 fel amser o gael i gael ei gwelwch ar gweithio'n rheswm ac yn mynd i gael y grediol. Yn cyfle gyda'n gweithio, bod efallai bodwn eu celfaidbain o blaenau, a'r hunu ffordd ychwanegol yn gweithio'n gydych chi'n mynd i noasu. Felly, mae'n fywdd y cael ei wneud gweithio, fel Michael yn erbyn'r gweithio, yn ffwrdd amdain i gyfle yw'r gweithio ac yn fwyro bod yn de mwybod yn ei gweithio, ein bod yna gweithio yng nghymru yn y cwm hefyd ydyn ni, is on the 13th of April and this is a live chat session and it's more aimed at the application side of thing, the processing side of things, so if you have any queries or questions relating more to that side of things then I would encourage you to come along to that session. We will be emailing all this information out to you in the kind of coming weeks so just keep an eye on your inbox and please do join us for that session if you'd like to. We are also recording the session today as well so we will also share this with you so you can come back, rewatch it if you would like to, but without further ado I'll pass you over to Michael and hope you enjoy the session. Thank you Rachel. Hi and welcome everyone. I'm Mike Jennings from the Department of Development Studies as I'm sure you know one of the global top five departments for the study of global development and humanitarianism. So what I'm going to do this afternoon is just give a short taster lecture, an example of how we discuss issues and topics in our programmes. In fact about an hour ago I just finished my lecture on this very same topic so it really is taken from the things that we are talking about as part of our teaching part of our modules. I'll try and speak for around 30, 35 minutes and then leave time for questions at the end so if you do have a question you know please do ask it. So what I'm going to talk about is excuse me humanitarian aid so the support that is given to people in the time of crisis in order to address suffering and need and of course when we're confronted with suffering it's a natural instinct I think for to want to respond in any way that we can and doing nothing so simply turning a blind eye or not responding is seen by many as morally unacceptable. When he was asked about the response to the Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s, Bob Geldoff, a celebrity who's increasingly now associated with campaigns to end poverty and food hunger, argued that even if just one life was saved as a result of that intervention it was worth it. And of course we're seeing these kind of feelings across much of Europe right now in the response to the war against Ukraine and we can see this outpouring, this desire to help you know people offering homes, people cooking meals for those in need offering health support and healthcare and so on, drivers who are setting off across the continent to deliver supplies. But we're also likely I imagine to increasingly start seeing people who don't, who may have good intentions, who may want to help but don't necessarily have anything they can specifically offer in relation to the needs that are being there turning up. Or organisations going without thinking about what it is that they can do rather than an organisation that is perhaps already there. In fact I saw a lovely quote yesterday about the fears that this will be the latest crisis where we start to see humanitarian actors going largely to be able to plant their flag, their flag first before others can get there and then show the world that they are responding and that they care. And of course in this session I'm going to be talking about the specifics of the humanitarian crisis where the humanitarian sector have specific legal and other responsibilities to act in particular ways where the response has to be undertaken within a particular set of guiding principles for it to be considered humanitarian action. But responding to these kinds of crises is of course very difficult. How can humanitarian actors ensure that they're given access by the differing sides during a conflict? How can they ensure that the aid and the support and the supplies that they're delivering and providing is only used to help those most in need rather than as a means to perpetuate or perhaps even take advantage during that conflict? Of course how can humanitarian workers themselves be protected from violence? And these are all questions that are asked quite frequently. I want to ask perhaps a slightly different question, one that is less frequently asked but is just as important. Whether humanitarian organisations are sometimes actively causing harm by intervening in the way that they do. So to respond to the point raised by Bob Geldoff, if one life was saved but at the cost of many lives what then do we think about the level of justification of a kind of intervention? So let me be really clear what I'm not doing in this taste of lecture, what I'm not saying is that humanitarian responses, humanitarian interventions and the humanitarian sector is bad or that it inevitably invariably causes harm or that it should never take place, that we should stand back. What I am trying to do is to challenge assumptions, to challenge a belief that is perhaps not necessarily based on evidence that it's always better to do something rather than to do nothing and that the harm that occurs within the humanitarian crisis zone is always the result of external factors or factors relating to that crisis but not related to the humanitarian response itself. So excuse me, because getting access to people in the midst of a crisis and a conflict in particular is so difficult, a set of core humanitarian principles has emerged over the past century and a half to ensure that humanitarian actors can gain access to those requiring assistance and can do so without being blocked or attacked and so on. And these principles are the mechanism through which humanitarian actors are defined. So actors that adhere to these principles are humanitarian actors. If they don't adhere to these principles even if they're working to provide relief and support during a crisis they are not part of the humanitarian sector. And there are four key principles or four core principles. The first is humanity, so the idea that human suffering must be addressed no matter where it's found, anyone requiring assistance regardless of any other factor must be given it no matter what they've done, no matter who they are, no matter what they think. And that this must be done in ways that respect and acknowledge human dignity. The second core principle is impartiality. So this is the idea that age should be given purely on the basis of need with no distinction to what side an individual might be on, to their gender, to religious belief, class, political opinion and so on. It is purely based upon need and those who require the most urgent need are those who are living in the most urgent suffering. And the third principle is neutrality. Humanitarian actors cannot take sides or be perceived as taking sides and nor can their aid support one side or another. And finally, humanitarian actors must adhere to the principle of independence, in other words they must operate autonomously and separately from political, economic, military or other actors. And the first thing to acknowledge is that on the first site these principles seem obvious and they seem fair and I'm not necessarily challenging that. But they're also not necessarily the easiest principles or adhering to them is not necessarily as easy in practice as it might sound just from their basic definitions. You know, for example, impartiality. The Red Cross has already apologised for refusing to speak out about their knowledge of what was going on in the German concentration camps during the Second World War. They've acknowledged that their attempt to remain impartial in order to keep access to be able to go to these camps and provide support was the wrong decision to take. But in other crises, both Red Cross and Mensaul Frontier and other actors have been criticised for failing to speak out. For example, during the Rwandan genocide, both of those organisations presented it as a conflict between two sides rather than a genocidal campaign being run by the government, which was both instigator and director of the violence. MSF are more willing to speak out and indeed were established precisely because they wanted to be able to speak out where they noted egregious human rights abuses. But of course, the decision as to when it is possible, when it is advisable to speak out is difficult. But despite the practical issues, perhaps sometimes the ethical issues of adhering to these values being difficult, being challenging, they are seen as being essential to gaining access to building trust with all sides and therefore being allowed by all sides to gain access to people in need. It's critical or it's seen as critical for enabling humanitarian agencies to operate in those conflict zones. As neutral actors who are favouring no one, who are undermining no particular side, combatants have few acceptable reasons for denying them entry to meet those most in need. And of course, it can help protect the humanitarian workers themselves from attacks as they are not supposed to be seen as belonging to any particular side, so they are not considered to be legitimate targets for violent attacks. They're providing care for all regardless of what particular side those particular communities and individuals might fall upon. But I think there are ways in which we can see humanitarian actors, even where they're trying to adhere to these principles and their interventions can sometimes cause harm. And the question arises as to whether in these instances they should have been doing something either radically different, they should have not been there at all, or some other option. And I'm going to run through a few examples to explain what I mean. So, for many people of my generation, the response to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s was a moment of global political awakening. So, it was inspired by a series of news reports by the journalist Michael Burke and the cameraman, Mohammed Amin, who depicted people, particularly children, in the midst of anguish starvation, dying from lack of food. And the impact of what was being described led to a global outpouring of support and the influx of humanitarian actors. The live aid concerts raised at the time $127 million, which is about $400 million in today's terms, almost half a billion dollars, which was immense that one of the one of the biggest sums ever raised from a single event to that date. And humanitarian actors, NGOs, and other organisations flooded into the country to provide food relief for those in distress. The problem was that this was not a famine that was caused by food shortage, as was the impression given both by the news reports and by the campaigns that were being run by these humanitarian organisations. It was a famine that had been caused deliberately by the government in the midst of war. It was using famine as a weapon of war in order to undermine the rebellious areas in northern Ethiopia, in Tigray and in Eritrea, which was then part of the Ethiopian state. And indeed, if anyone's interested, there are a considerable number of parallels between what was going on in the mid-1980s and what's going on right now in Ethiopia, including the ways in which famine, starvation, food shortages, and food aid have become weaponised as part of that conflict. And the problem was that aid agencies were bringing in vast amounts of food aid in order to bring it to those people who are most in need. But because it was being brought into the country, it became a resource that could be manipulated and used. And we know that the government was able to divert some of that food, some of those food supplies to its military. It also meant that it didn't have to spend so much of its own money on providing food aid to its own citizens and to its military and could divert that spending to military spending, to buying weapons in order to continue to prosecute the war. And perhaps most egregiously, the government, the humanitarian organisations that were there, the NGOs, provided support for a government-implemented resettlement policy. The government said this was about moving people from the drought-ridden lands to more productive areas and therefore enabling them to become more resilient and to be better fed and to meet their development needs. But actually, it was a quite transparent government war policy to denude the areas of the north of supporters for the rebel TPLF and thereby undermine support or undermine the capacity of the rebel fighters to carry on with the war. At least 300,000 people died as a result of that resettlement policy, which wouldn't have been possible without the complicity, without the engagement of humanitarian organisations who provided the food aid that allowed it to take place. So this leads to two questions. Firstly, were the humanitarian actor, or this leads to a question, were the humanitarian actors actually aware of what was going on? And if they weren't, if this was kind of an unwitting complicity, then shouldn't they have been aware of what's going on? Being neutral is surely more than just a passive act of not taking sides. Surely it requires an in-depth of analysis and understanding of what is exactly going on, what has created that crisis, in order that you can respond in particular ways and act in particular ways and shape your interventions in ways that are truly neutral, not just neutral on paper. And if NGOs were aware, and we know that many were aware from looking at their internal papers and their internal debates that were going on about how they respond, was it ethical of them to present the famine in the ways that they did as a classic famine caused by failing crop harvests, food shortages and an absence of enough food and markets? And how could they justify participating in a resettlement campaign that was nakedly political, that was nakedly, very clearly linked to the war effort? And of course these issues are not something related to history. We can see this very clearly in operations that go on in the midst of conflicts. Because the challenge for humanitarian action is that bringing any resource into a country, into a conflict rather, makes that resource part of the crisis economy. And these resources can sustain crises by allowing sides to keep fighting. They can create new conflicts by becoming themselves a source, a site of conflict over who gets to control that particular resource. In Somalia, for example, in the early 1990s, the food aid that was brought in by the charities, the humanitarian actors, was distributed by the warlords who were establishing control over Somali society. The humanitarian organisations argued that this was the only realistic way of getting food aid to those most in need and perhaps they were right. But others have argued that what it served to do was reinforce the power of the warlords and in doing so perpetuate the conflict for a long time that caused far more immense suffering to a far greater number of people. And Syria has presented one of the most complex of emergencies, one of the most complex of and challenging of environments in which to work. And here too, we can see how food aid has been used as a weapon of war, how the attempts to remain neutral are undermined by the fact that food becomes a resource to be used and exploited by all sides. Food aid in the government held areas was required to be channeled through government approved organisations, which allowed the Syrian government to be able to claim that it was meeting its obligations of being a state, that it was looking after the needs of its people. It also meant that it needed to spend less of its own resources on purchasing and securing food supplies and could divert more to the military effort. The government caused obstacles, restricted access to rebel held areas for the very obvious reason that it meant that those people who were living in the rebel held areas increasingly opposed the authorities in those areas because they were starving and they couldn't get access to supplies and they blamed the authorities rather than the Syrian government who was the cause of those obstacles. And supplies were diverted from civilian to military use by all sides. The Islamic State, for example, insisted that it supervised a large proportion of any food supplies that were being handed out and that at least a third of them had to be handed out in boxes that were marked or branded with the Islamic State logo, giving the impression that this was their supplies. They were the ones who were providing food aid to people living in the territories that they concerned, that they controlled. So there is this real question, I think, to be asked about the balance between the potential for unintended harm caused by humanitarian operations against the assistance that they can provide. It's not an easy balance. It'll be very difficult to judge, but it's a question, nevertheless, that needs to be asked. And I think there is a question about whether humanitarian organisations are actually asking it sufficiently robustly and transparently. There are other problems too with the way humanitarian organisations operate and in particular a question as to whether they are operating for the interests of those most in need or perhaps for the interests of themselves as organisations and for fundraising. In July 1994, the Rwandan patriotic front, the RPF, defeated and overthrew the genocidal government of Rwanda. And as the RPF swept towards Kigali, the government or the now fleeing government called upon the remaining Hutu in the country to leave saying that if they didn't, the new government would seek reprisals, would seek vengeance for the genocide that had occurred. And around 2 million people left the country within a very short space of time. In one particular area in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Goma, around 850,000 people arrived in the space of two, three days. And it was one of the largest emergencies of time. Up to 200 organisations turned up to provide support to set up health centres, tents, provide food and so on. And around £1.5 billion was spent over the course of the year just on this operation alone. And of course it received huge interest from the media, led to campaigns by humanitarian organisations asking for donations. And this is where I think it becomes ethically incredibly problematic. Those organisations drew a direct link between the experience of people who had just gone through a genocide and were now fleeing a government and living in vulnerability and in very poor circumstances in these refugee camps in Goma. But the problem was it wasn't the people who had just been through genocide who had fled. The camps were filled with people who, many of whom perhaps not all, had been complicit in the genocide. And in amongst those civilians were also the Hutu militia that had carried out and directed the genocide. So this makes it incredibly problematic. Humanitarian organisations were misrepresenting and deliberately misrepresenting, I think, the cause and the nature of the particular crisis. Justified, they argued by raising a large amount of funds from a public who were appalled at what had been going on and wanted to do whatever they could to help. But it's worse than that. It's worse than just a misrepresentation. Because there are many people, and this is a site for debate so I'm certainly not saying this is the only perspective, but there are many who argue that because these camps were set up and bought in large amounts of resources, because the way the camps functioned gave the Hutu militias, the military commanders, not only an increased element of power, but a population over whom they could exert their control. It allowed the militias to rearm and to acquire support and to carry on a campaign of violence against the Rwandan government, which led to more than a decade of instability and violence across the whole of the Great Lakes region, which has probably killed, let's say, we don't know, but at least five, possibly even eight million people since the mid-1990s. Some people working for NGOs acknowledged the complicity and the problems of doing this, so Kevin Watkins, who worked for Oxfam and wrote a report for Oxfam, talked about the fact that it's an invidious position because they are delivering aid in order to support people through structures controlled by the very people responsible for the crimes committed in Rwanda. It's difficult to imagine Watkins' rights, a grave or abuse of international assistance. Ronnie Brauman, who is then the director or the president, rather, of Metsans en Frontier, one of the big humanitarian organisations, went further. The humanitarian intervention, he writes, far from representing a bulwark against evil, was in fact one of its appendages. That's a really strong criticism about what was going on, and it underpins why so many people think that this was one of the worst examples of a humanitarian intervention, that not only was not providing the help that it sought to, but created immense harm in the wake of its operation. And some have argued that actually the emergency was more used by humanitarian agencies as a way to boost their profile and their funding than the actual understanding of the necessity to respond and respond in ways that might have mitigated or minimised those harms. So as Mills writes, large, highly publicised humanitarian crises can be the perfect opportunity to raise enough funds, not only for the expenses for that particular crisis, but for the long-term survival of the organisation. The high publicity area of Goma Mills writes was turned into a situation where NGOs had to have a presence, even at the expense of analysing the context in which an NGO might be operating. And I think that goes back to that quote that I started off with, talking about the fact that NGOs and other organisations are now seeking to flood into Poland and then there is bordering Ukraine to plant their flags first, to show that they are there, they are responding, they care, perhaps in order more to raise their profile than for any real meaningful support that they can offer. Terry writes, Rwanda provided a dramatic, well-publicised show of human suffering in which the enemy was a virus and the saviour was humanitarian aid. So he's referring there to a cholera epidemic that swept through the camps and the idea that these people could only be saved through humanitarian aid from the global north. So a classic example of that kind of white saviourism that we started to increasingly talk about in recent years. And we can see areas where humanitarian responses have not necessarily inadvertently caused harm, but have directly caused harm through terrible failures in the way that they operate. The response to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, for example, one of the largest humanitarian responses to that point, so $5 billion was spent in the first few months alone, but one which was seen as the humanitarian sector getting it badly wrong in ways that caused harm prolonged the suffering of people and very little to restore Haiti to any sense of resilience or self-reliance or ability to cope with future shocks as we have now seen over the successive decade. Communications between various humanitarian organisations, NGOs, the United Nations, and other donor organisations was extremely weak. There was hardly any coordination of efforts, which meant that some areas received almost no support, whereas other areas had a large number of NGOs replicating the work of others where it wasn't necessarily appropriate. They could have done, they could have spread it out and therefore ensured a more even and better response. There was very weak engagement with local communities, major meetings where decisions were being made about what the needs were and what should be done were held in English in a French-speaking country. So that meant there was little thought to how they could engage with local organisations that were there, that were seeking to work, that required resources but certainly had the capacity and the skill level to implement any kind of response. Many of the incoming humanitarian organisations were motivated by genuine and admirable desire to help having seen the suffering, but actually didn't have the experience or the knowledge to be able to do so. They hadn't dealt with emergencies on this scale before and so actually required a lot support, they diverted support to them rather than to the people and the organisations who most needed it. Many organisations didn't think about their own needs, they came in without adequate shelter or without adequate food supplies, so therefore drew on the resources that were coming in for the crisis and volunteers were able to come and engage in activities for which they had no way of proving their credentials. So we know that volunteers were providing medical services despite not having and certainly not needing to show any medical qualifications, something that would be totally illegal in pretty much every country outside of a crisis. So why was this okay in a crisis that people within sufficient medical training, without the legally recognised credentials to be able to do the things they were doing, why was it okay for them to be doing it just because this was in the midst of a crisis? And whilst the example of Haiti may be egregious it isn't unique and that's what makes it, this isn't just a kind of a case of an operation that got it wrong, these mistakes are repeated to different levels of seriousness, to different extents, to different scales in humanitarian operation after humanitarian operation, which suggests that there is something institutional, structural rather than just being individual one-off failures. And these, the reason they matter so much of course is because you know the consequences for already vulnerable people can be catastrophic. So why are we allowing these to go on? Why are we giving the intentions, the good intentions of the humanitarian sector a kind of a get out of jail free card by saying you know whatever you do just long as you're doing something that's okay, but ignoring the needs of the most vulnerable people. I can see there's a question in the chat, I've almost finished, let me finish and then I'll come back to that question but I will come back to it. I think this links into these, a much wider issue of power and debates around decolonisation racism and issues around power and equalities and inequities within the humanitarian sector and I'm not suggesting these are only in the humanitarian sector. What I'm suggesting is that just as we look at these kind of issues in the private for profit sector, in the development sector, in universities, in schools, in the police, in government and so on, we also need to look at humanitarian actors because they have considerable power and therefore they need to be challenged and questioned. So there are questions like, you know, are humanitarian principles being used to exclude others and defend the power and the role of humanitarian actors? Do we focus more on the intentions and values of humanitarian organisations, their principles rather than the needs, the experiences of effective populations and the outcomes of those operations? And how are humanitarian organisations held accountable for their actions? And this isn't something, this isn't a debate that has only been done on the outside, this is a debate that is going on within the sector as a whole. A couple of years ago around a thousand people, a thousand staff members of Mets Saint-Saënt Frontier accused their own organisation and in an internal letter of being institutionally racist of failing to understand how colonial frameworks and colonial pasts and neo-colonial ways of operating were shaping their operations and their decisions and their policies in ways that could be damaging, not only to the staff, with, employed by MSF, but the communities with whom they were working. So it's hard, of course, if not impossible to look at suffering in the world and not to want to respond, that I'm absolutely not saying that we shouldn't respond, that we should just kind of shrug our shoulders and accept it and say, well, you know, whatever we do, we'll make it worse. I'm definitely not saying that. What I am saying is that we can't assume that just because humanitarian actors have good intentions, have good values that we admire and are working to a set of principles that therefore they're not causing harm, because we know that simply isn't true. And we can't excuse harm on the basis that actors have good intentions. If a for-profit company causes inadvertent harm, it gets taken to court quite rightly, it gets challenged. We can't simply say that just because these are not for-profit organisations, just because they're trying to do good, they don't therefore have responsibilities and they're not accountable for any harm that they may well do. So we can't just say we admire their values and their dedication and that is sufficient, because that prioritises our feelings in the global north, our values, our experiences over the lives and the experiences of those who are already incredibly vulnerable in the midst of a crisis. So how can humanitarian principles be used in ways that lessen vulnerability, empower communities and live up to the aspirations? So of course it isn't about saying humanitarianism is bad, it isn't, it's vital, it's more necessary now than it ever has been. But it's about how it can be structured in ways and delivered in ways that preserve the human dignity of all and protect against additional harm. Okay, I'm going to thanks everyone, I will open it to questions, I'm going to leave this slide open, I'm just going to go back to the question that I saw was asked in the chat site, it's quite a long one, so just bear with me while I read through it. So if you haven't got your chat box up, you'll be able to put it up because you'll be able to see this question yourself. So right, so how since most humanitarian crises come from other countries and transnational organisations, how do we ensure the allocation of resources and track where things are going? Okay, so this is really a question about sovereignty, so you know there are and how can we protect states against the misuse of resources. The first thing to say that it isn't just states, you misuse resources, it's all sides within a particular conflict can and do misuse resources. And I think here it's about transparency, it's about ensuring that it is very clear what is going on, what is being delivered and to where. Now it may be hard for some humanitarian organisations to do that whilst remaining independent and neutral and impartial, but of course that may be where the role of the international media comes in, who can report and do report on many of the abuses that are going on. And you know it's worth bearing in mind that you know there is no such thing as total sovereignty within international law. Governments don't get to do exactly what they want within their territory with no consequences or at least there is no right for them to do that. There's a separate question as to whether that actually happens. There is an obligation on all sides, legal obligations on all sides to let humanitarian actors in, that doesn't make it easy, it doesn't mean that it all necessarily happens and it is often the result of quite fraught and tense negotiations which can take time, but there are obligations for them to go in. So sovereignty is not an kind of unmovable obstacle to humanitarian action, but you're right it does make it difficult and that is one of the challenges that humanitarian actors can't be responsible for the misuse of food aid, but they might be responsible if they've delivered a resource and brought it in in ways that allow for its exploitation more so than others. If you want to kind of come back on that that's fine, it was a long question so I may not have captured all of what you're asking. Rachel I'm not sure if people are able to unmute themselves and ask questions directly but if they are that's fine. So shouldn't you be able to raise their hand and then I can unmute them? So yeah if anyone wants to chip in or add anything do you raise your hand and I'll unmute you. Just because it'll also be easier than me trying to very quickly scan through a question pick up what I think it's about but I'll keep going unless I see some hands up. So someone asking if it's possible for organisations to ask for government's contribution. I think that the problem there is and this comes back to this they're trying to deal with those people in need so there's an acknowledgement that no side is necessarily doing what it should be doing and so it's coming in so they're not saying it's not a bargaining in the sense of well if you provide this then we'll provide that. The humanitarian principle is about if people are in need we need to go in and address that need because no one else is doing it so the humanitarian operation takes place because an organisation being at a government or another side is not able to or not willing to fulfil its obligations in order to address that particular need and that might not always be kind of something that we might attach blame to so for example if hospitals have been destroyed or if there are no essential medicines if there just simply isn't enough food those kind of things need to be brought in but there is normally a degree of working with those kind of organisations and the extent to which but in the midst of highly complex conflicts and this is something we can see in Ukraine at the moment where you know there's an awful lot going on one of the things that is going on is that the Russian government is seeking to present any form of support going into Ukraine even if it's things like food aid or medical supplies as part of a military support to the Ukrainian government so they're denying that is humanitarian and therefore they're blocking it on those grounds with very little kind of real credibility for that but that's nevertheless the argument that they're making and of course given the power of the Russian state given that it's kind of not stopping you know the bombing campaign that makes it difficult if not impossible for humanitarian organisations to go in so yeah I mean it makes it very difficult I mean the thing I would stress and this is true for the whole programme is that you know there are no easy answers you know there are no solutions that are entirely good there are kind of decisions that have to be made which may be less bad than others everything that one does is problematic in one way or another so the point is not to say in addressing this humanitarian response you do this and it will be fine or in order to kind of work with gender and development if you do this and everything will work it out the programmes are designed to get you to think about the questions you need to ask and to understand the contexts in which that particular issue is taking place in ways that can mean that you're more likely to do good you're more likely to achieve the aims that you want to than not but of course it's incredibly complex and in some cases one is simply coming up against the brick wall of this is not going to be possible because either we're not being let in or the violence is too severe or whatever else it happens to be and that makes it very difficult uh so Nicola is asking you know how can the incentive for NGOs to prioritise you know good press over effective help be overcome again a really difficult question and I certainly don't want to suggest that all NGOs are driven by the need or the desire for you know a good press story more than anything else and there are many NGOs that kind of have quite strong sets of principles and regulations over how they are supposed to report on a crisis how they are supposed to represent poverty or represent a particular region and they try to do ways do so in ways that to kind of promote human dignity rather than kind of perpetuate narratives of suffering you know that kind of poverty porn that people have talked about you know the red cross for example have a very specific code on the images that are allowed to be used in their campaigns but it is difficult it's incredibly difficult because they're you know whatever else we think of NGOs they are organisations that exist by getting funding so again you know there is always going to be a tension between their needs to get hold of resources through their campaigns which means tugging on the heart strings and opening the wallets of people like us watching their campaigns and doing so in ways that show the complexity of poverty show the complexity of engaging with these things in ways that are realistic and respectful and so that I guess is partly our responsibility we need to look at those campaigns and if we think that something isn't right we should let the NGO know we should write and say actually I think what you're doing is deeply problematic one thing what's really interesting development in recent years and it might have been going on longer but I've kind of noticed this more in recent years is that diaspora groups are now increasingly vocally critical of NGOs that are representing their kind of home countries or their ancestral homes in ways that they think are misrepresenting and are engaging and working with those NGOs to try and improve that aspect but it is difficult and it requires on goodwill of NGOs and perhaps that's where we need to think about how accountability better forms of accountability for NGOs can be created in order to provide disincentives for that kind of activity. And we have got a raised hand so thank you for Rachel's talk I will just remind everyone that this session is being recorded so if you have any problems with that then you know it's probably better to pop your query into the chat but Rachel I'll just grant your permission now so if you want to unmute yourself and ask your question please do. Thank you. Thank you Rachel. Thank you Michael. I don't know why I got him a bit late but my question is related to when you mentioned how humanitarian organisations can strike a balance between the principles their values and the needs of the actual people that they're trying to serve and then the outcomes that is expected to be seen. So my question is how can we developmental professionals strike that balance have a balance or equilibrium between fulfilling the need the mission or vision of values or principles of an organisation and the needs for actual outcomes of the people or beneficiaries we're trying to help out. Thank you. Thanks Rachel that's a really good and interesting and difficult question but I think it's one that you know all of our students current students and former students and prospective students are grappling with that's why they're doing these kind of programmes and I think it's difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly I think personally I think it's absolutely essential that organisations have values so and I think that organisations should work to those values and I think if those values are transparent if it is very clear what those organisational values are then everybody knows and so you can work within that. So for example if an organisation says that you know under no circumstances will we work alongside military forces as part of our operations so therefore you know we we didn't go into Afghanistan in the two you know the 2000s and 2010s and we won't go into similar areas where we are we might be seen as working alongside the military on the one hand that means they're not kind of providing support where perhaps they could but on the other it's a very clear open value that everyone is aware of and I think that's fine. I think where it becomes more problematic is where assumptions are being made where NGOs are saying this is what we think the causes of poverty are and this is what we think the solutions to that poverty are and that's why I think that the the greatest skill that an NGO you know development worker of any kind doesn't really matter what sector they're working in can have is about questioning and critical analysis so understanding what actually is going on in the particular context so understanding you know why is this a problem here and why you know not just kind of you know let me give an example you know if we're talking about you know why do people not have water clean water supplies in a particular village one approach would be to say look we tried this project in Nepal it worked really well so we're going to come to Cameroon and we're going to do exactly the same project because we know it'll have the same outcome the reality is it probably won't because you're dealing with an entirely different context but social cultural economic and so on so understanding and questioning the context is really important and listening understanding how you listen to people how you empower people to put forward their own ideas and to work with people so you're facilitating development rather than creating development I think becomes really important and I think so it's those kind of skills it's the not just the kind of accepting well this is the way we've always done it so you know we'll try it again regardless of the outcome but thinking about well we might do something different here because of factors x yn z because we've talked to the people and this is what they have told us and I suppose the other thing is humility you know the fact that you know we live in a world where the dominant development policies are shaped by the big international organizations by kind of the world bank the IMF and the big donors and I think what they show is a remarkable lack of humility they have absolute or many people I accept that it's not true for everyone but many of them have absolute faith in the rightness of the policies they're putting forward and don't listen to the challenges so having humility listening to challenges trying to understand when things have gone wrong and why they have gone wrong is also one of those kind of critical values and together all of them can help make development interventions better and make everyone better doing their job but it takes time and it takes actually quite a lot of courage for people to be able to do that but it's really important so that was a really really interesting question thanks thank you Michael Rachel do we have time because I think it's another question Yeah we're heading towards the end but maybe if you want to wrap things up with one or two of these last questions here and then if you wouldn't mind sharing your email address perhaps or I think you might have had contact details on one of the slides any further questions Okay well let me just put I'm just going to put my email address in before I answer the questions now okay so that's my email address so if you want to get in touch you know that's absolutely fine there's just two more questions that I'll address quickly in the chat so someone is asking about international systems to regulate on humanitarian aid and development yeah that's a it's you know yes I think there needs to be much greater systems of regulation which will improve accountability and the humanitarian sector has tried to put in place some regulations there's something called the Sphere Project which some of you might have heard about which is an attempt to set minimum standards for humanitarian operations and there are other kind of guidelines and practices for how NGO should be operating in the humanitarian zone the problem is that many NGOs are incredibly wary of regulation because they see it as perhaps a form of government control and perhaps undermining their independence so it needs to be a way that doesn't just let these organizations off the hook and kind of mark their own homework as it were but it also needs to be sensitive enough so it isn't about kind of asserting government donor control because of course the main donors governments may then seek to misuse humanitarian aid for their own purposes I would argue for example that the European Union and the UK in their response to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean deliberately misused humanitarian funding in ways to protect their own migration policies rather than help save and protect those people in desperate need kind of making the way in precarious boats across the Mediterranean so it's difficult yes so yes there needs to be something the point is it has to be something that everyone can agree is workable and doesn't lead to the subverting of humanitarian action for just a different set of interests that might be equally or even more harmful and then finally there's a question about excessive humanitarian aid so yes so a good example so organizations who have been working on nutrition but haven't made a significant improvement despite years of aid I think there is a danger that humanitarian aid which is supposed to be time limited for the nature of the crisis effectively becomes permanent it becomes a permanent part of the system metson sang frontier for example often find this so you know they they um when they have tried to move out of countries where they've been providing healthcare for say 10 or even 20 years arguing that you know this is not our role we should be you know it should be a you know either a donor supported national health system or a government supported national health system but they've faced incredible pushback by saying that if you leave there is nothing and that makes it very difficult and sometimes you know that can be a problem that they become more permanent than others but I think it's also worth reflecting on the fact that you know there is a huge shortfall in funds for humanitarian operations um you know there is something like 20 billion gap financing gap between what has been pledged by donors and what is being asked for in the various humanitarian crises funds that are going on across the world right now um which means that you know in many cases the reasons why nutrition may not have improved may not be the fault of the humanitarian organization but may actually be a lack of an unwillingness or a lack of engagement from the donors to be able to put in the resources that might actually make a tangible difference um so yeah I mean that that can be a problem and I think there are a variety of causes and potential reasons why that may occur um but you know the better humanitarian organizations are aware of that and are trying to think about you know what is our exit strategy when and how will we pull out and hand over to a kind of a not humanitarian crisis system but a a national sustainable system for whatever it happens to be nutrition health education and so on okay thanks everyone really interesting questions as I say that if you've got any other questions get in touch with me if you have a question about our program or about the admission process you can still email me because I can just pass those on uh to the most relevant person we'll be able to answer your question um but I hope you enjoyed that I hope you took something from it uh and if you disagree radically with everything that I've said that is even better you know we're not here to tell you what to think what we're trying to do is to provide you some ideas so you can think for yourself ask your own questions and come up with your own conclusions so thanks everyone thank you take care everyone bye now