Observatoire – Humanitaire.org
research group
Aid Watch was created in France in March 2003 by concerned citizens from the IRD (Institute of Research for Development), the University of Montpellier and the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. At the IRD, this project was supported by a Research Unit, UR102 (“Public intervention, territories, societies”), which worked on development policies and which merged with the IEDES (Institute for the Studies of Economic and Social Development) at the University of Paris I (Sorbonne) in 2008. At the University of Montpellier, Aid Watch was linked to the curriculum of the Department of Geography. At the Institute of Political Studies, the website was launched as a students’ joint project.
Aid Watch is based on voluntary work. Besides students, the observers, either researchers, teachers, or journalists, are paid by their respective institutions. Aid Watch is not a business-oriented office and its database can be consulted for free. The list of its members include people who contribute regularly (or used to contribute) to the website. We welcome free contributions to help us translate and update our data.
Aid Watch recognizes the following findings:
1) The modern humanitarian movement has been gaining great influence over the
past three decades.
2) In France, research on humanitarian aid in armed conflicts is incomplete and disorganized in comparison to that from our Anglo-Saxon colleagues (especially the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, the Humanitarian and War Project in the US or the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen).
3) The NGOs working in or about conflict situations have become real political actors on the global diplomacy scene: lobbies which have contributed to the establishment of an International Criminal Court or the signature of a treaty banning the use of landmines.
4) The humanitarian movement has reached a stage that allows outside criticisms without harming the cause.
5) The evaluation of humanitarian programs is made internally, creating a transparency issue. Many NGOs are, along with their financial backers, judges of the quality of their own actions. Following an accountancy logic, the audits of financial backers focus more on the use of the funds than on the impact of international aid on the receiving populations.
6) The different private structures composing the humanitarian movement are far more difficult to seize and study than the institutional actors of aid, namely states and intergovernmental organizations. Les diverses composantes associatives du mouvement humanitaire sont beaucoup plus difficiles à saisir et à étudier que les acteurs classiques de l’aide au développement, à savoir les Etats et les organisations intergouvernementales.
7) It is therefore necessary to set up a database on NGOs.
Introduction
Aid in war-torn countries suffers from several difficulties. Mainly: the problems of logistics; the risk of a “dependency syndrome”; the increase of social inequalities, sometimes in favour of the refugees to the detriment of the locals; the disloyal competition, for the local farmers, of the distribution of free food; the hijacking of aid for military purposes. Some points must be made clearer before undertaking a thorough study. First, war is certainly not restricted to the times of fighting, as peace is not characterized only by the absence of war. In his Leviathan, Hobbes would define peace rather as the absence of the threat of war. In other words, the field of study of Aid Watch is not limited to a dubious dichotomy between emergency and development. Crises can become permanent, while development experts sometimes have to deal with exceptional situations. Sustainable development is linked to two fundamental aspects of humanitarian action, namely reconstruction and the prevention of conflicts.
Another point to be stated is that establishing the difficulties and the challenges of aid in conflict situations leads to a quite complex description. Thanks to his academic and financial independence, a researcher can undoubtedly write more freely than a consultant in charge of the internal evaluation of a project funded by the backers who pay him. Evading issues for fear of putting the whole system into question leads to supporting practices that would individually be condemned. Yet the aim of research is not to disparage the humanitarian movement but, if possible, to contribute to improving work in the field, even if it involves informing without hiding problems. Looking critically at the aid provided by states, intergovernmental organizations or private actors is in no way incompatible with positive propositions. It is only necessary to avoid amalgams and to identify lapses, not to generalize improperly.
By showing the programmes at risk, the idea is to point out shortcomings to avoid catastrophes. The “humanitarian intelligence”, as we call it, consists in strengthening the analytical capacity and the “political awareness” of aid operators thanks to regional specialists. As NGO employees in the field often change quickly, one objective is to study the records of a programme and to stress the importance of the historical dimension which is indispensable to assess a situation in terms of improvement or degradation. As the contexts are very diverse, the aim is also to identify the features, to point out the obstacles and to take into account both the positive and negative effects of aid. Finally, we want to try to answer some of the questions raised by decision-makers or concerned citizens.
Humanitarian aid and war: a dangerous relationship
Over the past twenty years, relief operations to war-torn countries have greatly expanded. In developed countries, it has become a major political theme, as is shown by its take-over by donor states for diplomatic and strategic purposes. 
In the West, notably, the fact that governments and public opinions are more and more opened to humanitarian issues has emphasized phenomena that already existed during the Cold War, when aid was seen as another way of promoting national interests. Now, the armies of industrialized countries allegedly develop humanitarian programmes, NGOs are consulted by the United Nations Security Council and the private sector is asked to take part in peace operations: a militarization of aid that can lead to preventative wars or wars of aggression.
In developing societies, where most of the assistance go, relief has also become an important element of armed conflicts. The shortcomings of the system are structurally quite well identified, be they keeping the recipients in a “dependency syndrome”, increasing social inequalities by aiding refugees to the detriment of the locals, or harming the local farmers by distributing free food. The way humanitarian aid supplies a civil war economy is particularly significant.
The hijacking of relief by combatants can be seen at three levels. At the first level, the most obvious one, there is direct extortion: four wheels drives vehicles are stolen, food warehouses looted, medicine stolen, refugee tents sold, humanitarian workers protected for money or abducted and freed against a ransom. At a second, more subtle level, one can find the side effects of international aid. In economies where resources are scarce, NGOs rent houses, employ locals, pay customs duties to authoritarian regimes, “buy” the agreement of warlords with baksheesh, and provide, eventually, a population wholly engaged in civil wars. At a third level, finally, the injection of humanitarian funds and logistics in a conflict allows indigenous resources to be invested in the fights, leaving the provision of the basic public services to NGOs.
This is why it is not possible to know how many lives are saved in the long term. True, it is impossible to anticipate the side effects of humanitarian aid in sustaining the hostilities. But neither is it possible to know, retrospectively, what would have happened without relief from abroad. One cannot be sure that a conflict would have dried out and ended on its own if it had not been stirred up by adding “humanitarian fuel” on the fire, a balm that would only alleviate sufferings for a while. Money is the nerve of war and the introduction of aid resources in a conflict widens the field of competition and the stakes of the predation. This is the main challenge that humanitarian organizations are confronted with.
From the prevention of crises before they break out, to the trial of war criminals by international courts after the end of a conflict, some remedies have been implemented during the hostilities. However, these cannot prevent aid from being hijacked. Among the alternatives, an armed escort is not a satisfactory solution as such a measure denies the NGOs’ apparent neutrality, militarises their actions and turns the humanitarian workers into strategic targets, at the risk of making the attack on supplies more likely; moreover, funding such protection is not different from funding fighters and it makes the expenses dedicated to food or medicine smaller.
In some cases, retreat seems unfortunately to be the only option. The possibility of a withdrawal should be considered as soon as a programme is undertaken, if NGOs and their financial backers agree on giving limits to their actions. In practice, it is rarely so. When a western NGO decides to leave, mainly after one of its members has been killed, others take its place. Three main factors explain such “stubbornness”. The first is obviously linked to the insufficient knowledge of the side effects of the aid. It is very difficult to measure scientifically the negative and positive effects of a humanitarian programme. And a mathematical logic often leads donors to judging the success of an operation by the number of bags of rice or of tents distributed, without questioning the later use of such resources by the combatants.
Another factor which explains why humanitarian actors refuse to “leave” is the bureaucratisation of the aid, divided into market shares. While NGOs compete to get funds from international donors, ending a programme can now be decided independently from the needs assessed in the field, not even mentioning a retroactive control on the usefulness and the quality of the humanitarian aid. Finally, the fact that a co-ordination between NGOs is as yet impossible makes a strategic withdrawal from the most dubious situations impossible. The attachment of humanitarian actors to their independence, the diversity of charity cultures and the different opinions on the hijacking of aid prevent a common front against those responsible for the abuses. Nevertheless, a joint withdrawal would be far more effective since humanitarian operations always depend on the state of the forces involved. It would be better that donors and international organizations support an interruption of aid while the media would point out those responsible for the massacres, the abuses and, consequently, the withdrawal of the NGOs.
A focus on the actors
Such a challenge shows the need for a critical observation 
of humanitarian work in war-torn societies. One of the main tasks of Aid Watch is therefore to analyse the implementing strategies of NGOs that define themselves as “non-profit making” “private voluntary associations” with a “charitable aim”. Only the organizations dealing with situations of crises and armed conflicts are to be considered. On a longer term, this also implies studying programmes for the prevention of violence or for post-war reconstruction in a view towards sustainable development. Less stress is to be put on the fake dichotomy between those working in “development” and those in “emergency”. The former can be involved in a crisis and the latter sometimes conduct long-term programmes when insecurity has become permanent and when countries rebuild themselves after the signature of a peace treaty or the military exhaustion of the combatants. The intervention in war situations constitute the core issue of the study. As Aid Watch does not aim at an exhaustive review, it will only consider the most relevant organizations.
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Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos
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