I’m over in Geneva, where I’ve just been presenting to the IASC, which is composed of the heads of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies (including UN agencies like WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNDP and the WHO; NGOs like Oxfam; and the Red Cross / Red Crescent movement). Here’s my presentation, which uses food prices as a springboard from which to look at long-term drivers of change in the humanitarian sector, and ask some of the key questions for the future of humanitarianism.
At the end of the discussion, I was left with the thought that humanitarian agencies will occupy a uniquely interesting place during the turbulent couple of decades of transition on which the world now looks set to embark. Partly, of course, that’s just because of the obvious point – that it’s humanitarian agencies that will be at the very front line of dealing with the shocks and stresses we’re likely to see. But more subtly, we can expect to see a difference between the context for humanitarian agencies and for other kinds of multilateralism.
For most kinds of multilateral collective action – trade policy, say, or global environmental issues, or peace and security – there’s very much an open question about how relevant multilateral cooperation will be over the next two decades. It could go either way: a more turbulent world could lead to renewed global solidarity; or it could lead to fragmentation and marginalisation of multilateralism.
The humanitarian system, though, is the one part of today’s multilateralism of which that’s not the case. Whatever happens, publics and states are still likely to look to humanitarian agencies to cope with the effects of a more turbulent world (even if they won’t always fund them properly). Humanitarian agencies are the one set of multilateral players whose relevance is effectively guaranteed in the years ahead, no matter how bad things get. Pretty important, then, that they use their profile to set out a strong narrative about why global cooperation – on prevention as well as relief – is essential.
