Humanitarian Assistance: When is it appropriate?

Questions: When is Humanitarian Relief appropriate? Who assesses the need? How? What is appropriate assistance? Summary and Critique: Risk assessment determines whether humanitarian assistance is needed or not. International organizations like the United Nations are usually the ones responsible for coordinating complex assessments through models that help anticipate, prepare, and respond to public health outbreaks. The challenges to implement these models are data selection, collection and interpretation. As localities vary largely on their causes for complex emergencies, decision makers from international agencies face increased difficulties to address humanitarian problems accordingly. Burkle defines complex emergencies as “situations in which the capacity to sustain livelihood and life are threatened primarily by political factors and; in particular, by high levels of violence.” Famine and forced immigration caused by human and not-human induced actions illustrate the complexity of dealing with slow-onset emergency situations. In these cases, internal politics -- and oftentimes international interests -- shapes the urgency and processes of relief efforts. Cuban refugees, for instance, are not only a product of national economic difficulties but also the result of conflicting ideologies and geopolitics. Burkle also points out that decision-making in humanitarian relief efforts is based on the best evidence available. Best evidence available means making decisions by differentiating the needs of the populations, the resources available, and the costs of actions. Burkle argues that surveillance and standardized assessments are needed for the provision of consistent humanitarian response. Standardized assessments, however, depicts few shortcomings. The first is its assumption that different problems can be treated by the same remedy. The second is the inflexibility of its model by frequently not offering institutional mechanisms for local communities to provide inputs to the system. And the third negative aspect is the approach of standardized assessments on solutions rather than highlighting particularities and capability to operate an unfamiliar system. Burkle states that assessment “is the first step before humanitarian intervention” and “when states are unable to respond, they are obliged to allow the intervention of humanitarian interventions.” This statement must take into account the political forces that have led to a complex emergency. Also, military intervention does not always enjoy the capacity and expertise to effectively deal with emergencies while complying with local norms. The logic of military humanitarian intervention lacks legitimacy when international political, social, and economic interests are intertwined in the foundation of complex emergencies. Gurr affirms that “the thrust of international policy should be on long-term foreign assistance, conflict resolution, and development programs that could prevent many disasters from happening in the first place.” The challenges to implement these long-term policies are “the monitoring of threats to public health, the provision and interpretation of information, and the identification of latent and low-level conflicts that have not yet attracted international media.” By this definition of humanitarian assistance and its goals, it is interesting to ponder on the assumption that humanitarian assistance quite often stems from an international perspective and that the creation of international rules would supposedly address complex local emergencies. As monitoring and interpretation of latent threats rely on local expertise, it seems that the management of emergency situations should be focused on the development of community capacity rather than palliative international standard recommendations. Also, the media logic is not quite different from the one seen on the market -- short-term maximum profits --; therefore, attempts to balance low-level conflicts and media front pages would be better applied if concentrated on securing international treaties and mutual development agreements. Gurr points out that the modern world has increased its capacity to collect and disseminate information since 1980s due to the development of technology. However, technology cannot assess all the different variables included in the information collected. Gurr, thus, suggests the application of models for risk assessment. The difficulties involving models is that it requires “testing against the empirical reality of a large number of conflict situations to ensure that they identify the potential for escalation with acceptable levels of accuracy.” This accuracy is reached by considering substantive resources to test such models, extensive data, sustained research effort, and data collection from unanticipated crises and predicted crises that did not happen. Gurr warns that the risk involved in models is that “inaccurate early warnings may be discredited in the eyes of skeptical policy-makers.” In the Fukushima nuclear leakage, the first official statement was that the situation in the power plants was under control and that a very little amount of radiation had leaked. However, the Japanese government and other international specialized agencies were under international suspicion of hiding the truth, and so criticisms rapidly emerged. Thus, the government emitted a new official statement saying that the Fukushima accident was out of control and had reached its level seven, the same as Chernobyl. This information quickly caused confusion and panic but was later corrected by a statement affirming that all protective measures were taken and radiation leakage controlled. This recent dramatic case exemplifies the limitations and challenges of working with models during risk assessments. Subjective interpretations based on experts underestimating uncertainties have led to the poor communication management of the Fukushima nuclear event. References Burkle, Frederick M., Jr., 2003. “Evidence-based Health Assessment Process in Complex Emergencies”, Chapter 3 in Emergency Relief Operations, Kevin M. Cahill (editor), Center for International Health and Cooperation and Fordham University Press. Gurr, Ted R., and Barbara Harff, 2003. “Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Risk Assessment to Action”, Chapter 1 in Emergency Relief Operations, Kevin M. Cahill (editor), Center for International Health and Cooperation and Fordham University Press.