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Global humanitarian overview 2022, attachments.

In 2022, 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection. This number is a significant increase from 235 million people a year ago, which was already the highest figure in decades. The United Nations and partner organizations aim to assist 183 million people most in need across 63 countries, which will require $41 billion.

To explore the full interactive report, please head to the Global Humanitarian Overview website .

The Global Humanitarian Overview is the world’s most comprehensive, authoritative, and evidence-based assessment of humanitarian need. It provides a global snapshot of the current and future trends in humanitarian action for large-scale resource mobilization efforts and explores opportunities to deliver humanitarian assistance more effectively.

All the data present in the report is a snapshot as of 20 November 2021. For the most up to date figures for appeals please head to the Financial Tracking Service and Humanitarian Insight .

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• 11 July 2018

Grand challenges in humanitarian aid

• Abdallah S. Daar 0 ,
• Trillium Chang 1 ,
• Angela Salomon 2 &
• Peter A. Singer 3

Abdallah S. Daar is professor of clinical public health, global health and surgery at the University of Toronto, Canada; chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of Grand Challenges Canada; and a permanent fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, South Africa.

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Trillium Chang is a master’s student in public health at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Angela Salomon is a master’s student in public health at the University of Toronto.

Peter A. Singer is chief executive of Grand Challenges Canada and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network, Canada

A Rohingya refugee from Myanmar in a Bangladeshi camp in 2017. Credit: Adam Dean/The New York Times/Redux/eyevine

The gap between the magnitude of humanitarian need and the global capacity to respond is massive and growing. Here we describe an attempt to map ways in which that gap might be closed (see ‘Top 10 Humanitarian Grand Challenges’).

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Nature 559 , 169-173 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05642-8

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• HGC practical actions and Acknowledgements

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A systematic literature review of the ethics of conducting research in the humanitarian setting

William bruno.

1 Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, USA

Rohini J. Haar

2 Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Research Fellow, Human Rights Center, School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

Associated Data

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available as tables in the manuscript.

Research around humanitarian crises, aid delivery, and the impact of these crises on health and well-being has expanded dramatically. Ethical issues around these topics have recently received more attention. We conducted a systematic literature review to synthesize the lessons learned regarding the ethics of research in humanitarian crises.

We conducted a systematic review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines to identify articles regarding the ethics of research in humanitarian contexts between January 1, 1997 and September 1, 2019. We analyzed the articles to extract key themes and develop an agenda for future research.

We identified 52 articles that matched our inclusion criteria. We categorized the article data into five categories of analysis: 32 were expert statements, 18 were case studies, 11 contained original research, eight were literature reviews and three were book chapters. All included articles were published in English. Using a step-wise qualitative analysis, we identified 10 major themes that encompassed these concepts and points. These major themes were: ethics review process (21 articles, [40.38%]); community engagement (15 articles [28.85%]); the dual imperative , or necessity that research be both academically sound and policy driven, clinical trials in the humanitarian setting (13 articles for each, [25.0%)]; informed consent (10 articles [19.23%]); cultural considerations (6 articles, [11.54%]); risks to researchers (5 articles, [9.62%]); child participation (4 articles [7.69%]); and finally mental health , and data ownership (2 articles for each [3.85%]).

Conclusions

Interest in the ethics of studying humanitarian crises has been dramatically increasing in recent years. While key concepts within all research settings such as beneficence, justice and respect for persons are crucially relevant, there are considerations unique to the humanitarian context. The particular vulnerabilities of conflict-affected populations, the contextual challenges of working in humanitarian settings, and the need for ensuring strong community engagement at all levels make this area of research particularly challenging. Humanitarian crises are prevalent throughout the globe, and studying them with the utmost ethical forethought is critical to maintaining sound research principles and ethical standards.

Defined as both natural and man-made disasters, along with both acute and chronic conflicts, humanitarian crises threaten the lives and livelihoods of over 131 million people in the world today [ 1 ]. With more than 68.5 million people currently displaced, 25.4 million of whom are refugees outside their country of origin, the global community is witnessing urgent humanitarian issues that are crossing borders and impacting even those states and communities once thought immune [ 2 , 3 ]. Humanitarian aid is the impartial, independent and neutral delivery of services to populations in immediate danger [ 4 ]. Since the end of World War II, the humanitarian aid sector (in the form of health services, water and sanitation services, nutritional goods and security) has grown tremendously [ 5 ].

With expansion in humanitarian aid delivery and the deepening awareness that humanitarian crises can destroy health systems and have long-term impacts on public health, ensuring that the services provided are effective and acceptable is crucial. Following several highly publicized failures of the humanitarian community, veteran humanitarians from across the spectrum of governmental and non-governmental organizations have attempted to improve humanitarian response [ 6 ]. Initiatives such as the Sphere Project and others aimed to create minimum standards and evidence-based protocols for the delivery of five core components of humanitarian response—water supply and sanitation, nutrition, food aid, shelter and site planning and health services [ 7 ]. Over the past several decades, a key component of the assessment process has been conducting formal monitoring, evaluation and research on humanitarian aid delivery. Studies ranging from randomized control trials to population surveys and qualitative assessments evaluating the full spectrum of humanitarian aid delivery have burgeoned [ 8 ].

Parallel to the increase in professionalization of humanitarian aid, the public health community has been grappling with how to ensure that research on vulnerable populations is conducted ethically and with a focus on the rights and best interests of the community. Spurred by a backlash to unchecked human experimentation carried out through the twentieth century during World War II and the decades afterwards, there is more recognition of the critical importance of considering research ethics, particularly when studying vulnerable populations [ 9 ].

Few populations are as vulnerable to the potential adverse ethical challenges of research as those experiencing a humanitarian crisis [ 10 ]. Faced with weak government protections, disrupted health systems, insecure living conditions, and unreliable food and unsafe water, disaster-affected populations can be particularly at risk of inadequate consent processes and coercion. Furthermore, humanitarian emergencies require timely evaluation and management, making traditional ethics review—typically a protracted process—impractical [ 11 – 13 ]. These unique challenges, along with underdeveloped oversight and regulatory bodies of host countries and international mechanisms, make ethics considerations a crucial but difficult task in humanitarian research [ 14 , 15 ].

Despite increasing interest and an expanding literature base, there has been limited formal synthesis of the existing published data around the ethical issues of research in the humanitarian setting. We conducted a systematic review to (1) identify ethical issues surrounding research in humanitarian settings, (2) assess how these issues are managed in these unique circumstances and (3) develop an agenda for major issues that will require further discourse.

We conducted a systematic review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines [ 16 ]. The PRISMA checklist has been provided as Supplementary Table  1 . Articles relevant to research ethics in the humanitarian setting were identified and analyzed. We chose to limit the search to articles published after January 1, 1997, when the initiation of the Sphere project marked a paradigm shift in how humanitarian aid was envisioned and carried out. This allows for review of nearly 25 years of literature, therefore spanning a wide swath of potential ethical research. We used the Sphere project dates because it included explicit language highlighting the need for evidence-based practices, which would require significant augmentation in research efforts to provide such an evidence base [ 7 ]. Our search included articles published as late as September 1, 2019, when this study was first undertaken.

Search strategy

We searched PubMed and Scopus for articles with significant discussion of the ethical issues of humanitarian research ethics. After a qualitative assessment of relevant keywords, we identified all pertinent articles based on the following terminology categories (articles could be in any language): (1) humanitarian settings (terms such as humanitarian, global health, disaster, emergency and/or conflict), (2) ethics (terms such as ethic(s), bioethics, human rights and/or rights) and (3) research type (terms such as research, program evaluation, monitoring and evaluation and/or investigation). The full search strategy and MeSH terms can be found in the Appendix . The initial search results of 1459 articles underwent a title and abstract review followed by a full text review by two different authors (WB and RH) (Fig.  1 ). A priori inclusion criteria included the 22-year timeframe mentioned above and selected for articles with robust discussion of ethical issues in the context of conducting research in humanitarian settings. Any article deemed by both reviewers to contain only a superficial mention of ethical issues and to not substantively (1) discuss ethics or (2) focus on research (3) in the context of humanitarian settings was excluded from the final analysis. Ethics was defined broadly as engagement with specific research ethics, as well as human rights issues, and other non-formal discussions of right versus wrong and other moral concepts. Research was defined as discussions including any types of data collection including quantitative and qualitative, as well as data collection for monitoring and evaluation for other programmatic and academic purposes. Humanitarian settings included diverse contexts including conflict and post-conflict states, post-natural disaster settings and refugee camps that requires specific interventions to prevent large scale suffering of the populations. Two authors (WB and RH) reviewed the final list of articles meeting the inclusion criteria.

Stages of Systematic Literature Review Utilizing PRISMA Guidelines

Analytical methods

We used a modified meta-ethnographic approach to inductively identify key concepts and synthesize the major themes [ 17 ]. We chose the meta-ethnographic approach as it has been shown useful in other systematic reviews of qualitative health literature in that it utilizes an inductive approach that can account for differences in methodology and focus, and has the potential to provide a higher level of analysis and generate new research questions [ 18 – 20 ]. We conducted three steps of analysis: (1) Identifying original concepts and ideas from each paper that related to cross-cutting themes; (2) synthesizing these ideas into cross-cutting themes; and (3) identifying major themes. These steps are outlined in Table  2 . Original concepts were topics discussed in each paper, which the authors felt had some relevance to this paper’s focus on humanitarian research ethics. Cross-cutting themes were key concepts that were identified in at least two different articles. We assessed how the cross-cutting themes may fall into broader overarching ideas and coded these into related non-mutually exclusive groups we termed major themes. The synthesis process of extracting these major themes was one of reciprocal translation and constant comparison of concepts across studies. The process elucidated tensions and areas for future research within each major theme, as shown in Table ​ Table2. 2 . Any disagreements on the analysis were resolved with discussion and consensus.

Summary of Modified Meta-ethnographic Analysis

This research, based on previously published literature, did not meet criteria for Institutional Review Board approval.

Of the 1459 unique articles resulting from our search terms, 52 matched our inclusion criteria (Table ​ (Table1: 1 : List of Included Articles). The articles took the shape of five non-mutually exclusive categories of analysis: 32 were expert statements, 18 were case studies, 11 contained original research, eight were literature reviews and three were book chapters. All included articles were published in English. Thirty-four of the 52 (65.38%) articles were published in 2015 or later, ten between 2007 and 2014, and eight were published in the 1997–2006 decade (Fig.  2 ). Of the 52 articles included for final analysis, 23 were published by international teams (meaning that they were comprised of members from at least two different countries), 12 were from the United States, six from the United Kingdom, three from Canada, two each form Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, and Switzerland, and one each from Australia and India.

List of Included Articles

Included articles by publication date

Thematic analysis

The step-wise analysis is presented in Table ​ Table2. 2 . First order analysis of the articles meeting our final inclusion criteria revealed ideas and issues within the context of ethics related research in humanitarian settings. In the second phase of the analysis, qualitative review of the reports identified cross-cutting themes between the papers, and 10 major themes that encompassed these concepts and points. These major themes in descending order of prevalence were ethics review process (21 articles, [40.38%]); community engagement (15 articles [28.85%]); the dual imperative , or necessity that research be both academically sound and policy driven and clinical trials in the humanitarian setting (13 articles for each, [25.0%]); informed consent (10 articles [19.23%]); cultural considerations (6 articles, [11.54%]); risks to researchers (5 articles, [9.62%]); child participation (4 articles [7.69%]), and finally mental health , and data ownership (2 articles for each [3.85%]).

Ethical review

Discussion of the ethical review process was the most commonly identified theme, with 21 articles having a substantive focus on this [ 11 , 21 – 40 ]. Independent ethics review prior to the start of a study is a core component of research ethics. Tansey et al. conducted a survey of ethics review board members with experience in reviewing research ethics in disaster settings. Their results suggest a general feeling that research in this setting is not only of particularly high social value, making it a desirable pursuit, but also necessitates a higher level of justification due to the inherent vulnerability of the research subjects [ 33 ]. There is also general agreement that the innate fluidity and urgency of humanitarian situations make swift and efficient ethics review of paramount importance [ 11 , 25 , 29 ]. Hunt et al. report, “where research is launched in response to a sudden-onset disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane, researchers may need to initiate their protocols quickly in order to answer research questions pertinent to the acute phase of the disaster response” [ 11 ]. However, as mentioned above, the particular vulnerability of the subjects being studied leads many research ethics committees to automatically identify humanitarian research as requiring “the highest level of stringency”. On the other hand, framing research as “needs assessments” and/or “monitoring and evaluation,” which is often done in evaluating aid needs and programs, may act to sideline rigorous ethical review and jeopardize the well-being of the recipient population [ 11 ]. This contradiction of values makes ethical review of humanitarian research particularly challenging.

Authors suggested strategies to mitigate the inherent challenges of ethics review in this setting [ 25 ]. For example, Hunt et al. suggest pre-approved research protocol templates which can be quickly customized for use in individual emergencies [ 11 ]. Eckenwiler et al. propose what they refer to as ‘real-time responsiveness,’ which is an iterative strategy of constant dialogue between ethics reviewers and researchers while studies are being conducted [ 24 ]. Given the potential for misstep in an expedited initial ethics review, Chiumento et al. describe the utility of a post-research ethical audit. The authors explain how this could help to evaluate “procedural ethics against in-practice realities”, which could help inform future studies [ 21 ]. Ethical analysis after data collection may also offer the added benefit of offering lessons on the review and practice process to the reviewers and researchers.

Our results highlighted the particular case of how the humanitarian aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF), who conducts substantial research in humanitarian settings, has devised an independent Ethics Review Board (ERB). The ERB utilizes several of the strategies mentioned above such as pre-approved protocols, engaging in ongoing dialogue between researchers and the ERB and conducting post-research evaluations [ 29 , 31 ]. Saxena et al. reported on a joint panel conducted by the WHO and the African Coalition for Epidemic Research, Response and Training. The authors outline the group’s recommendations for “rapid and sound ethics review”, which includes “preparing national ethics committees for outbreak response; pre-crisis review of potential protocols; multi-country review; coordination between national ethics committees and other key stakeholders; data and benefit sharing; and export of samples to third countries” [ 32 ]. Indeed, as Mezinska et al. point out in their systematic review of ethical guidelines, most of the analyzed documents included in their report did “not attempt to give researchers and other stakeholders a comprehensive overview of how to proceed ethically in all types of research and in all types of disasters”, which the authors see as problematic given that “disaster research is unavoidably context and time sensitive, making generalized guidance less applicable” [ 35 ].

Community engagement

Substantive involvement of the community being studied was identified as an imperative for researchers and a major theme of discussion in 15 articles [ 21 , 22 , 30 , 32 , 33 , 41 – 50 ]. It was generally agreed that active participation is necessary in order to fulfill the ethical requisite that research be of use to the community being studied (also known as beneficence) [ 22 , 48 , 50 ]. As Chiumento et al. identified in their systematic review of mental health literature, the right to participate in research can be viewed as a basic right in and of itself, insofar as it relates to other rights such as self-determination and autonomy [ 22 ]. One important strategy described was involving local community health and government officials in an effort to maximize community support [ 43 ]. More practically speaking, this effort can help limit potential for a community’s misunderstanding of research, which can jeopardize a project’s legitimacy and undermine its acceptance [ 46 ]. Early involvement of community actors, potentially via consultation during study protocol design or community meetings, was suggested [ 21 , 42 ].

The discussions within the articles suggest that community involvement also involves strengthening local institutions, effectively improving their ability to conduct their own research [ 21 , 22 ]. Despite being recognized as an important component of ethical research, it was generally agreed that there is a critical shortage of local capacity to carry out studies, particularly in post-conflict zones where formal institutions are often eroded [ 45 , 47 ]. In their study on the research capacity of Somaliland, Boyce et al. identified potential harms of a “dominance of authors from [High-Income Countries]” [ 45 ]. They explain that, for example, the unrelatability between researcher and subject could lead to a reduced relevance of the research question.

Despite the agreement for “a set of practices that help researchers establish and maintain relationships with the stakeholders to a research program”, Tansey et al. discuss some of the inherent challenges in community participation. Particularly when conducting disaster research, the practicality of including locals can be difficult when “you don’t know when the disaster is going to hit. .. so it would be hard to set up community approvals and engagement beforehand” [ 33 ]. Furthermore, lack of adequately trained researchers and poor local infrastructure are perennial problems [ 45 ]. While ethically desirable, partnering with the local community may, in many circumstances, often prove practically prohibitive.

While including local authorities in research may seem prudent on face value, as discussed in the section on cultural considerations, these articles make clear the potential for ethical ambiguity when dealing with such actors [ 47 , 49 ]. For example, in a civil war context, researchers may hope to adhere to humanitarian principles of impartiality to ensure access to participants and safety for researchers [ 49 ]. Furthermore, as Funk et al. describe in their evaluation of the response to the Syrian conflict, remaining impartial can be impossible. One respondent explained, “You have to understand that even though we declare ourselves as a non-biased health organization with no political standing, the mere fact that we are not ‘pro-government’ makes us [perceived as] ‘the enemy’ and ‘anti-government’” [ 49 ].

The dual imperative

Thirteen articles discuss what humanitarian researchers refer to as the ‘dual imperative,’ which is the inherent tension between ensuring that research is both academically sound and practically relevant [ 28 , 41 , 53 , 55 , 57 – 64 , 71 ]. Despite the inherent challenges in humanitarian research, the general consensus is that it is justifiable insofar as it is needs-driven and not at the expense of humanitarian action [ 60 ]. However, as researchers attempt to construct sophisticated research and attract funding, there is a move toward a greater level of academic sophistication [ 59 ]. On the individual level, a member of a humanitarian response team may feel responsibilities as both service provider and researcher [ 58 , 61 ]. Wood, in her description of experiences researching conflict zones in El Salvador, describes an inevitable self-inquiry of why this research is worth pursing at the expense of a purely humanitarian medical relief mission. She concludes that her role as a researcher was justified in that a sound understanding of conflict is necessary for its abolishment. Wood does, however, concede that this conclusion may be predicated on the nature of the “relatively benign and coherent conditions” of her work. Specifically, she “did not have to make a decision whether or not to intervene to attempt to prevent or mitigate an attack on civilians.” She “did not have to decide how to leave an area under attack at short notice, retreating with one force or seeking shelter from another.” She was “never faced with direct threats [insisting] that [she] turn over material [she] had gathered” and did not have “to judge how far to press respondents about violence they had suffered or observed because of the focus of [her] research.” The implication was that had she been faced with one of these more charged situations, her resolve in the justification of research would be challenged. In fact, she ends her discussion by stating that “conditions in many civil wars simply preclude ethical field research” [ 62 ].

Another related point of contention identified in our search is a disagreement that arose between a researcher and aid agency. Due to an overtaxed and under resourced system, the Democratic Republic of Congo had engaged in rationing of AIDS medications. Rennie, a global health researcher, had intended to study the community attitudes toward this practice [ 55 ]. Feeling rationing medications to be unethical, the aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), specifically MSF-Belgium, wrote a letter informing Rennie that they would not support his investigation [ 55 , 63 ]. They expressed concern that the research might be a form of acquiescence to the practice of drug rationing, which they see as antithetical to the humanitarian mission [ 63 ]. This tension between assessing an existing program and unintentionally bringing legitimacy to it is one of many practical conflicts in humanitarian research that requires further consideration.

Clinical trials in the humanitarian setting

Given that clinical trials are considered imperative for investigating medical interventions, many researchers advocate for these types of studies in the humanitarian setting. Thirteen articles explore the ethics of conducting clinical trials in the humanitarian setting [ 27 , 29 , 30 , 36 , 38 , 46 , 51 – 56 , 63 ]. Lanini et al. make the point that the principle of clinical equipoise should apply in the humanitarian setting as in any other, making randomized controlled trials (RCTs) the most ethical way to conduct research in this situation, using the recent Ebola outbreak and subsequent drug trials to illustrate their point [ 51 ]. With respect to Ebola, Perez et al. make the claim that, given the lethality of the disease, not including pregnant women and children (two groups often excluded from trials on grounds of inherent vulnerability) in Ebola trials is unethical [ 46 ]. This, however, presupposes a benefit to the experimental arm of a hypothetical trial, which would violate the principle of clinical equipoise and thus Lanini et al.’s justification of clinical trials outlined above [ 51 ]. Salerno et al. argue that the unique circumstances of conducting research in humanitarian settings necessitates that the researcher be less stringent in terms of study design. As the authors explain, “the recipients of experimental interventions, locations of studies, and study design should be based on the aim to learn as much as we can as fast as we can without compromising patient care or health worker safety, with active participation of local scientists, and proper consultation with communities” [ 52 ].

Again, with a focus on the recent Ebola outbreak, Calain makes an argument that insistence on RCTs, in which, by definition, one group of participants will be denied the experimental treatment, equates to a preference toward a collective interest (i.e. societal) over the individual (i.e. the patient) which could violate the basic principle of beneficence [ 53 ]. For Calain, in the face of a catastrophic illness like Ebola, randomization of interventions is seen as a “tragic choice” for humanitarian workers [ 53 ]. Furthermore, as Schopper et al. explained, there is justifiable concern that clinical trials during such an epidemic, which require significant amounts of resources and planning, would detract from the crucial work of directly caring for patients in a resource limited setting [ 29 ].

Informed consent

Like formal ethical review, informed consent is another core component of modern research ethics and was separately discussed in ten articles [ 21 – 23 , 27 , 37 , 38 , 44 , 46 , 65 , 66 ]. Our results highlight several unique considerations when contemplating informed consent in humanitarian settings. For example, Western norms of written consent might be impossible if research is carried out in a population with low literacy rates or when written consent can violate the need for complete anonymity or expeditious research [ 21 , 22 , 44 ]. Controversy surrounding traditional ideas of informed consent were highlighted by Chiumento et al. in their literature review [ 22 ]. The authors explain that despite the general consensus that informed consent was central to ethical research, there were some authors who emphasized a more informal process that considered “consent as a partnership between researchers and participants” [ 22 ]. Some authors surveyed in the study supported flexibility in informed consent by utilizing a “consent framework” that presumably ensures norms such as autonomy and capacity, but allows some latitude for the researcher to adapt to the circumstances. Germane to this point is what Black et al. describe as “dynamic consent”—where a participant’s willingness to be involved in a project is constantly reassessed [ 44 ].

Chiumento et al. explain that because of cultural norms, the typical processes of consent may be undesirable or even impossible [ 21 ]. In their case study of research conducted in a post-conflict setting in South Asia, they explain that the procurement of informed consent first required permission from gatekeepers (i.e. household males and village elders) [ 21 ]. They outline the concept of negotiated consent in which collaboration with researchers helps to distil what exactly culturally specific consent would look like and proceed with an ad-hoc consent process [ 21 ].

Our results suggest that special attention be paid to informed consent during clinical trials conducted in the humanitarian setting [ 29 , 46 , 51 ]. Particularly illustrative is the idea of informed consent for experimental therapies during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014–2015 [ 46 ]. Authors raise the question as to whether or not informed consent, free of coercion, can really be possible when potential subjects are faced with such a deadly disease [ 23 ].

The use of participatory visual methods (PVM) poses specific challenges with regard to informed consent. The methods ask researchers to encourage subjects to engage in creative forms of communication and expression, such as drama, photography, film, drawing, design, creative writing and music. The products can then be used to engage the community and answer research questions.

However, as participants are synthesizing novel content during the study, and are often encouraged to draw on traumatic experiences as inspiration for this content, fully informed consent is impossible. This is because neither participants nor investigators can completely anticipate which direction their facilitated creative endeavors might turn [ 44 , 65 ]. This type of research may require more creative or dynamic forms of consent such as frequent check-ins with participants, or “dynamic consent”, as described above.

Cultural considerations

The importance of strong appreciation, humility, and understanding of local culture was discussed to a robust degree in six articles [ 21 , 47 , 50 , 57 , 64 , 67 ]. As Black et al. explain, research can only be legitimate if it accepts the people as central actors [ 57 ]. They describe how community and cultural dynamics may be vital to ensuring that the products of research not be utilized in perverse ways [ 57 ]. The authors explain that analyzed and interpreted data on a particular population could be of strategic value to belligerents in a conflict setting [ 57 ]. This notion presents an obvious ethical challenge as it has the potential to make researchers active participants in conflict or surveillance. One may conclude that the solution is for researchers to refuse to share data with any local authorities. This, however, conflicts with what Ditton et al. refer to as a vital aspect of ethical field research, namely “the importance that the researcher has an appropriate relationship with the legitimate gatekeepers [and policy makers] of a field site” [ 47 ]. As the authors note, local authorities may have perfectly legitimate reasons for demanding cooperation and transparency from researchers. For example, in Thailand, government control of researchers might be justifiable since they espouse it as necessary to ensure that the local population is the ultimate beneficiaries of the research produced within their communities. The government, being responsible for the public’s well-being, argues that having some control over research activities is necessary for them to meet this responsibility [ 47 ].

Despite general agreement about the importance of respect for local customs, there is more ambivalence toward which, if any, customs might justifiably be ignored. Bennouna et al. in their survey of researchers explain that 15% of respondents did not believe that local attitudes should be taken into account when deciding on including children in a study, because “what if they tell us not to listen to children?” implying that local norms should not preclude children from having a right to be heard [ 67 ]. In contrast, Chiumento et al. suggest “that ethical conduct of research does not equate to importing cultural norms.” The authors continue to describe a common “ethically charged dilemma” in which consent or access to participants first requires permission from a “gatekeeper.” Cultural norms may dictate that (often male) household or community leaders are to make decisions in terms of participation and access to research, depriving some members of the community of basic “ethic and human rights norms” such as autonomy and the right to participate or refuse [ 21 ]. These points highlight an unanswered question regarding the universality of ethical principles.

Not only might respect for cultural norms be inherently ethically desirable, but it may also be important for ensuring community participation. As Mfutso-Bengo et al. explain, respect for cultural norms may be necessary “to ensure active community involvement as the community does not perceive overt threats to their way of life” [ 50 ]. Balancing fundamental ethical principles of inclusion and autonomy with cultural norms, the articles agree, requires deep cultural understanding.

Risks to researchers

Five of our included articles discuss the potential risk to researchers working in a humanitarian setting [ 21 , 23 , 49 , 68 , 69 ]. With the inherent instability of many of these contexts, Chiumento et al. summarize the wide range of potential risks to the wellbeing of researchers, stating that “threats to physical safety; risk of psychological distress; potential for accusations of improper behavior; and increased exposure to everyday risks such as infectious illnesses or accidents” must be recognized [ 21 ]. The very nature of conducting research in disaster settings exposes researchers to the potential of witnessing “human carnage and physical destructiveness” [ 23 ]. While researchers have personal decision-making responsibilities, host organizations must also acknowledge their obligations to provide security and mitigate risks while ensuring the researchers are fully informed of potential dangers [ 23 , 69 ].

Child participation

Child participation in research was discussed in four articles [ 43 , 65 , 67 , 70 ]. There was a general consensus that despite being particularly vulnerable, researchers had an ethical responsibility to include children in their studies. This action is necessary, the authors conclude, in order to ensure that children’s voices are heard and that they are not excluded from potential benefits of the research [ 67 ].

D’Amico et al. explain “researchers need to develop specific approaches that ensure children understand the benefit of participating voluntarily in research and that consent is informed and an ongoing process” [ 65 ]. The challenge, however, as the authors explain, is that through research, particularly qualitative forms such as PVM, “dangerous emotional terrain” might be breeched [ 65 ]. The implication is that it is difficult to know whether anyone can fully consent to these unforeseen emotional responses, especially children.

Data ownership

Two articles describe the unique ethical concerns surrounding data ownership when conducting research in the humanitarian setting [ 45 , 57 ]. Often, none of the researchers in question are from the communities being studied, so the potential ethical pitfalls of an abusive extractive nature of data collecting might be created [ 45 ]. The concern arises when researchers from high-income countries collect data on lower income communities and the ultimate benefits are seen in the former [ 57 ].

Mental health

Mental health research, which was discussed in two articles, has some unique features, which create special ethical issues [ 21 , 22 ]. For example, Chiumento et al. describe how community mistrust, stigma and paranoia can be particularly significant with regard to mental health, complicating mental health research [ 21 ]. There is also a particular importance for confidentiality and anonymity during mental health research given the potential for discrimination and stigmatizing behavior [ 22 ].

With the drive toward professionalization of humanitarian practice comes a need to develop a strong evidence base. While the latter half of the twentieth century has seen promising trends in favor of ethical standards for research, the unique conditions of humanitarian work and the particular vulnerabilities of the communities being studied makes exploration of humanitarian research ethics imperative. The time-sensitive nature of the work in combination with complex cultural and security dynamics makes conducting research in the humanitarian setting inherently difficult from an ethical perspective.

Efforts to better understand the nexus between research and humanitarian emergencies are expanding. Other research, including an ongoing review of ethics of humanitarian research and more focused analyses of ethics among specific crises will service to expand this knowledge base [ 72 ]. We hope that this paper, representing a broad review and meta-ethnographic analysis of ethical issues in research over more than two decades, strengthens ethical processes and decision making in the humanitarian sector.

Among the 52 articles included in the analysis, 10 major themes regarding the ethics of humanitarian research were extracted for future analysis. In our qualitative analysis of the articles, we found a general acceptance by authors that the increased vulnerabilities of crisis-affected populations lead to several unique issues. Though identified and described in our search, many of these issues have yet to be adequately resolved in a way that might be useful to further researchers. For example, with regard to respect for local cultural norms, our results highlight a unique conflict between a cultural or political demand to share research with a local authoritative body and moral or ethical apprehensions to do so [ 47 , 57 ]. Authors identified both acceptable and unacceptable reasons for an authoritative body to demand access to research [ 47 , 57 ]. The researcher must then decide whether they cooperate with authorities by sharing products of their research, and risk being complicit in less socially desirable actions, or refuse and risk access to their study population, potentially depriving them of the fruits of their work. And to the related point embodied in the disagreement between MSF-Belgium and Rennie, controversy persists as to whether cooperating with an authoritative body to study a practice in which they are engaged suggests support of that practice [ 55 , 63 ]. Further exploration of these questions is essential as the role of research on humanitarian response expands.

Our results suggest that themes of cultural considerations, community engagement and mental health research incorporate ethical dilemmas related to cultural relativism. Accepting cultural norms such as gaining a husband’s consent for his wife’s participation in a research study, or excluding children from a research project on the grounds that including them is too high risk, equates to denying some of the fundamental principles of ethical research. Therefore, researching these populations may mean conceding to certain undesirable cultural norms and rejecting others that would require the researcher to compromise ethical standards. But where should the line be drawn? What guiding principles can future researchers employ? Bennouna et al.’s survey, which revealed most researchers claimed they would, if necessary, ignore local customs and include a child’s point of view in a study might help answer the question [ 67 ]. More of this type of research needs to be done in order to identify and resolve potential conflicts of local norms and traditional research ethics.

A surprising result of our study was that some researchers held the view that certain components of traditional, modern research ethics, such as formal consent, may be applied less rigidly in the humanitarian setting [ 21 , 22 , 44 ]. For example, arguments have been made that any consent is impossible in the case of experimental treatment for Ebola victims, and the failure to meet traditional standards should not preclude one from conducting this research [ 52 ]. On the other hand, there may be certain universal ethical principles of conducting research that should never be compromised. Exactly which principles these are, if any, have yet to be elucidated.

There are further unanswered questions with regard to the involvement of local institutions. Though our results point to a general agreement about the magnanimity of significant local involvement in research, including the development of local capacity for such work the inherent challenges have yet to be addressed [ 27 , 33 ]. Humanitarian research is often conducted in places with little or no infrastructure and limited numbers of qualified researchers. Including local aid workers as researchers, solely for the inherent value of doing so, may prove costly and distract from other research mandates and aid delivery, particularly in disaster relief. As Tansey et al. put it, “while the global health research literature strongly endorses community engagement in all research, there have been few suggestions for overcoming challenges to carrying it out in the disaster setting” [ 33 ]. Future work must come to terms with this inevitable conflict of ideals.

Despite the unavoidable ethical challenges, the results of this systematic review suggest that not only is it possible to conduct research in this context, but there is an ethical obligation to do so [ 41 , 48 ]. If the global community is compelled to provide assistance in the form of humanitarian action, than those in the humanitarian field must acknowledge the responsibility to develop rational, evidence-based approaches that are, at their core, ethically responsible [ 41 ]. This impulse is reflected in our results, which demonstrate an increasing number of publications on humanitarian research ethics since the inception of the Sphere project. The growing body of literature bodes well for researchers looking to ground their future work in a strong ethical foundation.

We would like to note, however, that the vast majority of articles included in this study were from high-income and Western countries. This highlights a finding in the research itself—that community participation and involvement of researchers from the countries and regions affected by crisis is limited. Addressing this inequity should be prioritized as the field of humanitarian research ethics progresses.

It should be noted that our study has limitations. We attempted to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature with a systematic review, augmented by known grey literature, but may have missed some potentially relevant literature that did not fit the search terms and was not identified via the grey literature review. This review is based primarily on published research literature and may exclude operational or programmatic reports with valuable insights. Also, though our initial search did include book chapters via the Scopus database, and dozens of chapters have been written on the subject, relatively few were screened into our final list of included literature. The reason for this is not immediately apparent. The authors did note a relative difficulty in the searching for and screening of book chapters when compared with other types of articles. This may have lead to a preferential selection of the latter type of literature, at the expense of the former.

The selection of papers was systematic and reproducible, and the analysis of those papers relied on standard qualitative methods. While the analysis may be considered less reproducible, we utilized a standardized interpretive methodology that would reliably highlight the critical findings and points within the papers as evidenced by the strong consensus between the authors (WB and RH) on almost every inclusion and exclusion decision. Though the limited literature base makes drawing firm conclusions difficult, the consistency of issues raised between and within the articles confirms the importance of the major themes elicited in this analysis.

This study represents one of only very few attempts at a systematic review of research ethics in the humanitarian setting. We identified an increase in articles with robust ethical discussions particularly in the past few years. This promising trend could lead to further clarification and stronger ethical grounding of future research. Our data also highlight a number of unanswered questions related to fundamental conflicts that are unique to conducting research in the humanitarian setting. There is a clear need for further research and debate addressing these, and other important questions, such as: When is it appropriate to share data with local authorities? At what point should a researcher abandon a cultural relativistic point of view for an absolutist one? In a modern day humanitarian setting, what components of traditional ethics review may be anachronistic? How can researchers include local stakeholders as co-investigators when they may lack the training or infrastructure to do so? Mechanisms to translate these discussions into practical guidelines will need to be strengthened if the ideals of the Sphere Project are to be realized.

Supplementary information

Acknowledgements.

We would like to acknowledge Parveen Parmar and Len Rubenstein for support in developing the conceptual framework of this study.

Abbreviations

Search terms for systematic review of humanitarian research ethics

• (Humanitarian OR “Global health”) AND (disaster OR emergency OR conflict) AND (ethic* OR bioethic* OR “human rights” OR rights) AND (research OR “program evaluation” OR “monitoring and evaluation” OR investigation) [MeSH terms].
• (disaster) AND (ethic* OR bioethic* OR “human rights” OR rights) AND (research OR “program evaluation” OR “monitoring and evaluation” OR investigation) [MeSH terms]. Disaster medicine/ [MeSH]

Authors’ contributions

WB was primarily responsible for writing the manuscript and co-coordinated study design, data analysis, and data interpretation and contributed to data collection. RH designed the study, contributed to data analysis, data interpretation, and writing. All authors have reviewed the submitted manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

There was no funding for this research.

Availability of data and materials

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

This review of published literature did not require ethical review.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

William Bruno, Email: moc.liamg@78onurbjmailliw .

Rohini J. Haar, Email: ude.yelekreb@raahinihor .

Supplementary information accompanies this paper at 10.1186/s13031-020-00282-0.

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The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is a University-wide academic and research center in humanitarian crisis and leadership supported by Harvard University's Office of the Provost. HHI is based at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Department of Global Health and Population and is affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital Emergency Medicine Department . As an Inter-Faculty Initiative (IFI) at Harvard University, HHI collaborates closely with faculty and students throughout all Harvard Schools and Harvard Teaching Hospitals. 

HHI’s aim is to relieve human suffering in war and disaster by conducting interdisciplinary, practice-based research and education that can be used by scholars, policymakers, NGOs, and others to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in order to: •    Improve the effectiveness of humanitarian strategies for relief, protection, and prevention; •    Instill human rights principles and practices in these strategies; and •    Educate and train the next generation of humanitarian leaders.

In 1999, Harvard University established a program on humanitarian crises and human rights at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights in response to growing interest in humanitarian response. By 2002, the demand for technical expertise and educational and training opportunities from NGO partners, professionals, and graduate students overwhelmed the capacity of the existing program. In 2005, Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH and Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH established the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative as a University-wide academic and research center to address issues of evidence-based humanitarian interest and became Co-Directors. In 2010, Michael VanRooyen continued as the Director of HHI. In 2011, HHI launched the Humanitarian Academy at Harvard, the educational arm of HHI and the first Humanitarian Academy of its kind.

Mission and Vision

The mission of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is to create new knowledge and advance evidence-based leadership in disasters and humanitarian crisis.

Humanitarian aid will be based on scientific evidence and humanitarian principles and will preserve the human rights, autonomy and dignity of those affected by crisis.

Over the past decade, HHI has built and expanded a range of educational and research programs to promote understanding of humanitarian crisis as a unique contributor to global health problems. Humanitarian crises include recent wars and conflict-based disasters that involve civilian populations as indirect or deliberate targets, violate established norms of war, and impede global progress. Humanitarian crises also include large-scale natural disasters that lay bare issues of environmental degradation and disregard for local communities, and are often accompanied by disease and famine. Appropriate academic response to these crises requires developing methods to understand and describe these conflicts, designing means to evaluate and assess the impact of humanitarian interventions, and preparing the next generation of engaged and effective humanitarian actors.

Our Management Approach

Our strategy, strategic objectives.

To achieve our mission, HHI builds on its unique expertise to confront the most pressing humanitarian challenges to advance evidence-based humanitarian action by:

• Conducting high quality research and policy analysis
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HHI faculty, fellows, and students serve as a resource for technical, research, and training assistance to many humanitarian agencies, international institutions, and educational organizations. Below is a partial list of collaborators, past and present.

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As an Interfaculty Initiative, HHI collaborates with various academic centers and schools with Harvard University and with affiliated Hospitals.

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The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative is committed to improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations by assuring they have access to quality humanitarian aid. We seek to identify those at greatest risk of exploitation and assure their basic human right to safety, health and dignity. As HHI approaches its 15th year, we have decided to use this opportunity to look at issues of bias, both at home and abroad. In our own organization, we have further prioritized our understanding of, and commitment to diversity and inclusion; in our community, as a part of Harvard, we have collaborated with Enroot to support their mission.

Nearly two years ago, the World Humanitarian Summit consultation process documented the widespread call for a “new way of working” that would help bring diverse actors together across mandates, sectors and institutional boundaries to achieve collective outcomes for people affected by crises. We have all been seeking ways to address what some call the need to decolonize aid, to increase capacity and elevate the voices of affected communities. In our research we are increasing our understanding and awareness of these important issues by serving as a convener for safe discussions about how to improve the humanitarian sector’s approach to working with - and for - diverse communities.

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Ineffectiveness, Poor Coordination, and Corruption in Humanitarian Aid: The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon

• Research Papers
• Published: 18 June 2021
• Volume 32 , pages 894–909, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Soha BouChabke   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6626-5173 1 &
• Gloria Haddad 1  

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Corruption attracts scholar attention due to its harsh impact on people and institutions, especially in nonprofit organizations traditionally associated with altruistic intents. Although many scandals have shaken the third sector, rare are the studies that offer a true understanding of how corruption occurs. Our research provides insights into the corruption phenomenon in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. The findings show the powerlessness of public institutions, the chaotic working environments of humanitarian organizations, managerial malpractices, and inefficiencies in projects, all leading to unethical choices and to corrupt behaviors perpetrated by humanitarian agencies. The theoretical model that we propose brings new understanding of the relationships between nonprofit management, coordination, and corruption in the aid sector. On the practical front, it offers suggestions to public policy makers and practitioners about preventing corruption even during crisis situations.

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BouChabke, S., Haddad, G. Ineffectiveness, Poor Coordination, and Corruption in Humanitarian Aid: The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon. Voluntas 32 , 894–909 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00366-2

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Accepted : 23 May 2021

Published : 18 June 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00366-2

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Palestinians in Gaza have begun receiving humanitarian aid delivered through a newly completed floating pier off the coast of the besieged territory. Built by the U.S. military and operated in coordination with the United Nations, aid groups and other nations’ militaries, the pier can trace its origins back to a mid-20th century U.S. Navy officer who collected discarded cigar boxes to experiment with a new idea.

Among the artifacts of the military collections of the National Museum of American History , I happened upon these humble cigar boxes and the remarkable story they contain.

In 1939, John Noble Laycock , then a commander in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, was assigned, as the war plans officer for the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks in Washington, D.C., to help prepare for a potential war in the Pacific.

Laycock had to figure out how to construct naval bases on undeveloped islands. The top priority would be what the military called “naval lighterage,” the process of getting cargo and supplies from ships to a shoreline where there were no ports or even piers to dock at.

That’s exactly the problem the relief effort faced in Gaza – and one that military forces and humanitarian groups have faced countless times in the past century.

In the office files of his predecessors, Laycock found plans developed in the 1930s to use small pontoons – essentially floating boxes – that could be easily transported and quickly assembled by hand into larger barges or floating platforms. But Laycock saw problems with the plans’ design and method of connecting the pontoons to each other. And he had an idea.

In my research into his work , I found that around July 1940, Laycock began visiting every concessionaire in the Navy’s headquarters building, which was then located along the National Mall, asking them to save empty cigar boxes for him. Laycock and a helper lined up the boxes and spaced them evenly. Then they linked them together using wooden strips from children’s kites, which they fastened to the corners of the boxes with small nuts and screws.

The simple model demonstrated that it was possible to connect individual, uniformly sized, small pontoon boxes into a much longer, and much stronger, floating beam. Multiple beams could be combined into the base for a platform of any needed size. A big enough platform could support cargo, military trucks and armored vehicles weighing up to 55 tons.

From cigar boxes to steel pontoons

In August 1940, during his family vacation, Laycock figured out how exactly to connect the individual pontoons, which were made of steel and not wood or cardboard like his cigar-box model. He designed steel fasteners – scaled-up nuts and bolts nicknamed “jewelry” that could be inserted and tightened by hand – that could handle the stress of the movement of the ocean beneath a floating platform.

Through trial and error, and applying various military requirements such as the width of the steel plates, weight of the empty pontoon, depth needed to float and load-bearing capacity, Laycock designed a basic pontoon 5 feet high by 7 feet long by 5 feet wide. He also designed a curved section to serve as the bow of a pontoon-based transport vessel. By 1941, testing had proved the design and the system were ready for mass production.

Floating causeways of steel

The pontoon technology first went to war in the South Pacific in February 1942 with the Naval Construction Force, nicknamed the Seabees, who took it to Bora Bora in the Society Islands. The Seabees were pleased with how it worked and helped contribute to the system’s nickname – Laycock’s “magic box.”

The universal nature of the pontoons permitted construction of an array of floating structures , including dredges, barges, floating cranes, workshops, storehouses and gas stations, tug boats, pile drivers and dry docks. These pontoon structures could be found from Guadalcanal to the Marianas, the Aleutians and the Philippines.

The planning for the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 found another use for Laycock’s pontoon system. In late 1942, Royal Navy Capt. Thomas A. Hussey recognized that the Sicilian beaches had gentle slopes. During an invasion, landing craft, especially those designed for tanks, could be expected to run aground several hundred feet from dry land, in water 6 feet deep. Even waterproofed vehicles would be swamped and could sink.

Aware of Laycock’s pontoons, Hussey inquired whether the units could form a floating road, called a causeway, to bridge the gap between ship and shore. Laycock designed a method to build narrow causeways two pontoons wide and 30 pontoons long – roughly 175 feet. Setting them side by side would form a 325-foot floating causeway. They could even be towed or carried by landing craft and deployed upon arrival in shallow water.

Tested successfully in mid-March 1943, the causeways proved a success at Sicily . In 23 days of round-the-clock shifts, the Seabees unloaded over 10,000 vehicles, including trucks, jeeps, half-tracks and towed artillery, on the causeways. Senior American and British leaders said the landings could not have succeeded so rapidly were it not for the pontoon causeways .

Pontoon highways at Normandy

Much like Sicily, the Normandy coast of France also featured beaches with gentle, flat slopes. Floating pontoon causeways were key to the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings for U.S., British and Canadian forces. Engineers would anchor one end of the causeway on the shore and extend the structure out into the ocean far enough that whether it was low or high tide, cargo-carrying vessels could dock without running aground.

Along the sides, every few hundred feet along the causeway, additional pontoons were attached to form piers, so multiple vessels could dock at the same time, regardless of tidal conditions. They could unload directly onto dry pontoons just as they would at any regular pier or dock.

This system allowed a massive, around-the-clock flow of tanks, trucks, artillery, supplies and personnel to support the fighting as the Allied forces moved inland through Normandy over the coming months.

Uses in war and for humanitarian aid

Over the decades, this concept, with technological advancements in construction and fasteners, evolved into pontoon systems used in the Korean and Vietnam wars . Those have since been improved as well and have helped provide humanitarian aid such as in Haiti after a massive earthquake in 2010.

The pier at Gaza involves both parts of the pontoon system – Laycock’s original floating platform as a cargo transfer site 3 miles offshore , and the British-suggested floating causeway and pier system allowing truck deliveries to get to dry land. All from a humble concept model of cigar boxes.

• World War II
• Disaster relief
• Humanitarian aid
• Palestinians
• military logistics
• Israel-Hamas war

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A meeting was held Saturday between the Palestinian Prime Minister and the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding Italy’s commitment to providing an additional 35 million euro aid package to Palestine.  The aid package seeks to fund  ‘Food for Gaza’ and the  UNRWA ( The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) .

The aid package’s primary funding distribution is to ‘Food for Gaza.’ Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani has committed 30 million euros to fund this program further. The previous aid packages allocated 20 million euros to ‘Food for Gaza.’ The Italian Government provided a press release announcing the project’s conception on March 11, iterating that they work in collaboration with the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ( IFRC ). The organisation’s mission is ‘facilitating access to food aid, alleviating the suffering of the population and ensuring food security in the Gaza Strip.’ For the context of the reach of the funds, the WFP said they had assisted 1.5 million civilians by providing them with food in April alone. 

Tajani also committed 5 million euros to the UNRWA. However, per the press release, the funds will be apportioned per region. The separation was between the West Bank, and the group consisting of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Funds would be distributed in 2 million and 3 million euro portions, respectively.

Tajani stated , ‘Italy has decided to resume financing specific projects intended for assistance to Palestinian refugees, but only after rigorous controls that guarantee that not even a penny risks ending up supporting terrorism.’  

The statement comes after Israel accused the UNRWA of being involved in the October 7 attacks by Hamas and complicit in Terrorism. This accusation resulted in a loss of nearly 450 million USD in funds for the humanitarian support group as countries such as the US temporarily ceased funding allocation. The UN conducted an internal review due to the allegations, with their summary press report stating that the UNRWA did and continues to have acceptable mechanisms of neutrality but will continue working towards improving these mechanisms. Numerous member states have begun reissuing their funding following the UN internal investigation’s findings.

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Gaza: Rafah aid situation increasingly desperate, UN teams warn

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Hostilities across Gaza reportedly continued on Wednesday, fuelling already alarming aid access problems and dire food insecurity as the main entrance routes for relief convoys remained closed or too dangerous to access , UN aid workers warned.

In a  post  on X, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA , confirmed that food distribution had been suspended because of a lack of supplies and ongoing hostilities that have made it too dangerous for aid teams to work.

“The situation in Rafah has been significantly deteriorating since the initial evacuation orders were issued there on 6 May,” UNRWA spokesperson Louise Wateridge told UN News on Wednesday. “As this military operation has expanded further into Rafah, this has severely, severely restricted our ability and the wider humanitarian ability to provide aid, to provide services and, in this case, to distribute food.”

“ We now no longer have access to the food distribution centres  in this area because of the active military operations, there is no safety and in addition to this, we are receiving no unimpeded access to aid through the crossings.”

Ms. Wateridge stressed that “we have a lot of people on the ground ready to provide aid and provide services, but without access across the borders to any supplies and without access to our distribution centres, we are simply unable to distribute food.” 

Those comments echoed an update to the Security Council by Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, on Monday.

“I am deeply concerned that the current trajectory, including the possibility of a larger-scale operation, will further undermine efforts to scale up the entry of humanitarian goods and their safe distribution to desperate civilians,” he said. 

While welcoming the opening of the Erez West/Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, Mr. Wennesland emphasised that “ much more aid is needed to meet the enormous scale of the needs… there is no substitute for the full and increased operation of existing land crossings.” 

“Saving lives and addressing the critical needs in Rafah and Gaza more broadly must remain our immediate priority,” Mr. Wennesland said, reiterating the Secretary-General’s call for a humanitarian ceasefire.

The UN official also highlighted the risks of a “wider spillover” regionally from the conflict as long as it remains unresolved.

Also on Wednesday, Ireland, Spain and Norway jointly announced that they intended to recognise a Palestinian State.

The diplomatic move to recognise Palestine, “effective 28 May”, follows months of consultations “with like-minded countries across Europe and the Middle East”, the Irish Government said in a statement.

Aid lifelines under threat

As of 18 May, OCHA reported that only 10 bakeries were operational out of a total of 16 supported by the UN agency’s partners.

“ It is expected that these will run out of stock and fuel within days if no additional supplies are received,” Ms. Wosornu said. The remaining six bakeries – all in southern Gaza – have closed “due to either shortages of fuel or because of ongoing hostilities”.

According to UNRWA’s  online aid tracking platform , no trucks have entered the main crossings into the enclave via Rafah and Kerem Shalom in the south since 27 vehicles made it through on Saturday. 

At least 500 aid trucks are needed every day to keep Gazans healthy, humanitarians have said repeatedly, while also calling for relief supplies to flood into Gaza to try to halt the new crisis caused by the Israeli military’s incursion into Rafah on 6 May, in response to deadly rocket fire by Hamas militants.

Fewer trucks crossing

While more than 5,600 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza in April via both crossings, only around 1,400 have made it so far in May, UNRWA data indicates.

The UN agency also noted that its health centres have not received any medical supplies in the last 10 days. Nonetheless, healthcare staff “continue to provide thousands of medical consultations each day at health centres that are still operational”, UNRWA said.

After more than seven months of heavy Israeli bombardment in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on southern Israel, nearly one in two Gazans – around 1.1 million people – face hunger levels so catastrophic that the UN has warned that many are on the brink of famine . 

The latest casualty data from OCHA via the Gazan health authorities indicates that more than 35,000 people have now been killed in the violence and more than 79,000 injured. Around 17,000 children are unaccompanied or remain separated from their families. 

At the Security Council's Gaza briefing earlier this week, ambassadors heard an update from OCHA, which noted the Israeli military's announcement that it had recovered the bodies of four Israeli hostages from Gaza.

“It is estimated that 128 Israeli and foreign nationals remain captive in Gaza, including fatalities whose bodies are withheld,” said Edem Wosornu, the UN agency's Director of Operations and Advocacy.

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 10 December 2020

The humanitarian-development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics

• Jon Harald Sande Lie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0778-1386 1  

Journal of International Humanitarian Action volume  5 , Article number:  18 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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The humanitarian–development nexus is increasingly being cast as the solution to humanitarian concerns, new and protracted crises, and to manage complex war-to-peace transitions. Despite widely endorsed amongst policymakers, this nexus presents some challenges to those implementing it. Humanitarian action and development assistance represent two distinct discursive and institutional segments of the international system that are hard to juxtapose. Humanitarianism’s apolitical and imminent needs-based approaches building on established humanitarian principles are fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, rights-based approaches of development. As they rub shoulders, as intentionally instigated by the nexus, they affect and challenge each other. These challenges are more acute to the humanitarian domain given the constitutive status of the humanitarian principles, which, when challenged, may cause changes to the humanitarian space and a mission-cum-ethics creep. This article explores the formation and effects of the humanitarian–development nexus as rendered both at the top, amongst policymakers, and from the bottom. The latter explores the discursive transition from conflict to reconstruction in Northern Uganda. Humanitarian organisations’ different response to the transition demonstrate more pragmatic approaches to the humanitarian principles and thus how the nexus itself is also formed bottom up and further exacerbates the mission creep.

Introduction

The humanitarian–development nexus is a hot topic and has been so for a whilst, creating expectations as well as problems to policymakers and practitioners of humanitarian action and development assistance alike (Eade and Vaux 2007 ; Hilhorst 2018 ; IDS 2018 ) Footnote 1 . Basically, the nexus refers to “the transition or overlap between the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the provision of long-term development assistance” (Strand 2020 : 104). The nexus’ rationale is fairly straightforward: as the war-to-peace transition is understood in terms of a continuum, one should not compartmentalise but motivate distinct actors to cooperate regardless how the situation is defined. This has, however, proven easier said than done. Not only are the discursive segments of humanitarianism and development distinct to each other, but the segments themselves are characterised by great internal diversity—and these differences become amplified by the nexus itself. The nexus seeks to merge well-established discursive, institutional and attitudinal differences that are hard to reconcile, especially as seen from the perspective of humanitarian actors. Despite their differences, actors belonging to the humanitarian segment share a more principled approach to policy and practical work as compared to what more pragmatic and political development actors do. The humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence provide the foundations for humanitarian action. These principles are important in constituting humanitarian actors’ identity and legitimacy, they govern humanitarian practice and they are central in constructing the conceptual and physical humanitarian space in which humanitarian actors operate. The humanitarian principles are, however, not blueprints or a straitjacket, but propositions and values that guide action, set standards and provide benchmarks against which practice aspires and is later measured. This makes the principles subject to contextual interpretation and application, by different actors in different settings, something which affect the formation of a humanitarian–development nexus—which is the scope of this article.

First, the article outlines central policy features and challenges related to the humanitarian–development nexus. Second, these aspects are put into historical context by giving attention first to the how this nexus emerged in the wake of the need to unpack the civilian dimension of the erstwhile security–development nexus, and then to the discursive origins of humanitarianism and development respectively. The empirical third section first provides some vignette cases concerning the humanitarian–development nexus at the top-levels of policy and planning, before a more bottom-up approach is given. This section explores the discursive transition from humanitarianism to development in Northern Uganda, which triggered different and pragmatic interpretations of the humanitarian principles. The cases demonstrate how various analytical approaches produce different renderings and dynamics of the humanitarian–development nexus. Moreover, the two approaches demonstrate that the nexus itself is not only driven forward by headquarters’ policies but also by actors’ pragmatic stance vis-à-vis the humanitarian principles. Notwithstanding these different dynamics, important practical and conceptual challenges are maintained—which is the scope of the final coda section.

Intentional policy interface of humanitarianism and development

The humanitarian–development nexus received renewed, global attention with the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. In recognising that humanitarian assistance alone is insufficient to adequately address the needs of the world’s most vulnerable, this UN summit called for new humanitarian approaches transcending the humanitarian realm: first, humanitarians were now to engage in conflict prevention and address its root causes, which are activities not only typically designated the development segment but also activities taking place before the humanitarian crisis occur, thus infringing on the notion of the humanitarian present. Second, it called for increased humanitarian emphasis on political diplomacy and conflict resolution, being typical peacebuilding activities and infringing on humanitarianism’s apolitical principles. Third, and corollary, this requires bringing together humanitarian, development and peacebuilding efforts, into what got known as the triple nexus, to harmonise different, diverging and potential conflicting actors, activities and objectives. Notwithstanding the wide acclamation of the humanitarian summit—attended by more than 9000 representatives of states, governments, civil society, private sector, international and non-governmental organisations—the nexus remains widely debated, poorly adopted and highly contested. To illustrate, whilst revising this manuscript I attended two webinars concerning the nexus Footnote 2 . Bringing together practitioners and researchers, the seminars revealed a form of structural flagellantism when dealing with the challenging scope and practices pertaining to the nexus: uncertain policies, conflicting mandates and lack of leadership; limited funding, competition over resources and siloed funding streams; need to collaborate and coordinate more. This article, however, moves beyond these immediate practical concerns to engage the more discursive and institutional aspects relating to the humanitarian–development nexus as primarily seen from the humanitarian side, which illustrates how the nexus both drives and reflects changes in the humanitarian realm by expanding and contracting the humanitarian space.

The bold ambitions of the humanitarian–development nexus demonstrate that the instituted order of humanitarianism is both changing and challenged. Shifting circumstances in the areas where humanitarian actors operate and the responses these call for demonstrate how external and internal factors affect the domain of humanitarianism. This also point to an anachronism—humanitarianism’s governing principles were conceived of in a time and in response to concerns different to contemporary ones: current environmental concerns and climate change affect conflict patters; armed conflicts increasingly take place within and not between states, which makes it tricky to manage host state’s consent; not only are civilians increasingly targeted but state actors may also be amongst the adversaries; geopolitical shifts affect conflict formations and humanitarian practice; external funding agencies push for more inter-agency cooperation spanning the civil–military divide affects humanitarian practice. Despite this humanitarian anachronism between old principles and new concerns, the principles remain important in constructing the conceptual and physical humanitarian space in which humanitarian actors operate and which provides for the identity, protection and legitimacy of humanitarian actors and action. Yet, as these new and external factors impinge on the realisation of the humanitarian principles, it is regularly argued that the humanitarian ethos and rationale are challenged, that the humanitarian space is shrinking (Brassard-Boudreau and Hubert 2010 ).

This article, however, draws attention to how changes internal to the humanitarian domain work in the opposite direction but with the same effects, that is, the humanitarian scope is intentionally expanding, which causes a depletion of its principles and space. The formation of the humanitarian–development nexus both illustrates and propels these processes. They demonstrate that humanitarianism is intentionally changing from within, reorienting itself beyond the humanitarian present and its apolitical fundaments. These processes reflect what Barnett ( 2011 ) called the ‘humanitarian mission creep’: as the seminal humanitarian scope and ethos as constituted by the humanitarian principles are put under pressure and stretched, the conceptual and physical humanitarian space in which humanitarian actors operate are gradually truncated. For instance, the notion of the humanitarian present—i.e. the idea that humanitarian action is about the here and now, not what occurs before or after the crisis—is being undermined by humanitarian involvement in prevention and reconstruction activities. These are activities which temporality occurs before and after the humanitarian present and which traditionally has been the scope of development aid—but ‘as humanitarians began imagining how to build peace after [or before] war, they slipped into building states’ (ibid.: 3), which undeniably verges on politics and thus has a poor fit with the apolitical humanitarian principles.

Greater cooperation across segments drive the mission creep and thus changes to the instituted order of humanitarianism and how the principles, and thus legitimacy, of humanitarian action, is challenged. This calls forth institutional boundary work, where the humanitarian segment not only needs to wrestle with the security segment, but increasingly with other civilian components of the international system. The humanitarian mission creep thus reflects the ongoing nexus between humanitarian action and development aid. The encounter of these knowledge fields constitute what Long describes as situations of interface, defined as ‘a critical point of intersection or linkage between different social systems, fields or levels of social order where structural discontinuities, based upon differences of normative value and social interests, are more likely to be found’ (Long 1989 : 1–2). The notion of interface implies a shift in analytical focus from different discourses or systems of knowledge towards the various situations where these meet and where differences become articulated, and draws attention to various forms of battlefields of knowledge (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010 ; Lie 2012 ; Long and Long 1992 ). The two discursive fields of development and humanitarianism represent two such distinct knowledge and practice fields of the international system—yet, they are invariably treated as one common, civilian segment of the international apparatus, particularly when contrasted with the military segment.

Unpacking the civilian dimension of the security–development nexus

The means and mechanisms of the international system are traditionally described as and compartmentalised into the three distinct segments of defence, diplomacy and development. Defence or security, and diplomacy are seen to trump other concerns by virtue of protecting and promoting states’ national interests. Conversely, the development segment aims, at least nominally, to assist in promoting the interests of others, i.e. the aid recipients. There is thus an innate hierarchy between these segments, where the soft power of development is dwarfed by the hard power and realpolitik of the other segments (Leira 2019 ; McNeish and Lie 2010 ). Since 9/11 2001, however, these three segments have become increasingly and intentionally intertwined, merged into 3D or whole-of-government approaches. This merger both drives and reflects how donor countries’ national interests impact international development in general and how the politics of western aid is being securitised, especially in areas considered conflict hot-spots (Fisher and Anderson 2015 ). The instrumentalization of western aid has not only affected development aid’s core purpose of fighting global poverty but also collapsed the practical and conceptual distinction between security and development (Woods 2005 ).

The international experience with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the early 2000s and the international intervention in Darfur were seminal in advancing the security–development nexus (Buur et al., 2007 ; Chandler 2007 ; Contessi 2010 ). Here, policymakers and security actors included the civilian development component into military operations in order to win the local populations’ hearts and minds (Gusterson 2011 ; González 2010 ). Whereas the diplomacy and defence segments represent different state entities with established protocols or rules of engagements, the development segment is often understood as more diverse and unruly by virtue of consisting of a multitude of civilian, non-state actors having their distinct mandate. Yet, those orchestrating the security–development nexus often fail to see these differences and thus largely treat the civilian component as one homogenous entity, thus undermining important internal differences amongst actors and, notably, between humanitarian action and development assistance (Carothers and de Gramont 2013 ). The development segment includes bi- and multilateral actors in addition to the vast NGO-sector. Despite most of these actors are in a triple bind in the sense that they receive policy guidelines from their funding agency, have their own institutional scope and mandate to attend to whilst also need to align their policies with those of their recipient. Aid actors are, however, fairly autonomous in brokering and juxtaposing these potentially conflicting interests. Understanding these dynamics are crucial not only to understand the development segment itself but also to grasp the problems and opportunities that lie in the interface between various actors and segments of the international system. Seeing the civilian component of the international apparatus as a homogenous development segment not only reduces the complexity of civilian engagement. It also undermines the distinct nature and role of its two main sectors of development assistance and humanitarian action, and the important differences that exist between them. Whilst these differences may appear opaque from an outsiders’ perspective, they are central to the individual sectors’ identity, legitimacy and boundary work vis-à-vis other institutions.

Despite these differences, calls are being made for greater coherence, cooperation and harmonisation within the civilian segment. Whereas the security–development nexus sought to combine military and civilian efforts, these calls proposed a new way to manage the complex war-to-peace transition by proposing a new workflow between civilian actors in what would be identified as a humanitarian–development nexus (Acuto 2014 ; Lie 2017 ; Yamashita 2015 ; Eade and Vaux 2007 ; Chandler 2014 ; Barnett and Weiss 2008 ). This nexus is driven forward by not only external impulses and political intentions, but equally by changes internal to the segment itself and its immanent responses to new conflict formations and humanitarian concerns. Understanding the war-to-peace transition as representing a continuum and not distinct and sequenced phases designated military, humanitarian and development actors has been pivotal to foster this new nexus (Duffield 2012 ). The nexus fosters the intentional, but challenging interface of humanitarian action and development assistance, and it brings humanitarianism into the development domain of prevention and reconstruction. Consequently, it widens the humanitarian space through a more contextual and pragmatic application of the humanitarian principles. As the nexus touches on the very identity and leitmotif of both humanitarianism and development, these interfaces require a great deal of boundary work between erstwhile distinct segments of the international system. However, to explore these interfaces one first needs to understand the segments.

Humanitarianism and development

The fields of humanitarian action and development aid represent two different segments of the international system with distinct discursive origins and institutional trajectories (Hilhorst 2018 ; Dudaite 2018 ). The origin of humanitarianism typically pivots around Henry Dunant and his experience at the Battle of Solverino in 1859. Originally on a business travel, Dunant accidentally witnessed a carnage between Austro-Hungarian and French troops outside the Italian village of Solferino, which made him join the local townspeople to provide the relief he could. Dunant had ‘left Geneva as a man seeking riches and returned home as a man who was about to dedicate his life to higher calling’ (Barnett 2011 : 1). After publishing his memoirs, which became a European bestseller, Dunant launched a call to alms and a campaign to establish a permanent relief agency for humanitarian aid in war, and a government treaty recognising the neutrality of this agency in order for it to operate in a war zone. Following a broad grassroots movement, this led to the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Geneva Conventions, which constructed the humanitarian discourse around a set of guiding principles that still epitomise and shape humanitarian action today, despite being revised and reaffirmed in 1949 to account for the lessons of two World Wars and the establishment of the United Nations (Fassin 2012 ; Terry 2002 ). Later, these principles have become formally enshrined in two UN General Assembly resolutions. The principles of humanity (that human suffering must be addressed when and wherever it is found), neutrality (humanitarian actors must not take side) and impartiality (aid should be based on needs alone) were adopted in 1991 in a pivotal resolution marking the (re-)creation of the humanitarian system and the international community’s collective commitment to help the world’s most vulnerable when they need it most Footnote 3 . The principle of independence (that humanitarian action must be autonomous to any other concerns, such as political, military and economic objectives) was added in 2004 Footnote 4 , and can be seen as a response to the incipient security–development nexus. These principles guide humanitarian action, which implies they may be subject to different interpretations and context-specific usage. They are nevertheless important for the humanitarian identity and in constituting the humanitarian space, the humanitarian present and humanitarianism as apolitical.

The institutional development apparatus has a more intentional and political origin. Emerging in the wake of the Second World War and the ensuing geopolitical struggles, aid and economic support were seen as means to establish and secure political interests. Inspired by and extending beyond the Eurocentric Marshall plan, scholars usually associate President Truman’s 1949 inaugural speech as the inception of ‘development’, marking the start of a particular historical period—the era of development (Sachs 1992 ). Point Four of the Truman Doctrine established lasting master metaphors in stating that ‘We must embark on a bold and new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas’ (Porter 1995 : 66). It ordered the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ by creating a conceptual division between the ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’, where the latter is defined by lacking what constitutes the former, i.e. development (Nustad 2001 ). This stipulates not only what development is, but also that development is something to be actively conveyed ‘them’ by ‘us’. This undercuts the idea of development as an immanent process unfolding over time to advance a perspective that development requires an active and guided societal intervention—as later manifested by the modernisation theory drawing on Rostow’s guide to unilineal progress in different qualitative stages with the USA as the beacon on the hill, showing way and calling every nation to follow in its footsteps (Cowen and Shenton 1996 ; Escobar 1995 ). Development assistance today is highly diverse, ranging from small NGOs to huge multilateral institutions working in partnership with recipient institutions no projects spanning local development and social development to good governance, economic reform, infrastructure development and state building. Development work is political both in scope and organisation and draws on a rights-based discourse. At the operational level, development aid builds on certain partnership principles where participatory approaches aim to instal recipient ownership and decisiveness to externally funded programmes. These partnership principles are, however, rarely realised in practice and donor countries still use aid for political purposes.

The different discursive origins of humanitarianism and development have produced and reproduced two distinct civilian segments of the international system that often appear to be at odds with each other: humanitarianism’s apolitical and imminent needs-based approaches building on the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence are fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, and rights-based approaches of development. Humanitarian action is mainly exogenous, meaning that interventions, ideas and funding come from outside of the affected country, building on universal principles and often in response to the host state’s lack of will or capacity to sufficiently cater for its own citizens. Contrary, development aid is organised around certain governing partnership principles, meaning that both donor and recipient institutions—be it NGOs, state or multilateral institutions—are supposed to jointly programme and implement projects and that external actors should underpin the policies and priorities of the recipient. In such efforts, the ambition is that those on the receiving end should have ‘ownership’ to externally funded processes and policies, and the donor agencies should align their approaches and policies with those of the recipient.

The segments of humanitarianism and development differ in both structure and content regarding how aid is provided and what type of aid is given. These practices are shaped by and keep reproducing the segments’ formal distinctiveness, historical trajectories and institutional orders. Yet, against such a formalistic notion it is important to underline that each segment consists of a myriad of different actors, from civil society to multilateral organisations, operating in very different contexts, which provide different practical and pragmatic interpretations of the governing principles of humanitarian action and development aid. As such, the renderings of these segments and their governing principles are not only contextual. The principles governing humanitarian and development practices are of a more philosophical concern taking place in the conference rooms at the headquarters level (Slim 2006 ), whereas the imperative to help prevails in field operations regardless of principles and segments. Indeed, the beneficiaries and those at the receiving tend not to tell apart the various actors and their principles regardless whether they are described as belonging to either of the humanitarian or development domains (Lie 2017 ). Yet, these differences matter: both for how and what aid is provided, and for the institutional cooperation in the field and at headquarters level. The empirical cases below first attend to the problematic interface of development and humanitarianism at the headquarters level, illustrating the philosophical quandaries of implementing the humanitarian–development nexus. Moving from the empirical vignettes, the case from Northern Uganda takes a bottom-up approach to the nexus. It demonstrates the interface of the different discursive segments in practise and how the nexus is being propelled not by top-driven policy guidelines but as an effect of how actors in the field are more pragmatic about the principles to maintain relevance as the government recasts the humanitarian crisis situation as one of recovery.

Vignette cases on the interface of development and humanitarianism

When I attended the launch of a joint UNHCR–World Bank report— ‘ Forcibly Displaced Towards a development approach supporting refugees, the internally displaced, and their hosts’—the authors, and in particular the one representing UNHCR, stressed the hardship that had been put into having two different organisations with distinct mandates speak together Footnote 5 . Amongst the rationales of these two multilateral agencies joining forces was to put together their distinct datasets, to monitor and predict migration patterns in order to intervene before people start migrating. The cooperation draws on the notion that development interventions could provide preventive measures by helping displaced and host communities before they migrate. This interface not only reflects the humanitarian–development nexus, but also how aid is being politicised and installed with other interests than held by the two segments themselves as the cooperation was arguably pushed for by donor countries’ aiming to limit migration to the global north. These political considerations never surfaced during the report’s presentation and discussion, and indeed the substance of the report itself received little attention. Rather, both the World Bank and UNHCR representatives stressed the novelty and problems in working together, reiterating their organisation’s mandate and distinctiveness and thus the interface challenges in having the various units in DC and Geneva operate together.

Similarly, when UN and World Bank staff facilitated various regional, consultative meetings in preparation of their joint flagship study ‘Making Development Work for the Prevention of Violent Conflict’ (UN and World Bank 2018 ) Footnote 6 , a seemingly disproportionally amount of time and focus were devoted to how one could have the UN in New York and the Washington-based World Bank speak together at the institutional level. Here, the staff said they were personally committed to this work and to working together, but again: finding a common ground and joining the mandates of the different organisations had been challenging at the institutional level and arguably amongst the more serious concerns preventing collaboration.

In early 2014, UN OCHA launched its policy initiative Saving Lives Today and Tomorrow (SLTT), being yet another flagship report that calls for a fundamental shift in the way humanitarian and development actors operate Footnote 7 . OCHA, itself a gatekeeper of the humanitarian principles, initiated the report and policy initiative. As the title indicates, the report calls for an expansion of the humanitarian present into future crises through preventive measures to also save lives tomorrow. The policy initiative calls upon the funding agencies to shift from responding to crises in a purely reactive manner to instead adopt a proactive approach to anticipate and prevent crisis through risk management initiatives. Realising that existing structures are not sufficient, the SLTT policy initiative seeks to overcome institutional hurdles to foster greater cooperation between different actors to invest in risk mitigation and crisis management. The SLLT policy states that to ‘overcome this challenge, humanitarian, development and government actors must work together to identify risks and align planning cycles, increase aid effectiveness, build the resilience of affected populations and, where possible, focus on preventing disasters’ Footnote 8 . As reported by several UN and World Bank, this initiative fast gained momentum outside OCHA. Representatives of other UN entities—such as DPKO, UNDP and DPA—all held that they saw this as a sign that OCHA was opening up its humanitarian gatekeeping role and what they saw as a strict interpretation of the humanitarian principles. Turbulence soon surfaced within OCHA as not all were convinced with this policy initiative and the problems bound to occur when ‘aligning planning cycles’ with complex development actors external (World Bank) and internal to the UN (UNDP). OCHA was, moreover, concerned how both the UN entities of DPKO and DPA also got on board the SLTT policy initiative, thus sparking critique within the humanitarian segment about aligning its cycles not only with UN’s political affairs unit but also its military arm (i.e. DPKO). Many in OCHA saw this as a bridge too far, reportedly causing OCHA to effectively (but not nominally) withdraw its support for the SLTT-initiative to the extent that all practical momentum was lost.

The humanitarian discourse may also be adopted by those external to it, as a means to gain legitimacy to own operations. When the DPKO from 2009 incepted its New Horizon-initiative to chart out new roles and functions of UN peacekeeping operations Footnote 9 , it included the Protection of Civilians (PoC) as an integral and central part to future peacekeeping operations (Lie and de Carvalho 2009 ). The reference to PoC would no longer only be in the mandate, with the many uncertainties that entailed when translated into practice (de Carvalho and Lie 2011 ). A strategic challenge to peacekeeping operations as identified and to be ameliorated by the New Horizons-agenda, was how modern peacekeeping struggles to come up against the reality of insufficient instruments to address political issues in the areas of operations. This concern was propelled due to two interconnected facts. Firstly, that conflicts and peacekeeping operations now take place within states and not between them, which was the case when the DPKO was formed. Secondly, the mandate of peacekeeping operations needs to be negotiated and approved by the host government, which tends to refute any references made to politics, thus tying the hands of DPKO and DPA to work politically with what they regard as the root causes of the conflict. Here, the humanitarian discourse and, in particular, the domain of PoC served as a Trojan horse to work politically through a seemingly apolitical mission mandate. As the mandate of UN missions merely refers to PoC as ‘to protect civilians under imminent threats of physical violence’, without further telling what this actually entailed, it became up to the force commander or others within specific missions to interpret the PoC agenda and put it to action. So, whilst PoC up until the New Horizons agenda was merely seen as a bothersome humanitarian mandate requirement, it now gained new momentum—although not always for the reasons initially envisaged by the humanitarian proponents.

The vignette cases illustrate different expressions of the humanitarian mission creep, driven forward by bold policy headquarters ambitions pertaining to the humanitarian–development nexus. The cases render the different interfaces between the discursive realms of humanitarian action and development aid, illustrating contentious knowledge battles at the institutional and policy levels that also may also undermine the headquarters’ policy ambitions. These interfaces bring together different principles and institutionalised mandates, demonstrating how the nexus itself is both produced by and contested at the top. Below, however, a more ground-up perspective is offered to the formation of the humanitarian–development nexus. Drawing on fieldwork exploring civilian protection in Northern Uganda (Lie 2012 , 2017 ), the case offers a different perspective to the nexus formation. The case illustrates how the mission creep and nexus are driven forward not by central policies but as a result of changing crisis context and humanitarian actors’ pragmatic use of the principles when operating in a volatile environment. Indeed, by the stroke of the pen, the Ugandan government recasted the situation in Northern Uganda from being one of crisis and thus the scope of humanitarian action, into one of recovery, which is the domain of development aid. Redefining the situation as one of recovery produced obstacles to humanitarian actors and their ability to pay heed to the humanitarian principles. Whereas some withdrew, others took a more pragmatic stance to this recast and the humanitarian principles under the auspice of the imperative to help the civilians regardless of how the situation was being (re)defined.

Northern Uganda: conflict to recovery - humanitarianism to development?

In 2005, at the peak of the civil war between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) there were roughly 1.8 million internally displaced people (IDPs) living in 251 different ‘protected camps’ across 11 districts in Northern Uganda. The roots of the conflict dates back to 1986 when current President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Army (MRA) overthrew former president Tito Okello, who came from the northern Acholi tribe. Museveni came to power promising to restore stability, security and respect for human rights. People from the northern parts were, however, antagonistic to a government led by a person from the south. Museveni’s policies of downplaying ethnicity as a political, organising principle were seen as a way to undermine the political voices of the north, creating further trepidation in the north, causing rebel groups to emerge. Multiple insurgencies emerged from Acholiland, of which the Joseph Kony-led LRA would eventually rise as the most enduring and destructive rebel movement.

In response, the government in 1996 escalated its fight against the LRA through its scorched-earth policy. This included ordering all Acholis to vacate their homes in 48 h, forcing them to resettle in ‘protected camps’, thus swiftly turning the citizens into internally displaced people (IDPs). The rationale was to separate civilians and combatants in order for the Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) to identify and target the combatants. The government invoked a humanitarian reasoning for the encampment process, arguing the camps would enable the UPDF to better offer physical protection. Seeing the political aspects of the insurgency, however, allows analysing the encampment and recasting the civilians as IDPs deprived of their civil rights as a way to control and quell political opposition from arising in the north, thus being instrumental in the Kampala-based state formation process.

The so-called ‘protected camps’ did not receive sufficient physical protection as the UPDF used its limited resources to focus on fighting the LRA and not protecting the civilians. This left the camp borders porous, allowing the LRA to hide and attack within the camps. The civilians, moreover, were forced to move outside the camps to maintain agricultural production, collect firewood, go to the markets and so on, as there was a critical lack of services and provisions within the camp. Leaving the camps to sustain their livelihood, the civilians feared not only being attacked by the LRA but also being associated with the LRA and consequently reprimanded by the UPDP since the government’s policy criminalised out-of-camp activities. Together, the LRA atrocities, the UPDP’s response to the LRA and the government’s encampment policies and poor camp management produced a massive humanitarian crisis (Branch 2011 ).

International humanitarian assistance was gradually phased in to help respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis. In response, the government reallocated its camp funding into the UPDF, making the humanitarian involvement at least partly complicit in sustaining the conflict as it allowed the government to focus on a military and not political solution to the conflict, whilst international humanitarian actors assumed responsibility for managing the camps. Meanwhile, most state building and development activities in the north were lying fallow with neither funding nor focus from the government and international actors.

Northern Uganda experienced a dramatic expansion of externally funded, humanitarian civil society organisations from the late 1990. The intervening humanitarian regime had its primary function in administrating camp populations, causing civilians to be self-disciplined into non-political forms of organisation rather than empowered to pursue their own aspiration. The massive influx of humanitarian actors proliferated after the head of UN OCHA, Jan Egeland, in 2003, brought attention to the conflict, describing it as the worst forgotten humanitarian crisis on earth, followed by pledges and appeals to beef up relief operations. The ensuing CNN-effect made humanitarian funding skyrocket, from $34 million in 2002 to its 2008 peak of $238 million, causing Northern Uganda, in the words of an informant, to suffer from NGO-obesity, creating an aid-based civil society and an economy almost entirely contingent on external funding.

The peak of the external involvement in 2008 also marked the beginning of the end of the humanitarian crisis—at least nominally—as the government started a process of recasting the situation from being one of humanitarian crisis to one of recovery and development in order to reclaim its sovereignty in Northern Uganda. Instrumental in this move was the government’s closure of the ‘protected camps’, thus forcing the internally displaced population to return to their ancestral fields which had been lying fallow for over a decade. The government’s discursive recast of the situation happened partly in response to how the humanitarian actors undermined the state through their comprehensive operations and antagonising advocacy work, and partly because the UPDF had pushed the LRA out of Uganda. The government took the Kampala-based donors to the north, showing them that people were returning home, that the camps were being closed and that the conflict was over as the LRA had been pushed into the neighbouring countries. Only seeing the surface of the situation, the donors were persuaded that the crisis was over and to move their funding from humanitarian activities into development aid, notably in the form of budget support to the government’s own recovery and reconstruction plans in the north.

The transition happened in spite of the persistent humanitarian sufferings and needs in the post-conflict period. The recast had detrimental effects for ongoing activities—‘too many NGOs withdrew too soon with too much unfinished business’ was the general story told by informants, arguably leaving a humanitarian vacuum for the many civilians who after years in the protected camps were forced to leave, returning to their homelands and districts which in the meantime had received minimal government and donor attention regarding social and infrastructure development.

Admittedly, representatives of local authorities, humanitarian and development NGOs and community leaders all expressed that there no longer was an ongoing crisis per se given that the armed conflict had ended, which warranted a move into recovery and development. Yet, they held there were numerous concerns with the immediate camp closure and the depleting humanitarian funding. Although the LRA had been pushed out of Uganda, it still waged attacks but with plummeting frequency from neighbouring DRC and South Sudan.

The sudden decommissioning of the IDP-camps undermined the sustainability of the humanitarian’s work. The process of replacement was, moreover, full of tensions as the IDPs themselves were never consulted about their repatriation as stated by the principles of Durable Solutions for IDPs. Formally, the government subscribed to these principles. In practice, however, the authorities wanted the displaced people to return to their rural homes as quickly as possible, arguably as a way to reclaim its humanitarian sovereignty and as a token of stability and the transition to recovery.

The returning IDPs, however, were faced with a collapsed state apparatus that had received little attention from both donors and the central state during the decades of armed conflict, during which the many NGOs in effect had replaced the state in terms of service delivery and protection efforts. The humanitarian activities during the crisis had, moreover, addressed the immediate and present concerns, but in so doing the intervening actors neglected foreseeing the future, post-conflict needs and concerns. Land rights, in particular, became a critical hotspot causing for violent conflict. Many families saw their land they were forced to move from appropriated when returning from the camps, causing for legal disputes erupting into violent conflict due to the lack of formalised tenure and a penal system to settle the conflicts.

The camp closure not only degraded the livelihood fundament and basic services provided by the humanitarian actors. The ensuing forced resettlement also dismantled the social fabric that had been established within the camps. Together, this exacerbated the humanitarian concerns and needs in the post-camp, recovery phase despite the conflict had formally been called off. These concerns were further exacerbated as the humanitarian actors started to phase out after losing their rationale and operational consent when the government did recast the crisis situation as one of recovery. In the areas recovering from decades of armed conflict, civil society and local authorities reported about concerns related to children’s rights, sexual and gender-based violence, poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, violence, conflict over access and rights to land, unexploded ordinances and weapons, illiteracy and a general lack of basic services such as health, social protection, education and water.

Responding to the transition—principles and pragmatics

Are these concerns of a humanitarian or development character? Within which realm do they Uganda. Indeed, perhaps with the exemption of the contentious land rights, all other issues are found throughout the country where they are addressed by development actors. The main difference, however, is the magnitude and complexity of these issues caused by decades of conflict. These issues, moreover, became exacerbated due to limited attention given to infrastructure development and state building during the conflict, together giving these concerns both a temporal and spatial diffusion outreaching any other national context.

Generally, the humanitarian actors’ response to the government’s situation recast can be grouped into three categories: those who withdrew with reference to their humanitarian mandate; those who relocated their operations and those who maintained presence but refocusing and reorganising their aid activities. Of the first category, one finds the UNHCR, the ICRC and the MSF. The UNHCR had to withdraw as it is dependent on both the government’s consent and donor funding to operate. The ICRC and MSF—being actors that well beyond this specific case are renowned for their strict and verbatim understanding of the humanitarian principles—withdrew with reference to their humanitarian mandate as the situation moved into recovery and development. They acknowledged the critical situation and the persistent needs but feared breaching humanitarian principles, explicitly invoking a hierarchy by holding humanitarian principles over pragmatic approaches. The second category involved several larger, international NGOs that sought to pay heed to the humanitarian principles whilst simultaneously remaining operational in Uganda due to funding requirements. This was enabled by relocating operations to the north-eastern Karamoja-region where the indigenous pastoralists’ cattle raiding dynamics, climate change, land scarcity and nomadic transborder movement now emerged as a humanitarian hotspot requiring intervention. The third category involves organisations that took a more pragmatic stance to the discursive recast of the situation in the north and its consent and funding implications. Disagreeing about the underpinning assessment and recognising the persistent concerns, some actors reframed their programmes into development aid, which warranted both operational legitimacy and external, financial support. Despite scaling down their activities due to the plummeting of funds, these organisations gradually aligned themselves with regular development activities, such as building schools, education, reproductive health, vocational and livelihood training, agricultural extension programmes and reintegration projects.

These organisations, in disagreeing about the government’s assessment to warrant the discursive recast of the situation, took a more pragmatic stance regarding the humanitarian principles. Humanitarian actors that took a more pragmatic stance, argued that the government’s rhetorical recast of the situation was unsubstantiated, did not reflect real changes on the ground and was motivated by having external organisations to withdraw. As argued above, the discursive recast did not eliminate humanitarian concerns. Some were even exacerbated when people had to migrate as the camps closed. Moreover, the organisations were concerned that their donors did not realise the persistent humanitarian needs and that the resettlement of civilians, which persuaded donors about the discursive recast, in fact was a forced one caused by the government’s closure of the camps. Against this backdrop, several organisations maintained their operational activities, arguing that their commitment to the civilians and those suffering in the post-conflict period trumps the government’s rendering of the situation as well as the sanctity of the humanitarian principles. ‘We are committed to helping people in need, not to maintain some abstract principles’, one informant held. Reflecting similar sentiments, several organisations reoriented and redefined their support, moving from explicit humanitarian assistance into development aid ‘but with a significant humanitarian touch’, I was told. For instance, the Norwegian Refugee Council, despite significantly scaling down its activities, moved into infrastructure development by building schools. For humanitarian purposes, this was inscribed as part of the education in emergencies discourse, although there was no emergency and even those doing the work perceived it as a typical development activity (Lie 2017 ). Initiatives from, amongst others, the Justice and Reconciliation Project, Save the Children, and Refugee Law Project all received less humanitarian funding, yet they aspired to maintain their activities with reference to persistent needs. Whilst some of these organisations are so-called dual-mandate organisations, meaning they attend to both humanitarian and development situations, their funding streams and operational consent are usually tied to either of the segments.

To transcend segments involved boundary work, downplaying the unilateral relief and advocacy work based on the humanitarian principles, to advance greater partnership with the local communities and their participation in, and ownership of, development policies that were also required to be aligned with the government’s national development strategy. This meant that policies and activities nominally had to conform to those of the government, such as infrastructure capacity building, education, health services, vocational and livelihood training and farming activities. When recasting their work in terms of development, less attention was given to issues of human rights, gender-based violence, child protection, legal aid and reproductive health, although most organisations started to address these issues indirectly and as part of less controversial topics.

Throughout, informants held that the transition from humanitarianism to recovery happened too fast, and that neither donors nor implementing agencies were sufficiently prepared for this shift. Their work and strategies were planned for emergency responses and humanitarian funding, not development and rehabilitation. ‘Those organisations that did not alter their practices according to the new rendering of the situation would eventually have to withdraw’, one informant stated, adding that perhaps the most critical aspect was the lack of an exit strategy to ease the transition, to prevent abandoning a lot of incomplete work, and mitigate the impact the sudden transition would have for the beneficiaries. Consequently, against this backdrop and the persistent humanitarian issues still lingering in the area, a number of organisations reoriented their support as development, both as a way to ease the transition, complete ongoing work, and phase out activities in a somewhat more sustainable manner, but also as a way to continue address the persistent humanitarian needs.

This pragmatic stance in transitioning from humanitarianism to development was less controversial to the donor community and the national authorities than to the humanitarian agencies. The donors admittedly struggled to find new partners to receive the funding already allocated to their budget for activities in Uganda. National and local authorities were satisfied, not only because the humanitarian crisis was formally over but also that donors would commit themselves financially to assist in the government’s state-building and recovery activities now planned to take place in the north. The organisations that withdrew or moved into development activities were antagonistic as they did not see the transition being warranted by any substantial improvements of the civilian’s needs—yet they were compelled to relate to the transition, although in different ways.

Amongst those organisations withdrawing according to their humanitarian mandate, this pragmatic ‘third way’ response was seen as somewhat controversial and a hollowing of the humanitarian space and principles, as it connected erstwhile humanitarian actors not only to the politics of aid but also to the government’s state building and recovery programme. In the words of an informant responding to this critique, ‘we are committed to help people in need, not to maintain some abstract principles’. The different responses to the discursively recasted situation remind us not only about the heterogeneity of humanitarianism but also the malleability and its constitutive principles: multiple and diverse organisations operate under the same humanitarian umbrella and lend legitimacy from its morally charged principles and values, regardless whether organisations share the same interpretation and understanding of what these principles mean and entail in practice. The malleability of the humanitarian principles and concepts make for a knowledge battlefield where different actors representing different organisational cultures and mandates vie over humanitarianism’s meaning, interpretation and application in practice. This malleability is to some seen as a way to be pragmatic about humanitarian challenges and principles by enabling more diverse and context sensitive operational action—meaning that the end justifies the mean. Conversely, others see the malleability as undermining the humanitarian principles and the legitimacy they provide for, thus curtailing room to manoeuvre on the basis of humanitarianism.

Coda: The compartmentalisation of humanitarianism and development

The discourses of humanitarian action and development aid are often understood as representing different archetypes (Ferme 2013 ), megarhetorics (Dingo and Scott 2012 ) or communities of international aid (DeChaine 2005 ). Increasingly, these segments of the international system rub shoulders—as tectonic plates—affecting, overlapping and challenging each other. Their interface illustrates an incipient humanitarian–development nexus. Regardless whether this nexus is produced by intention or as an effect of how actors pragmatically employ the humanitarian principles in practice—as illustrated by the vignette cases and the Northern Uganda case respectively—it nevertheless reflects an ongoing humanitarian mission creep (Barnett 2005 , 2011 ). This may potentially undermine the humanitarian principles and thus the humanitarian space and legitimacy so central to the conceptual and physical humanitarian practice in which humanitarian actors operate (Acuto 2014 ). In its strictest sense, humanitarian action is understood as the unconditional help to people in need, when in need. Corollary, when needy people are not offered assistance or if assistance is provided before needs arise, this nominal version is undermined. As the cases illustrate, this nominal version is being stretched both through practices emerging from the bottom and by top-driven policy initiatives: practitioners increasingly engage aspects outside of the humanitarian present, see the war-to-peace transition as a continuum, and thus decompartmentalise how various actors operate in distinct (temporal) phases of the crisis. This, however, reflects back on the seminal humanitarian scope. To return to Barnett’s quote in the beginning: ‘as humanitarians began imagining how to build peace after war, they slipped into building states’ (Barnett 2011 : 3), being not only the domain of development but also an inherently political activity taking place before needs arise. The obvious question that begs itself is whether this really matter—should principles or pragmatics prevail and guide action? Or is this conceptual and philosophical concerns merely relevant in the conference rooms and at the headquarters levels? Do the humanitarian ethics become tainted when humanitarian agencies take on practices outside its remit? Is there a hierarchy, or contradiction, between the humanitarian deontology and pragmatic approaches to save lives and protect civilians?

The cases above show different dynamics and considerations regarding these questions. The vignette cases all demonstrate the troublesome practical interface of the two distinct discourses of humanitarianism and development at the level of planning, despite actors’ own policy ambitions of enhancing the nexus. This discrepancy between policy and practice is largely due to the discursive formation of the two segments and the governing role of the humanitarian principles. However, the formative role of the humanitarian principles appears somewhat different when approached analytically bottom up. As the case from Northern Uganda shows the principles serve to anchor, not govern, practice. In response to the discursive recast of the crisis, different humanitarian organisations interpret their mandate and response differently, thus showing the principle’s context-specific malleability. The transition from humanitarian action to development aid in Northern Uganda illustrates the ambiguities of principles and pragmatics by drawing attention to important humanitarian changes and challenges that give momentum to what has been described as an ongoing humanitarian mission creep causing for a general debate about the nature and future of humanitarianism. As the case demonstrates, this mission creep is driven by interrelated factors both external and internal to the humanitarian field. Externally, the recast of the situation into one of recovery impinged on the government’s consent and donors’ funding of the humanitarian activities. Internally, realising the lingering and persistent effects of the Civil War several humanitarian organisations reoriented their support in terms of development in order to continue to assist the civilian population, thus taking a pragmatic stance favouring the civilians’ needs and not the humanitarian principles.

The case of the humanitarian changes and challenges in Northern Uganda correspond to more general observations pertaining to the evolving humanitarian mission creep, i.e. that the humanitarian–development nexus is driven not only by central policy prescriptions but also by how actors in pragmatically and in practice respond to changing and complex contexts demanding new approaches (Duffield 2007 ; Kaldor 2007 ; Terry 2002 ). In response to these changing circumstances and new conflict formations, humanitarian actors have expanded their scope beyond their seminal temporal and conceptual remit so important for the humanitarian principles and thus actors’ legitimacy. On the temporal side, it questions humanitarianism’s inherent presentist stance (Reid-Henry 2013 ; Weizman 2012 ), that is, the insistence on assisting people in need when in need. The increased humanitarian focus on prevention and reconstruction is not only commonly seen as falling within the temporal scope of development but also overlapping its thematic area of operations.

Whilst beneficiaries of international aid tend to be neglectful or unaware of the differences between humanitarianism and development aid, their distinctiveness matter for practitioners and operational activities. Increasingly these segments of the international system rub shoulders, sometimes even overlapping and challenging each other. The realms of humanitarianism and development draw on distinct rationales involving different actors with their particular mandates: humanitarianism’s imminent needs-based approaches building on the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence—together providing for the physical and conceptual ‘humanitarian space’ in which humanitarian actors operate—are as such fundamentally different from the more long-term, political, rights-based development approaches. Central here is the notion of politics. There is no novelty in stating that both humanitarian and development aid produce political effects (Yamashita 2015 ). What we see now, however, is that political intent, motives and actors increasingly become part in shaping and defining the apolitical humanitarian realm in practice.

Humanitarianism and development may appear alike to those outside their institutional boundaries. The beneficiaries of international aid are not concerned with the institutional boundaries between humanitarianism and development. But who and how aid is delivered have important bearings and effects for the beneficiaries. Yet, and nominally, humanitarianism and development are distinct sectors in many ways, involving particular rationales, actors funding mechanisms and, importantly, their relationship to both politics and the host government in the country which they operate. Humanitarian practice is based on an apolitical and impartial rationale, often bypassing the state. Development aid is explicitly political and works with and through state authorities. These organisational and institutional differences have effects, creating great philosophical disputes in the conference rooms about the nature and future of both development and humanitarianism. In practice, however, lines are a bit more blurred. The typical humanitarian practice was concerned with providing food and blankets, which has expanded into managing refugee camps, food distribution, provide clean water and offer public health care. Other recent but less typical humanitarian practices now include ‘cash transfers, protection programming, shelter, family reunification, agricultural recovery, business continuity and humanitarian advocacy’ (Slim 2015 : 13–14). Such topics overlap and replicate much of what the development sector had been alone in addressing for a long time, thus illustrating the humanitarian mission creep by moving attention from what Arendt called zoë to bios . Zoë refers to the zoological life, or the simple fact of biological life. Bios, by contrast, refers to the biographical life: ‘life that is properly formed through events such that it can be narrated as a story’ (Redfield 2005 : 340). This expansion of the humanitarian scope into new forms of relief concerned with the biographical life and societal resilience has led some critical theorists drawing on the works of Foucault and Agamben to analyse humanitarianism as a form of bio-political governance (Agamben 2005 ; Foucault 1991 ). Whilst this is a common approach to and critique of the institutional development apparatus, seeing humanitarianism as a powerful instrument and a way to govern individual bodies is thus also, indirectly, a token of changes to the humanitarian field and its nexus with development.

Availability of data and materials

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I am indebted to Hannah Dönges, Benjamin de Carvalho and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and feedback on earlier versions of this article. This research was supported by the Research Council of Norway via NUPI’s SIS Research Program (grant no. 304516), and the projects ‘Protection of Civilians: from principle to practice’ and ‘Developmentality and the anthropology of partnership’ (grant no. 262524).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Hannah Dönges and Benjamin de Carvalho for comments on a previous version. The usual caveats apply, and all remaining shortcomings are the author’s alone.

The Norwegian Research Council. The research draws on work undertaken as part of the projects ‘Developmentality and the anthropology of partnership’, ‘Protection of Civilians. From principle to practice’ and NUPI’s SIS Research program funded by the Research Council of Norway.

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Jon Harald Sande Lie is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and co-editor of the Forum for Development Studies journal. He holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Bergen (2011).

Focusing on governance, power and resistance, his research interests include development aid, humanitarianism and postcolonial state formation in Eastern Africa. His research has appeared in, amongst others, Third World Quarterly, Social Analysis, Millennium, and African Security. His monograph on ‘Developmentality: An Ethnography of the World Bank–Uganda Partnership’ was published with Berghahn Books in 2015. He currently leads the research project on “Developmentality and the anthropology of partnership”.

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Lie, J.H.S. The humanitarian-development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics. Int J Humanitarian Action 5 , 18 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41018-020-00086-0

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41018-020-00086-0

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• Development
• Humanitarian
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• Mission creep

Govt Urged to Address Humanitarian Aid Disparities in Nigeria

T he Federal Government has been urged to place greater emphasis on the humanitarian and development sectors, and devise strategies to enhance the effectiveness of aid provision within the country.

The executive director, Neem foundation, Dr. Fatima Akilu, said this during the unveiling of a research themed: "Aid Beyond Politics and According to Need: Overcoming Disparities in Humanitarian Responses in Nigeria", organised by Neem Foundation, in collaboration with ODI and Humanitarian Policy Group in Abuja.

Akilu stated that the significant disparities in aid distribution within Nigeria, particularly between the Northeast and Northwest regions, despite similar levels of displacement and economic vulnerability.

She said the event will provide information on the factors leading to disparities in aid provision both internationally and locally, and how these factors impact marginalised demographics.

"We recognize that while the landscape of aid provision in Nigeria is saturated with positive forces, certain demographics often remain marginalised and underrepresented," she said.

She said the event aimed to draw parallels between aid dynamics in Nigeria and other conflict-affected countries, such as Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine.

She emphasised the importance of aligning international and local aid efforts with the actual needs at the grassroots level, ensuring interventions are driven by evidence rather than convenience.

Akilu reiterated the Neem foundation's commitment to maintaining evidential integrity in its interventions to ensure they reflect genuine needs.

She urged stakeholders to consider the insights provided by the study and adopt more inclusive and transparent approaches to humanitarian aid allocation. By prioritizing evidence-based decision-making and local perspectives, the humanitarian community can better serve those most in need and contribute to sustainable peace and development in Nigeria.

Also speaking, the Director-General of Nigeria's National Early Warning Centre, Chris Mwangudu, emphasized the geopolitical and strategic factors that often shape humanitarian aid distribution globally.

Drawing on personal experiences, Dr. Mwangudu underscored the challenges of garnering international attention and aid for lesser-known conflict zones within Nigeria, despite urgent humanitarian needs.

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Aid groups warned humanitarian operations in gaza may collapse. in rafah, they have.

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UN groups have run out of food in Rafah and say the same could happen within days in other parts of Gaza, while a new pier built by the U.S. struggles to get aid to Palestinians under siege.

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