The Humanitarian Aid Hamster Wheel is Broken
July 10, 2023 - Do you remember why, how or when the Syrian civil war started?
With so many wars and coups and unrest going on around the world, it is understandable that we can’t remember the details or the length of time behind Syria’s unrest.
As part of the wider 2011 Arab Spring protests, unrest in Syria began on March 15, 2011 due to ongoing discontent with 3 things:
the authoritarian practices of the Syrian government since Assad’s father became president in 1971
the drought Syria experienced between 2006 and 2010, reduced hundreds of thousands of farming families to poverty, and caused a mass migration of rural people to urban shantytowns
ethnic sectarianism: the Assad family were from the minority Alawites; the opposition belonged to the Sunni majority
It eventually escalating to an armed conflict after protests calling for Assad's removal were violently suppressed.
Twelve Years and Counting
Since 2011, millions of people have fled and/or been displaced. In a country of 21 million people, 15 million are displaced, living in refugee camps, including 7 million children and 4.5 million women.
Seventy one percent of Syria’s population has had to flee their homes.
Imagine if 71% of your family, your neighbors, your country was displaced. Of every ten people you know, seven would not have a home.
Global Challenge
You and I know it is not just Syria. The Kutupalong in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh has 880,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. The Dadaab and Kakuma Refugee Camps in Kenya have been in operation since 1991 and 1995, respectively. Both are “home” to over 200,000 refugees each, mainly from Somalia.
To give it perspective: 200,000 is the size of population of the cities of Des Moines, Iowa; Spokane, Washington; or Rochester, New York!
For many children, these refugee camps are the only home they have ever known.
According to the UNHCR, there were 108.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2022 as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.
62.5 million are internally displaced people (within their own countries)
35.3 million are refugees (living outside their home country)
5.4 million are asylum-seekers
5.2 million are other people in need of international protection
Moving Beyond Emergency Response
“They want us to stay dependent and helpless,” says Zuhair al-Karrat, a general surgeon and health director in Idlib, a city in northwest Syria. “We’ve been saying for twelve years we don’t want humanitarian handouts. We want development projects, we want early recovery projects, we want factories.”
Those living in the refugee camps are all capable of providing for themselves. Prior to the war and unrest that cause them to flee they had homes, jobs, the children to school…they were self-sufficient. They were doctors, teachers, mechanics, housewives, storekeepers, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs, and chefs.
Why do humanitarian organizations think all that is needed or all refugees are capable of is vocational training or micro-grants? It may tick the box for their donors, but does little to move the needle back to self-sufficiency for those they are allegedly helping.
Why do they continue to view these refugee camps – larger than many cities – through the single lens of “emergency response”?
So Much $$, So Little Change
My grandmother lived to be 104 years old. Over her life time she saw inventions like the airplane, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, shopping malls and mobile phones. It would be quite odd if when she died nothing had changed in 104 years.
The International humanitarian “industry” has been around for 80 years. Yet no one seems to mind that despite the extremely large amounts being invested in humanitarian aid, so little is actually changing.
I ask you to consider:
Who really benefits from providing emergency response?
Who decides what type of responses and what are their decisions really motivated by?
The above thoughts are from my lecture notes for a new masters course in Sustainable Development that I designed entitled “Leadership, Politics & Multiparty Collaboration”. Please reach out if I can speak at your university or conference. You can reach me at drdeannedevries@icloud.com
Photo: sourced from https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/editors-take/2022/10/06/humanitarian-reforms-accountability-localisation