Memorandum from CARE International UK
SUMMARY
From the perspective of CARE International,
the Comprehensive Approach (CA) needs to be understood in the
broader context of shifts in civil-military relations, peace operations,
donor aid policy related to conflict-affected developing countries.
The "War on Terror"' has introduced new dimensions to
longer-term changes in donor and military policy, which promote
"integrated approaches" across political, military and
aid strategies. Certain trends appear encouraging—at the
level of rhetoric at least, if not implementation. Thus some variants
of "Comprehensive Approach" policy discourse in the
UK and internationally appear to recognise the need for civilian-led
political and reconstruction strategies in post-conflict situations.
"Lessons identified"', if not "lessons learned",
emerging from Iraq and Afghanistan underline the ineffective and
counter-productive nature of short-termist, military-dominated
approaches to civil-military relations. For others, it is merely
a new label for the old-style ways of working.
Different military and government officials
maintain quite varied understanding of the term's definition.
For some officials, it implies a new way of operating, which respects
and supports civilian leads on tasks associated with stabilisation
and reconstruction. For others, it is merely a new label for old-style
ways of working. Fundamentally, the CA appears to remain a military-dominated
agenda; focusing on narrow and technocratic issues about departmental
territoriality and organisational culture. While coherence of
government policy is an obvious and important objective, NGOs
maintain serious concerns about potential impacts of CA implementation
for their operations, and the safety of their staff and beneficiaries.
At field level, experience of military operations in Afghanistan
suggests that international forces will continue to assert a military
pre-eminence in hostile environments in which they are conducting
combat operations. This partly reflects both the level of authority
delegated to the force commander in-theatre, and the imbalanced
spread of resources between military and civilian actors involved.
Such an approach threatens the space for NGOs or other agencies
to deliver independent, neutral and impartial humanitarian assistance.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:
— The UK Government should respect the
non-governmental and independent character of civil society and
specifically NGOs involved in humanitarian assistance in conflict-affected
contexts. For this reason, it should not seek to incorporate NGOs
into a Comprehensive Approach framework, but rather identify means
to enable appropriate and effective dialogue with NGOs on related
policy and operational issues.
— The UK Government should invest in NGO
capacities and mechanisms to enable effective and appropriate
NGO engagement in policy dialogue on issues related to the Comprehensive
Approach; trainings and exercises with the military to sensitise
them to humanitarian principles; and programmatic learning on
effective NGO approaches to civil-military interaction at field
level.
— The UK Government should ensure that
development of the Comprehensive Approach respects the distinct
mandate and priorities of the Department for International Development
(DFID); in particular in relation to humanitarian action. DFID
should be maintained as a government department represented at
cabinet-level by a Minister to ensure effective and appropriate
coordination, as opposed to subordination, between aid policy
and the other relevant line ministries.
— UK approaches to the Comprehensive Approach
are highly influenced by wider international efforts. For this
reason, DFID should invest in strengthening UN humanitarian leadership
and coordination structures, in particular UN OCHA. At present,
UN OCHA is frequently constrained by inadequate human resources
and political backing to effectively engage in coordination with
political and military actors on an equal and independent footing.
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH:
IMPLICATIONS FOR
NGOS AT
FIELD LEVEL
1. NGOs, such as CARE International, deliver
life-saving and livelihoods assistance in some of the most insecure
and conflict-affected regions of countries like Afghanistan, Somalia
and Sri Lanka. That access, often fragile and dynamic, is dependent
on the acceptance of local communities and parties to the conflict.
Respect of humanitarian principles is central to negotiating such
access. Our commitment to humanitarian principles is not inspired
by abstract theory, but rather our need to ensure the safety and
security of field staff, partners and beneficiaries. In southern
Afghanistan, for example, one of CARE's local partners was approached
by Taliban representatives and told: "Your aid is good for
the local community and may continue. However, if you or the programmes
you implement become associated with the NATO forces, then you
will make yourselves a target."[73]'
2. For the above reasons, CARE maintains
serious concerns about potential consequences of the Comprehensive
Approach for its operations, and the safety of our staff and beneficiaries.
An instrumentalist interpretation of the Comprehensive Approach
in donor government policy would threaten the space for CARE and
other aid agencies to deliver independent, neutral and impartial
humanitarian assistance.
3. At field level, experience of military
operations in Afghanistan suggest that international forces continue
to assert a military pre-eminence in hostile environments in which
they conduct combat operations. This partly reflects both the
level of authority delegated to the force commander in-theatre,
and the imbalanced spread of resources between military and civilian
actors involved. CARE played a leading role in organising recent
field research by the BAAG and ENNA networks on civil-military
relations in Afghanistan; with a particular focus on experience
in Uruzgan and Paktia.[74]
That research found that inappropriate associations between the
military and some NGOs created security risks for the wider NGO
community and local beneficiary populations. It also led to recommendations
that military forces should stop instrumentalising NGOs to deliver
on their short-term "hearts and minds"' activities;
and take greater steps to minimise risks incurred through their
interactions with civilian agencies. The research indicated that
while there has been an expansion in the civilian capacity of
NATO Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and investment in
coordination with the government and other civilian actors, considerable
challenges remain. While "civilianisation" of stabilisation
efforts may feature high in the rhetoric of policy-makers, it
was yet to translate into discernable changes for either Afghan
populations or NGOs on the ground at the time of our research.
4. The BAAG/ENNA research also assessed
the mechanisms for civil-military interactions at field level
in Afghanistan. A number of NGOs participate in the Afghanistan
"civil-military relations working-group", which is chaired
by ACBAR in Kabul. The group is attended by donors, UN, NATO ISAF
and Coalition representatives. Its objectives are to facilitate
dialogue in order to address concerns regarding "bad practice"
(eg. military CIMIC activities that impact negatively on aid programmes),
and share information of relevance to NGO safety and security.
Critical to the on-going sustainability of this working-group
is its careful demarcation as a forum for appropriate dialogue
that respects the neutrality of aid agencies. No information can
be discussed that could be perceived as alignment or intelligence-sharing
with the military. However the group suffers from two major limitations:
inconsistent participation from all sides; and failure on the
military side to follow-up and implement commitments made. In
terms of participation the group has lacked representatives from
the national contingents leading the PRTs. Additionally, ISAF
participation has normally been limited to the CIMIC unit (CJ9),
while most of the issues discussed need participation of representatives
from the other branches of ISAF (particularly planners and strategists—CJ5).
On the NGO side, many NGOs simply lack the staff capacity to engage
in such processes. In terms of concrete results, NGOs express
concerns about the limited follow-up on issues raised in the working
group. On the military side, this partly reflects the high turn
over of personnel and a lack of follow-up within the military
hierarchy.
RECOMMENDATIONS
— The UK Government should respect the
non-governmental and independent character of civil society and
specifically NGOs involved in humanitarian assistance in conflict-affected
contexts. For this reason, it should not seek to incorporate NGOs
into a Comprehensive Approach framework, but rather identify means
to enable appropriate and effective dialogue with NGOs on related
policy and operational issues.
— The UK Government should invest in NGO
capacities and mechanisms to enable effective and appropriate
NGO engagement in policy dialogue on issues related to the Comprehensive
Approach; trainings and exercises with the military to sensitise
them to humanitarian principles; and programmatic learning on
effective NGO approaches to civil-military interaction at field
level.
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH:
IMPLICATIONS FOR
UK GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS
5. Donor deliberations on aid effectiveness
have become increasingly preoccupied with "whole-of-government
approaches" to coordination between diplomatic, defence and
development efforts. In the UK, these debates have focused on
implementation of the "Comprehensive Approach" across
relevant government departments; in particular the Department
for International Development (DFID), Ministry of Defence (MoD),
and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Coherence of government
policy is an obvious and legitimate objective. For this reason,
efforts to promote the Comprehensive Approach have partly focused
on narrow and technocratic debates about departmental territoriality
and organisational culture in Whitehall. However, the Comprehensive
Approach must also be understood in the broader context of shifts
in civil-military relations and wider donor policy related to
the "War on Terror". Certain trends appear encouraging—at
the level of rhetoric at least, if not implementation. Thus some
variants of policy discourse on the Comprehensive Approach appear
to recognise the need for civilian-led political and reconstruction
strategies in post-conflict situations. "Lessons identified",
if not "lessons learned", emerging from Iraq and Afghanistan
have underlined the ineffective nature of short-termist and military-dominated
approaches to stabilisation and reconstruction efforts in such
contexts. However, for others, the Comprehensive Approach is merely
a new label for old ways of working.
6. In the UK, some commentators have suggested
that a Comprehensive Approach could imply that development and
humanitarian policy become explicitly subordinated to UK national
security or foreign policy imperatives. This has led some commentators
to suggest that DFID should end in its current form as an independent
Government department represented at Ministerial level in the
Cabinet; and that it becomes incorporated as a sub-department
within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This would represent
a hugely controversial and counter-productive direction for UK
policy and practice, reminiscent of changes in US foreign assistance
policy under the Bush administration. Under the Bush administration,
aid policy became explicitly framed within the US national security
strategy. Between 2002 and 2005, total US assistance managed by
the Department of Defence (DOD) went from 5.6% to 21.7%, while
that managed by USAID fell from 50.2% to 38.8%.[75]
This militarisation of US foreign assistance policy is widely
perceived as a significant factor in the increased targeting of
US-based NGOs by armed groups involved in conflicts around the
globe. More recently, policy discourse from the Obama administration
indicates that the US may shift towards a more nuanced approach
to coordination across development, defence and foreign policy.
7. CARE, along with other multi-mandate
NGOs operating across humanitarian, recovery and development programmes,
has widespread experience of the linkages between security and
developmental efforts on the ground. Disarmament, demobilisation
and reintegration (DDR) programmes provide one example. DDR consists
of short-term military components (disarmament and demobilisation)
and a long-term development process (reintegration). Failure to
adequately link, sequence or resource DDR has led to insecurity
(El Salvador, Guatemala, Angola), and even jeopardised peace processes
in some instances. However, CARE's experience in community-based
reintegration and rehabilitation efforts, in contexts like the
Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, suggests that effective
coordination not require integration.
RECOMMENDATION:
— CARE calls on the UK Government to ensure
that development of the Comprehensive Approach respects the specific
mandate and priorities of the Department for International Development
(DFID); in particular in relation to humanitarian action. DFID
should be maintained as a government department represented at
cabinet-level by a Minister to ensure effective and appropriate
coordination, as opposed to subordination, between aid policy
and the other relevant line ministries.
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH:
IMPLICATIONS FOR
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
8. While the Comprehensive Approach has
been primarily an intra-governmental agenda, its implications
for multilateral institutions are also evident. From CARE's perspective,
one of the most important challenges lies in strengthening the
UN's role in humanitarian coordination. The ability of humanitarian
agencies to engage in policy dialogue or coordination with military
or political actors depends on functioning humanitarian coordination
structures. For this to work, these humanitarian coordination
structures, whether UN or non-UN, must be experienced as legitimate
from the perspective of operational agencies, such as CARE. At
present, it is generally acknowledged that humanitarian leadership
and coordination remains one of the most significant challenges
in reform of the UN humanitarian system.
9. Current debates in the UN secretariat
on the role of humanitarian coordination in relation to "integration"
between political, military and aid strategies are preoccupied
by models of "structural integration" versus "coherence
and strategic partnership". At present, UN Integrated Missions
are headed by the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General
(SRSG), who will often also hold the double-hated role as Resident
Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator. This arrangement integrates
humanitarian leadership into the mission's political and military
leadership. In some instances, a deputy Deputy-SRSG role has also
been established with responsibility for humanitarian affairs,
reporting to the SRSG. Advocates of the latter approach argue
that it provides for adequate humanitarian coordination capacity,
and enables humanitarian influence on the SRSG from inside the
mission. At present, there is not one stand-alone UN Humanitarian
Coordinator (HC) deployed anywhere worldwide. UN OCHA continues
to struggle to deploy adequate capacity to the field-level to
support humanitarian coordination efforts in a timely and effective
fashion. As yet, there have been no independent evaluations to
verify whether these arrangements have led to any positive outcomes
in terms of facilitating humanitarian access. Humanitarian agencies
have frequently criticised current arrangement for [a] politicising
humanitarian coordination; and [b] resulting in inadequate capacity
for humanitarian coordination as the individual in-question is
pulled in several directions.
10. More recently, the deteriorating situation
in Afghanistan has led to the establishment of a new and semi-independent
OCHA office in that country. This development is widely perceived
as an acknowledgement that total integration of humanitarian affairs
into a political and military mission in Afghanistan was not effective
or sustainable. While this change is unlikely to make a fundamental
difference in how humanitarianism is perceived in Afghanistan
in the short-term, it should provide enhanced capacity for humanitarian
coordination. With time, this may also result in a better coordinated
humanitarian community able to deliver life-saving assistance
in a principled and professional fashion.
11. For the above reasons, CARE believes
that international reforms should recognise that effective coordination
between aid agencies and political or military actors does not
require integration. Particularly in violent contexts, the responsibility
for humanitarian coordination should remain outside of political
and military mission structures. Military and political missions
should not be given mandates or capacities, which duplicate or
undermine the remit and efficacy of an independent OCHA, which
should serve as the voice and representative of the humanitarian
community.
RECOMMENDATION:
— CARE calls on DFID to invest in strengthening
UN humanitarian leadership and coordination structures, in particular
UN OCHA. At present, UN OCHA is frequently constrained by inadequate
human resources and political backing to effectively engage in
coordination with political and military actors on an equal and
independent footing.
19 June 2009
73 Interview, 13 June 2006. Back
74
Aid and civil-military relations in Afghanistan BAAG and
ENNA Policy Briefing Paper, 2008. Back
75
United States (2006), DAC Peer Review: Main Findings and Recommendations.
OECD/DAC. 2006. http://www.oecd.org/document/27/0,2340,en_2649_201185_37829787_1_1_1_1,00.html Back
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