Confronting humanitarian crises
David Miliband on fixing the broken global aid system
Restoring international law and repairing UN efforts are needed to avert increasing misery, says the head of the International Rescue Committee
THE CHARTER of the United Nations promised human rights for citizens while establishing equal rights for countries. This arrangement—which balances responsibility from states, co-operation among states and accountability of states—is falling apart. In 2021 there were near record numbers of people in extreme poverty, malnourished and fleeing violence. The system for responding to and preventing humanitarian crises, built on the pillars of state sovereignty and international law, is at risk of collapsing. Without repair, the suffering will grow.
The problem is structural, not superficial. There are four failures. States are failing, as more countries neglect their basic responsibilities to citizens or are in conflict with them. Diplomacy is failing, with 55 civil wars currently under way and a record low number of peace deals last year. The international legal regime is failing to punish war crimes, with demands for good behaviour ignored. And aid is unable to fill the gap, an operational failure: appeals are less than half-funded, aid workers are blocked from reaching those in need, UN officials are intimidated and humanitarian groups are scared to speak out for fear of repercussions.
The result is that a global system designed to respond to crises is now unable to contain them. Conflicts within states are worsening in number, duration and virulence because they are increasingly “internationalised”. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria and Yemen, more than five foreign powers have provided arms, fighters or significant resources to the warring parties. Nearly all civil conflicts considered severe—suffering at least 1,000 battlefield deaths—are internationalised ones.
At the same time, efforts to provide humanitarian assistance are blocked by the fragmentation of global power. China and Russia block anything at the UN that looks like “external interference”. (Even a resolution at the Security Council on climate change this week was vetoed by Russia.) Mid-sized countries feel able to obliterate international norms and laws as they pursue goals through violence. In Yemen, conflict monitors are disbanded amid hostilities; in Syria, vital aid crossings are closed—all as political power plays. Armed, non-state organisations, including global terrorist groups and local militias, in places like Nigeria and Yemen, command territory that is home to millions of people, and add to the chaos.
Meanwhile, assertions of national sovereignty are used to undermine universal rights. From the UN Security Council to the UN Human Rights Council, action is blocked on grounds that states should have untrammeled powers within their borders. This is a weaponisation of the Westphalian system: sovereignty has become a shield against accountability, both for populists in democratic countries and autocrats in undemocratic ones.
The situation is dire. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which I lead, produces an annual “emergency watchlist” of the top 20 countries in need of humanitarian action. Based on 66 indicators—such as civil unrest, state capacity, forced displacement and vulnerability to natural disasters—the latest ranking released today places Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Yemen at the top of the list. Of a combined population of 800m in the 20 countries, some 244m people need assistance. Although humanitarian agencies help more people than ever, which is especially necessary given covid-19, the gap between needs and support is widening.
Restoring the global order for aid
However, there are bold ways that policymakers can repair the system, respond to crises and perhaps prevent the most heinous ones. Four essential ones stand out.
First, reinvigorate UN action by suspending the Security Council veto in cases of mass atrocity. The council mandates peace envoys, imposes UN sanctions, implements arms embargoes and deploys peace missions. Yet when it is gridlocked by global politics it can do none of these things. The veto held by the five permanent members of the council, and critically the threat of veto, holds international action to ransom in the world’s worst crises, from Syria to Yemen to Ethiopia, and thereby serves to enable war-making and law-breaking.
As a remedy, France has proposed that the veto be abandoned for mass atrocity. Some 100 countries support the idea at the UN General Assembly. This, at a stroke, would create an incentive for serious diplomacy. Ideas off the table, from imposing sanctions to establishing humanitarian corridors for aid, would be in play. To make this work, and avoid turning the definition of “mass atrocity” into a geopolitical football, the UN should create an independent, standing panel to decide on cases that constitute mass atrocity.
Second, apply international law rather than let its enforcement be optional. The International Criminal Court is not recognised by some countries such as Syria (and America, alas). International-war crimes tribunals, such as the one that took place for the former Yugoslavia, are blocked by politics. The result is a licence for impunity: war crimes committed without fear of punishment.
However, there is a way for states to prosecute citizens of another country for serious crimes, using the principle of universal jurisdiction. It was recently used by Germany to prosecute people accused of war crimes in Syria, using evidence from civil-society groups. This kind of action sits alongside the use of Financial Crimes Enforcement Network advisories on individuals and organisations involved in international humanitarian-law violations. If combined with co-ordinated financial sanctions (on the model of the Magnitsky acts that have been passed by America, the European Union and some other countries), this could whittle away the assumption that justice has nowhere to turn.
Third, create a new and independent Organisation for the Protection of Humanitarian Access. The denial of aid and humanitarian access has become an armament in conflict, from Syria and Ethiopia to Yemen and Afghanistan. The world needs new muscle to prevent aid from being strangled or used as a weapon. Just as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has a single focus, so too a body to protect aid would concentrate on exposing the denial of assistance, itself a contravention of international humanitarian law. This would bring independent assessment without fear of political repercussions to the defence of humanitarian support.
Fourth, transform assistance for refugees and asylum-seekers. These people, among the poorest of the poor, have nowhere to go. More than 80% of them are in the IRC’s watchlist countries. The sheltering of them is a global public good, yet the bills are largely paid by the poorest countries not the richest.
To help turn this around, we need action to resettle refugees to rich countries and a new economic deal with states that host refugees. Thus far, Europe can’t even agree on a resettlement policy and Britain has not even managed to launch its promised resettlement scheme for Afghans who are at risk. But America’s president, Joe Biden, has pledged to resettle 200,000 people this year (around 70,000 Afghans and 125,000 refugees from other countries). That moral and generous stance should be matched by other countries, along with the economic support for the poorer states that host refugees.
The fact that these ideas are seen as politically unrealistic, when they are only a start, shows the depth of the problem. What I have learned as a foreign minister and now the head of an international-aid organisation is that every humanitarian emergency is a political emergency. The absence of accountability immiserates the most vulnerable and emboldens the worst actors, who glorify their impunity.
The growing breadth and depth of the world’s humanitarian crises are not just bad luck: they are symptoms of political failure. As such, they call for a political response, not just a humanitarian one. The international system needs muscle and commitment in order to work. Unless repaired, its failures will be ours.■
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David Miliband is the chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, which provides humanitarian relief and refugee assistance around the world. He was Britain’s foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010 and a Member of Parliament from 2001 to 2013.