos desplazamientos cada día. Este contexto de violencia informa no solo el tipo de respuesta que el CCM apoya, sino también la forma en que se lleva a cabo la respuesta.

El trabajo de asistencia del CCM se adhiere al Estándar Humanitario Básico (2014) sobre calidad y responsabilidad que busca mantener a las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis en el centro de cualquier respuesta. Basado en los principios de humanidad, imparcialidad, neutralidad e independencia, el EHB establece nueve compromisos que las agencias que llevan a cabo respuestas humanitarias deben cumplir para mejorar la asistencia que brindan:

  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis reciben la asistencia adecuada y relevante para sus necesidades.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis tienen acceso a la asistencia humanitaria que necesitan en el momento adecuado.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis no se ven negativamente afectadas y están más preparadas, son más resistentes y tienen menos riesgos como resultado de la acción humanitaria.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis conocen sus derechos y beneficios, tienen acceso a la información y participan en las decisiones que les afectan.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis tienen acceso a mecanismos seguros y responsivos para manejar las quejas.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis reciben asistencia coordinada y complementaria.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis pueden esperar una mejor asistencia a medida que las organizaciones aprenden de la experiencia y reflexión.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis reciben la asistencia que requieren de personal y voluntarios competentes y bien administrados.
  • Las comunidades y personas afectadas por las crisis pueden esperar que las organizaciones que les ayudan gestionen los recursos de manera efectiva, eficiente y ética.

No es suficiente simplemente distribuir suficiente comida o enviar la cantidad necesaria de cobijas. La consulta auténtica con las comunidades afectadas es esencial para garantizar que la respuesta humanitaria sea apropiada y relevante, efectiva y oportuna, fortalezca las capacidades locales y responda a la retroalimentación de la comunidad. La respuesta del CCM en situaciones de conflicto debe considerar la seguridad física de las personas participantes y del personal así como el acceso a las poblaciones afectadas. Los proyectos no solo responden a las necesidades tangibles como alimentos y refugio, sino que también abordan las necesidades psicosociales muy reales que surgen del trauma del desplazamiento, violencia y destrucción de hogares y comunidades. La asistencia humanitaria en estos contextos requiere un buen análisis de conflictos para garantizar que la prestación de asistencia no agrave el conflicto y cause más daño que bien.

Los artículos en este número de Intersections exploran las formas en que el CCM, junto con sus organizaciones asociadas locales, ha estado abordando estas complejidades de proporcionar asistencia humanitaria en medio de conflictos en contextos tan variados como Colombia, Nigeria, Sudán del Sur, Líbano y Siria. Cada caso examinado en estos artículos contribuye al aprendizaje continuo del CCM en aras de mejorar su trabajo futuro, ofreciendo lecciones sobre el mantenimiento de la imparcialidad de la respuesta humanitaria, analizando diferentes tipos de desvío de la asistencia humanitaria, obteniendo el apoyo de los hombres para intervenciones humanitarias dirigidas a las mujeres, integrando la sensibilidad al conflicto en la respuesta humanitaria, construyendo capacidades locales para la paz y fortaleciendo la sostenibilidad de los proyectos de asistencia humanitaria.

Stephanie Dyck es coordinadora del programa de contribuciones externas del CCM Líbano y Siria.

Norma Humanitaria Esencial: corehumanitarianstandard.org

Conflict and humanitarian assistance

[Individual articles from the Fall 2019 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]

Alberto Mosquera, traveling by boat in this March 2018 photo, is a farmer in the Lower San Juan region of Choc, Colombia. Mosquera is a participant in a cacao project run by MCC partner Weaving Hope Agricultural Foundation (FAGROTES/Fundacin Agropecuaria Tejiendo Esperanza). Through the project, Mosquera received technical assistance in cultivating and processing cacao. MCC supports this sustainable cacao production project in Choc through Growing Hope Globally (formerly Foods Resource Bank). Participating farmers gain technical skills related to producing, processing and commercializing cacao. The project aims for sustainability, both in specific farming practices and as a long-term livelihood option. Growing Hope Globally photo/Alex Morse

Each year, MCC responds to dozens of disasters and crises around the world that displace tens of thousands of people. In many cases, those in need of assistance have been displaced by conflict. In its most recent global trends report on forced displacement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported a record number of persons displaced from their homes at the end of 2018 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence and human rights violations, including 25.9 million refugees and 41.3 million internally displaced, with 37,000 new displacements each day. This context of violence informs not only the type of response that MCC supports, but also the way in which the response is undertaken.

MCC’s relief work adheres to the Core Humanitarian Standard (2014) on quality and accountability that seeks to keep communities and people affected by crisis at the center of any response. Based on the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence, the CHS sets out nine commitments that agencies carrying out humanitarian responses should follow to improve the assistance they provide:

  1. Communities and people affected by crisis receive assistance appropriate and relevant to their needs.
  2. Communities and people affected by crisis have access to the humanitarian assistance they need at the right time.
  3. Communities and people affected by crisis are not negatively affected and are more prepared, resilient and less at-risk as a result of humanitarian action.
  4. Communities and people affected by crisis know their rights and entitlements, have access to information and participate in decisions that affect them.
  5. Communities and people affected by crisis have access to safe and responsive mechanisms to handle complaints.
  6. Communities and people affected by crisis receive coordinated, complementary assistance.
  7. Communities and people affected by crisis can expect delivery of improved assistance as organizations learn from experience and reflection.
  8. Communities and people affected by crisis receive the assistance they require from competent and well-managed staff and volunteers.
  9. Communities and people affected by crisis can expect that the organizations assisting them are managing resources effectively, efficiently and ethically.

It is not enough simply to distribute sufficient food or ship the needed number of blankets. Authentic consultation with affected communities is essential to ensuring that humanitarian response is appropriate and relevant, effective and timely, strengthens local capacities and accounts for community feedback. MCC’s response in situations of conflict must consider the physical safety and security of participants and staff and access to affected populations. Projects not only respond to tangible needs such as food and shelter but also address the very real psychosocial needs that arise from the trauma of displacement, violence and destruction of homes and communities. Humanitarian assistance in these contexts requires good conflict analysis to ensure that the provision of assistance does not exacerbate conflict and cause more harm than good.

The articles in this issue of Intersections explore the ways in which MCC, together with its local partners, has been navigating these complexities in providing humanitarian assistance amid conflict in contexts as varied as Colombia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Lebanon and Syria. Each case examined in these articles contributes to MCC’s ongoing learning for the sake of improving its future work, offering lessons about maintaining the impartiality of humanitarian response, analyzing different types of diversion of humanitarian assistance, garnering support from men for humanitarian interventions aimed at women, integrating conflict sensitivity into humanitarian response, building on local capacities for peace and strengthening the sustainability of humanitarian assistance projects.

Stephanie Dyck is MCC Lebanon and Syria’s external grants program coordinator.

Core Humanitarian Standard: corehumanitarianstandard.org

Diversion and humanitarian assistance in South Sudan

[Individual articles from the Fall 2019 issue of Intersections will be posted on this blog each week. The full issue can be found on MCC’s website.]

Cropped image
Nyang Jawu Nyanpiu is one of more than 1,000 households that received food items such as sorghum, beans, cooking oil and salt in South Sudan’s Rubkona, Pariang and Bentiu counties.

Nyanpiu, who is in her early 70s, lost her family members during conflict in her home village and fled to the Pariang camp IDPs where her only surviving son died of an unknown illness. (MCC Photo/Patrict Mulu)

The positive and negative impacts of humanitarian assistance can be viewed through two primary lenses: first, the direct impact from the transfer of aid in meeting basic human needs; and second, the ethical message conveyed in the provision of assistance. In this article, I examine a key factor that humanitarian agencies in conflict settings that plan food assistance interventions must consider, namely, diversion. My discussion of diversion builds on MCC’s experience in supporting food assistance projects implemented by a South Sudanese church relief organization among famine-affected internally displaced peoples in the part of South Sudan formerly known as Unity State (in 2015, the South Sudanese government divided Unity State into the three new states of Ruweng, Northern Liech and Southern Liech).

Diversion in humanitarian assistance refers to actions that, by altering the intended distribution of relief items, results in humanitarian assistance being reduced, not reaching or being delayed in reaching intended beneficiaries, or being used for something other than its intended purpose. One type of diversion involves actions by political officials or by armed groups (such as the police, the military or non-state actors) to intercept and divert humanitarian assistance away from the intended beneficiaries. Another type of diversion, however, happens when project participants themselves use humanitarian assistance they receive for something other than the planned-for purpose. Selling food assistance is a classic example of such diversion. Another type of diversion happens when beneficiaries share assistance they receive with family, friends and neighbors. My focus in this article will be on this latter type of diversion of humanitarian assistance by project participants.

A concrete example will help clarify the issues at stake in diversion. In December 2018, staff with the Episcopal Church for South Sudan-South Sudanese Development and Relief Agency (ECSS-SUDRA) conducted a survey of internally displaced peoples (IDPs) in the former Unity State who had received food assistance through a project implemented by ECSS-SUDRA with support from MCC and the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB). The survey revealed that the supported beneficiaries had shared, sold and diverted part of the food they had received through the project, rather than keeping all of it for their household food needs (the intended purpose).

When ECSS-SUDRA staff asked why this diversion had happened, beneficiaries gave multiple responses. For many, diverting food assistance they had received represented a way to help relatives and friends who had newly arrived and settled in the camp. Conflict often separates members of extended and even nuclear families from one another. In contrast, stability and food in times of need bring family members together. Food aid recipients therefore sought to share this assistance with their extended relatives who also experienced need. Not only that, but the ECSS-SUDRA survey found that some food aid recipients also shared a portion of their food aid with newly arrived IDPs, both with IDPs coming from their home communities and with returnees from distant internal displacement camps and refugee settlements.

Ubuntu is an ancient African worldview based on the primary values of humanness, caring, sharing, respect and compassion, values that help ensure happiness and well-being within family and community: within this worldview, sharing one’s resources with family, friends and neighbors is a cultural imperative.

Another cause of diversion by beneficiaries was that some items in the distributed food parcels were not readily usable in the form provided. So, for example, beneficiaries reported that they lacked money to have the sorghum that came in the food package ground into flour: they therefore sold the sorghum for cash. Recipients who sold items from the food package reported doing so in order to meet other priority needs, such as the purchase of soap or meat or for covering medical expenses.

Still other recipients viewed the food assistance as an opportunity to start a business. In some cases, recipients sold food assistance to access startup capital. Others who already had access to some capital used those funds to grind the sorghum they received into flour for baking bread that they then sold, increasing household income.

The types of diversions described above are common when humanitarian agencies distribute food assistance in conflict situations. Humanitarian agencies like MCC might sometimes unreflectively assume that food is the primary, or even sole, need of IDPs and other vulnerable groups, yet such peoples, who may have no regular sources of income, have other basic needs, including health, hygiene and education. Diversion in these instances represents a creative attempt by beneficiaries to meet multiple needs through food aid which had originally been intended to meet only basic nutritional and diet diversity needs.

When the number of people who end up benefiting from humanitarian assistance surpasses the originally planned scope of the project, one reasonably deduces that diversion by beneficiaries has occurred. So, for example, ECSS-SUDRA found through its survey that the household sizes reported at the end of the project varied from what was originally projected, resulting in the project reaching more households than anticipated in the initial plan. Households expanded as IDPs welcomed members of their extended families. Also, the number of overall beneficiaries of the project expanded as recipients shared and consumed food aid with their friends and relatives.

Humanitarian agencies like MCC and ECSS-SUDRA seek to ensure that the amount of food aid distributed is appropriate and effective for the size of the households receiving the assistance. Yet, in bantu contexts like the areas where ECSS-SUDRA operate, people hold strongly to the communal value of ubuntu. Ubuntu is an ancient African worldview based on the primary values of humanness, caring, sharing, respect and compassion, values that help ensure happiness and well-being within family and community: within this worldview, sharing one’s resources with family, friends and neighbors is a cultural imperative. Ubuntu calls on people to show basic respect and compassion for others, based on a recognition of how people are defined by communal relations: “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.” One’s neighbor’s survival is a precondition of one’s own survival: sharing the food one has, including food assistance one has received, is a duty. One is not separate from family members who have also had to run away from their homes and villages, nor is one separate from friends and neighbors, including new neighbors in an IDP camp. Ubuntu calls people to extend food and brotherly embrace. While humanitarian assistance project plans may give clear instructions about beneficiary selection, the communal value of ubuntu disrupts these plans through its spirit of sharing.

There are several steps that can be taken to minimize negative types of diversion in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. These include improved planning, needs assessments, regular monitoring, integration of priority needs into holistic assistance packages, provision of assistance that can have long-term benefits and empowerment of and coordination with local actors to prevent duplication of support. Yet, as the ECSS-SUDRA experience in South Sudan shows, not all forms of diversion by beneficiaries are harmful. Indeed, when recipients of food aid share those resources with extended families and social networks, they extend the benefit of food assistance and help foster social cohesion, even if these benefits were not part of the original project planning.

Amos Okello is MCC representative for South Sudan and Sudan.


United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, South Sudan.