CHAPTER 1
In the line of fire: development in conflict
Stephen Commins
The blurred continuum
International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other humanitarian agencies have traditionally assumed a dichotomy between relief and development work. Sometimes, this dichotomy has been reinforced by the way in which bilateral donor bureaucracies allocate funds for programmes and projects. Occasionally, as Jonathan Goodhand and Peter Chamberlain illustrate in their paper on NGOs in Afghanistan, reprinted in this volume, donors have even refused to support projects in what are deemed as relief areas if the programmes are 'too developmental'. Over the past decade, there has been a move towards establishing clear links, both conceptual and operational, between initial relief operations and longer-term development goals. Indeed, there is now a common language to describe 'the continuum' between relief and development work. This has proved helpful in contexts of food-insecurity and drought, but changes in the nature of emergencies demanding a humanitarian response now require the recognition that both the old dichotomy and the new continuum may obscure more than they clarify. The difference between relief and development has been substantially blurred in situations of long-term political emergencies related to civil conflict. What is now apparent is that some forms of gap-filling development work to provide stabilising mechanisms can be done, and are indeed necessary, in situations of conflict.
A changed environment: new skills and challenges
Operations in conflict-related emergencies require different skills and time-frames, and a recognition that local communities have their own resources and priorities, and are not helpless victims, even in situations of brutality and suffering. The experiences of NGOs operating in such situations can provide a valuable base for helping other agencies to identify development potential within conflict, to review their priorities and capacity for work in different settings, and to present policy challenges to governments and donors. Without an understanding of the ways in which development can and does occur on the midst of conflicts, NGOs will miss opportunities to strengthen local communities. Further, without a political and/or a human-rights perspective on conflicts, NGOs may either unintentionally strengthen warring groups, or serve as political cover for the lack of action by donor governments.
NGOs have begun to move, however uncertainly, towards a wider understanding of development, which is not limited to economic indicators. They have come to recognise that there are questions of social relations, production relations, gender, and the management of human capacity and natural resources that need to be considered. In order to achieve lasting and real changes, they need to understand development as a more inclusive concept that cannot be contained in the old linear continuum of 'relief-to-rehabilitation-to-development'. The new concepts do not view development as depending on the end of armed hostilities, because they include relations and capacities that require attention even during conflicts — as can be seen from the experiences of agencies in places as diverse as Sudan and El Salvador.
Reflections for fresh insights
This Reader is a collection of papers from previous issues of Development in Practice, offering a range of perspectives on the challenges that confront NGOs in situations of conflict. The designation 'NGO' is often over-inclusive (one colleague described 'NGO' as equivalent to calling a table 'not water'); but, for the purposes of this essay, it includes local, national, and international NGOs, with an emphasis on the roles of the latter in the context of conflict. The relationship between international NGOs and local organisations is often complex, as is clear from several of the papers in this Reader. Learning from these experiences is not a matter of finding answers to simple or linear questions; rather the papers can help practitioners to recognise their own perspectives and assumptions about working in conflict, the importance of providing policy input to governments and humanitarian agencies, the need to review the priorities of their own organisations, and questions related to operational practice.
If the experiences from the mid-1970s onwards are inadequately understood, NGOs will miss opportunities to improve their effectiveness while operating in the line of fire; their goals may be at odds with community perceptions; and, as observers such as Mary B. Anderson and John Prendergast have pointed out, they may worsen rather than alleviate the conflict. The provision of food and other resources, the hiring of armed guards, agreements with particular political factions, or the selection of specific regions in which to concentrate can all have an influence on contending factions and even on the eventual outcome of the conflict. In a world where situations of long-term conflict are on the increase, these papers offer insights that will be a valuable resource for practitioners.
Complex humanitarian emergencies and 'the new reality'
The end of the Cold War in 1989 has been seen as creating the conditions for increased civil strife and internal wars. There is a danger in implying that 1989 was the date on which complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs) came into being. Instead, it may be that the removal of super-power restraints on client states has also been accompanied by growing awareness of the spread of such emergencies. These are characterised by the breakdown of political, economic, and social orders, and by the targeting of civilian populations for violence. The cruel realities of today's CHEs can be found in the earlier civil wars in which NGOs gained important experience in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, there were many significant and brutal emergencies before 1989 (in places such as Afghanistan, Mozambique, Cambodia, and El Salvador), but these were overshadowed by the Cold War, and many were somewhat muted by the actions of various external actors. They share with more recent crises the character of being political, rather than natural, emergencies. And as such they are important sources of information and experience that can provide guidance for practitioners today.
The Cold War was a time of vicious, proxy wars. While the patrons have been removed, the arms and sources of conflict have not. The growth of CHEs is documented in the increased numbers of refugees since 1990, the growing numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the higher proportion of official development assistance (ODA) now spent on emergency relief. One result of the recognition of the realities of working in long-term CHEs is a rethinking of the role of NGOs in these conflicts. The harsh lessons from experiences such as Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia point to the need for NGOs to give serious attention to how they operate in such contexts. Increased recognition of the difficulties of working in situations of armed conflict should not detract from lessons that have been learned in the past two decades. Because of the decline of security issues related to the Cold War, greater attention has been paid to other kinds of conflict. In particular, the unravelling of a number of states in Africa has created the impression for some that the work of NGOs in situations of conflict is fairly new. However, this is far from the case, as can be seen when reviewing the range of NGO experiences in several long-term conflicts around the world before 1989.
Although there has been a tragic increase in the overall number of CHEs involving warfare and violence, over the past several decades many NGOs have gained significant experience of working in the line of fire. As the papers on Sudan and El Salvador in this volume point out, NGOs (local and international) which have worked with local communities in times of conflict have learned valuable lessons. Other places in which long-term development work has been done in the context of conflict include Ethiopia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. In this Reader, the paper by Alison Joyner on work in Sudan provides insights into the task of incorporating development goals into long-term work with refugee populations. As she notes, it is 'too late to wait until after the emergency'. In this case, the introduction of a flexible system for educating teachers offers an approach for human development that is not contingent upon investing in buildings that might not survive the war. Joyner notes that, even in prolonged conflicts, depending on the nature of the warfare, societies will continue to 'develop' through crisis periods. If NGOs can also be flexible and mobile in their efforts, then improved education and training becomes an investment in people which can survive physical destruction. This is echoed by Francisco Alvarez Solís and Pauline Martin, writing about El Salvador, who conclude that 'a wealth of experience has been accumulated in humanitarian assistance, non-formal education and community-based health, economic and social development, particularly in areas and communities most severely affected by war'. The very difficulties inherent in assessing the impact of assistance in unstable environments point to the importance of enhancing local capacities in this area.
Building on local institutional capacities and local learning
As noted earlier, the relationship between international NGOs and local organisations is complex in ways that require attention and astute responses. NGOs experience tensions over the use of funds and programme priorities, as well as the problem of sub-contracting. International NGOs, in particular in emergency-relief situations, often operate as implicit or explicit sub-contractors for multilateral and bilateral donors. When they begin to work with local NGOs or grassroots organisations, there is a danger that, due to pressures of time and the larger operational structure within which they must function, the relationship will be established on a contractual basis for reasons of expediency. A further risk is that the pressure to 'go operational' will reduce the ability of international NGOs to assess their potential counterparts. Yet the task of assessing the legitimacy and accountability of different local organisations raises important issues that require careful analysis.
In civil conflicts, there are often new roles for local NGOs and grassroots organisations that stretch them in their operations and skills. Local organisations such as labour unions, churches, peasant cooperatives, and women's groups may move into different aspects of relief and rehabilitation work, out of necessity. This transition can cause difficulties when conflicts die down or cease, as Goodhand and Chamberlain, as well as Alvarez Solís and Martin, point out. New roles, new tasks, and even new structures emerge from conflict and must then adapt when conflict diminishes. In the Salvadorean civil war, many local groups emerged to defend community resources and provide for survival; and it was indeed in response to violence that new forms of social organisation evolved. This is also a reminder to international NGOs that they should be seeking locally generated forms of organisation to act as their partners and as the lead agencies in the community, rather than seeking to generate their own structures or projects. Assessing the realities in Central America, Alvarez Solís and Martin point out that 'many of the 1980s generation of NGOs are essentially the institutional expression of sectors of the urban and rural poor who organised to defend themselves from violence and oppression'. Given the enormous differences in country or regional contexts, the capacity or legitimacy of local NGOs cannot be taken for granted and requires astute on-the-ground assessment by those agencies which would support them.
Work in El Salvador, Cambodia, Sudan, and other countries has provided NGOs with lessons about, among other things, how development for survival occurs in the midst of conflict. The line between 'relief' and 'development' disappears, especially when one recognises that local populations have lives and histories that pre-date the presence of external agencies (as James Scott and Robert Chambers have emphasised). The challenge for NGOs is to understand the geographic spread and impact of contemporary conflicts, as well as the long historical time-frame. This comes though clearly in Goodhand and Chamberlain's paper on Afghanistan, where NGOs are forced to recognise that their work is occurring in situations of complexity and multi-layered realities. Similarly, the paper by Chris Roche offers insights into operating in turbulence and shows the possibility of finding stabilising points which do not resolve the conflict, yet may provide a foundation or base for future development.
As NGOs learn from their experiences in CHEs, they have to confront questions about their wider roles and responsibilities, especially in relation to the victims of violence. There has been an accepted distance between NGOs and other humanitarian agencies in relation to the politics of warfare and civil conflicts. This has begun to change, as NGOs' conduct in complex emergencies comes under closer scrutiny. The increased presence of NGOs in contexts of long-term conflict has created greater questions about the impact and role of any humanitarian agencies in such situations. Serious questions about their impact have been raised by commentators who have challenged NGOs to consider the real nature of their roles in multi-mandate operations. (The annotated bibliography in this volume contains examples.)
Lost neutrality and other complications
Mary B. Anderson has shown that there are many ways in which NGOs can exacerbate conflict. Frequently, the introduction of external resources has been interpreted as either favouring one side against another, or providing invaluable material that enhances the power of factional leaders. When NGOs hire guards or negotiate agreements with particular leaders, they move from a neutral role to one which may influence the outcome of the conflict. Anderson's concerns are echoed here by Alvarez Solís and Martin, who comment that the contribution of NGOs in El Salvador was not entirely positive, as they also brought competition, duplication, poor planning, lack of coordination, and generally weak evaluation of their work. They also point to the difficulties that arise from competition between NGOs for funding, and the tensions between NGOs and popular organisations. A problem which afflicts many NGOs, and not only in situations of conflict, is the increasing reliance on packaging and selling projects to donors.
These types of criticism are welcome and necessary, because during the 1980s there was a tendency to generalise about the attributes of NGOs, without a concomitant willingness to ask hard questions about the quality of their work. NGOs are under growing scrutiny regarding their legitimacy, accountability, and effectiveness. There is a need to evaluate their impact and determine how accountability to local populations can be balanced with the requirements of different donors to NGO programmes. And accountability is also required when NGOs respond to hard political questions arising from conflict.
The organisation African Rights has produced trenchant criticisms of the shortcomings of international agencies in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. Its Discussion Paper Humanitarianism Unbound? questions the role of humanitarian agencies and asks whether there is a new imperialism and arrogance among those who call for military action or 'humanitarian intervention' as a quick fix to complex emergencies. A question that emerges from this critique and from the wider literature is whether humanitarianism is unbound or has unravelled. Have NGOs called for intervention through arrogance, or rather as a result of their uncertainty about what to do in situations of conflict?
