1 00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:05,530 We have a also developed in the if you're interested, 2 00:00:05,530 --> 00:00:14,229 you'll see in the in the book there's a typology of of how actors in the theatre manipulate humanitarian action and of course, 3 00:00:14,230 --> 00:00:20,170 donors, external states, the host states, third party states, 4 00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:27,400 non-state actors are very often involved in instrumental izing what's happening on the ground, 5 00:00:27,730 --> 00:00:33,880 but also our local communities who have their own interests in using humanitarian action to advance to their advantage, 6 00:00:34,360 --> 00:00:39,760 and aid agencies, international organisations, NGOs, local INGOs advocacy groups. 7 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:47,829 One of the tensions in particular that we've noted is the tension between the advocacy, 8 00:00:47,830 --> 00:00:52,500 human rights groups and NGOs or aid agencies providing assistance. 9 00:00:53,080 --> 00:00:59,650 And of course, this passive instrumental is Asian instrumentation, but not doing things in addition to active instruments, rotation. 10 00:01:00,070 --> 00:01:08,530 And one important form of instrumental ization that we've identified that often gets overlooked is instrumentalize action by storytelling. 11 00:01:09,430 --> 00:01:17,920 For example, if you look at the situation in in Sudan, Darfur or in Afghanistan, in Afghanistan, it's even earlier than Sudan. 12 00:01:18,460 --> 00:01:29,980 The way in which the story was told at different times in the history of the conflict defined who the players were and how they would operate. 13 00:01:30,280 --> 00:01:39,069 And just to give one example, post 2009 11, the story that was told was a story. 14 00:01:39,070 --> 00:01:43,750 This is a post-conflict situation. Therefore, there's no room for humanitarian players anymore. 15 00:01:43,750 --> 00:01:45,190 You have to work for the government. 16 00:01:45,430 --> 00:01:51,700 And of course, the more you tell this story that it's post-conflict, the more the story becomes disconnected from reality. 17 00:01:51,700 --> 00:01:57,489 And now, fortunately, nobody or hardly anybody still uses a post-conflict narrative. 18 00:01:57,490 --> 00:02:02,200 Now Afghanistan is presented as a crisis that we are cautiously optimistic. 19 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:07,450 But, you know, problems remain. And these problems have to do to a large extent with a continuing conflict. 20 00:02:11,110 --> 00:02:15,340 Instrument transition, of course, is not a new thing. It's always been there. 21 00:02:15,790 --> 00:02:19,780 It was there in the Boer War where you had a Red Cross. 22 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:31,629 Actually, this is not necessarily a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but the is in a uniform kind of, 23 00:02:31,630 --> 00:02:41,030 you know child soldier is that was a and this one of course is a much more blatant violation of the code. 24 00:02:41,050 --> 00:02:49,840 This is the Red Cross in 1948, 1940, in Berlin with the swastika and the emblem all wrapped into one. 25 00:02:50,440 --> 00:03:02,380 So the use of humanitarian players and actors and and messages for political or military gain is something that is been going for a while. 26 00:03:02,770 --> 00:03:07,149 And now this is an example in Sri Lanka is in Afghanistan, 27 00:03:07,150 --> 00:03:16,030 where the Afghan army is the the U.S. American soldiers are in the background, but they were there as well. 28 00:03:16,240 --> 00:03:23,319 They go up to a village in northern Afghanistan and distribute goodies and then issue a press release saying the Afghan National 29 00:03:23,320 --> 00:03:29,860 Army and their coalition partners were delivering humanitarian aid to the populations of Syria in exchange for the aid. 30 00:03:29,860 --> 00:03:36,790 They asked where the Taliban were hiding. So that's a clear example of instrumental ization. 31 00:03:37,390 --> 00:03:42,190 And here is an example of perfidy the misuse of the emblem. 32 00:03:42,190 --> 00:03:52,030 This is the Colombian operation to free Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages of the FARC, 33 00:03:52,420 --> 00:03:59,320 where they made an elaborate scam, where they transformed the Army helicopter into an ICRC one. 34 00:04:00,070 --> 00:04:06,520 So so is there a golden age? 35 00:04:06,520 --> 00:04:09,849 Was there a golden age or a conclusion? 36 00:04:09,850 --> 00:04:11,649 And, you know, we set up a straw dog. 37 00:04:11,650 --> 00:04:21,729 So it was easy to say there was no golden age, that many of the pathologies of what we see today are very much the same. 38 00:04:21,730 --> 00:04:23,260 That sort of, you know, 39 00:04:23,650 --> 00:04:34,120 the way in which Lord Byron instrumentalized the the nascent media in the UK and what Bernard Kouchner did in the 1970s are very similar. 40 00:04:34,510 --> 00:04:39,549 Hearts and minds in Vietnam, in Afghanistan also have very, very much similarity. 41 00:04:39,550 --> 00:04:49,360 In fact, we haven't invented anything very new in terms of how hearts and minds in Afghanistan were instrumentalize the atrocities is. 42 00:04:49,360 --> 00:05:00,010 This relates to the the the furore about massacres of Christians in Bulgaria in the 1860s, 1880s 1860s and. 43 00:05:00,670 --> 00:05:02,680 Very much like the Save Darfur Coalition. 44 00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:12,910 The media and the public were collecting money on trains in the newspapers to organise an expedition to Bulgaria to save the Christians, 45 00:05:13,180 --> 00:05:17,740 which of course then the Russians intervened and that went quite badly, but for a number of different reasons. 46 00:05:19,720 --> 00:05:25,360 However, there are a number of qualitative, in particular quantitative difference, 47 00:05:25,360 --> 00:05:30,909 because the the humanitarian enterprise today is of a magnitude, you know, 48 00:05:30,910 --> 00:05:38,710 it's worth $18 billion a year and it's due to the institutionalisation itself 49 00:05:40,330 --> 00:05:49,479 make it much more powerful and as a source of potential instrumental position. 50 00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:54,549 And it's key, it's in the centre of conflict. Whereas in the past it was the, in the, in the, 51 00:05:54,550 --> 00:06:01,300 on the fringes and because of the sensitisation it has developed its own network power 52 00:06:01,300 --> 00:06:05,740 where the is the enterprise has to act like a business or act like a government. 53 00:06:05,740 --> 00:06:12,400 Or some people would say that humanitarian action has become part of government in itself. 54 00:06:13,300 --> 00:06:26,170 And perhaps the most glaring examples of instrumental ization in recent years are around the global war on terror and how humanitarians were. 55 00:06:27,220 --> 00:06:31,480 There was an attempt it to co-opt humanitarians in this global war. 56 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:37,360 But there are the politicisation. 57 00:06:37,360 --> 00:06:43,209 The attempt to incorporate humanitarian action into wider designs is always there. 58 00:06:43,210 --> 00:06:47,080 And we turn to that in a minute. 59 00:06:47,620 --> 00:06:53,530 So when I was giving a presentation on this book in Berlin, Hugo was there. 60 00:06:55,420 --> 00:06:59,110 Someone said that, you know, this book was full of gloom and doom. 61 00:06:59,110 --> 00:07:05,230 Of course, we were focusing on the instrumental ization part and that in reality there is a golden age and it's now. 62 00:07:05,860 --> 00:07:08,230 And you know, I think we could argue this case, 63 00:07:08,650 --> 00:07:23,780 are we better now than ever before in protecting this fundamental work that we do from the from manipulation or has institutions 64 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:34,690 institutionalisation itself and the power that comes with it created more forms of inter instrumental ization so that there's issues here which, 65 00:07:35,590 --> 00:07:39,400 you know, keeps some humanitarians awake at night. 66 00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:48,220 But, you know, if you're an NGO and you have to balance the the money that you're getting from states with your principles, 67 00:07:48,520 --> 00:07:51,129 that creates very difficult questions. 68 00:07:51,130 --> 00:08:02,680 As, for example, in when Colin Powell said to the US, INGOs, you are force multipliers, you are part of our combat team. 69 00:08:03,580 --> 00:08:08,709 NGOs were split down the middle. The fundraising people said, Oh, we have to go there. 70 00:08:08,710 --> 00:08:14,170 You know, there's a lot of money coming this way. And the policy people said, Oh my God, no, this is unbearable. 71 00:08:14,170 --> 00:08:16,980 And the I mean, 72 00:08:17,590 --> 00:08:26,140 I don't think that the more that the and then Jos actually had a very strong moral compass to guide themselves through this complicated situation, 73 00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:35,379 because many of the NGOs that we've been brought into the the global war on terror enterprise were, you know, 74 00:08:35,380 --> 00:08:42,270 partly in agreement, philosophically or politically with the objectives that the US government was. 75 00:08:42,610 --> 00:08:48,850 They were Wilsonian in the sense that they identified themselves with the foreign policy objectives of their government, 76 00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:54,820 but at the same time they wanted to maintain some kind of humanitarian principles, 77 00:08:55,150 --> 00:09:01,270 maybe not neutrality, but certainly an amount of a large amount of impartiality and some independence. 78 00:09:01,300 --> 00:09:05,290 And so they they were they were faced with really difficult issues. 79 00:09:08,860 --> 00:09:21,250 So one of the consequences of the institutionalisation has been that the ethos with which we do things has changed. 80 00:09:23,170 --> 00:09:27,780 We, a humanitarian enterprise, have become a very networked enterprise. 81 00:09:27,790 --> 00:09:36,969 We are intrinsically linked with the way in which globalisation functions, even if we're sometimes the sort of critical voice of globalisation. 82 00:09:36,970 --> 00:09:43,990 But de facto we are linked into, we are substantial with globalisation. 83 00:09:44,590 --> 00:09:51,879 But at the same time, what has happened is that the sort of voluntary nature of the enterprise, particularly angels, 84 00:09:51,880 --> 00:09:59,680 has been lost on the altar of institutionalisation and professionalisation, which of course are good things in many ways. 85 00:09:59,680 --> 00:10:08,350 But we've lost the flavour that's allowed NGOs to be a small player in a context 86 00:10:08,350 --> 00:10:16,180 with providing essential services that were not seen as linked to a state agenda. 87 00:10:16,390 --> 00:10:24,460 NGOs tended to be state avoiding. Now you can ask yourself if Oxfam in particular, since we're in Oxford, 88 00:10:25,210 --> 00:10:33,010 is Oxfam Oxfam still an NGO or is it a branch of the foreign policy of the UK government? 89 00:10:33,160 --> 00:10:35,680 Maybe that was clearer under Blair, but still, you know, 90 00:10:36,640 --> 00:10:43,090 there's a kind of crossover politics going on here between what NGOs are doing and what governments are doing. 91 00:10:43,930 --> 00:10:47,050 So that's by way of background. 92 00:10:49,330 --> 00:10:56,020 The other point I wanted to make is about the increasing remoteness between foreign NGOs, 93 00:10:56,470 --> 00:11:03,790 U.N. agencies and the populations that they are there to support or assist in crisis countries. 94 00:11:03,800 --> 00:11:14,530 There is a an expansion of the enterprise, but at the same time, a physical withdrawal in places like Afghanistan or Darfur or southern Sudan or DRC. 95 00:11:15,220 --> 00:11:18,100 NGOs are in bunker ized compounds. 96 00:11:18,880 --> 00:11:29,200 The mode of operation because of security concerns obviously has been increasingly in these fraught environments, remote management. 97 00:11:29,620 --> 00:11:34,650 So it's kind of a virtual humanitarian action, a bit like virtual war using drones. 98 00:11:34,660 --> 00:11:42,390 Well, that's a very real war. But, you know, I think remote management is the is to humanitarian action, what drones are to military action. 99 00:11:42,400 --> 00:11:45,040 So there's some issues there about, you know, 100 00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:55,630 how we conceive our role and what it means if we've lost this proximity with the people that we are supposed to be working with. 101 00:11:56,110 --> 00:12:00,819 Okay. A couple of examples of dilemmas. 102 00:12:00,820 --> 00:12:08,320 Well, dilemmas I think Hugo will correct me. Dilemmas are actually situations where there's two bad options. 103 00:12:09,040 --> 00:12:15,429 Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. These are not real dilemmas. 104 00:12:15,430 --> 00:12:21,790 And, you know, they can be couches, bad practice or awkward challenges or difficult moral choices, 105 00:12:21,790 --> 00:12:26,650 but not necessarily dilemmas of the Sophie's Choice variety. 106 00:12:27,520 --> 00:12:34,420 And if we look at these two examples that I'm going to show you, you know, you can ask, 107 00:12:34,690 --> 00:12:41,139 are we better today at dealing with some of these difficult moral issues than in the past? 108 00:12:41,140 --> 00:12:45,850 I think in Afghanistan, partly because I was there, we were successful in Sri Lanka. 109 00:12:46,980 --> 00:12:48,940 Look, we were not successful in Afghanistan by any means. 110 00:12:48,940 --> 00:12:57,280 But in Sri Lanka, I think there are very, very serious issues that that arose in the last phases of the war. 111 00:12:57,730 --> 00:13:01,320 So this is a case of Afghanistan. 112 00:13:01,330 --> 00:13:12,260 In western Afghanistan 2021, there was a very serious drought and there was a population movements also triggered by by conflict. 113 00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:17,260 And what happened was that people concentrated in in camps. 114 00:13:17,680 --> 00:13:25,370 And we, the UN agencies and the NGOs were struggling with dealing with should we create camps or not? 115 00:13:25,390 --> 00:13:32,140 That was the first question. So we tried to convince the Taliban that they should house the refugees in, you know, existing structures. 116 00:13:32,140 --> 00:13:37,150 But people kept on coming and they kept on coming for a variety of reasons. 117 00:13:37,420 --> 00:13:46,600 One of the reasons was that assistance was being provided, so that acted as a pull factor, but there was undoubtedly a very serious humanitarian need. 118 00:13:48,070 --> 00:13:53,500 And what happened was that this huge camp, modular camp, emerged. 119 00:13:54,070 --> 00:13:58,770 This is a part of it. And the Taliban was saying, oh, there's more than 100,000 people here. 120 00:13:58,780 --> 00:14:03,250 You need to increase the the assistance that being provided. 121 00:14:03,700 --> 00:14:07,480 At the same time, we knew that some of the food the WFP was providing. 122 00:14:07,680 --> 00:14:12,810 Was being diverted by the Taliban for their own uses, including to feed combatants. 123 00:14:12,840 --> 00:14:17,700 So we were in a bit of a quandary should we try to keep assistance to a minimum? 124 00:14:18,030 --> 00:14:23,160 But then we would potentially face riots that the Taliban could also orchestrate. 125 00:14:23,460 --> 00:14:32,100 Or do we go ahead? Humanitarian imperative. You know, close our eyes to the the diversion of the assistance. 126 00:14:32,100 --> 00:14:37,290 Of course, the donors weren't too happy with that. So in that particular instance, we were smart. 127 00:14:37,410 --> 00:14:43,320 And we we decided that a vaccination campaign was required. 128 00:14:43,830 --> 00:14:48,330 And by vaccinating all the kids in the camps, we had proxy indicators of how many people were there. 129 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:53,870 And that showed that there were not 120,000 people. 130 00:14:53,880 --> 00:15:01,080 There were more like 80,000, maybe even 70,000. And that a large amount of assistance was being diverted. 131 00:15:01,350 --> 00:15:05,010 Then we faced another question. Do we say this to the Taliban? 132 00:15:05,490 --> 00:15:09,500 And what's going to happen if they you know, they were in the camps and they were orchestrating things. 133 00:15:09,570 --> 00:15:13,500 They were technically managing the camps. So we struggled. 134 00:15:13,500 --> 00:15:21,780 And finally we came up with the best possible solution, which was to give warm food that was self targeting. 135 00:15:22,110 --> 00:15:30,600 We set up bakery and not bakeries or cooking stations where there's gruel, which was not very good, but the kids liked it was be provided. 136 00:15:30,630 --> 00:15:36,150 But of course, no Taliban fighter would want to be seen eating this this gruel. 137 00:15:36,150 --> 00:15:39,360 So in a sense, we solve the problem, at least for a time. 138 00:15:39,870 --> 00:15:48,360 Manipulation continued in other ways, but I think we found a practical solution to a difficult issue. 139 00:15:49,530 --> 00:15:53,640 In Sri Lanka, however, things went. 140 00:15:54,900 --> 00:15:58,260 Has anybody worked in Sri Lanka? Does anybody know? Sri Lanka? 141 00:15:58,800 --> 00:16:06,750 Oh, okay. I haven't actually worked in Sri Lanka, been there a couple of times and I've followed the last phases of the war. 142 00:16:07,170 --> 00:16:16,620 And, you know, there was the culmination of a long process of 30 years of conflict. 143 00:16:16,740 --> 00:16:25,790 The conflict goes back to independence, actually, and that's the number of failed peace process processes. 144 00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:33,540 And one of the questions that arises in Sri Lanka is to what extent the the international community's 145 00:16:33,540 --> 00:16:39,990 insistence on trying to get the warring parties to talk to each other using aid as an incentive, 146 00:16:40,710 --> 00:16:51,390 in effect, backfired. But the issue that I think is important for us now to look at is what happened in the final phases of the war. 147 00:16:51,870 --> 00:17:04,380 And as you probably remember, the I don't have a map here, but the Tamil Tigers controlled the north east of the country. 148 00:17:04,740 --> 00:17:19,680 And when Rajapaksa was elected in 2008, 78, I think was eight, he basically although there was still technically a ceasefire between the two sides, 149 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:26,880 it wasn't very well respected, decided to go for a final military approach to solving the problem. 150 00:17:27,300 --> 00:17:33,420 And what was interesting was the extent to which they developed a sophisticated narrative talking 151 00:17:33,420 --> 00:17:37,890 about instrumental opposition by sort of storytelling about how this was a humanitarian war, 152 00:17:38,190 --> 00:17:43,110 how no civilian casualties, where there was zero tolerance for civilian casualties, 153 00:17:43,440 --> 00:17:50,130 and how somehow they were able to convince the donors or some of the donors or certainly of the key players, 154 00:17:51,090 --> 00:17:59,670 the US, India, China, Pakistan, who all had interests in Sri Lanka, that this was the way to go. 155 00:17:59,850 --> 00:18:09,629 And of course the Tigers had lost whatever legitimacy they had and whatever support they had outside the Tamil diaspora around the world, 156 00:18:09,630 --> 00:18:19,800 they had no friends. And that in a sense allowed the government to set up the Colombo government to pursue its strategy. 157 00:18:20,700 --> 00:18:29,249 This was combined with a discourse that equated NGOs and to some extent the UN with neo imperialist control of the country, 158 00:18:29,250 --> 00:18:39,360 and how Colombo was asserting its sovereignty and basically was able to say no to Western donors because China is here to help us. 159 00:18:39,810 --> 00:18:40,680 That was one element. 160 00:18:40,950 --> 00:18:50,880 The other element was how Rajapaksa and his clique or regime were able to couch the conflict in the north as part of the global war on terror. 161 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:56,070 So again, a a instrumentation by storytelling. 162 00:18:56,820 --> 00:19:07,460 And of course, the LTTE in the North was equally culpable of instrumental izing humanitarian action over. 163 00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:13,709 Long periods of time, they were controlling what was entering the territory that was that they were 164 00:19:13,710 --> 00:19:25,380 controlling and they were quite abusive in in using assistance as you know, 165 00:19:25,380 --> 00:19:32,580 it's fungible. So it supported their, their military efforts and forcible recruitment of child soldiers, etc., etc. 166 00:19:33,180 --> 00:19:42,149 So what happened in September 2008 is particularly from the perspective of the people who were on the ground, 167 00:19:42,150 --> 00:19:49,380 and I've interviewed a number of them, the kind of challenges and moral quandaries that they were put in in September. 168 00:19:50,040 --> 00:19:57,660 The government basically told all expatriate personnel to leave the North because they could no longer assure their security. 169 00:19:58,050 --> 00:20:02,880 And what happened there was that on the one hand, the government was prepared to allow, 170 00:20:03,180 --> 00:20:07,950 at least in theory, the UN agencies, the NGOs and their national staff to leave. 171 00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:15,960 But the LTTE blocked the national staff from from leaving the the value of the north with the northeast of the country. 172 00:20:16,530 --> 00:20:25,739 And so that created a first split in the community on how do we handle this dramatic issue of families being torn apart. 173 00:20:25,740 --> 00:20:30,540 And in effect, many staff decided to stay with their family. 174 00:20:31,380 --> 00:20:38,700 And that's also how a lot of the information subsequently came out through national staff, aid workers who were there. 175 00:20:40,110 --> 00:20:45,389 But so very quickly, there was a split in the aid community about what to do. 176 00:20:45,390 --> 00:20:53,940 Should we continue to negotiate access or do we speak out about the indiscriminate shelling that the government is doing on this rapidly 177 00:20:55,320 --> 00:21:05,520 decreasing area controlled by the Tamils where there were no no fire zones and where all the medical facilities hospitals were. 178 00:21:05,760 --> 00:21:14,190 You know, the GPS coordinates had been given to the Colombo military forces and and the government says, yes, yes, no, no, no civilian casualty. 179 00:21:14,190 --> 00:21:19,050 But there was documented evidence that hospitals were being shelled. 180 00:21:19,410 --> 00:21:27,270 And for a number of reasons, the UN agencies were not keen to speak out. 181 00:21:28,230 --> 00:21:32,070 One reason was that, of course the LTTE didn't have any friends. 182 00:21:32,340 --> 00:21:39,510 Another reason was that the development agencies in Colombo were keen to maintain the their their 183 00:21:39,510 --> 00:21:43,410 relationship with the government that they would have to continue to work with in the past. 184 00:21:43,470 --> 00:21:50,370 And they were not prepared to anger the government by raising issues of human rights violations. 185 00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:57,450 But even the whether it was lack of labour leadership or incompetence or just particularity, 186 00:21:57,450 --> 00:22:03,330 I don't know, the the aid the humanitarian aid agencies were reluctant to speak out. 187 00:22:03,450 --> 00:22:12,479 And I think that's one of the. Looking back and interviewing people who were there, particularly the the UN and NGO staff were clearly not here, 188 00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:18,570 then had to be evacuated and some witnessed the carnage that was going on as they were retreating from that area. 189 00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:26,790 For me, it's incomprehensible to understand why the aid agencies didn't speak out more or didn't convince the 190 00:22:26,790 --> 00:22:34,980 Secretary-General or the media or the donors in Washington or or London to speak out more of what was happening. 191 00:22:35,700 --> 00:22:46,679 So only a handful of of aid personnel argued for a full push for a full exposure of the direct impact of the war on civilians. 192 00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:54,089 So, you know, I think maybe it was a kind of a wicked problem where there was no easy solution. 193 00:22:54,090 --> 00:23:00,450 But with the benefit of hindsight, I think one can ask, could things have gone differently? 194 00:23:00,540 --> 00:23:08,730 Could the the balance between the objectives of access and the objectives of protection be handled differently? 195 00:23:08,970 --> 00:23:13,200 Was too much focus put on access, on getting in, 196 00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:24,719 on being able to provide assistance and not enough on the plight of civilians who were being shelled and or roped into camps or so. 197 00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:28,950 That's a. You know, 198 00:23:28,950 --> 00:23:43,469 a dilemma that maybe is the shape of things to come because of what we faced in Sri Lanka is a and this picture 199 00:23:43,470 --> 00:23:52,650 here is placards for the May Day celebration last year in or maybe the year before and 2010 in in Colombo. 200 00:23:52,660 --> 00:23:58,049 These are the friends of Rajapaksa and Chavez, Fidel Gadhafi, Putin. 201 00:23:58,050 --> 00:24:01,770 And I forget who was the Chinese president of the time. 202 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:09,989 And basically this was the message that Sri Lanka was giving that, you know, we are a sovereign state. 203 00:24:09,990 --> 00:24:16,020 As states, we are able to coordinate and provide the framework for aid. 204 00:24:16,020 --> 00:24:23,520 And we don't want Ban Ki moon or human rights NGOs to come and tell us what we should be doing. 205 00:24:23,910 --> 00:24:27,510 And that is a trend that we're seeing elsewhere as well. 206 00:24:28,620 --> 00:24:36,850 We are seeing it very clearly in places like Sudan, but you also see it in more muted ways in in Nepal. 207 00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:45,390 You see it in even in Afghanistan, where the government now, because of the uncertainty of what's likely to happen in 2014 and beyond, 208 00:24:45,630 --> 00:24:56,460 is not affirming its sovereignty and trying to provide the barriers to the entry or the work of aid agencies. 209 00:24:58,410 --> 00:25:05,060 So I think one of the conclusions that we talk about in the book, but that also, you know, 210 00:25:05,070 --> 00:25:13,020 Sri Lanka reminds us of is the changing relationship between the humanitarian enterprise and the states. 211 00:25:13,350 --> 00:25:23,370 And this relationship is rapidly changing. On the one hand, Western agencies are increasingly caught, coaxed wittingly or unwittingly, 212 00:25:23,370 --> 00:25:30,209 into becoming servants of the state in the pursuit of liberal peace agendas and many NGOs, 213 00:25:30,210 --> 00:25:35,780 sort of because that's where the money is in Afghanistan, in Iraq, elsewhere, we've seen that happening. 214 00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:42,420 And the agency there are able to withstand this pressure of being incorporated 215 00:25:42,420 --> 00:25:49,500 in in states strategies or liberal peace strategies are few and far between. 216 00:25:49,530 --> 00:25:54,810 It's the ICRC because ICRC, although it gets money from Western donors, 217 00:25:54,820 --> 00:25:58,980 is able to launder this money and to make it neutral and impartial and independent. 218 00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:07,230 And a few NGOs like Medicins Sans Frontieres, who as a matter of policy, refuse to take money from belligerent states. 219 00:26:07,470 --> 00:26:15,730 If you look at Afghanistan today, all the major donors in Afghanistan except Switzerland are belligerents in Afghanistan. 220 00:26:15,730 --> 00:26:17,520 And of course, that creates, you know, 221 00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:24,790 interesting discussions between NGOs and and and diplomatic personnel about, you know, who is doing what and why. 222 00:26:24,810 --> 00:26:30,750 And clearly, the the embassies are keeping an eye on what their NGOs are doing. 223 00:26:31,260 --> 00:26:36,060 Well, I have to tell you a small anecdote about the parties. 224 00:26:36,300 --> 00:26:39,300 The parties are provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan, 225 00:26:39,300 --> 00:26:47,100 which are kind of a military civilian hybrid that is supposed to provide basic services to local populations, 226 00:26:47,100 --> 00:26:53,830 sometimes services of a humanitarian nature, but very much part of the hearts and minds exercise. 227 00:26:53,850 --> 00:27:00,749 So I was at a conference in Norway a couple of years back, and the government officials were talking about the great work that the Norwegian 228 00:27:00,750 --> 00:27:06,150 party up in Faria was doing when a couple of NGOs in the room started saying, 229 00:27:06,390 --> 00:27:10,650 Well, you know, this is not this is a violation of our codes. 230 00:27:10,650 --> 00:27:16,469 We don't want to be involved in this. And, you know, it's going to look worse in a few years from now. 231 00:27:16,470 --> 00:27:21,860 You know, it might look okay now, but these things, you know, the chicken come home to roost kind of arguing. 232 00:27:22,290 --> 00:27:27,960 So the Minister of Defence who was there, got up and said, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. 233 00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:31,680 The party needs the NGOs around it. 234 00:27:31,710 --> 00:27:41,160 So basically saying that the NGOs were there to protect the party from the population, which is an interesting twist in in in reality. 235 00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:47,219 And of course, NGOs were split on on how to manage these situations. 236 00:27:47,220 --> 00:27:51,630 And those who compromise or who agreed to be the, 237 00:27:52,350 --> 00:28:00,090 the implementing partners of party or government projects are now finding because of the instrumentalized and by storytelling, 238 00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:03,089 that they are in a difficult, if not dangerous position, 239 00:28:03,090 --> 00:28:12,270 because how are they going to re-establish their credibility if the political dispensation in in Kabul changes all of the same? 240 00:28:12,270 --> 00:28:12,990 All of a sudden? 241 00:28:13,770 --> 00:28:26,280 Basically, what I think we have seen happening over these past 20 years of massive growth of the humanitarian enterprise is that we are much more. 242 00:28:27,790 --> 00:28:34,420 Predictable. Competent professionals in addressing humanitarian issues. 243 00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:44,739 But the basic challenge is the basic clash between practical pragmatism and the 244 00:28:44,740 --> 00:28:51,370 realpolitik kind of approach and the ethical values of the humanitarian message. 245 00:28:51,370 --> 00:28:54,370 This and this clash remains unresolved. 246 00:28:54,790 --> 00:28:58,930 And maybe I don't know, but maybe this is a question for you. 247 00:28:59,710 --> 00:29:05,140 Is this clash bigger and more worrying today than it was in the past because 248 00:29:05,140 --> 00:29:09,310 of the quantitative and qualitative qualitative changes that have happened? 249 00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:15,070 Or is it are we sort of on the same kind of level of instrumental position as the past? 250 00:29:16,630 --> 00:29:21,520 I think that one should look at how the enterprise has changed. 251 00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:28,150 The humanitarian surprise has changed in terms of how stubbornly self self-referential there remains, 252 00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:39,940 how stubbornly embedded it is in Western modes of thought, but also of of organisation, of networked power that comes with this organisation. 253 00:29:40,450 --> 00:29:47,379 And I think but you know, I'm not sure I'm right that this clash, 254 00:29:47,380 --> 00:29:56,740 this tension between principles and pragmatism is bigger today than it was in the past, partly because of the huge size of the enterprise. 255 00:29:57,730 --> 00:30:06,730 So if this clash, this tension between the moral values that somehow seem to be universal, I mean, 256 00:30:06,730 --> 00:30:12,370 are studies on the perceptions and the listening project and other projects that have looked 257 00:30:12,370 --> 00:30:19,480 at whether the humanitarian message resonates around the world seem to conclude that, 258 00:30:21,340 --> 00:30:26,230 you know, there's a humanitarian substratum that is common to all cultures, 259 00:30:26,530 --> 00:30:30,729 but it's the baggage is the organisation, it's the way in which money flows. 260 00:30:30,730 --> 00:30:39,130 It's the the the the surrogate sovereignty that humanitarian agencies sometimes provide. 261 00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:44,950 That is the, the cause of tension between the outsiders and the local populations. 262 00:30:45,670 --> 00:30:56,290 So, you know, it what we have seen is that despite the best intentions, this tension is always there. 263 00:30:56,290 --> 00:31:03,310 So you could ask yourself, is instrumentalize ation fundamentally in the DNA of humanitarian action, 264 00:31:03,670 --> 00:31:13,389 or is it possible to conceive of a change in the way in which the enterprise functions that would 265 00:31:13,390 --> 00:31:24,370 make it a more equal relationship or a relationship that is not based on the dominant nature of the, 266 00:31:25,930 --> 00:31:29,950 you know, the unbalanced relationship between the giver and the receiver. 267 00:31:30,340 --> 00:31:41,770 And I think that's one argument that has been made by Mark Duffield and others is that there's a clash 268 00:31:41,770 --> 00:31:47,620 between the ontological duty bound approach to humanitarianism and the consequentialist approach. 269 00:31:47,980 --> 00:31:51,580 You know, do we look at what we're doing now, saving lives now, 270 00:31:51,580 --> 00:31:58,600 or should we look at what the consequences are of the saving lives of what we do now for the future? 271 00:31:58,990 --> 00:32:01,569 And this clash also has not been resolved. 272 00:32:01,570 --> 00:32:10,630 What what Duffield is saying is that basically the humanitarian, the ontological message is a very clear one. 273 00:32:10,750 --> 00:32:20,440 You know, if you it's clear evident and the way in which it was portrayed in the public emerging, for example, 274 00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:28,420 during the Seychelles famine in the 1980s was a very simple message We need to go and help our brothers and sisters who are suffering. 275 00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:39,310 The consequentialist agenda is more complicated and it's probably it's probably more political. 276 00:32:39,310 --> 00:32:49,299 It's more linked to the ethical foreign policy that Tony Blair was talking about when he came to power in Aden. 277 00:32:49,300 --> 00:32:53,080 When was it? In 1997. 278 00:32:53,800 --> 00:33:01,720 And that was clearly the way in which DFID, the reorganise itself in those years was all about consequentialist issues. 279 00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:13,629 It was about, you know, addressing root causes and dragging the humanitarian duty bound people into addressing root causes potentially creates a clash 280 00:33:13,630 --> 00:33:25,540 of principles and a clash of we always have to deal with the politicised environments we are when we work in crisis situations. 281 00:33:25,540 --> 00:33:34,559 The context by definition is. Extremely political. But if, as in Afghanistan, you're dealing with advocacy, 282 00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:43,410 you're dealing with working with the government on structural violence issues, on gender, on the on advocating for better policies. 283 00:33:43,470 --> 00:33:47,940 That may be a completely legitimate activity in itself. 284 00:33:48,210 --> 00:33:56,880 But in a country in crisis, it puts you in a difficult position if you are also claiming that you want to do humanitarian work according to principle. 285 00:33:57,270 --> 00:34:04,830 When all your offices are in government held territory, all your money comes from donors that are also belligerent. 286 00:34:05,130 --> 00:34:12,090 So I think there is an argument about being more the ontological in certain situations. 287 00:34:12,990 --> 00:34:22,890 I'm going to wrap up because the enterprise has grown so much and because humanitarianism has transitioned from being a powerful discourse, 288 00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:26,819 it discourse that everybody can understand to a discourse of power, 289 00:34:26,820 --> 00:34:34,350 a discourse where we are part of the powerful people who can decide on your fate and the you know, 290 00:34:34,350 --> 00:34:39,900 and the triage that comes with it is also a manifestation of humanitarian power. 291 00:34:40,380 --> 00:34:49,850 So has the humanitarian. The very simple, clear, convincing, powerful message of of humanitarianism. 292 00:34:50,130 --> 00:34:59,400 Has it been lost now, with the complexity of everything that is is linked to humanitarianism, whether, you know, 293 00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:05,280 the the tension between the negotiating axis and advocating for rights, for example, 294 00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:14,880 is a continuing tension that in some cases makes access and addressing need much more difficult. 295 00:35:15,810 --> 00:35:22,740 So the question here, I put myself there because the last time I saw Hugo, 296 00:35:22,950 --> 00:35:27,150 he talked about Simone de Beauvoir in similar vein, so I can talk about examples. 297 00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:33,719 Limassol is a play that's probably not shown much anymore by Jean-Paul Sartre, 298 00:35:33,720 --> 00:35:39,299 and it's a story of a communist, militant young man who needs to prove himself, 299 00:35:39,300 --> 00:35:49,850 who is tasked with killing a bourgeois politician who is well-meaning but linked to a bourgeois view of things. 300 00:35:49,860 --> 00:35:56,999 And what's interesting in in this play is the the tension between purity and collaboration. 301 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:00,810 And it's a tension that we see a lot in humanitarian action. 302 00:36:01,110 --> 00:36:09,059 And, you know, we have to dirty our hands by speaking to the Taliban, by speaking to the LTTE, by, you know, 303 00:36:09,060 --> 00:36:19,590 sitting down even with very, very long spoons, with, you know, eating from the same plate as people that we find objectionable. 304 00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:32,250 And the ambiguity in the play is that it's unclear whether the guy kills the bourgeois reactionary gentleman 305 00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:38,310 because he's bourgeois reactionary because the party told him to him or because he's kissing his wife, 306 00:36:38,910 --> 00:36:40,620 you know, kissing the wife of the killer. 307 00:36:40,650 --> 00:36:50,280 So, yeah, you're left with this ambiguity and this the fundamental similar ambiguity in the humanitarian endeavour where we have, 308 00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:51,749 as George AGAMBEN says, 309 00:36:51,750 --> 00:37:00,420 we have this secret solidarity with the people that we are really supposed to be fighting, but somehow we have to engage with them. 310 00:37:00,420 --> 00:37:08,129 And the disengagement is the the ethical terrain that we have to navigate very often. 311 00:37:08,130 --> 00:37:11,700 And that is quite difficult to negative to to navigate. 312 00:37:12,270 --> 00:37:25,620 So what is there a solution to this tension between principles and practice and this the ontological versus consequentialist ethic? 313 00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:33,629 And would a return going back to basics, would that provide a way forward to, you know, 314 00:37:33,630 --> 00:37:41,130 maintain a kind of protected niche for the ontologies to work in crisis fraught situations? 315 00:37:41,130 --> 00:37:48,960 And you know, the others have very important things to do, but let's not call them humanitarian, let's call them something else. 316 00:37:49,530 --> 00:37:57,060 So I think I'll stop here and leave you with an example of policing in progress. 317 00:37:58,050 --> 00:38:00,150 And then you. Thank you very much and.