Last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) celebrated 150 years of their mission to “protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence.” Though this mission hasn’t changed in the past century-and-a-half, the nature of conflict and crisis response has. [Video Below]

Humanitarian organizations face new challenges to assisting those in need. The ICRC finds itself increasingly responding to complex situations where short-term humanitarian relief is not enough to create long-term solutions, said President of the ICRC Peter Maurer at the Wilson Center on April 10.

Syria, the Sahel, and a “Vicious Circle”

Intractable conflict, politics, and environmental change have created recurring crises and places where the need for humanitarian aid is seemingly unending. Syria is a case in point, said Maurer. Humanitarian workers face resistance from all sides of the conflict, as well as from each other. “One of the most devastating and critical issues of the present moment is that in the international community there is no consensus on how to bring aid to Syria,” he said. “Even the most elementary consensus is questioned.”

Syria is also emblematic of the “contagious effects that conflicts today have in spreading to neighboring countries and regions,” said Maurer. More than 40 percent of the population has been uprooted, three million have been displaced to neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, and violence has flared in some refugee camps, said Wilson Center President and CEO Jane Harman, who moderated the discussion.

Other examples of “contagious conflicts” include last year’s civil war in Mali that spread to parts of Niger and Nigeria, and the permeable boundary between war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “As humanitarians we were used, in the past, to look at country programs…to bring relief to specific contexts,” Maurer said. “We are looking today much more transnational, regional, thematic challenges to food, water, sanitation, and how we can best operate in this context.”

Likewise, “we have been so used in the past to see humanitarianism, development, poverty, and climate change as distinct issues,” Maurer said. “We see today that this is not a good way in looking at the problems because they are increasingly intertwined.” Conflict in the Sahel, the band of semi-arid land that stretches from Mali and Niger through Sudan, exemplifies this intersection of issues and the “vicious circle,” he said, “where underdevelopment, climate change, scarcity of resources, and conflicts move countries from year to year…deeper into problems.”

Proximity and Politics

A complicating issue in all these contexts is that humanitarianism has become a multibillion dollar industry, said Maurer. Some organizations have political motivations, raising the question of when the ICRC should cooperate with others and when it should act alone.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing to do humanitarian action for political purposes,” Maurer said, “I just say it’s not ICRC’s mandate.” Whether an aid organization is political or non-political can “make a big difference in some contexts on how you deliver and what you are able deliver,” he continued:

Access to the most difficult areas of the world is only possible if you stay with strict neutral and impartial humanitarian action. So it puts limits to cooperation and interaction with others. It’s not by chance that in many parts of the world – rural Afghanistan, southern Yemen, central and southern Somalia, rural DRC, the north of Mali – we find ourselves pretty alone.

This can challenge an organization’s principles. How does the ICRC define its most important lines of action? It comes down to priorities, said Maurer. One example is proximity. “Proximity to victims and perpetrators of violence is crucial for humanitarian action in the past and will be crucial in the future,” he said. “The ability to be close to people, to make clear needs assessment, to make target action with response to clear needs, is crucial. It has to inform the way you operate.”

Building Resilience

Amidst all of these challenges, Maurer said it’s important that humanitarian action is not just “reduced to tons of assistance,” but builds towards long-term resilience.

Resilience, though, can have numerous definitions. Harman called it “a combination of awareness, preparedness, and the ability to take personal responsibility.” Maurer framed it as strengthening the basic infrastructures in communities, so others can replace them and countries can become self-sufficient in the future. In the past, he said, humanitarian organizations would substitute infrastructure and businesses to allow people to survive; but substitution is “devastating” in the long-term.

And this transition to stability requires more than just humanitarian aid. “If there is not more concerted action outside of humanitarianism – providing security, rule of law, strengthening state administration and state systems – humanitarian action will just disappear in a sinkhole,” Maurer said.

These challenges might seem impossible, Maurer said, but “there are success stories nevertheless.” For example, when he started at the ICRC in July 2012, rebel groups had taken over northern Mali. Despite challenging opposition, within a month the ICRC was able to reach 500,000 people with food aid, and manage 10 clinics and a hospital, thanks in part to engagement with some of the rebels, Maurer said.

Conflicts like those in the Sahel and Syria are “an enormous challenge,” said Harman, “but that should not make it too hard to tackle; that should make it necessary to tackle.”

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