Humanitarian Crises | Council on Foreign Relations

Nigeria

The Lake Chad Crisis

In this episode of the Africa in Transition Podcast series John Campbell is joined by the International Crisis Group’s Nnamdi Obasi, Hans De Marie Heungoup, and EJ Hogendoorn. The group discusses the origins of Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon, as well as the current security and humanitarian crisis occurring in the Lake Chad Basin.

Podcast March 3, 2017 Africa in Transition
Nigeria

Caught in the Crossfire: What Future for Women and Children in Nigeria’s Forgotten Crisis

This is a guest post by Sherrie Russell-Brown. Sherrie is an international lawyer, who writes about issues of gender, security, international justice and humanitarian law, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She also coordinates a collaborative group of experts dedicated to promoting research and analysis on the Sahel, and, in particular, the Boko Haram insurgency. Ahead of an all-important international donor conference, on February 24, in Oslo, Norway to mobilize greater international involvement and increased funding for the humanitarian crisis in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters (DHQ) has warned the public of an alleged “new tactic” by Boko Haram. The movement is already known for using more women and girls to carry out suicide operations than any other terrorist group. However, in a statement on Friday, January 27, Director of Defense Information Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said that “female suicide bombers are now evading detection from security operatives by carrying babies on their back.” In earlier reports, he had speculated that the bombers may have only disguised their IEDs as infants. The intention in either case is the same: to enable them to pass as nursing mothers and cross a security checkpoint. Nigerian authorities who confirmed the January 13 attacks in Madagali “saw two women detonate their devices, killing themselves, two babies and four others.” Last month, the Associated Press also reported “[i]n a particularly horrific instance, a woman suicide bomber carrying a baby on her back was shot by soldiers at a checkpoint on Nov. 28. The shot detonated her explosives, killing the woman and the baby. The BBC noted that “officials” have said that the use of babies by Boko Haram, signals a dangerous “trend”. King’s College London researcher Elizabeth Pearson notes an associated trend affecting women and girls in northeast Nigeria. Reports of averted attacks indicate that the Civilian Joint Task Force and military have shot and killed more than twenty suspected female bombers in the past year. If this disturbing news of Boko Haram using babies in female suicide attacks were not enough of a wakeup call about the deepening crisis in Nigeria, Toby Lanzer, outgoing United Nations (UN) assistant secretary-general and regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, has been tirelessly raising the alarm about the grave humanitarian situation, faced, in particular, by children, in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region. Lanzer reported that in the Lake Chad region ten million people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid and that 7.1 million of them face severe food insecurity surviving on one meal a day, if that. Over five-hundred thousand children are severely and acutely malnourished and will die this year if aid does not reach them urgently. At an International Peace Institute event, Lanzer recalled a trip to Bama, Borno State, Nigeria in April 2016, a town he said was completely devoid of children aged two, three, and four. When he asked where the children were, the response was that “they had died, they had starved.” Mausi Segun at Human Rights Watch, similarly reported on the new victims of the Boko Haram conflict, starving children. Only last week, the New York Times reported that “starvation in northern Nigeria’s Borno State is so bad that a whole slice of the population—children under five—appears to have died.” There is action at the grassroots level to confront this crisis. Nigerian women this week convened a Peace Summit in Yola, Adamawa to discuss gender equality and the security situation. Many were reportedly widows, or had lost children to the Boko Haram insurgency. At the January 12, UN Security Council (UNSC) session on the Lake Chad region, the former U.S.- ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, expressed her gratitude to Fatima Askira, director of the Borno Women Development Initiative and youth programs coordinator at Search for Common Ground Nigeria, “for sharing the vital voice from the ground.” Nigeria’s representative to the UN, Ambassador Anthony Bosah, advised the UNSC that it was working hard to ensure the release of all Nigerians held captive by Boko Haram, including the Chibok schoolgirls who remained in the country’s “national consciousness” (shortly after the UNSC session members of the #BringBackOurGirls movement team including Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and Aisha Yesufu participated in a guided tour of the Sambisa General Area War Zone hosted by the Nigeria Air Force). But action requires resources, and this is a key challenge. At a high level dialogue, January 24, at the UN, titled Building Sustainable Peace for All, Joy Onyesoh, president of WILPF Nigeria put out a call to donors, that investing in peace and investing in women are critical to the transformation sought in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region. Other national measures to complement humanitarian intervention in northeastern Nigeria, include the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative and the Emergency Coordination Centre led by the Chief Humanitarian Coordinator Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija. There is growing awareness not just of the severe regional implications, but also the global consequences of Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis—Nigeria was the third largest source of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in 2016. It remains to be seen whether the use of babies by Boko Haram in female suicide attacks marks a “trend.” What is clear is that hundreds of thousands of children are suffering as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency, in many other ways. Both the Oslo pledging conference in February and the UN Security Council mission to the Lake Chad region in March, should seek to ensure the role of women in building sustainable peace. As concluded by The Fund for Peace report Confronting the Unthinkable: Suicide Bombers in Northern Nigeria which used data generated by the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Program , the Violence Against Women and Girls Observatory Platform, and The Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker. More dedicated research, funding, and support is needed to address the complexity of the issue of female and child suicide bombers. It must also be used to tackle those urgent issues less likely to make global headlines, such as the starvation of children in northeastern Nigeria, and the towns like Bama, where their faces are no longer seen.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for John Campbell February 3, 2017 Africa in Transition
Nigeria

MSF Delivering Emergency Food in Northeast Nigeria

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders (MSF) has issued a press release that it has just delivered 810 metric tons of food to Maiduguri in northeast Nigeria. The organization estimates that it will feed 26,000 families for two weeks. MSF is primarily a medical organization. But, according to its press announcement, it is now delivering food because “there are people in desperate need. Other organizations were not stepping up until now, and MSF was obliged to fill the gap.” MSF runs two large medical facilities in Maiduguri, two therapeutic feeding centers for malnourished children, and trucks in 80,000 to 100,000 liters of water every day. It estimates that Maiduguri now hosts more than one million refugees. MSF notes that the food security and health situation will worsen in March, the start of the annual “lean season” in Nigeria. A MSF medical doctor, Javed Ali, says: “There is a lethal interplay between the lean and rainy seasons. Just as people’s immunity falls as nutrients in their diet decrease, the number of infections rises. This is particularly difficult for children and can leave them very vulnerable to developing severe malnutrition with complications.” In the aftermath of sounding the alarm over Ebola in West Africa, MSF has particular credibility. The fact that it is now delivering food–not its usual focus–indicates that the humanitarian emergency in northeast Nigeria remains out of control.

Blog Post by John Campbell January 10, 2017 Africa in Transition

Venezuela

How Venezuela Got Into This Mess

[This post was co-authored with John Polga-Hecimovich*] By the end of 2017, the Venezuelan economy will likely be less than three-quarters of its 2013 size. Inflation is set to increase from 700 percent in 2016 to a hyperinflationary 1,500 percent next year. Despite the government’s best efforts to continue payments, a crippling debt default seems increasingly inevitable. The human costs of the crisis are readily apparent, with food and medicine shortages, rising infant mortality, and increasing violence. Fully three-quarters of Venezuelans polled claim to want President Nicolás Maduro out. But last week, a series of judicial decisions appear to have quashed one of the most promising routes out of the political crisis, the presidential recall referendum. This string of suspect decisions confirms the Maduro administration’s descent into blatant authoritarianism and cuts off one of the last avenues for the peaceful restoration of a democratic system. Incongruously, all of this is in a country with the richest reserves of oil in the world, where the government has long proclaimed a commitment to social progress, inequality reductions, and popular legitimation. How did Venezuela reach this crisis point, and what could turn it around? The short answer to the first question is a combination of the resource curse, populist spending, and bad policymaking. We briefly unpack these elements in this post. As for the second question of what might be done to overcome the crisis, we discuss what domestic and foreign actors could do to help the country to find a way out from the current debacle in subsequent posts here and here. An Anatomy of Chavista Power The ascendance, popularity, and consolidation of power of the late President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) was premised on twenty-first century socialism, anti-elite mobilization, and the gradual accumulation of the levers of state power by electoral means. Helped by oil prices, which surged from $10 a barrel in the late 1990s to a peak of $140 in 2008, Chávez was able to build a series of social programs, the so-called misiones sociales, to provide unprecedented services to the popular sectors. Simultaneously, Chávez moved to slowly accumulate power and eliminate checks on his socialist project: he packed the courts, gradually filled the ranks of the military with loyalists (and the ranks of political underlings with these military officials), staffed the state oil company PDVSA with supporters, and systematically dismantled independent media. By the time of his death in 2013, the Chavista state was a hybrid regime—neither a liberal democracy nor an outright dictatorship. As one of its leading critics noted, “if the ’physiology’ of the regime is doubtfully democratic, its ’anatomy’ is formally democratic.” This formal adherence to democracy provided symbolic cover that permitted other Latin American nations sympathetic to the Chavista project to work with Venezuela, despite creeping authoritarian practices such as the imprisonment of opposition leaders, and troubling economic policies such as expropriation. The “Bolivarian” project—founded on Chávez’s devotion to South American liberator Simón Bolívar—gained adherents among other left-of-center governments in the region, and institutional presence through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and even the transnational media company TeleSur. Left-leaning governments in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil worked closely with Chávez, bringing Venezuela into the Mercosur trade bloc out of a mix of ideological affinity and realist calculation that this might enable them to temper his grander plans for the region. And Chávez was masterful in using Venezuelan oil to buy enduring influence with Cuba and the seventeen Caribbean members of PetroCaribe, which enjoy preferential terms on oil purchases from PDVSA. Chávez also benefitted from a ham-handed and internally divided political opposition. The opposition has engaged in bold actions, but often at a net loss to its objective of curbing Chavismo. The short-lived coup of 2002, in particular, backfired spectacularly by providing Chávez an opportunity to question the democratic values of the opposition, while simultaneously allowing him to restructure the armed forces and remake it into a far more ideological and regime-loyal institution. Revelations that the Bush administration had prior knowledge of the coup plans also helped feed Chávez’s anti-Americanism. The oil strike of 2002-2003 likewise provided a justification to remove opponents from strategic sectors, while subsequent boycotts and demonstrations have frequently served to strengthen the regime and demonstrate its superior force. It is also vital to recognize that whatever his faults as a democrat, Chávez had electoral support that frequently exceeded half of the electorate and allowed him to repeatedly outpoll the opposition, which was tarred as excessively elitist. Beginning in 2011, Chávez’s health deteriorated, leading him to tap long-time foreign minister and (later) vice president Nicolás Maduro as his successor. After Chávez’s death from cancer, Maduro narrowly defeated Henrique Capriles of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition in the April 2013 presidential election. From Bad to Worse Maduro’s time in office has been marked by declining economic and political fortunes. The economy has been devastated by a combination of bad policies, especially currency and price controls; a monoproduct export economy dependent on an especially volatile product whose price has plummeted; and populist spending. Chávez and Maduro share the blame for the country’s bad macroeconomic policy. To deal with loss of revenue from the PDVSA strike in 2003, Chávez fixed the exchange rate between the local bolívar and the U.S. dollar, and gave the government the authority to approve or reject any purchase or sale of dollars. While this was a short-term fix, the measure also became a ticking time bomb. With a decline in dollars under government control after the fall in oil prices in 2009, black market demand skyrocketed (causing some Venezuelans to engage in the so-called raspao and other forms of arbitrage). Instead of lifting currency controls and normalizing the exchange rate, the Maduro government continues to print more money, further raising inflation. Price controls on basic goods, a constant in Venezuela since World War II, have also disincentivized domestic production. What is more, far from heeding Arturo Uslar Pietri’s famous advice that Venezuela should “sow the oil” (sembrar el petróleo), Fifth Republic governments have depended on oil proceeds more than ever to fuel their spending. This has had disastrous consequences as crude prices and production have simultaneously dropped. Oil, which expanded from 80 percent of all exports in 1999 to 95 percent today, is at just over $50 a barrel today. As a consequence of low oil prices and declining PDVSA production, the country is facing a critical shortage of foreign currency, even after a devaluation in February. A ballooning set of payments on the country’s $138 billion debt is approaching, and the government’s efforts at a bond swap have been only partially successful. The government quietly loosened price controls last week in six states, which is allowing stores in those places to import food and sell it at whatever price they please. This is a major development, insofar as queuing for food may decrease in those states, removing a key source of public discontent. However, inflation will still make most products unobtainable to the average citizen, so long-term, the political impact may not be very significant. Meanwhile, despite having borrowed some $65 billion from China since 2005, the country is reportedly running out of the ability to import goods. On the political front, the picture is no better. Clashes with protesters in 2014 left at least 40 dead, and more than 870 wounded. These tumultuous events resurrected fears that the military might once again be dragged into the type of repression against the public that scarred it deeply in the Caracazo protests of 1989. But the government also used the protests as an excuse to arrest opposition leader Leopoldo López, who was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for allegedly inciting the protests. In December 2015, the MUD won a supermajority in the National Assembly for the first time under Chavismo, and by April 2016 it had approved a recall referendum against Maduro (the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999 does not provide for presidential impeachment). Over the past two weeks, a number of developments have deepened the political crisis. The National Electoral Council (CNE) postponed December’s elections for governors and mayors, in which the PSUV seemed certain to suffer. Maduro stripped powers away from National Assembly, most notably by giving the Supreme Court (TSJ) power to approve the budget law. Most recently, as noted above, several criminal courts ruled on 20 October 2016 that signers committed fraud during the first signature collection in June, in what is clearly an unusual act. This last news is particularly disheartening for the MUD and for anyone else holding out hope for a recall referendum in 2016. It all but ensures that any referendum will only take place after 10 January 2017, which would ensure the continuity of Chavismo in office until the 2018 presidential elections, even if it removes Maduro. Pending a final decision from the TSJ, furthermore, it is likely that the referendum will be cancelled altogether, blocking a constitutional path out of crisis. In sum, Venezuela’s descent into an unprecedented political and economic crisis has accelerated. The potential impact could be significant: the continued worsening of humanitarian conditions, increasing political violence, and the likelihood of rising emigration (more than 1.8 million have fled Venezuela since 1999) are all potential consequences. In our next post, we look at the political economy of support for Maduro, and what it means for the possibility of change from within the regime. The third and final post will look at how external actors might alter the conditions that sustain the Chavista regime. *John Polga-Hecimovich is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. His research interests include comparative institutions of Latin America, especially the executive and the bureaucracy, as well as presidential instability. He has published peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and others, and conducted fieldwork in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil. His Twitter handle is @jpolga. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of or endorsement by the United States Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.

Blog Post by Matthew M. Taylor October 28, 2016 Latin America’s Moment
Nigeria

Emergency Food Aid Needed in Northeast Nigeria

A September 28, 2016, press release from Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) characterized the humanitarian emergency in northeastern Nigeria as having reached “catastrophic levels.” As Boko Haram’s territorial control continues to recede, MSF has released reports on horrific conditions in previously inaccessible areas. Included in these areas is Ngala, a refugee camp “cut off from the outside world” with eighty thousand internally displaced persons (IDPs). MSF conducted a nutritional screening in Ngala of some two thousand children under the age of five and determined that 10 percent were “suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.” In Maiduguri, the state capital of Borno and the metropolis of northeast Nigeria, MSF reports that more than half of the population of some 2.5 million is made up of IDPs. In another location an MSF screening found that one in five children were suffering from acute malnutrition: “The mortality rate is five time higher than what is considered an emergency, with the main cause being hunger.” MSF characterizes the aid response as “massively insufficient, uncoordinated, and ill-adapted to the needs of the people.” The magnitude of the crisis in northeast Nigeria would appear to be too great for any country alone to face, even Nigeria, the Giant of Africa. President Muhammadu Buhari in his United Nations General Assembly address of September 20, acknowledged the role of international agencies: “Let me seize this opportunity to once again thank all UN and other aid agencies and development partners currently deployed in North East Nigeria.” But, clearly, the international effort must be scaled up dramatically.

Blog Post by John Campbell October 5, 2016 Africa in Transition
Global

Five Questions About the Historic UN Summits on Refugees and Migrants

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. This interview is with Sarah Costa, executive director of the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC). Costa reflects on women and girls in the Syrian conflict and European migration crisis, as well as on the outcomes from the two historic summits on refugees and migrants at the United Nations General Assembly last month. The number of people displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution in 2015 was a record high at 63.5 million people—that’s one person in every 113. What are some of the unique challenges faced by displaced women and girls around the world? Women make up approximately half of the people displaced by humanitarian crises worldwide. These crises result in enormous risks to women and girls in the form of rape, assault, intimate partner violence, an increase in early marriage, and all forms of exploitation. With displacement, there’s a breakdown of traditional family and community protection systems, leading to greater violence, and there’s a breakdown in law and order, leading to impunity for perpetrators. Women often travel alone, which makes them particularly vulnerable to trafficking and to exploitation by smugglers. We’ve seen this in the Syrian crisis, as women and girls move through Europe. Among migrants and refugees, the gender inequality that women and girls face in society follows them into displacement and exacerbates these challenges. Factors like age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation can further exacerbate risks for women and girls. For example, adolescent girls are often invisible—isolated in their homes or forced into early marriages. The humanitarian community hasn’t done enough to identify them, and doesn’t understand their specific needs. This is something that the Women’s Refugee Commission cares deeply about and is trying to remedy. The situation for displaced women and girls is compounded by the lack of resources for humanitarian needs, in general, and the significant gaps in addressing the needs of women and girls in emergency responses from the beginning of crises. Focusing on the European migration crisis, how does the current EU-Turkey deal uniquely affect displaced women and girls? How can these risks be better addressed? Many of the refugees who arrived in Greece this year are women and children seeking to reunite with family members in European countries. The EU-Turkey deal has profound and distressing ramifications for these women and children, including prolonged displacement, family separation, and unacceptable hurdles to accessing legal protection. After the EU-Turkey agreement, refugees who had recently arrived in Greece were stuck, living in deplorable circumstances. When we recently traveled to Greece to assess the situation, women and girls reported feeling unsafe and were unable to access basic protection and services. Pregnant women did not have access to medical care, and families did not have diapers or milk for babies. Women were often forced to share spaces with strangers, and reported being raped at night. So many of these women suffered sexual violence and abuse en route; and yet, when they reach what should be a place of relative safety, they’re still threatened. Our primary recommendation is that the EU and Greek government do more to protect refugee women and children stuck in Greece, and provide them with the information they need to access asylum. The Greek government should work closely with humanitarian partners to ensure that refugee women and girls have access to safe gender-segregated spaces and critical reproductive health services, and that they are not detained. We also must pay close attention if women and girls are returned to Turkey to help make sure that they receive adequate protection or asylum there. Shifting attention to the recent events in New York, what do the outcomes from the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants and the U.S.-hosted High-Level Leaders’ Summit on Refugees mean for displaced women and girls around the world? They laid out plans for the adoption of two Global Compacts in 2018—one focused on refugees and one on safe, orderly, and regular migration. How should these compacts address the needs and experiences of displaced women and girls? The summits provided a good opportunity to highlight what’s going on, but we were disappointed that there were not more concrete, tangible commitments made that would make a real difference on the ground for refugees and migrants. The New York Declaration includes good points on gender equality, gender-responsive humanitarian action, gender-based violence, and the full and equal participation of women and girls in creating solutions. Now it’s absolutely critical to ensure that the compacts that are developed over the next few years for refugees and migrants include specific actions regarding the rights, protection, and empowerment of women and girls, to which states will be held accountable. We’re also trying to push for recommendations that would expand access to legal and safe livelihood opportunities that leverage women and older girls’ capacity to sustain and protect themselves and their families. The humanitarian community often views livelihoods as long-term interventions when, in fact, if women and girls do not have access to income, it puts them at great physical risk. Of the large number of women trying to make their way to Europe, how many of them are selling their bodies to pay for a ticket and passage, or selling their bodies to pay for food? We know if basic needs are not met, women are vulnerable. There is an opportunity for the compacts to address this gap in a new and meaningful way. As part of the Grand Bargain at the May 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, aid organizations and donors committed to provide more humanitarian funding to local and national responders to improve outcomes for affected people and reduce transactional costs. An additional commitment was made to provide better funding and training for local women around the world. Why is this a priority and how can the global community make it happen? The Grand Bargain is spot on. In order for the outcomes from last month’s summits to be effective, it’s critical to make funding work for women and girls. We need humanitarian programs that address the specific needs of women and girls, and we need funding to go as directly as possible to civil society organizations. There’s something like 4,000 civil society organizations responding to crises, but they receive a tiny fraction of humanitarian funding. Civil society groups can help monitor what’s going on in country, and help hold governments accountable for all the commitments that have been made. But they need financial support to do that. When there’s violence or crises, very often it’s women’s rights groups that are the first responders to issues affecting women and girls. But time and time over they do it without any funding at all. They’re playing a critical role, but the humanitarian community doesn’t acknowledge it. The Women’s Refugee Commission will monitor the overall amount of humanitarian funding that goes to civil society groups and track whether women’s rights groups receive an equitable share. This is critical for the protection of women and girls. There is a parallel effort underway—the Call to Action on Protecting Girls and Women in Emergencies—through which humanitarian actors have committed that every humanitarian response mitigate the risk of gender-based violence and provide safe and comprehensive services for those affected by it. What’s next on this front? Our challenge now is in implementation. We know a lot about preventing gender-based violence, and some of it starts with simple steps—like locks and separate latrines for women and men. Yet, across the humanitarian community, there is a continued failure to implement this basic guidance. We need to call the humanitarian providers out on that. When they set up camps, they need to put these basic procedures in place from the beginning. It’s much harder to correct them if they’re not there, and women and girls suffer in the meantime. The international community has made strong commitments to protect women and girls in emergencies, but now we have to make sure that these pledges are really carried out.

Blog Post by Jamille Bigio October 5, 2016 Women Around the World
Nigeria

Famine in Northeast Nigeria

Michelle Faul, writing for AP, reports on the horrific famine now underway in Northeast Nigeria. She quotes Doctors without Borders as characterizing the crisis as “catastrophic.” She also quotes an American midwife who runs a feeding center as saying “These are kids that basically have been hungry all their lives, and some are so far gone that they die here in the first 24 hours.” UN Assistant Secretary General Toby Lanzer reports that some quarter of a million children “are severely malnourished.” He went on to say that two million people have not been contacted because of the security shortcomings, “and we can’t assess their situation.” Nobody really knows how many are internally displaced and dying. Humanitarian and UN agencies have been sounding the alarm for months. It has been difficult for the western media to operate in northeast Nigeria because of security concerns and military discouragement. Nevertheless, it has carried the story despite these limitations. Yet the famine has attracted remarkably little popular attention in the West, certainly far less than the Chibok school girl kidnapping. There has been no equivalent of #bringbackourgirls, publicized by Michelle Obama. The kidnapping and the famine are horrific tragedies. But the first involved 276 girls while the latter would appear to involve hundreds of thousands, mostly women and children. Perhaps the famine is so huge, and so impersonal, that it is difficult for outsiders to comprehend it.

Blog Post by John Campbell September 21, 2016 Africa in Transition
Humanitarian Intervention

The Global Humanitarian Regime: Priorities and Prospects for Reform

Overview A record sixty million people are currently displaced globally, primarily as a result of violent conflicts. Displaced populations are more mobile than ever before, thanks to new transportation methods and communication technologies. These factors were unforeseen when the global humanitarian regime—which encompasses the policies and organizations that govern international humanitarian prevention efforts and responses—emerged in the wake of World War II. The rapid escalation of refugee flows in 2015, coupled with the protracted nature of today's conflicts, has strained the humanitarian regime to the breaking point, tested the reception systems of states, and called into question the protections afforded to refugees. The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a workshop to examine the challenges facing the global humanitarian regime. This report, which you can download here, summarizes the discussion's highlights. The report reflects the views of workshop participants alone; CFR takes no position on policy issues. Framing Questions for the Workshop The Current State of the Global Humanitarian Regime What are the biggest shortcomings in the global regime for assisting refugees, as demonstrated by the European crisis and other humanitarian emergencies? Is the 1951 Refugee Convention still viable or does it need to be updated? What are some potential challenges of reopening the convention? How has technology affected migration patterns? What is the current state of international coordination on global refugee issues and how adequate is this coordination? How can humanitarian actors better access and protect internally displaced persons (IDPs)? Are current mechanisms for financing humanitarian emergency response sustainable? Should the United States and the United Nations regard recent massive population movements as a blip or an ongoing trend? Strengthening the Humanitarian Regime: Priorities for Institutional Reform What reforms to the international legal regime for refugees are warranted? How can international and regional organizations enhance national capacities for processing asylum applications? Can refugees be assets to local communities and markets? If so, how can they be integrated to become self-reliant economic actors? How might humanitarian aid responses be better linked with development efforts in long-term refugee situations? Is there a way to place global humanitarian assistance on a firmer financial footing? What changes in U.S. government policies toward refugees and humanitarian aid are warranted? What can be done at the international level to improve coordination on refugee issues?

Report by International Institutions and Global Governance Program April 26, 2016 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s Forgotten Drought

This is a guest post by Gabriella Meltzer, Research Associate in Global Health for the Council on Foreign Relations Studies program. El Niño was first discovered in the 1600s when fishermen noticed that in some years, water temperatures in the Pacific became warmer than usual. Hence, according to the National Ocean Service, El Niño today refers to “large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming in sea surface temperatures across the central and east-central Equatorial Pacific.” These anomalous weather patterns vary across regions, ranging from heavy rainfall and flooding to severe drought. The El Niño of 2015-2016 has thus far proven itself to be the worst on record because of its interaction with global climate change, where higher atmospheric temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions lead to a higher frequency and greater intensity of the extreme weather events characteristic of an El Niño year. Perhaps no country has felt this more than Ethiopia, which is experiencing its worst drought in roughly half a century. The country has faced three consecutive failed rains, the most intense and recent being in June 2015 with the arrival of El Niño to its doorstep. The primary rainy season from June through September is critical to Ethiopia’s agricultural sector, which contributes 42.3 percent of the country’s GDP and employs roughly 73 percent of its labor force. Ethiopia has suffered from chronic food insecurity for over thirty years as a result of intense population growth whose overcultivation of small landholdings has put immense pressure on the soil in an already fragile environment. Yet, the drought occurring now has brought a level of devastation that, according to the United Nations, could rival the major famine in 1984 that killed upwards of 900,000 people. As of February 2016, 75 percent of harvests have been lost, one million livestock have died, and ten to fifteen million people require emergency humanitarian food assistance, with 430,000 children experiencing severe malnutrition. Between 2004 and 2012, Ethiopia’s economy grew at roughly 11 percent annually, outperforming the 7 percent annual growth required to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty by 2015. Ethiopia is frequently touted as a sub-Saharan Africa success story in development circles due to government investments in healthcare, agriculture, education, and infrastructure. Yet as of February 1, the Ethiopian government and its aid partners have announced that they need a total of $1.4 billion in 2016 to address the current drought-induced crisis, and have only received roughly one-third of this amount thus far. The World Food Programme has said that $500 million of this request is urgently needed by the end of this month to extend aid efforts through April. With the political urgency surrounding the current crisis in Syria, organizations like Save the Children have found it challenging to garner public attention and fiscal support for this equally severe humanitarian situation. Despite its efforts to present itself to the world as leading sub-Saharan Africa’s economic renaissance, Ethiopia remains desperately poor, with a human development index of merely .442 (on a scale of 1.0), ranked 174th in the world. The country only reduced poverty by one-third by the close of the MDGs, and nearly 90 percent of the entire population of 96.5 million is living in multidimensional poverty. Despite all of this, the Ethiopian government has still funded 46 percent of its humanitarian requirements. Through its flooding, record snowfalls, and droughts, El Niño has proven to be a far greater threat than any nation could have anticipated. This is particularly the case for a resource-poor country such as Ethiopia, whose communities rely on subsistence farming for survival. Ethiopia is justified in its pleas for help, and donor countries should act quickly to aid the many potential victims of famine. However, the adverse effects of climate change will continue to exact an outsized toll on countries like Ethiopia, and in addition to the rapid mobilization of resources in a time of crisis, there needs to be a forward-looking plan to help vulnerable nations build resilience.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for John Campbell March 2, 2016 Africa in Transition
Nigeria

Northern Nigeria’s Multifaceted Humanitarian Crisis

With warfare continuing between the Islamist radical movement Boko Haram and the Nigerian security forces, the resulting humanitarian crisis in northern Nigeria is deepening. The United Nations (UN) estimates that there are between two and three million internally displaced persons (IDP). How many there really are is impossible to know. A small percentage are in formal camps. The majority appear to have been taken in by kin. The security services have liberated some women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. Again, exactly how many is not known, in part because of the lack of transparency and incomplete official statistics. However, International Alert, a peace-building group, and the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), both of which are highly credible, report that there is widespread community rejection of the freed women and girls. In some cases rejection is based on fear that those liberated have been radicalized and will recruit others. Others are rejected as “Boko Haram wives,” and rape carries a strong cultural stigma. Finally, there is anecdotal evidence that is highly credible that food prices in parts of the northeast have reached famine levels. There is a United Nations estimate that there are 223,000 severely malnourished children that could die absent immediate help, according to the New York Times. Periodically, the security services announce that because they have cleared Boko Haram from certain territories, IDP’s go home. But many flee again because of renewed Boko Haram depredations. The pervasive lack of security in the northeast makes the delivery of humanitarian assistance and services by the Nigerian government and the international community highly problematic.

Blog Post by John Campbell February 17, 2016 Africa in Transition
Yemen

Fiddling in Yemen: A Messy War’s Lessons for Global Conflict Management

Coauthored with Callie Plapinger, intern in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. As the world watches Syria burn, a tiny glimmer of hope shines in Yemen. Today, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee disclosed that it will use new oversight powers to more closely monitor U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, which for nine months has been carrying out a brutal campaign against Houthi rebels that’s left thousands of civilians dead. The news comes on the heels of an announcement earlier this week by Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, that he would begin a renewed push for peace talks in Geneva next week. To be sure, near-term prospects for peace are low, given the conflicting interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran and the growing presence of both al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. Even so, the United States should welcome the UN’s latest initiative. More broadly, it should consider what Yemen teaches about the limits of backing proxy interventions—and the need to build up the UN’s multilateral conflict management capabilities. First, a little context. During the Arab Spring in Yemen, many national dialogues failed to produce meaningful results, and this lack of progress is to a large extent what gave rise to the Houthis, who took advantage of the power vacuum created by stagnating peace talks by consolidating power in the northern part of the country. Like Syria, however, Yemen has fragmented into a bloody civil war largely along the faultlines of the broader sectarian struggle engulfing much of the Middle East. Shia Houthi rebels deposed Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi earlier this year, prompting a Saudi-led coalition—backed by the United States—to intervene in March. Since then, Saudi air strikes have taken a heavy human toll, killing over 2,600 civilians. Besides civilian deaths, these air strikes have stalled the delivery of food and fuel supplies, displaced nearly two million people, and rendered a whopping twenty-one million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance. The Saudi coalition, which includes airplanes and auxiliary support from the Gulf states, the United States, and the United Kingdom, seeks to weaken the Houthi rebels’ hold on territory and, ultimately, reinstate the government of President Hadi, now exiled in Riyadh. Meanwhile, Iran is providing the Houthi rebels with military hardware, funding, and training. Although Saudi Arabia has publicly committed to a peace process under UN auspices, it has not ceased its bombing campaign. The conflict in Yemen is further complicated by the presence of AQAP and the Islamic State, both of which have seized on the power vacuum to stage a series of deadly attacks throughout the country in their endeavor to acquire territory. Most recently, AQAP, which has long been active in Yemen, gained control of the capital city of Abyan Province, as well as smaller towns in the area. In early December, the Islamic State conducted a bombing attack that killed the governor of Aden, a crucial port city, and dozens of civilians. Over the past two years, the UN has mediated a series of inconclusive peace talks. A first such effort, in late May 2014, was aborted before it even got off the ground. The following month, delegates representing the warring sides refused to meet in person, forcing UN negotiators to shuttle back and forth between separate rooms, which ultimately proved a futile exercise. In both April and May 2015, both sides neglected to adhere to a ceasefire negotiated by the UN, intended to allow for the safe delivery of humanitarian relief supplies. Meanwhile, the UN effort continues to flounder, thanks to wounds both self-inflicted and from powerful parties. Critics accuse UN mediators of undermining prospects for peace by excluding significant parties in the conflict, including southern separatists affiliated with neither the Saudi-backed government nor the Iranian-backed Houthis. But UN mediation efforts are also being stymied by the interests of outside powers. They include not only Saudi Arabia, but also its U.S. and UK backers, who view the war as part of a larger geopolitical struggle to counter Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the region. Unless they come on board and accept Houthi participation in the Yemeni government, the UN will lack the weight to shepherd, much less safeguard, a workable peace plan. Recent events in various UN fora have only reinforced this impression. In the most recent September session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Netherlands drafted a resolution calling for a UN mission to examine potential human rights and international law violations in Yemen. Saudi Arabia blocked the proposal, offering an alternative that excluded any mechanisms to evaluate human rights violations. And although the Security Council reiterates its commitment to a peaceful settlement to the conflict, it has taken no concrete action. Saudi Arabia, for its part, continues to draw international attention to Syria, likely to draw attention away from its geopolitical agenda in Yemen. Last month, the Saudi delegation introduced a draft resolution in the UN General Assembly, cosponsored by the United States, France, and other allies, seeking to formally condemn the actions of Iran and Russia in Syria. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has declined to use its position on the Security Council to moderate the conflict—essentially giving Saudi Arabia a free hand. The time for doing so is over. Investigation into the gross human rights violations in Yemen are long past due. In this regard, the Senate’s forthcoming investigation is a step in the right direction. In the meantime, the United States should back increasing calls for an impartial UN inquiry into human rights violations in Yemen. Finally, the United States must support the negotiation and implementation of a long-term peace agreement among Yemeni parties to the conflict, as well as relevant regional and global powers. Sustained political attention and economic investments will be critical to consolidating peace and stimulating recovery in one of the world’s most fragile, poor, and water-stressed countries. Any eventual agreement must be accompanied by a major pledging conference led by the World Bank and major donor governments, so that Yemen can proceed with demobilizing, disarming, and reintegrating combatants, rebuilding infrastructure, and ensuring a smooth political transition. The United States and its allies should be prepared to provide aid and resources as necessary, but in order to ensure lasting peace in the country, local political solutions should be facilitated under UN oversight, rather than reflecting the historical pattern of global powers imposing political structures in post-conflict Middle Eastern countries.

Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick December 11, 2015 The Internationalist
Syria

Syria: The Need for Diplomacy and De-escalation

Introduction Of all the factors currently tearing the Middle East apart, none is more consequential than the war in Syria. The war has left some 250,000 Syrians dead, seven million internally displaced, and three million forced to flee to neighboring states and Europe. The conflict is exacerbating an already large regional sectarian divide, as the Bashar al-Assad regime's violence against a primarily Sunni rebellion fuels the growing conflict between the region's Sunni-majority states and Shia-majority Iran. The violence also leads desperate, resentful Sunnis from across the world to support whatever groups are most willing to fight that regime, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The November 13 Paris attacks tragically demonstrated that the repercussions of the conflict are spreading well beyond the Middle East. These developments, which are destabilizing U.S. allies and posing a direct threat to the security of Americans, put a greater premium than ever on de-escalating the war. Yet the policy the United States and its partners have been pursuing for four years is not likely to achieve that goal. The strategy has consisted of gradually increasing support for a "moderate" opposition that would compel the regime and its primary sponsors to sideline the Syrian dictator and hand power over to a transitional government. Instead of forcing the regime's capitulation, however, that approach has led to a counter-escalation by the regime and its sponsors. Further military escalation is unlikely to change this dynamic, as both Iran and Russia are committed to the regime's preservation. If taken to its logical conclusion, escalation could bring about a "catastrophic success" scenario, whereby the regime's overthrow is followed by all-out war among conflicting extremist factions and more killing, refugee flows, and regional instability. There are no good policy options in Syria. But considering the dire consequences of the status quo or military escalation, the United States should support a new course that consists of using the new diplomatic process in Vienna to de-escalate the conflict on the basis of a cease-fire between the regime and the opposition; devolving power to local representatives in areas the regime does not currently control; intensifying the campaign against the Islamic State; and establishing an internal political process that would ultimately determine Assad's fate but would not make the outcome of that process a prerequisite to ending the war. Even achieving this set of goals could take many months, and would leave some problems unresolved, but it is a far more realistic approach than the current one. Why the Current Approach Will Not Work The current policy—gradually escalating the war in the hope of forcing a comprehensive political transition—is unlikely to succeed. As opposed to regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, where unpopular leaders quickly fell to opposition protests, Assad is backed not only by sizeable military forces and a considerable portion of his population but also—and perhaps most importantly—by major outside powers determined to prevent the collapse of his regime. Tehran sees its position in Syria as critical to its regional leverage and has thus supplied the regime with money, weapons, and direct military assistance, particularly through its proxies in Hezbollah. Russia is also determined to keep the regime in place. Moscow vehemently opposes the principle of regime change and worries that Assad's fall could lead to even greater chaos with no one in charge or extremists taking power. This explains why outside support for Assad's opposition, provided by the United States and others, has not accomplished its stated goals. Rather than forcing the regime to the table—essentially to negotiate its own demise—it has led only to a military stalemate that is benefiting the extreme elements of the opposition, including the Islamic State. The result has been a growing, open-ended conflict, with devastating humanitarian, strategic, and geopolitical consequences. Diplomacy and De-escalation To end the conflict in Syria, the United States should pursue a course of action consisting of the following steps: Institutionalize a diplomatic process with all parties involved. The October 30 and November 14 multilateral meetings in Vienna, for the first time including Iran and Saudi Arabia, were a useful first step. Participants agreed on basic principles, including preserving Syria's unity, independence, and territorial integrity, and on the need for a political process that would ultimately lead to a new constitution and elections. While influential countries remain deeply divided on the question of whether, how, or when to require Assad's departure, only by hammering out issues collectively and realizing the high costs of maximalist positions can the gaps be narrowed. When the Bosnia "Contact Group" was created as the war there raged in the early 1990s, the United States, Europe, and Russia were all far apart on key issues. They ultimately compromised, imposed a solution on recalcitrant local parties, and agreed on a settlement that has kept the peace in Bosnia for two decades. Initiate a bilateral U.S. back-channel process with Russia. Because no agreement on the most sensitive issues can be reached with nearly twenty participants around a table, the United States should pursue back-channel discussions with Russia at the highest levels. The objective would be a quid pro quo that assures Moscow that the Assad regime will not collapse in exchange for a cease-fire between the regime and the opposition, and joint focus on the Islamic State. If Russia continues to insist on propping up the regime and indiscriminately bombing all elements of the opposition, the United States and others will maintain their support for opposition fighters, the war will go on, and Russia will alienate the Sunni world and become a growing target for terrorists. The October 31 bombing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai and the November 24 downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey underscore the risks for Russia in the absence of a settlement. But if Moscow is willing to press for policy changes from Damascus—including support for a cease-fire, recognition of opposition autonomy in parts of the country, and a process for longer-term leadership changes—a diplomatic agreement might be possible. Pursue a cease-fire between the regime and the opposition. The goals of an agreement would include an end to both sides' offensive operations, including regime aerial attacks; devolution of power so that regions currently held by the opposition can govern themselves; the uninhibited provision of humanitarian assistance to both sides; and the adoption of a political process to determine political leaders and structures to govern an ultimately unified Syria. Given the extremely fragmented nature of the opposition, with no single authority in control and even moderate groups now fighting alongside extremists, it will be nearly impossible to prevent some violations of a cease-fire even if an agreement is reached. But if Russia and Iran were able to guarantee an end to the regime's attacks on the opposition and the provision of humanitarian aid, supporters of the opposition would be well placed to press their clients to accept a cease-fire by threatening to cut off assistance for those who refuse. The Islamic State would not be party to the cease-fire and would continue to be targeted. International peacekeepers might be required to police the agreement, but the risks of deploying them would be significantly reduced if all the external powers were committed to the deal. Defer the question of Assad. There is no doubt that Assad is a brutal dictator who deserves to face justice. The question, however, is whether the pursuit of that elusive goal is worth the costs of an unending war or the consequences of the military escalation that would be necessary to end the war. The United States and others do not have to abandon their position that Assad has lost legitimacy and that Syria will not be fully stable—or accepted by the international community—as long as he is in place. And they could condition support for a cease-fire on a political process that would determine the country's eventual political structure and leadership. But they should not allow disagreement over Assad's fate to be the obstacle to reducing the violence, if other elements of an agreement could be reached. Those countries most determined to see Assad's departure—such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey—will resist such an outcome, but a clear U.S. position and clarity that the United States will not support military escalation could help bring about their acquiescence. Many weary Syrians, and a growing number of countries, even in the Arab world, would welcome an end to the fighting even if it was not accompanied by immediate regime change in Damascus. Continue the fight against the Islamic State. Even as they pursue a diplomatic agreement to de-escalate the conflict between the opposition and the regime, the United States and its partners should intensify the war on the Islamic State. This should include efforts to empower the Sunnis of Iraq, maintenance of the coalition's bombing campaign, greater intelligence sharing in Europe, the deployment of U.S. and other special forces, and the provision of military assistance to groups willing to target the Islamic State. If the regime and the opposition forces accepted cease-fires vis-à-vis each other on the basis of the current lines of control, they and their outside backers could focus their efforts on the common enemy—the Islamic State. Better Than the Alternatives Critics will be quick to point out the difficulty in making such an approach work, especially given the deep divisions among the outside actors, the inability of anyone to speak for or control an extraordinarily fractured opposition, and the determination of many in the opposition and the region to keep up the fight as long as Assad is in place. The difficulties are indeed considerable, but the primary alternative—military escalation in the form of the provision of more sophisticated weapons to the opposition, less strict vetting procedures for the recipients of U.S. and other allied military assistance to the opposition, or even direct U.S. strikes against the forces of the Assad regime—is even less likely to work and would in many ways make things worse. Escalation would not likely lead to Assad's replacement by "moderates" but only to more killing and destruction as Russia and Iran respond with more support for the regime. It could foment the growth of the Islamic State, which would take advantage of the intensified fighting to attract new recruits. Reducing the violence on almost any terms would be better than that. Ultimately, were the United States prepared to confront Russia militarily and apply enough military power, it could eventually depose Assad, just as it was ultimately able to oust the Soviets and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya. The result, however, is not likely the establishment of a moderate, inclusive Syrian regime but a political vacuum, an even greater refugee crisis as fearful Assad supporters flee the country, a struggle for power in Damascus that extremists might win, a further breakdown of order across the country, and other unwelcome or unintended consequences that would be the responsibility of the United States. Changing the regime in Damascus is a worthy objective given the crimes Assad has committed against his own people and the widespread opposition to his rule. The costs of pursuing that goal by escalating the war in Syria, however, far outweigh the benefits, especially given the low prospects for success and the growing humanitarian, strategic, and political consequences of the conflict. A diplomatic effort to de-escalate does not guarantee peace or decent governance in Syria, but it is a far better approach than the alternatives.

Policy Innovation Memorandum by Philip H. Gordon December 7, 2015 Middle East Program
Syria

A Massive Humanitarian Failure in Syria

Coauthored with Shervin Ghaffari, intern in the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. As civil war in Syria inches toward its four-year anniversary, the nation’s humanitarian catastrophe deepens. Some 7.6 million Syrians are now internally displaced, and another 3.3 million have fled to neighboring countries to avoid the complex three-way dogfight among Assad’s forces, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and Syrian rebels. In Lebanon the influx of one million refugees is straining the capacities of a country of only 4.4 million. Today, some 12.2 million Syrians, both inside and outside Syria, rely on emergency food aid. It thus came as a shock when the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) announced on December 1 that a lack of funds was forcing it to suspend aid to help feed and clothe Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt. In fact, the WFP had been signaling for months that its program for Syria was in dire need of a cash injection from international donors. Last week, the United States donated $125 million to prop up the program until the end of the year, but it clearly wasn’t enough. The WFP stated that it needed an additional $64 million for December alone to support its system of prepaid voucher cards, which can be used at local stores to buy food and supplies. Without this lifeline, refugees will face the impending harsh winter without food, warm clothes, or heat. “This couldn’t come at a worse time," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “I urgently appeal to the international community – support WFP now. Don’t let refugees go hungry.” The cutback is projected to hit 1.7 million Syrian refugees. Many have signaled that their best option now may be a journey back to war-torn Syria. Unless funds are found quickly, Syria’s “new level of hopelessness” might rise to new heights. The suspension of WFP aid to Syrian refugees is symptomatic of broader weaknesses in the current multilateral approach to delivering emergency relief. First, because humanitarian assistance is entirely voluntary, it is vulnerable to shifting attitudes in donor nations, particularly aid fatigue. After years of war and upheaval in the broader Middle East, major international donor governments and their electorates are weary of sending money overseas, particularly given competing domestic demands. Since 2001, donor nations have devoted hundreds of billions of dollars to humanitarian relief and nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere. The appetite to continue doing so is dwindling, particularly when—as in the case of Syria—it is clear that such aid is a mere palliative, unaccompanied by either a clear political strategy for a negotiated solution or a military effort to ensure the victory of one side. As the Syrian war grinds on interminably, there is bound to be dwindling support for providing endless “emergency” relief that only addresses surface symptoms. In other words, public support for addressing the consequences of war is contingent on there being an end in sight. Second, the current financial burden of providing humanitarian relief is unevenly shared. The United States has been by far the most generous donor government, having contributed approximately $2 billion to the WFP program, about five times as much as the next biggest donor, the United Kingdom. It is past time for other major donors, both established and emerging, to play their part. Most egregiously, France and China, two of the world’s largest economies, have given less to the WFP than has Ethiopia. The $64 million shortfall that compelled WFP to suspend its program is a “drop in the bucket” for either country. As long as nations like France and China abstain from pulling their weight, other nations will feel justified sitting out. Third, the humanitarian system is experiencing unprecedented demand on its limited resources. The last time this blog reported on the Syrian refugee crisis, there were three “level-3” emergencies around the world. Today, there are officially four: Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic (CAR)—not to mention the Ebola outbreak affecting West Africa. These simultaneous calamities not only distract attention from Syria, they also divert money. Iraq’s fight against ISIS has displaced approximately 2.1 million Iraqis. The civil war in CAR has led to at least 5,000 deaths and left 2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. In South Sudan, 1.5 million people have been displaced and more than seven million are at risk of hunger and disease. The Ebola crisis, meanwhile, has claimed approximately 6,000 lives, according to recent reports. These competing crises are taxing the already strained resources of the WPF and other UN agencies. Rigid rules about how institutions can use funds only complicate matters. As Greg Barrow, spokesman for the WFP’s London office, explains, “Because many donations are allocated to specific programs and cannot be used elsewhere, there is a lack of flexibility in the system.” Although the scale of Syria’s crisis dwarfs the others, the WFP has little authority to reprogram the funds at its disposal. What can to be done to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, both in Syria and globally? The immediate priority is to provide WFP with the stopgap assistance it needs to resume its voucher program. The current suspension, which exposes already vulnerable populations to intolerable suffering, can be alleviated at modest cost. The WFP has embarked on a social media campaign in hopes of plugging the hole left by international donors, hoping that the world’s Twitter followers will mobilize action from derelict governments. The United States needs to complement this grassroots effort with high-level diplomatic muscle. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry should press France, China, and other donors to step up to the plate immediately, to ensure that Syrian refugees survive the impending winter—and that nations that are hosting them in large numbers can sustain this burden. Simultaneously, the Obama administration must redouble its efforts to bring an end to the Syrian civil war—the only sure way to end the country’s humanitarian catastrophe. The administration has sought for some time to thread the needle in Syria, hoping in vain that a robust moderate opposition would emerge that could somehow triumph over both the Assad regime and ISIS jihadists. This strategy has enjoyed little success. Indeed, the focus on ISIS’ rise has directed U.S. and international attention away from Assad’s atrocities, allowing his campaign against the rebels and the civilian population to remain unchecked. Every airstrike levels buildings, destroys lives, and diminishes any semblance of normality. Without a political solution, which seems unlikely, Syrians will continue to swell in neighboring countries. External actors have sought to soften the blow on those affected, but their efforts are waning. Finally, the United States must work with other influential nations to place the global humanitarian enterprise on a firmer institutional and financial foundation. The multilateral response to the Syrian crisis suggests that humanitarian aid has an expiration date, that current voluntary funding mechanisms are inadequate, and that the WFP and existing UN organizations are easily overwhelmed by multiple calamities. The World Humanitarian Summit, to be convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2016, will provide a valuable opportunity for the United States to demonstrate its leadership in helping reform systematic and structural flaws in the current international aid regime. More immediately, the Obama administration should push for a special session of the UN Security Council to focus global attention on the disastrous security as well as human consequences of the global humanitarian crisis.

Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick December 5, 2014 The Internationalist
Mali

Mali’s Humanitarian Crises

With so much attention to stonings, amputations, and the destruction of world heritage sites by radical Islamists in the north and the sometimes grotesque political ballet in Bamako, it is easy to lose sight of the dawning humanitarian nightmare of malnutrition, and internal displacement and refugees, all of which encourage disease. As of the present, the international community is ill-prepared to cope. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 53,000 Malians have fled to Niger and 96,000 to Mauritania. UNHCR estimates that 174,000 Malians are internally displaced. The World Food Program (WFP) has enough food to feed 60,000 Malians until the end of September. A WFP official estimates that 77,000 need food aid – other estimates are much higher. Malnutrition often combined with malaria is not new among children in the south. In 2011, before the present political crisis became so acute, a government survey found 150,000 acutely malnourished children. Medicines sans Frontiers estimates that 30,000 of them were treated by aid agencies and the government. Nobody seems to know what happened to the other 120,000. There is anecdotal evidence that the situation is much worse this year. In the north, malnutrition in the past was less prevalent because the diet was protein-rich among pastoralists: meat, milk, and tea. But, now pastoralists’ access to pasture is reduced, animals are dying, and cereal prices are high because of the pervasive drought and conflict. There are also estimates that rice production will be reduced by 20-30 percent this year. Aggravating the food and health crisis, many health workers fled and clinics closed with the coming of the Islamists. The international community must help. But, according to the UN, the World Food Program has a 36 percent budget shortfall. The shortfall for UNHCR is 66 percent. Overall, the funding shortfall for UN agencies working in Mali and the Sahel is about 58 percent. Yet, as a practical matter, it is these agencies often working closely with NGOs that are the means by which the international community responds to disaster. Governments need to open their wallets--now. Agencies need lead time to buy and stockpile food and medicine. And, for WFP at least, the food runs out in September.

Blog Post by John Campbell August 27, 2012 Africa in Transition
Humanitarian Intervention

Humanitarian Intervention

Overview Americans have spent much time in the last ten years arguing whether to intervene in places like Kosovo, Rwanda, and East Timor—and there will almost certainly be no policy consensus in future humanitarian crises of that nature, according to this report. Instead of phony consensus, this Council Policy Initiative lays out three separate arguments that would support distinct policy emphases on humanitarian intervention. The conflict in Kosovo in particular raised profound questions about when and where the United States and other international actors would use military force to curb massive abuses of human rights. It presented grave issues regarding the authority of the United Nations to make the essential decisions for or against such intervention on the territory of a member state. Accordingly, the Council examined whether it would be possible to frame a workable “doctrine” to guide policy through the range of humanitarian crises that are bound to unfold in the twenty-first century. To this end, three U.S. experts with widely divergent views on the use of military force for humanitarian aims were each asked to develop an option. Presented as memoranda that cabinet officers might offer to a U.S. president, these proposals advance: the moral imperative to intervene against large-scale assaults on innocent civilians (by Physicians for Human Rights’ Holly J. Burkhalter as secretary of state); the strategic case to refrain from intervention except in the extreme circumstance of genocide (by former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Dov S. Zakheim as secretary of defense); and the political prerequisite to balance moral and strategic claims on American power (by U.S. Army Colonel Stanley McChrystal as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). An introductory memo (by former Deputy Undersecretary of State Arnold Kanter as national security adviser) summarizes the three arguments and provides critical background and context to help the president decide which option he wishes to adopt.

Report by Alton Frye October 4, 2000