The UN as ‘first responder’: the case of the Middle East

In recent history, United Nations (UN) delays in post-crisis aid provision to populations in dire need have often been reported in and criticised by news reports, social media and civil society platforms. Against this historical context, the February 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and Syria marked an important moment for the UN and its international reputation as a primary accountable actor.

‘What is the UN waiting for?’ and ‘where is the UN?’ were the questions that populated the headlines in the Middle Eastern region after the 2023 earthquake. A quick look at the regional history of UN interventions prior to the earthquake shows how such questions were not isolated, but similar criticisms including the UN’s neglect, the withholding of aid, what has been defined as an irresponsible response, and the UN’s delayed support had been raised after conflicts in the region. Against this backdrop, does the UN consider itself a ‘first responder’? The UN’s understanding of ‘first response’ is key to placing grassroots expectations in a broader picture; last year’s earthquake was only a moment on a line of long-standing resentment towards those who have political power in the international community and who can make UN interventions more effective in the region.

So, how is the UN located in the global history of first response? Between 1943 and 1951, after the foundation of the United Nations and the St James’s Palace Declaration, bringing relief to Second World War victims was the priority. However, up until 1971, the primary funding focus was still placed on development aid. During the 1971 secession of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), there finally came greater UN involvement in emergency aid and, only then, according to historian Florian Hannig, did the UN begin to understand itself as a truly global and permanent ‘first aid’ provider and coordinator.

The earthquake as a key moment in a timeline of continual inefficiency

A look across different UN agencies suggests that each of them holds a particular mandate regarding first response after crisis and/or disaster. For instance, OCHA, UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, can deploy skilled staff that are ready to provide relief at short notice (in 12–48 hours) anywhere in the world, in response to ‘sudden-onset’ emergencies, in particular via its UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) system. As such, UNDAC officially projects itself as a first responder to emergencies deriving from disasters, such as earthquakes and floods.

Despite this, the immense earthquakes that struck northwest Syria and southeast Türkiye on 6 February 2023 challenged the idea of the UN being a first responder and even led some to speak of the ‘UN’s acknowledged failure’. During that time, several international and local media, as well as grassroots reports, questioned the political willingness and the legal capacity of the UN to enter Syria to provide relief to the disaster-affected victims, while UNDAC, as per its own mandate, is expected to be the first to attend to a disaster scene and begin rescuing people in the direst situations, such as being buried under rubble. The delay occurred despite the existence of the Syria Cross-border Humanitarian Fund (SCHF), a multi-donor Country-Based Pooled Fund established in 2014 following UN Security Resolutions 2139 and 2165, in view of the complexity of the Syria crisis and the need for alternative ways to deliver humanitarian assistance inside Syria. The SCHF was indeed utilised but with delay.

According to Raed Saleh, the head of the Syrian grassroots rescue organisation the White Helmets, after the Kahramanmaraş earthquake, the first UN convoy arrived on Thursday 9 February 2023 providing general relief rather than a bespoke earthquake response, as it should have done. Such an inappropriate and delayed response triggered the criticisms of humanitarian practitioners, as well as diaspora advocacy groups, which accused the UN of having abdicated its responsibility of being first responders in Syria, where the only way of getting cross-border aid into northwestern Syria over the last decade has been the Bab al-Hawa crossing point. Moreover, the rescue teams that arrived in the disaster-affected locations were reported not to be in coordination with the UN, but rather with the countries allied with the Syrian regime, such as Russia, Iraq, Algeria, Iran and Lebanon.

Russia and China have vetoed extensions of ad hoc agreements over the last year to allow aid into the disaster-affected area. International opinion was divided. Some have argued that, from a legal perspective, the UN could have crossed easily, given the humanitarian nature of the mission. Moreover, the available crossing point had been open in the past and was familiar to the UN, since humanitarian corridors and the UN itself had been working in government-controlled areas throughout the Syrian conflict. Others believe that the UN sanctions against Syria and the Russian veto on the renewal of the resolution to continue using the Bab al-Hawa crossing should take most of the blame for having slowed down the UN’s disaster response. In this latter perspective, the UN was powerless vis-à-vis such geopolitical impediments.

Other examples from the region

The UN’s reputation of being helpless and ineffective has also been questioned more recently, in relation to the Israeli war on Gaza, which started October 2023. In this context, too, the UN is depicted as being unable to operate in Gaza.

Arabic media outlets have often evidenced a widespread frustration about the UN implementing double standards in different political geographies, and being a neglectful provider. When the UN is mentioned, grassroots critiques generally address the whole international community rather than the single institution, since the UN is seen as a conduit of the international community’s views and actions in terms of supporting, valuing and preserving human life in the Middle East.

With a closer look at the history of the UN response to crises in the Middle East, UN delays in intervention or the evacuation of UN staff during crises are a rule rather than an exception. The UN delayed in responding during the July 2006 Israel–Lebanon war, as leading Lebanese media such as al-Akhbar consistently reported. In fact, at that time, the first UN convoy bringing relief to Lebanon arrived two weeks after the Israeli bombing began. Additionally, in 2021, a civil society briefer told the UN Security Council that Yemen received ‘“the worst international response” to a humanitarian crisis’ ever since the armed conflict started in 2014: a conflict which pushed two-thirds of the local population (nearly 13 million) to live in severe need of aid.

The hurdles that are reported by the UN as impeding it to act promptly in such contexts not only include time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, but also political actors and armed groups that seize and/or instrumentalise aid to feed their war economy, carry out attacks against aid workers, or gatekeep the lists of local beneficiaries to assistance programmes, like in the case of Yemen’s Ansarullah (Houthi) movement.

Regional responses to the UN’s inefficiency

In my extensive anthropological research on aid provision, which includes conversations with UN and international non-governmental organisation (INGO) personnel over the years, it is often a shared opinion that efforts by local organisations and initiatives generally constitute the very ‘first response’. This has become more evident than ever now with the nine-month long war on Gaza. Yet, local efforts are not as widely known as UN efforts. CARE’s Tom Bamforth, who has been working in southeast Türkiye after last year’s disaster confirmed that ‘local NGOs are usually less resourced than the largely resourced actors in disaster response’. According to Bamforth, even if we consider the heavy bureaucracy that underlies the UN’s way of working in the field, the UN could still provide stronger coordination to facilitate a quick response. Drawing, again, on the 2023 earthquake as a leading example, during the first 24 hours, international rescue teams intervened in Türkiye but not in Syria, ‘where there was a lack of shelter provision and overcrowding, and overarching assessments across the whole demography affected were not conducted after the earthquake’, argued Bamforth. Importantly, grassroots views express how such a neglect is not merely interpreted as a technical failure, but especially as a lack of moral and political acknowledgement of people’s right to lead a dignified life in the region.

As Syrian pundits discussed during a debate organised by the Syrian Center for Policy Research about the devastating earthquake, such UN failures to implement effective aid provision during and after crisis in the region are perceived as hostile political actions that represent enormous ‘flaws of the international community’ (khalal al-mujtama‘ ad-duwali, as phrased in the mentioned debate). It is this historically evident neglect, voiced across the Middle Eastern region, which needs to be properly examined in relation to the UN in its framing as a ‘first responder’.

There is great discontent generated by inappropriate or delayed UN aid provision – with the UN embodying the morals and willpower of the so-called international community. This discontent points to the need to address the legal leverage that the UN should have during crises and disasters. The removal of legal impediments could truly address these long-standing voices of denunciation across the region. Greater legal clarity should be made before we witness further waves of historically motivated indignation and discontents.

Estella Carpi is Assistant Professor of Humanitarian Studies in the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London.