Examination of Witness (Questions 500
- 506)
TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 1998
MR MIKAEL
BARFOD
500. How do you deal with complaints at
the moment?
(Mr Barfod) From the NGOs?
501. Or about the NGOs.
(Mr Barfod) About the NGOs, we audit all our partners
regularly to see their management and control mechanisms. We discuss
with them if there are any shortcomings and it is normally rectified.
Complaints from the NGOs are dealt with by a colleague of mine,
a councillor within ECHO whose job it is (he is outside the operational
units) to basically put together these complaints, to deal with
them within the framework partnership agreement we have with all
the partners. The answer is that it is dealt with internally.
I would like to examine this ombudsman idea if only I had a much
clearer idea of how it could be done, how it could be implemented
and how many people would sign up. That is very important because
if you look at the code of conduct of the NGOs they signed a couple
of years ago, it has not been signed up by everybody, and the
principles are relatively vague.
Mr Khabra
502. You mentioned two models: one is humanitarian
aid linked with the human rights issue and the other is not. Which
of the models do you recommend? Because with one there can be
many international difficulties in relationships, foreign affairs,
independence of the country itself, the differences in culture
and tradition. Which model, in your view, is the most suitable?
(Mr Barfod) In my opinion the second model reflects
reality much more than the first model, because humanitarian aid
is not provided in a vacuum; humanitarian aid is always affecting
the crisis, and humanitarian aid is affected by the crisis. If
that is your point of view then it is clear we have to move gradually
towards the more strategic approach, more goal oriented, more
peace oriented approach. The traditional model was probably good
in war situations in the last century, but in today's conflicts
we are dealing with gang war situations that are similar to the
gang wars in the Bronx where no outsider understands the rules,
only the gang members themselves understand what the rules are.
That makes it extremely difficult to hope for respect of international
humanitarian law and respect for human rights. If it is up to
me, I would like ECHO to move gradually towards the strategic
model. We still have elements of both.
Ms King
503. Just a continuation of what we are
discussing here, the link between humanitarian assistance and
long-term development goals, when I was in Burundi recently I
noticed the British Government had decided to withdraw development
assistance to concentrate efforts on humanitarian assistance,
and what that meant effectively was children were brought to feeding
centres and then sent back to areas with no clean water because
the water supplies and the money to do that came out of long-term
development assistance. You have mentioned contradictions there
already, we are obviously having difficulty in practice implementing
that. In practice how do you link up your efforts with DGVIII?
(Mr Barfod) We have set up a system of linking
relief and development. There was a communication to the Member
States two years ago, and the core of that system is that we establish,
whenever there is a crisis or a crisis looming, a task force between
ourselves and the development service and, in your case, DGVIII—including
the food aid service within DGVIII, that has a global responsibility
and not just in Africa. We also link up, if necessary, with other
services responsible for human rights. First of all, we try to
draw up what instruments we have available to deal with the crisis
as a whole. We formulate a plan, a strategy for how to use these
instruments in a strategic way so ECHO can eventually pull out
and the development services can continue their regular work.
That system has worked quite well in Liberia, in Sierra Leone,
in Guatemala, but Burundi is not one of our biggest success stories
yet. The reason why the system will never be perfect is because
it is based on inter-service task forces. It would be much better
if the Commission's structure were simpler—so instead of
five external services, including ECHO, if perhaps there were
fewer. I noted the other day the British Government has now officially
supported one foreign service within the Commission. Although
I probably should not say this, I think that makes good sense.
If you quote me on that, I do not know what will happen!
Mr Canavan: You are
always quoted when you give oral evidence like this!
Mr Khabra
504. The Committee has received evidence
on the importance of war economies trading either legally or illegally
to resource conflicts. I have two questions: firstly, what can
be done to limit the capacity of warring factions to finance the
activities through business transactions; secondly, what can be
done to ensure that the EU sanctions on Angolan diamonds are effectively
implemented?
(Mr Barfod) They are big questions I think. How
do you deal with the situation in war economies, how do you deal
with the capacity of warring factions? To some extent I have answered
the question because we feel the key here is how to integrate
human rights into humanitarian aid at an early stage; because
this will reduce the dilemmas for us at a later stage where we
have the choice between principles and providing humanitarian
aid blindly without knowing what will happen to that humanitarian
aid. In some cases in Southern Sudan we know for a fact the humanitarian
aid provided by anybody is misused. You have to set up these structures,
or attempt to control the situation or pull out. What I mentioned
before about consortia and ground rules is in fact an attempt
to deal with that issue: how to involve warring parties; how to
commit them; how to constrain them. I would answer that question
by saying: integrating human rights in our humanitarian aid process;
ground rules; a strategic framework that involves everybody on
the spot; and to make every effort to involve warring parties
without basically going native and following whatever they say,
because that can also be dangerous. There is a certain amount
of brinkmanship involved in dealing with warring parties and,
in my opinion, that is becoming very complicated in many conflicts,
because we do not understand the complexity of these conflicts
very well. Have you ever seen the organigram of the clan structure
in Somalia? There are 70 clans, the organigram is bigger than
any department within the British Government. To understand the
processes, the dynamics of this is very complicated. When it comes
to business it is clear we are extremely concerned about the negative
role that business has played in some cases: mineral concessions
in Zaire are handed out left, right and centre in the conflict
in order to purchase arms later on. We have the link between diamonds
and mercenaries in many different cases, for instance Angola and
Sierra Leone. We have the oil pipelines all over the place which
have become involved in this—in Burma and the Taliban territory
in Afghanistan; and I feel in some cases the Humanitarian Office
has been directly up against the interest of certain unscrupulous
oil companies who do not care about the consequences of what they
do. I understood in America last summer there were some movements
within the oil industry to set up an approach to discuss this
with the big oil companies—how they can control themselves
a bit more, or at least the young mavericks who are seeking profit
and nothing else. That is an extremely complicated affair. Direct
arms supplies to the warring parties, that is of course another
issue which we are not directly responsible for, but we do suffer
the consequences very often in terms of insecurity for our relief
workers and for the victims we deal with. Sanctions we do not
like because they normally have bigger consequences for the humanitarian
victims than they have for Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Milosevic.
Mr Rowe
505. What are your relations with the national
governments? Are you basically free of them once you have your
budget, or do you find yourselves having to negotiate all the
time with the UK Government or whatever?
(Mr Barfod) In general terms the UK Government
is one of the big four in the European Union in terms of bilateral
humanitarian aid—the other three being, Holland, Sweden
and Denmark. We have the humanitarian aid committee in Brussels
where our plans are approved about once a month, where information
is exchanged. We would like to improve the structure there to
make them a little more policy oriented and a little less detailed
information about how many blankets go to this region or the other.
I think eventually the discussion will be more interesting in
that forum. Meanwhile we have very close relations with DFID.
I am in regular contact with Roger Clarke and Mukash Kapila. We
go on missions together regularly. Since there are only UK citizens
present here today I think I can say the UK is definitely one
of our strongest partners within the Union when it comes to humanitarian
aid, without any doubt, both operationally and when it comes to
policy matters, not least the latter.
Mr Canavan
506. During the recent crisis in Sierra
Leone the British Government Department for International Development
suspended the delivery of humanitarian aid but ECHO did not. What
was the reason for this difference? Why did ECHO believe it was
necessary and possible to continue to provide humanitarian assistance
to Sierra Leone?
(Mr Barfod) In Sierra Leone we believe the humanitarian
needs persisted after the coup. We were already mobilised before
the coup. We also thought it would be insecure for our expatriate
staff to stay, in many ways. Apart from ICLC, the NGOs pulled
out their international staff for security reasons. We decided
to continue and the basic services were provided in the health
centre and emergency and agricultural implements, and some sanitation
projects as well. We felt the population in the areas in which
we were dealing (and I have seen myself, not long ago, in Kenema
in eastern Sierra Leone) knew how important we were. ECHO provides
the backbone of some of the health services and agricultural implements
in that region. Had we pulled out it would have had dire consequences
for the population. I do not think in this case our aid prolonged
the war; at least I cannot demonstrate clearly that it prolonged
the war. The UK Government recently has had a slightly different
angle on Sierra Leone because it has emphasised much more capacity
building and demobilisation and the rehabilitation and reconstruction
of Sierra Leone. Our view has been slightly different. We feel
the security situation in Sierra Leone (we were there in July,
the UK, myself and representatives of the US, Swedish and Dutch
governments) is still very, very grave, and you cannot start to
think about a normal development process before the security situation
is sorted out. Demobilisation as well seems to be quite tricky
under the circumstances. Unfortunately, it seems to me, the security
situation has become worse rather than better since I was there
in July. I do not know if that answers the question.
Mr Canavan: Thank
you very much, Mr Barfod. Apologies for keeping you longer than
we had anticipated. Thank you for coming and giving evidence to
our Committee.
|
