Humanitarian spacebook

TN readers working on humanitarian assistance and development cooperation issues may be interested to know that there is now a serious but not solemn place on the web for them to exchange practice pointers and cooking tips. Aid Source bills itself as a humanitarian social network that is “fun, super cool, and counts as work”. I just established myself there and have proposed to help set up a working group on HLP issues, so feel free to “like” that idea upon arrival…

UPDATE – Pursuant to Chris Huggins’ eminently sensible suggestion that my proposal to start an HLP WG should actually be visible somewhere on the Aid Source site, I have now contrived to initiate a discussion on the topic. Feel free to wade in.

FURTHER UPDATE – After one week, my discussion topic has garnered a grand total of six views and no responses. As a result, I have decided to go with the flow and join the foodies group!

Avoiding conflict through early and effective management of land disputes

by John W. Bruce

The last decade or so has seen growing recognition of the major role played by competition for land in generating conflict. However, the often extremely complex and embedded nature of such conflicts—and associated political sensitivities—is such that both international and national actors have in many cases shied away from fully engaging with them. In other cases, forms of intervention have not always sufficiently taken into consideration their major—and potentially recurring—causes. The challenge is to better understand the role played by land, combined with related factors, in the generation of conflict—both in terms of the conditions that create a vulnerability to conflicts and events that tend to trigger violent conflict—as a basis for preventing or de-escalating violence.

I had worked on land issues from a development standpoint in Mozambique, Sudan and Cambodia, but a 2009 study in Rwanda for the Overseas Development Institute and follow-up work with UN-Habitat made me aware that the humanitarian community working in peacebuilding contexts had developed new ways of looking at land conflict and useful short-term approaches for addressing it. The land tenure in development community had little knowledge of these and often saw land policy and administration exclusively through an economic development lens. At the same time, those in the humanitarian community working with post-conflict land issues lacked familiarity with the role of land tenure in development processes and sometimes did not appreciate what was needed to lay the basis for sustainable, sound land governance.  These bodies of understanding and differing perspectives about land issues had not been integrated-an integration that is essential to the development of effective strategies for prevention and mitigation of land-related conflict.

With these challenges in mind I agreed to work with the Initiative on Quiet Diplomacy (IQd) to develop a handbook on Land and Conflict Prevention The handbook is one of a series providing third party actors with practical guidance in addressing issues that are frequently the sources of tension before violent conflict (re)erupts. IQd’s approach to me coincided with a train of thought that began when I worked with UN-Habitat on post-conflict land issues. I was struck by the fact that the valuable thinking that had been going on in the post-conflict context needed to be walked back through time, as it were, into the pre-conflict period, asking “What do we know about land and conflict that can be mobilized for prevention?” The result is a blend of ideas and practical guidance for preventing land-based conflict drawn from both the post-conflict and developmental contexts.

Squatters, IDPs or both? Untangling urban displacement in Liberia

by Rhodri C. Williams

I’m happy to announce the release of a report I wrote (available for download here) for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Liberia Office based on recent fieldwork. The report focuses on the plight of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced to Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, during the 1989-2003 conflict who chose unassisted integration into local informal settlements over assisted return to their homes of origin elsewhere in the country.

In resisting the expectation that they would return by becoming urban squatters, these internally displaced persons (IDPs) dropped off the radar of many humanitarian actors. However, their continued presence – which may have effectively doubled the population of Monrovia – has become a development question as infrastructure projects, investors and returning landowners begin to place pressure on the Capital’s many slums. The significance and potential volatility of the issue is reflected in the Liberian Land Commission’s decision to prioritize urban land issues in 2011.

In this context, it is very much to NRC’s credit that they have recognized the continuing humanitarian implications of what had come to be viewed almost solely as a development challenge. To quote from my report, the issue of urban displaced squatters in Liberia can be seen a classic exercise in the emerging discipline of ’early recovery’, or the attempt to design both relief and development measures in a coordinated and complementary manner:

Clearing the way forward: mine action and post-conflict land issues

by Jon Unruh

 Recently the Geneva Centre for International Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) explored new ground in linking land rights to ‘mine action’. Mine action is essentially all the activities related to demining efforts–certainly taking mines out of the ground but also the related activities of survey, record keeping, education, advocacy, turning cleared land over to government, dealing with local communities, etc.  The Centre commissioned seven studies on the relationship between landmines and land rights (Afghanistan, Yemen, Angola, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, South Sudan, and Bosnia) and then held a workshop in Cambodia on the topic designed to chart a way forward for policymakers.

Coming at the topic from a land tenure perspective I found it all quite intriguing. The studies revealed a lot more connections than I had realized. The spatial aspect of both land tenure and landmines certainly bring the two together in a variety of ways, but so does sequencing of areas to be cleared, strategies of mine laying and clearing, different approaches to dealing with local communities, government demining and legal capacity, and the different ways of operating for domestic and international private, humanitarian and government organizations that engage in a variety of types of demining.

Two of the more problematic linkages are land grabbing that occurs on the heels of demining, and lack of awareness on the part of demining organizations. The first occurs in a variety of ways and to such a degree that some communities do not want their land to be demined because they fear it will be seized, while others purposefully plant mines to deter seizure, demarcate, or otherwise provide for fairly strange forms of tenure security in wartime settings. The second is related to the first in that most demining organizations are very unaware of the land problems they can leave in their wake. With very little capacity to deal with land issues, or even enough awareness to avoid land conflicts that they contribute to or cause, most demining organizations seek safety in their stated and much valued notions of ‘neutrality’.

Jon Unruh to guest-post on new guidelines on land rights and demining

The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) just released a new Policy Brief on “Landmines and Land Rights in Conflict Affected Countries”. The Brief is based on case studies undertaken in Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka and Yemen (also available for download with the Angola and Cambodia reports to be posted by the end of January).

The report admonishes de-mining agencies for past failures to understand the local implications of their work, and encourages them to actively coordinate with humanitarian and development actors working with displaced populations and land issues:

Mine action organisations are not neutral when it comes to land rights. Releasing land which was previously contaminated with landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) and making it accessible changes its status. This inevitably involves land rights issues, even if the intent is to avoid them.

The report is a timely attempt to apply the type of conflict-sensitive, do no harm approach now commonplace to other humanitarian aid sectors in the heretofore somewhat distinct area of demining. I am therefore very happy to announce that its primary author, Jon Unruh, will be guest-posting on some of the report’s key findings in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Happy World Humanitarian Day!

by Rhodri C. Williams

Okay, you might be forgiven if the big date slipped your mind – after all we are only two years in since Sweden sponsored a UNGA Resolution that created it. Its worth a pause for reflection, however, as the timing this year is rather poignant. August 19 was proposed as it was the date of the bombing, in 2003, of the UN compound in Baghdad. At that time, SRSG Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed along with 21 others, including my law school asylum law professor (and mentor to many of my colleagues) Arthur Helton.

In the seven years since the UN attack, it is hard to say a lot of progress has been achieved in terms of resolving the fundamental dilemma in which humanitarian workers are increasingly targeted in spite of the principles meant to protect them and therefore increasingly dependent on forms of protection that are hard to reconcile with those principles. Indeed, as described by Samantha Powers and others, de Mello’s own presence in Iraq reflected a post 9-11 dynamic in which humanitarians have struggled to find an appropriate role in situations where they are badly needed but more at risk than ever of being perceived as partial by association or even design.

Last October, Conor Foley described a variant of this pattern in Afghanistan, asking how many more humanitarian aid workers would have to die before it would be broken. Part of the answer came with the appalling murder nearly two weeks ago of ten aid workers in northern Afghanistan. So its a good day to reflect on a lot of people who are out there in uncomfortable and dangerous circumstances working to mitigate the situation of others who are even worse off and do not have the option to leave. Would that none of it were necessary.

Land issues and natural disasters: introducing a new guidance for practitioners

by Esteban Leon

Much has been written and discussed in recent years about land issues by persons both expert and not so expert (and I include myself in the last group). However, in spite of the new literature, on-going debates, and variety of recommendations on issues such as land use and planning, land access, land administration and security of tenure, land remains one of the most controversial and challenging components of sustainable recovery from disasters.

In recent years, the humanitarian community has looked inward, learning from their past experiences providing emergency responses for the ever-increasing number of populations suffering from crises worldwide.  The humanitarian reform process has helped broaden the community of practitioners, reinforced global and country-based coordination systems, and initiated new and better means of ensuring integrated and robust humanitarian programming among concerned agencies.

“Natural disasters” are the consequence of natural hazards impacting human vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are ‘built’ by many different factors, and exacerbated by the lack of applied disaster risk reduction programming. Good land use planning and regulation could have minimized the effects of many of the disasters the world has suffered in the last decades. Good land use planning and regulation would have also facilitated the recovery of affected communities from disasters. Nowhere has this been more evident that in the devastating disaster Haiti recently suffered and the world has witnessed.

Recognizing the rights of communities affected by natural disasters (to non-discriminatory access to property, to adequate housing including security of tenure, etc), UN-HABITAT together with FAO and as part of a framework response prepared by the IASC Cluster Working Group on Early Recovery (CWGER) have produced a guidance for practitioners on “Land and Natural Disasters”.  The main objective of the Guidelines is to provide an approach for addressing land issues in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, facilitating early recovery and reconstruction of affected communities from the earliest opportunity.

Dye mon, gen mon – Land and shelter issues remain critical in post-quake Haiti

by Rhodri C. Williams

After blogging quite a lot on Haiti up till the New York donors’ conference back in March, my attention wandered a bit to other issues and regions. However, its been impossible to avoid noticing a steady drumbeat of reports over the last weeks indicating that a number of key pillars of the shelter and durable solutions strategies endorsed in New York seem to be faltering just as the new rainy season closes in on the beleaguered country.

Rebuilding after a disaster of the magnitude of Haiti’s quake will inevitably be a fraught process, subject to setbacks and delays. Even in relatively better off and better prepared Chile, IFRC reports that shelter and health issues remain a serious concern for those affected by the February quake there. But what is painful about the current impasse in Haiti is how quickly the cautious optimism generated in the run-up to the donor conference seems to be bogging down in a slurry of indecisiveness. Reading about it, I keep recalling a rather sad little Haitian proverb a colleague kept quoting in my grad school days of yore – back in the 90s when pre-quake Haiti was already seen as a basket case. “Dye mon, gen mon” went the title of her thesis: beyond the mountains, more mountains.

I began refocusing on Haiti after coming across an IHT editorial in mid-May that noted that the 1.5 million Haitians displaced by the quake remain, by and large, displaced. According to the editorial, only 7,500 people had been moved out of dangerous and overcrowded tent cities in the capital to planned transitional shelter areas due to the failure of the government to acquire appropriate sites, as well as the destruction of property records and growing neighborhood resistance to letting indigent newcomers put down roots. Meanwhile, the failure of humanitarian agencies to shift their operations beyond the capital was undermining the great decentralization plan, as urban IDPs began trickling back from the rural areas where they had found shelter in order to access aid.

Staying ahead of the rains in Haiti

by Rhodri C. Williams

The latest OCHA situation report on Haiti indicates that the challenges there continue to mount even as the situation there has well and truly slid from the headlines. As reported previously on this blog, humanitarian and early recovery actors are having to focus on a double displacement crisis affecting both the earthquake affected urban areas and large areas of the countryside where the displaced have found shelter with host families. In both cases, significant progress will have to be made before the impending summer rainy and hurricane season if further humanitarian crises are to be averted.

In the cities affected by the earthquake, and notably the capital Port au Prince, emergency humanitarian work remains to be done even as international actors scramble to institute more sustainable, transitional approaches. According to OCHA, as many as 13,000 people in the capital still may have received no aid whatsoever, and only fifty percent of those in need have received emergency shelter materials such as tents and tarpaulins. Direct food distribution is going into a second phase and rising rates of malaria are a harbinger of the rainy season to come. However, greater attention is also now being given to matters such as resuming schooling and providing psycho-social support for children – some 45% of Haiti’s population – as well as working with local partners to monitor the security and human rights situation in displacement sites.

Another crucial – and time sensitive – urban priority involves identifying, securing and preparing safe sites for transitional shelter. Here, the OCHA report’s description of efforts in both the capital and other affected towns indicates the extent to which consciousness of legal tenure as well as the physical appropriateness of sites has been incorporated into shelter planning:

Efforts to decongest overcrowded settlement sites in Port-au-Prince continue, with priority being given to sites that are particularly prone to floods and landslides during the rainy season. Relocating some 200,000 persons currently displaced in high-risk settlements would require approximately 600 hectares of land. The Government has so far identified five sites comprising a total of about 220 hectares in the following locations: Sibert, Villages Des Orangers, Carail Cesselesse, Villages Des Antilles and Tabarre Issa. These five sites identified by the Government for resettlement of displaced people have been assessed and are judged to be fit-for-purpose although some drainage work is required. Preparation of sites will commence in the next three days on 12 hectares of land that are public property; the remainder is still subject to negotiation for purchase with the landowners. Humanitarian actors are currently identifying organizations to support the Government in site planning and development, as well in the preparations for relocation. Meanwhile, the relocation site Santo 17 is almost complete in terms of site development and should be inaugurated shortly.

The situation in the countryside is also critical, with the closing window of time before the rainy season representing not only a threat (of further disasters) but also an opportunity (to get crops planted in time). Although some early flooding in the region is likely to result in localized crop failure, FAO has begun seed distribution in hopes that most farmers will be able to stay ahead of the rains. The presence of tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in rural host communities has created further pressure on agriculture as well as basic services:

Approximately 160,000 people are also estimated to have arrived to the border areas with the Dominican Republic from other areas affected by the earthquake. The majority of these displaced persons have not been accommodated in camps or settlements but by host families in communities. These communities, particularly in rural areas, where the displaced have arrived and found refuge have historically been very poor. With the arrival of large numbers of people from Port-au-Prince, the basic services there – schools, health centers, water supply – as well as the local economy – have been severely overstretched. UN missions visiting these areas inside Haiti, such as Fonds Verrettes in the South-East, or Ouanamithe in the North-East, have witnessed households that were composed of only 4 to 5 persons before the earthquake, are now housing 12 to 15 individuals.

Under normal circumstances, the fact that we are not hearing about Haiti anymore would allow the public to draw reassuring inferences – the crisis is over, reconstruction is underway. In this case, it may literally be the calm before the storm.

Haiti update – emergency response criticized as transitional measures get underway

Refugees International recently issued a new report, Haiti: From the Ground Up, which examines the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti and makes a number of recommendations for improving the international response. Coverage in today’s NY Times emphasized the fact that this report, like an earlier Human Rights Watch report on shelter issues, took the UN to task for lapses in coordination and prioritization.

The analysis in both reports has highlighted housing, land and property (HLP) issues related to shelter needs and durable solutions for the displaced. The Human Rights Watch report focused more narrowly on the need to ensure that sites for camps are lawfully acquired as well as suitable and safe for human habitation. However, the Refugees International report places displacement and HLP issues in a broader context, referencing the implications, described earlier in this blog, of the reverse urbanization that resulted from the quake:

Some 700,000 people in Port-au-Prince are without homes or proper shelter and another 600,000 people have left the capital. This has important implications for the overall development of the country. While the main focus of the humanitarian response has been on the Port-au-Prince area, the protection of displaced and affected families in the provinces requires both immediate assistance and longer term investments. The UN should increase its efforts and support existing activities to identify the needs of displaced people throughout the country.

Tents are in short supply in the settlements for displaced people both in the capital and in the provinces. Most people who have lost their homes sleep under makeshift dwellings of sheets and sticks providing little protection from the rain. The sanitation in the camps does not meet minimal international standards. The need for shelter poses immense logistical challenges and is intrinsically linked to land ownership and property rights, affecting both urban Haitians whose homes were destroyed as well as rural Haitians who depend on land for farming.

However, displaced people are not only in camps. Large numbers have sought refuge with relatives and friends who are quickly running out of resources. Refugees International has learned that families in Papaye, in Haiti’s central valley, now have on average 20-26 people in their homes. In Saint Marc, some 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince, the mayor has been organizing community support for the internally displaced. More than 25,000 have been registered, living in some 7,000 households. Refugees International also visited a school that remained closed because it housed displaced families. Such situations create a strain on already limited resources and infrastructure.

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If support is not channeled quickly into the provinces, the displaced will return to Port-au-Prince. This would only compound the challenges of distribution and coordination across the city, where at least 75 percent of the buildings have been destroyed and the ability to provide humanitarian assistance while protecting IDPs is overstretched. If support is invested in provincial communities, it will create a draw for those living in the Port-au-Prince camps to the provinces, lessening the strain in population-dense Port-au-Prince, while allowing for decentralized coordination and support of the displaced and host communities. ….

“Decentralization” has been the hot topic for the majority of Haitians. The infrastructure outside of Port-au-Prince is weak, and the capacity to absorb and support internally displaced people (IDPs) from the quake-impacted regions is thin. Within a disaster of this magnitude, however, exists the opportunity to support a decentralization movement and country-wide infrastructure investment that will not only provide urgent protection and support for IDPs, but will also address the imbalance in national development that contributed to great loss and vulnerability of Haitians in the Port-au-Prince area.

Meanwhile, the latest OCHA report contained mixed news. While concerns are mounting over the impending rainy season and the continued need to provide agricultural support to respond to the displacement-driven rural crisis, the report also noted that increased food distributions were giving way to food-for-work programs and that the Prime Minister had “approved five plots of land to set up transitional settlements, as well as eight plots to collect and treat debris in the metropolitan area.”