The aid system is broken – how can we fix it?
In a recent column for this section, the writer J suggested that too many people claim, without good reason, the aid system is broken. “What do people mean when they say the system is broken?” he writes. “Most people are reacting to whatever it is about the system that frustrates them.”
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In some ways, he’s right. Saying that the system is broken can be shorthand for whatever frustrates any given aid worker on any given day. Considering how frustrating aid work is, that’s a lot of broken things. But just because people overuse the phrase does not mean that the system isn’t broken.
The aid system is the product of historical circumstances. Most of the institutions that make up the system originated in the mid-20th century, and their “business model” (for want of a better term) – “to facilitate the continued flow of resources between donors and beneficiaries” – is neatly summed up by J using a metaphor of the aid system as a container ship with a set route and set cargo.
No matter what changes you make – upgrading navigation systems, hiring crew members and so on – the ship’s purpose remains to deliver the same things to the same places. If we were being critical, we might note that the ship sometimes has problems: an inadequate crew that is unfamiliar with the seas, a schedule that gets it into harbour two weeks late, and a manifest that doesn’t have enough of the goods that are needed. This week, for example, is the sixth anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, where the humanitarian community responded valiantly under difficult conditions, but where multiple evaluations of that response found exactly these types of problems.
However, humanitarianism can’t be reduced to logistics. Our real problem is not the container ship but the system that put that ship to sea in the first place. By the time it reaches its destination the entire situation has changed, and that’s why the aid system is broken: the political and economic conditions for which it was created have changed radically.
We need to recognise that the core mission is to express humanitarian principles – no matter who is distributing the aid
The 20th century industrial model of aid distribution doesn’t fit comfortably in the networked world of the 21st century. We’ve already seen how the internet cuts out the traditional middleman – just think of the massive disruption the music industry has suffered – and companies have either changed the way they work, or else started to die out. Many private sector organisations have recognised this and changed the way they work – or else they’ve gone out of business. Unfortunately, the aid system appears to be unable to adapt quickly enough.
The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), to be held in May in Istanbul, has collected a wide range of proposals during its global consultation process, dealing with issues such as closing the finance gap in humanitarian funding and including the most vulnerable people in decision-making. Nearly all of these proposals will help improve the lives and livelihoods of those affected by disaster – if they’re implemented. However, we should not have any illusions that they’re going to fix the system, because systemic problems need systemic solutions.
J is right that we need to start by understanding what the aid system is meant to do. We need to recognise that the core mission of the aid system is no longer to facilitate the flow of resources (if it ever was) but to express humanitarian principles – no matter WHO is distributing the aid itself. What this looks like is unclear – partly because so many people are focused on the container ship.
The transformative thinker R. Buckminster Fuller once wrote: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” The WHS may do the much-needed work of improving the existing model, but some of us also need to be building a new model through trial and error, and preparing for the turbulent century to come.
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Many aid agencies may go out of business as their mandates and funding shift, or disappear completely. We shouldn’t worry too much about that, because it doesn’t matter who delivers assistance in a crisis. What matters is how they deliver it, and specifically whether they maintain the humanitarian principles – humanity, neutrality, impartiality and so on – as described in the Red Cross Code of Conduct.
In the end, the greatest risk is not that the aid system might collapse, but that whatever comes after it doesn’t share these principles. The process of drawing up a blueprint for an aid system fit for the 21st century starts with a simple question: how can we ensure that the structures and organisations that come after us embody those humanitarian principles that give meaning to our work in the first place?
Paul Currion is a consultant who has worked with a wide range of humanitarian organisations, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia and the Indian Ocean tsunami.
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