Humanitarian actors face daily the challenges of a shrinking of humanitarian space

2021

Léa Gauthier
Plaidoyer Humanitaire/Humanitarian Advocacy Advisor – Médecins du Monde, France

Crises directly impact people's health. They lead to violations of the right to health and disruptions in access to care due to insecurity, fighting, attacks against health personnel or structures, destruction of medical infrastructure and checkpoints that prevent timely access to quality care. In addition, they are often concomitant with or lead to a weakening of States and public health systems, which see a decrease or a halt in the financing of health structures, supply disruptions, an irregularity, or an end to the payment of health workers salaries, all of which are synonymous with a reduction in the quality of care. Finally, beyond causing an increase in the vulnerabilities of people, especially those who are already marginalized by societies and/or health care systems, crisis situations create specific health needs for displaced people or refugees, injured people, women, children, people with disabilities and the elderly.

Crises are increasingly complex and long-lasting today. In 2020, more than one billion people (16% of the world's population) lived in countries in protracted crises. Conflict and forced displacement are at the root of most of these crises, and an estimated 215.6 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance in 2020.

However, as more and more people need assistance, the humanitarian space is increasingly shrinking.

Humanitarian space: an endangered concept with real repercussions

Humanitarian space is a concept that symbolizes the environment in which we, as a non-governmental humanitarian organization, can work. It is framed by international humanitarian law (IHL) and the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. It encompasses several interrelated issues related to IHL, access, and financing of humanitarian crises.

Currently, several underlying trends contribute to severely restricting the space in which independent and impartial humanitarian action is exercised.

Violations of international humanitarian law and failure to respect humanitarian principles

First, non-compliance with international legal frameworks and violations of IHL and international human rights law impact both the target populations of Médecins du Monde’s (MdM) projects and MdM's ability to provide them with timely and quality services. These violations, for example attacks on medical facilities in Syria or Yemen, primarily impact civilians: today they represent 80 to 90% of victims of conflicts in the world.

Restricted humanitarian access

Hence, access to people in need is compromised by an underlying trend aimed at strengthening states’ control of the operations of civil society organizations, including international NGOs. This impacts both the possibility for MdM, as a non-governmental humanitarian organization, to access areas and populations in need of assistance but also the possibility for populations living in crisis contexts to access quality health care when they need it.

Politicization of aid

In addition, politicization of humanitarian funding and chronic underfunding of certain crises forgotten by the international community are contributing to further reduce the capacity of humanitarian actors to operate under the conditions provided for by IHL and to help those who need it.

Among these issues, some have a more pressing impact than others.

An increasingly complex set of legislations impact our ability to fulfil our mandate

Humanitarian workers have been implementing techniques and technologies for years aimed at reducing logistical difficulties and physical barriers to access areas affected by crises: in situations of insecurity or destruction of access roads, flights are operated especially for humanitarians. French organizations have been pooling their resources to strengthen their capacity to bridge the “last mile”.

However, today, administrative barriers, restrictive laws, hurdles, and harassment most impact our ability to fulfill our mandate.

The increased trend by states to control international activity within their borders, with disregard for existing international legal frameworks and states' obligations under international humanitarian law, is best embodied today in the implementation of counterterrorism measures and sanction regimes and their lack of adaptation to humanitarian action.

These measures and regimes, as well as the resulting national laws, can go so far as to consider humanitarian actions as a form of illicit support for terrorist activities, leading to a risk of prosecution of members and staff of NGOs. We denounce this criminalization of humanitarian action.

We are particularly concerned that these measures and regimes create a security bias for humanitarian field workers by reducing the acceptability and access of populations to aid, which may be perceived as one-sided or non-neutral. The “screening” and “vetting” obligations of our staff, partners and suppliers can reinforce this negative perception. Therefore, we refuse and will always refuse to "screen" beneficiaries of our programs.

All these obligations represent a transfer of risks from States to donors and to NGOs. On the contrary, we plead for the risk, which we have been analyzing and taking into account for years, to be shared between the various stakeholders. Therefore, we ask that the specificity of humanitarian action be taken into account and that states integrate humanitarian exemptions into their national laws. It is only in this way that humanitarian space, a common good of humanity, will be preserved.