Oral evidence: The global humanitarian systemHC 675Tuesday 8 March 2016
Oral evidence, 8 March 2016.
Witnesses
Rt Hon Mr Desmond Swayne MP, Minister of State, Department for International Development, and Dylan Winder, Head, Humanitarian Policy and Partnerships, Department for International Development.
Chair
Minister, welcome back. You are our most frequent visitor from this parliamentary session so far.
Mr Swayne
This is becoming habit-forming, is it not?
Chair
Absolutely, and it is very impressive that you were here to listen to the other evidence. Thank you for doing that. We have quite a lot of questions for you and about half an hour to cover them. We have seven areas that we are aiming to cover in that time, but we have structured it so that the most important questions are the first ones. I am going to go straight to Stephen for the first question.
Stephen Doughty
Minister, in the written evidence from DFID, you say that the summit should revitalise commitment to the universal values that underpin humanitarian action. Can you give some practical examples of what you are pushing forward to meet that aim? For example, would you push for a global compliance mechanism on IHL?
Mr Swayne
There will be a meeting in April covering this, and also in September Obama will be organising another meeting on driving forward this agenda. I want to see a real engagement at the summit, an anger that will engage the world and drive forward an agenda to do something about the consistent and persistent abrogation of international law with respect to the treatment of non-combatants. Clearly there has to be political action and political action driven by the Security Council. The summit cannot do that, but the summit has to begin that campaign, the engagement of that campaign, to be driven by anger at what is happening.
Stephen Doughty
There is a danger here because something must be done. Anger is great. It is great that you are going to do that, Minister. It is fantastic and DFID has the ability to lead in that. DFID has the ability to be a leader here. DFID and the UK have the ability to be a leader, but what practical things are you going forward to push for at the summit?
Mr Swayne
We have a number of practical demands at the summit with respect to protracted displacement, with respect to financing and with respect to reform of the international systems. However, specifically in terms of abiding by international law, I do believe that that has to be a political decision made by the nations of the world in a forum that the summit does not address.
Dylan Winder
Perhaps also to add to that, Minister, we are working very closely with the Red Cross movement on looking at the compliance mechanism. We are working with other donors, with the US and the EU to also look at what we can collectively work together on on this really critical issue. It is, as the Minister says, a very political issue. We are hoping that there will be some kind of leaders’ segment at the summit where member states will be able to make some of these more political comments.
Fiona Bruce
Good morning, Minister. We welcome the Government’s leadership on dealing with the issue of protracted displacement. I want to ask you about, in particular, internally displaced persons, who often are in much more need than refugees in the sense that they are not protected by a universal or binding instrument. My question is: what can be done to improve the legal rights of IDPs? Should there be a binding legal instrument? Perhaps just to set this in context, the Committee has just returned from Nigeria where there are 2.2 million internally displaced people, and we went to a camp where there were almost 1,000. They had no support from the Nigerian Government. In fact, they had no support from any authority at all. They were entirely dependent upon the charitable support from people living near them in Abuja or the little bit of work that could be eked out by some of the young men who went out into the locality to try to find it. Even the school there where the children were taught was being run by volunteers from within the camp or local residents. This is a very serious question, because there are almost twice as many IDPs as there are refugees in the world.
Mr Swayne
You are absolutely right and I am glad that this is now the particular focus of the Secretary-General in what he wants. Absolutely, the internally displaced are a lot harder to reach often enough to deliver aid to, and they have fewer rights. It is something we have to address given that they are the greater part of the problem. I cannot see any solution other than a recognition—some form of formal recognition—of their rights.
Dylan Winder
We also believe we should be looking at all these different groups. Particularly with IHL, it is really critical to maintain humanitarian access into some of these areas. That is absolutely essential. IHL is the global agreement that we all have to be able to work there, so we do believe, as the Minister says, that this is a really important part of the summit. IDPs should be one focus, but not the only focus. We need to make sure we are working on all the different bits and they should come together in our approach to the summit.
Jeremy Lefroy
There was a meeting last June organised by a forum focused on improving humanitarian action, which was recommended to the Secretary-General to reform UN agency mandates and roles, and I am quoting here, “better to meet the basic humanitarian needs of affected people”. We understand that the UN Under-Secretary-General—our former colleague—Stephen O’Brien is insisting that the UN does not need to change. I do not know whether he was responding specifically to that or whether there is room for change without the UN as a whole changing. What is the Department’s position and what is the Government’s position on that at the moment?
Mr Swayne
I have had discussions about this and we were all agreed that we would not start from here. You would not design the system that we now have. However, should we be reopening those questions of the mandates and redesigning from scratch? I think pretty well the consensus is that it is not worth the candle. You would not get agreement. You would run into indeterminate difficulties and obfuscation. It would be very difficult to get agreement. What does the reform therefore look like? It comes down to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and revitalising that with what, in my brief, was called empowered leadership. Leadership is getting the right personalities in position. Clearly empowered leadership implies an element of institutional reform and getting leadership at the country, regional and global level. However, that reform, I am informed, would be very, very difficult because it raises the issue of sovereignty in all sorts of parts of the world where people do not want to be told what to do by a humanitarian co-ordinator who is in charge. My own preference is for someone to be in charge. The consensus in the Department is that we need to provide incentives in the form of the financing—the way that we finance the system—to get it to behave more in the way they want, rather than to secure institutional reform. Am I right?
Dylan Winder
You are, Minister.
Chair
You are always right.
Dylan Winder
We do think reform is a really critical element of the summit. The grand bargain, as mentioned in the last session, is going to be very important for that. Part of the problem is the donors. As people mentioned, the UK does not have a specific humanitarian budget at country level. We are able to operate more flexibly within multi-year arrangements. However, a lot of donors have a separate humanitarian budget in a separate Ministry. They are very time-bound. We think the grand bargain is a great opportunity for us to have discussions with donors, as well as the UN. We are slightly disappointed that one of the roundtables that was planned on reform has now been dropped from the summit agenda. However, we are hoping very much that the grand bargain discussions will pick this up. We will certainly be pushing absolutely for reform of the system, in the way that the Minister has said in terms of empowered leadership at both global and country level, looking at multi-year funding, looking at how we can have better joined up needs assessments and, particularly in protracted crises, looking at where we can get humanitarian and development actors working together much more effectively under one plan and under one assessment.
Mr Swayne
If we do not get a clear—I was going to say 10-point plan—plan with points and action coming out of that discussion on the grand bargain, we will be disappointed.
Jeremy Lefroy
It seems to me the UN Under-Secretary-General’s attitude is a completely logical one, because at this point the last thing you would want is a massive row over process, when we have such matters confronting us at the moment. Can I just ask about the way in which DFID’s humanitarian work looks forward and, to some extent, looks back? Looking forward, I think you have said before that it is vital that humanitarian and development goes hand-in-hand and that development has to be programmed into the humanitarian work. I just want to raise this issue of the predecessor to humanitarian intervention, which is political action or political failure. We saw in Nigeria last week that the UK’s work on the elections last year has, in some way, helped to have a peaceful election with an outcome that has been accepted. Clearly it took the bold decision of the outgoing president to say, “I accept these results”, and there was huge involvement by civil society, but the UK very much supported that process, which was an extremely important part of what has happened to Nigeria in the last year or two. Is DFID engaging more with political processes, not just around elections, but around trying to see conflict stresses coming and helping actors on the ground to work with each other, so that they do not end up in civil conflict or civil strife with the kinds of consequences we all too often see?
Mr Swayne
In terms of looking forward and looking back, we last published a humanitarian policy in 2011. We are going to publish a new, revitalised policy just before the summit. There is an expectation that we will, as the second largest donor, have something clear to say on that. We issued our first consultation document, which you may have seen, last week, asking a number of questions. You are absolutely right; part of our demands that we have placed upon ourselves and targets that we have to meet, which we are meeting, is spending at least half of our resources in the most conflicted and unstable states. That is part of the answer of the early warning and of addressing these issues. My main effort, as I regard it, is Goal 16 and the issues of governance, which if addressed properly are the most likely to de-conflict or deal with conflict at the outset. Ultimately, if people believe they can win on the battlefield, it makes life very difficult and it requires a very hard-hitting political message, at government and world leadership levels, to defuse that.
Dylan Winder
Absolutely, and what we are increasingly doing, as the Minister says, is working politically both at a global and at a local level. This is not just DFID; this is the UK Government. The new humanitarian policy will be a new government policy. We will look at the role of the Foreign Office and the network, which is really critical to this agenda. Also we have seen things like, recently, the Secretary of State chaired a Security Council meeting on development so we are really trying to look at how we recognise this political issue, as it is one of the most important things we do, particularly in those conflict areas.
Chair
Minister, can I take you back to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. You have made a case both today and in written evidence for reform. We heard earlier from Christina Bennett from ODI, who described the committee as having a crisis of legitimacy. When you spoke just now, you talked about what you ideally would like to achieve and some of the obstacles to achieving that. Realistically what would success look like in terms of reform of that committee?
Mr Swayne
I had this discussion yesterday and I am not sure that I necessarily agreed with the conclusion. I do hanker after somebody in charge, but I do not think we are going to get that, so we have to get a commitment out of the grand bargain: a commitment to an invigorated leadership at country, regional and global level. That, I suspect, will come at a price of much greater pooled funding, so that they have the flexibility with which to operate. That raises questions for donors. That is the best we could hope for. I do not think we are going to get an institutional agreement to reform the system, but I am happy to be corrected.
Dylan Winder
No, I agree, Minister. We want to see much more collective action from IASC Principals, which will hopefully be based on a more common assessment of need. The other thing we are after is perhaps a bit more space where donors can have a discussion with the IASC. At the moment we do not have an entry point with them either. Our discussion tends to be at individual agency boards. We wrote a joint donor letter to the IASC, calling for a space where we can have that system-wide dialogue with them.
Chair
Is there resistance to that and, if so, where it is coming from?
Dylan Winder
We have not had a full response to our letter yet, but I imagine that there may well be some resistance.
Mr Swayne
When I attended the finance paper discussion in the UAE a couple of weeks before the Syria conference, I had the impression there was rather greater consensus and determination on the part of all the agencies to address the issue. I am reasonably confident that it is very much on the agenda.
Chair
Is there a case for an expanded membership of the IASC?
Mr Swayne
I picked that up during the last session. It is important that the IASC has legitimacy. That involves inclusiveness. There is something in the back of my mind that says, “It is our money and I am responsible to you and have to answer to you on how it is spent”. So long as we are confident that the new mechanism is capable of spending pooled funds effectively, I will be reassured.
Fiona Bruce
I would like to turn to an issue that has been a recurrent theme of this Committee, which is about DFID’s support to smaller organisations. One of the key areas for improvement coming out of the summit consultations is the importance of empowering communities and local organisations through the localisation of aid. It is very interesting that local and national NGOs receive only about 0.1% of UK funding, much lower than the average worldwide, yet they are often the first and last responders in terms of crisis situations. Could DFID look at again at the importance of funding local actors?
Mr Swayne
I am surprised at the statistic because it seemed to be so much more in terms of the time that it evolved. Certainly, if you look at our response in Nepal, it was based on civil society organisations that we had empowered, provided for, trained and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. We want to see much more buying from local and national government in building resilience. I went to the launch of the Start Network, which we have supported, and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy, and the Disaster and Emergencies Preparedness Programme. These are all issues where we are trying to drive forward a local agenda, but colleagues are coming to me all the time and asking us to invest in particular local organisations that they draw their attention to. I have to be aware of the problem of managing lots of little ones and having the due diligence to ensure that they are capable. There is a balance to be had, but I do accept the argument that you make that local organisations get there faster and can deliver quicker. We have to be alive to that.
Fiona Bruce
Do you think sometimes DFID is just too risk-averse?
Mr Swayne
One of the things I have certainly found since being in the Department is that it is not risk-averse. We do all sorts of things that involve a great deal of risk but we seem to manage that risk. That is the problem here. How can you be sure that you are delivering effectively if you are trying to manage all these aid programmes? We have had this discussion in the last Committee on what we were doing in Nepal. The question put to me by the Committee was, “Are you sure that you can manage all of these things?” and then you asked me to do a whole lot more things as well.
Fiona Bruce
Charter4Change has called on a commitment of 20% of global funding to national NGOs.
Mr Swayne
Where has 20% come from? Is this just arbitrary? I do not know what the proper amount is. The proper amount is the right amount. The right amount is the one we have decided that these organisations can do this, ought to do this and will be effective at doing this. When you add them all up it will come to a percentage, but I certainly would not want to commit to any percentage in advance on the basis of a target.
Dylan Winder
Minister, perhaps it is also worth pointing out that DFID is the largest funder globally of pooled funds at country level, the majority of which goes to local NGOs. For us, it is less about the money transferred directly to national NGOs and more about the fact that those national NGOs, I think the last session said, are supported in terms of their capacity, they are able to engage working with the policy environment locally to make sure that can happen, and also looking at how the private sector locally can come into that piece as well.
Fiona Bruce
Have you seen any impact on what has been called the shrinking space of civil society in terms of local NGOs being able to work in different countries?
Dylan Winder
Lots, particularly in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Chair
Can I just press on this 0.1% figure that we have, would the pooled funds, which Dylan referred to, be outside of that 0.1%?
Dylan Winder
The 0.1% just refers to money that we directly pass to national NGOs, which I suspect are organisations like BRAC in Bangladesh, which are the bigger southern‑based NGOs, which are more international.
Chair
Would you have a figure for what the total UK funding of national and local NGOs would be that would include via pooled funds?
Dylan Winder
I am afraid it would be quite difficult for us to track.
Mr Swayne
We could have a go.
Chair
If you could have a go and, if it is possible, it would be great to have that figure. I take your point, Minister, about the 20%, but would you accept that 0.1% is too low?
Mr Swayne
0.1% certainly sounds very small and I am surprised at that number—shocked.
Fiona Bruce
Our figures, as I understand it, are coming from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Chair
They are, yes. They are OCHA figures, as I understand it.
Fiona Bruce
That monitoring organisation, yes.
Mr Swayne
I was not questioning their veracity.
Jeremy Lefroy
I would certainly agree, Minister, with the comment that you make about DFID being prepared to work in risky areas. We saw that last week in Nigeria and I very much pay tribute to the work of DFID staff and partners. The UK is pretty much the only country, as opposed to multilateral organisations, working extensively in a state like Kano and we were very pleased to see that. Please keep that ability to take high levels of risk and please continue to take that risk. I want to refer to a letter written to us by Andrew Mitchell and Clare Short, who are concerned about the effects of counter-terrorism measures on certain local NGOs. They give some examples: that the efficiency and timeliness of aid has been reduced due to increased administrative burdens; there has been an undermining of relations with local communities and local partner organisations, and there is less transparency and accountability due to associated uncertainty. This came as a result of a visit they paid to the area around Syria. What are your comments on that, first of all?
Mr Swayne
The law is that if you pay a bribe to get through a checkpoint, to deliver aid to starving people, you have broken the law. If it comes to a choice between letting those people starve or paying the bribe, the choice that the law—that we have made, as a Parliament—is that you let them starve. Breaking the law and paying the bribe, you might get mitigation for the smallness of the bribe and the greatness of the need but, nevertheless, it is the law. I am not sure there is any way around that. There is no humanitarian opt-out or amnesty in this. Perhaps that is something we need to do a great deal of thinking about. I got a very helpful note in my box overnight, which said, “What we can do is work closely with our partners to better understand the difficulties that they face, provide guidance and support their needs to navigate this complex landscape.” I am not sure that that is an answer. I am not sure that that gives us anything. The law is the law. We have to do due diligence on these organisations. They have to be alive to our concerns and the dangers. We cannot fund organisations where there is a danger of that funding going to terrorists. Some organisations can be very naïve. I had a number of religious organisations in a few weeks ago, and one of them complained that they were being condemned for not having condemned the events that took place in Paris. They said, “We are a development organisation. We do not make political statements.” I said, “Wise up to reality. If you do not condemn what happens in Paris, people will say, ‘They did not condemn what happened in Paris.’” It is obvious, is it not?
Jeremy Lefroy
I would agree with you; it is obvious. I will just give an example. My wife and I have a charity that we have had for 25 years. The account was blocked. That was because, I presume, we are considered, as Members of Parliament, politically sensitive. We were unable to operate that charity for nearly a year because we did not have a bank account. That was of little significance, except for the few people that we support. However, for major NGOs, which are coming under the same sorts of rules, these can be really difficult things. In most cases, they will not have any contact with terrorism at all but there will be a risk-averse response from the bureaucrat, the official involved—in this case a bank official.
Mr Swayne
I will cover myself by saying that banking regulations come under the Treasury and counter-terrorism comes under the Home Office. However, I do not believe these have come directly out of counter-terrorism legislation. They are largely an imposition from US banking regulations spreading. I would point out that local Conservative associations are experiencing those difficulties, as indeed are individuals and Members of Parliament.
Dylan Winder
It may be worth adding, Minister, that we have also established a working group with NGOs and the banking sector to better understand exactly what those issues are.
Jeremy Lefroy
That is very positive to hear. When is that expected to report?
Dylan Winder
I am not sure when it is expected to report, but it has certainly started.
Jeremy Lefroy
Would you be able to feed back at the earliest possible opportunity? Clearly this is an issue of concern to UK NGOs.
Dylan Winder
Yes, we can certainly come back to you on that.
Chair
We are taking evidence next week from Andrew Mitchell and Clare Short. I understand that Australia’s counter-terrorism laws have been amended to address this issue. Is that something that you are aware of and are able to comment on?
Mr Swayne
I am certainly not aware of that, but I would be very interested to see what they have done. I have a view, perhaps a controversial one, that there is something else we need to do at the other side of the equation. I started with this very stark example of you have a convoy, you are trying to negotiate through all sorts of numbers of checkpoints and, if you come across a terrorist group or a state party that says no, you cannot do it. This impunity and this knowledge that nothing will ever happen to them because, even after the war is over, with Western standards of evidence to secure an indictment, there is not a will on the part of the world to—this comes back to where we started with the anger that is happening; if that anger does not drive a will to do something about impunity then, ultimately, there is no way of enforcing it. What is the silver bullet? Is it a bullet? Do we arm or weaponise our relief efforts? Do we declare people to be outlaws and go out and get them so that they know that there is no impunity?
Jeremy Lefroy
What is your view, Minister?
Mr Swayne
I tend to that view.
Stephen Doughty
Leading on from that, but taking you in a slightly different direction, Minister, as a distinguished and gallant gentleman yourself you will have had your training in international law of armed conflict and so on. The Secretary of State for Defence yesterday was talking about the operations in the Mediterranean with refugees; increasingly our Armed Forces are being put in complex situations often working alongside humanitarian situations and crises. What role does DFID play specifically in advising the MoD and our Armed Forces on IHL and compliance dealing with those situations?
Mr Swayne
We do have a very good relationship with the Ministry of Defence and there is a liaison between the two. It is an established, regular liaison and I have met with them.
Dylan Winder
It is worth saying that the Foreign Office is the Government lead on IHL and we do talk collectively with the MoD. We have a set of memoranda of understanding with the MoD in terms of how we work. We have the Oslo guidance internationally, which the UK complies with. We have a very good discussion with both the FCO and the MoD on this issue.
Mr Swayne
I am alive to concerns that what is called the humanitarian community has about the militarisation of aid. Given my background, I do not particularly share those concerns. I am alive to them; we have to address them but I am not overly concerned. Our Armed Forces have shown themselves particularly flexible in a number of situations where they are quite capable of delivering aid. When it comes down to it, as I have said this before, when it comes to a situation like Sierra Leone, there is only one Department in Whitehall where a Minister can say “Go” and a man goeth; “Come” and he cometh.
Stephen Doughty
I have a cheeky last question. It is International Women’s Day today; what are you going to get out of this summit for women and girls in humanitarian situations?
Mr Swayne
It is very important that the summit is informed in all of its decisions by the principle that underpins the global goals: nobody left behind. We want to raise women up the agenda, certainly in places of conflict. They suffer much, much more and their voice is not nearly heard enough. That has to be an outcome of the summit if we are to declare it a success.
Fiona Bruce
You say the Foreign Office is a Government lead on IHL. Which Government Department is the lead on conflict prevention?
Mr Swayne
We have the CSSF. This is one of the ways in which we are addressing a number of concerns properly. We have a Conflict, Stability and Security Fund specifically to address areas that we have raised. We have a good governance fund. I would claim that we are; am I right?
Dylan Winder
It is a collective effort, Minister.
Mr Swayne
All HMG.
Chair
There is no lead Department.
Mr Swayne
I suspect that we are doing more than anybody else—put it that way. We do jointly administer the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund together with the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, so I suppose it is a collective effort. We will be spending significant bits of our budget on those issues outside the CSSF.
Jeremy Lefroy
In the last Parliament—I cannot remember in which inquiry it was—we recommended that the United Nations, or indeed DFID supporting the United Nations, could help to train more women in international peace negotiations. We found that almost all the negotiators involved in the various conflicts that we looked at were men. On this International Women’s Day, I wondered whether any progress had been made towards that. Certainly the Minister at the time thought that this was an interesting idea. I wondered whether we could take that up again, because there is a distinct lack both of trained peace negotiators in total and certainly of women who are peace negotiators.
Mr Swayne
I was not that Minister.
Jeremy Lefroy
You were not.
Mr Swayne
Now I have heard it and I think it is more than just an interesting idea; it is an idea we should do something about it if we are not already addressing it. Are we?
Dylan Winder
We are certainly doing a lot on women and girls internationally. We are certainly working a lot with the UN in terms of getting more women in positions where they can advise on needs assessment at global level, including in conflict areas.
Mr Swayne
Let me come back to you.
Jeremy Lefroy
It needs a more specific addressing of this subject.
Mr Swayne
I will take away an action point to tell you exactly what we are doing and what we ought to be doing.
Stephen Doughty
An important point was raised by the previous panel about humanitarian data. We are pleased to see the role that DFID is saying it is going to play in leading best practice in that. Can you say a little bit about the work the Department is doing on that and what you expect in terms of the summit?
Mr Swayne
There has been a great deal of work done on data. Indeed, it was driven forward by the Liberal Democrat Minister Lynne Featherstone, who hosted a conference at Westminster on driving forward data. It is vitally important that we are able to compare the different agencies and we have them all on the same basis so we are able to compare like with like, in terms of costs, overheads and all the rest. We will certainly be pushing forward with that agenda.
Dylan Winder
We are doing quite a lot on age and sex disaggregated data, to make sure that we and other partners can track that. We are also, as the Minister, says looking at value for money and transparency type data. There are lots of exciting initiatives around big data and working with the big tech companies to look at how we might get more feedback from affected people during crises. It is a big issue and a big issue for the summit.
Chair
Minister, one final question from me: on a scale of 0 to 10, how optimistic are you about this summit in May?
Mr Swayne
I would say 8. I have adjusted my expectations in terms of the ability to deliver a solution on the adherence to international law in respect of non-combatants, refugees and displaced persons. I doubt we will get institutional action but what I want to see is a real determination expressed to drive forward the agenda to get that action.
Chair
Thank you very much. Thank you for your evidence here today. We are really grateful. Oral evidence: The global humanitarian system, HC 675 21