Minimum standards, food security and more

This is last mailing of the first phase of the Relief and Rehabilitation Network. The RRN team would like to thank EuronAid our funders and mentors for the past 3 years for their on-going support. In 1993, before the debates on NGO performance standards, accountability and lessons learned had reached their current prominence on the relief agenda, EuronAid, recognised the importance of information and experience sharing as a resource for NGO workers and UN/donor personnel alike. Their confidence and support over this period has enabled the RRN team to produce 4 Good Practice Reviews, 18 Network Papers and 6 Newsletters and to grow from a one and half person team to two full-time and two part-time staff. Membership has expanded to over 410 individual members based in more than 50 countries, from NGO, UN/donor organisations, the media and research/training institutions.

As regular readers will know, the RRN aims to: provide a mechanism for the exchange of experience and good practice between individuals and institutions working in emergencies around the world, and to bridge the gap between headquarters and field staff and between research and practice. The results of the February 1996 members’ questionnaire, reported on page 2 of this issue, indicate that 78% of members feel that the RRN achieved this objective. While such a verdict was warmly received, we also recognise the need to go further and to improve the RRN ‘service’ in a number of important areas.

Over the coming three years we are planning a number of initiatives to respond to your comments and concerns about the RRN and to strengthen it still further. We look forward to reporting these initiatives to our membership in the first Newsletter of 1997. The next Phase of the RRN will be supported by two significant new donors – DANIDA and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, both of which have committed funding for the RRN for the next three years. We have also had positive indications from two other funders.

Despite the well-known pressures of securing funding for the coming phase, the editorial team has not been idle. The current mailing reflects current policy trends and programming debates at headquarters and field levels.

The Newsletter focuses on two main areas. First, the debates running throughout the international relief system – donors, UN and NGOs – on the development of common performance standards, monitoring and evaluation tools and measures of accountability. Although not new on the ‘humanitarian agenda’, examples of poor performance such have been documented extensively by recent evaluations of emergency assistance to Rwanda and of Operation Lifeline Sudan. These reports have confirmed anecdotal evidence from relief workers and others about difficulties in ensuring effective relief programming, providing the critical mass needed to formulate and implement policy reform.

Peter Walker, reports on the impetus building up within the NGO community to raise standards across the board – Developing Minimum Performance Standards in Humanitarian Relief. In the UK, the consortium People in Aid has published its Statement of Principles regarding the Management and Recruitment of aid workers, a tangible response to the research report by Rebecca Macnair, published last year by the RRN.

These initiatives are welcome and signal the willingness of NGOs working in relief to put their house in order to overcome some key weaknesses. However, Nick Stockton, Director of Oxfam’s Emergency Department in his article, Rations or Rights? – Humanitarian Standards, strikes a note of caution into the standards debate. He agrees that NGOs face important challenges in setting future standards for relief practice. But, he insists that while important, addressing standards alone will not be sufficient to confront some fundamental criticisms of the aid industry. Defining a clear legal, economic and political framework will be as important to redress deteriorating living conditions for the majority of the world’s poor.

Lola Nathanail, Joanna Macrae, and Philippa Atkinson consider three very different humanitarian interventions in North Korea (Small Fish in a Deep Dark Sea: NGOs’ Response in North Korea), Sudan (Conflict, Conditionalities and the Continuum – Key issues emerging from the Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan) and Liberia (Do No Harm or Do Some Good – NGO Coordination in Liberia) respectively.

Despite the distinct political environments, causes, duration and nature of these humanitarian emergencies, all three articles highlight the limitations of relief aid in the absence of an acceptable political and legal framework within which agencies can operate. They suggest that ignoring, or failing to face up to the political context within which relief is delivered and the political impact of relief actions, aid will necessarily fail to meet the short-term basic needs of disaster-affected communities, nor will it nothing to improve their long-term prospects. Drawing on recent field visits and research, each of these articles goes on to identify ways in which the humanitarian community can and should go beyond relief to respond to complex emergencies.

Finally, we turn to food. In his article (Food Security in the Post-GATT World), Professor Alan Matthews of Trinity College, Dublin addresses the question of whether the framework created by GATT, for international trade and the establishment of the World Trade Organisation, is likely to lead to a more or less food-secure world. The theme of food security is also taken up in Network Paper 17, in a thorough treatment of CRS (Catholic Relief Services) Baltimore’s experiences of the monetisation of food aid in emergencies.

The final RRN Network Paper of the year is published in collaboration with CODEP – the conflict, development and peace group, based in the UK. In 1994, CODEP organised a workshop which sought to respond to the increasing unease within the NGO community regarding policy and programming strategies in conflict situations. That meeting resulted in extensive discussion and ideas about how the issues confronting agencies working in actual and potential conflict situations. Two years later the issues are as pressing as ever and CODEP organised a second workshop to provide NGOs from Europe and Africa to reflect on what we have learned about working in conflict, and to identify lessons learned. RRN Network Paper 18 outlines the context against which the meeting took place and reports on the key elements of the discussion during the workshop.

This issue is also available in French: Échange Humanitaire No. 6