|
|
Preface
Deborah EadeIt is now almost routine to begin an essay on conflict-related emergencies by stating that contemporary wars are fought not on demarcated battlefields, but in the towns, villages, and homes of ordinary people. The fact that 90 per cent of today's war casualties are civilians, and the fact that four out of five refugees and displaced persons are women and children (perhaps over 40 million people worldwide) are so often quoted that we hardly stop to think about what they mean. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet bloc are thought to have intensified these trends and ushered in the New World Disorder and the concomitant phenomenon of the complex humanitarian emergency (CHE).1 Humanitarian aid is no longer seen as being insulated from politics, nor are aid workers immune from attack when they assist civilians in war zones. Agencies, relief personnel, and humanitarian assistance are all subject to fierce and sometimes violent dispute. All, in various ways, can be manipulated to influence the outcome of conflict.
Experienced development and relief agencies know (but sometimes seem to have forgotten) that emergencies have always been complex. Twenty years ago, the 1976 earthquake that devastated Guatemala exposed that country's deep social, economic, and cultural rifts and sparked one of the most brutal, sustained, and comprehensive military campaigns against civilians in Latin America's violent history: a chain of events that led to its being dubbed an `unnatural disaster'.2 No international humanitarian aid programme since World War II -- whether Europe in 1945-6, Palestine in 1948, Biafra in 1968-70, Ethiopia in 1974 and 1986, or Cambodia in 1979 -- could usefully be described as simple, in either political or operational terms. So it may seem almost perverse to define certain emergencies as `complex', as though others were somehow not.
However, the term `complex emergency' was coined in the United Nations to describe those major crises, which have indeed proliferated since 1989, that require a `system-wide response': a combination of military intervention, peace-keeping efforts, relief programmes, high-level diplomacy, and so on.3 In other words, the complexity refers to the `multi-mandate' nature of the international response as well as to the multi-causal nature of the emergency; to the recognition that major crises are necessarily political and economic (in their causes as well as their consequences), and never `merely' humanitarian; and to our engagement as humanitarian agencies in this reality as much as it refers to the reality itself.
The world may or may not be a more complex place than it used to be -- though we should beware of inventing a mythical Golden Age of shared moral certitudes, `clean' wars, and the uncontested simplicities of administering first aid to war casualties. But our understanding of how humanitarian relief fits into the international scene has undeniably had to become more intelligent, and more critical, in recent years. We have had to learn to see beneath the surface, to hear what is not spoken, in framing humanitarian interventions. Gender analysis offers a useful analogy. Only a decade or so ago, relief workers could content themselves with consulting with the village headmen or `community leaders' about what was going on, and what they thought was needed; and then draw up a response on that basis. In those days, any such consultation with the `victims' was seen as an enlightened advance on earlier practice. Yet societies are not a linear hierarchy, in which those at the top represent the interests of everyone, including those at the bottom of the pile. They are a tangled web of relationships based on exclusion as well as inclusion, and permeated by diverse perspectives and life experiences. With this insight, deciding how to act for the benefit of women and children, as well as of men, becomes a more demanding (and certainly more time-consuming) matter. This is not because gender roles and identities have become more complex. Rather, it is because we have (or should have!) a deeper appreciation of how they shape people's needs; and have learned that ignoring such gender dynamics is most damaging precisely to those who most need support. Similarly, the politico-military dimension of emergencies is not new; but understanding how it influences relief programmes does indeed challenge many deeply held beliefs about neutrality and justice.
A regrettable consequence of viewing the end of the Cold War as the global watershed for humanitarianism is a tendency to dismiss earlier experience as having nothing to offer us today. As Stephen Commins stresses in his introductory essay, nothing could be less true. If we turn our backs on the past, we not only lose the opportunity to learn from experience, but may also misread the present. Written by practitioners from many different backgrounds and countries, this compilation of papers from Development in Practice shows that, to be effective, interventions must always be based on the recognition that societies in crisis retain and are shaped by their own past -- one that pre-dates the arrival of the international aid juggernaut, CNN television, or the Blue Berets. Survival may appear to depend on international assistance, but the future must be built by the actual survivors, long after the dust has settled.4
Its all-encompassing nature can make the impact of modern warfare both randomly impersonal and yet highly intimate. Political disappearances, `ethnic cleansing', and gross violations of human rights -- whether in Guatemala, Burma, Indonesia, Rwanda, or ex-Yugoslavia -- are designed to destroy a society through systematic terror and hatred; and to destroy individuals through fear, pain, and loss. The millions of anti-personnel mines strewn across the paddy-fields of Cambodia or the small-holdings of Angola ensure that this cruelly indiscriminate destruction will continue for generations to come. Mending lives and relationships will demand patience, trust, and immense courage. For a society that has been ripped apart by civil war, developing a shared and sustainable vision of justice and peace may prove yet more complex than the emergency itself.
Notes
1 The terms `complex emergencies', `political emergencies', `complex political emergencies' (CPEs), and `complex humanitarian emergencies' (CHEs) are used interchangeably. Here, following the practice of many humanitarian agencies, we use the latter.
2 See, for example, Roger Plant (1978): Guatemala: Unnatural Disaster, London: Latin America Bureau.
3 A document produced by the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, Protection of Humanitarian Mandates in Conflict Situations, states that `... given the inter-related causes and consequences of complex emergencies, humanitarian action cannot be fully effective unless it is related to a comprehensive strategy for peace and security, human rights and social and economic development'.
4 The annotated bibliography in this volume cites several works addressing the consequences for civilians of the 12-year war in El Salvador, which might serve as a microcosm of the complex emergency. These works portray both the broad and the specific policy dilemmas and practical issues faced in providing humanitarian assistance to civilians, refugees, displaced people, and returnees in a climate of counter-insurgency and hostility to such intervention. They also show the complexities of embarking on post-war reconstruction in a post-Cold War environment of economic liberalisation. See Larkin et al. (1991); Macdonald and Gatehouse (1995); Pearce (1986); Thompson (1996; 1997 forthcoming).
