Oral evidence: The global humanitarian systemHC 675Tuesday 15 March 2016
Oral evidence, 15 March 2016.
Witness
Professor Mukesh Kapila CBE, Professor of Global Health and Humanitarian Affairs, University of Manchester, gave evidence.
Chair
Professor Kapila, Mukesh, welcome. Thank you very much for coming to give us evidence today. We have eight questions for you and about 40 minutes, so let me kick off. As has already been mentioned, last week we took evidence from the Minister, Desmond Swayne, and he said, “You would not design the system we now have”, in terms of the world humanitarian architecture. If the humanitarian system were to be completely redesigned from the ground up, what do you think would be the key differences compared to what we have at the moment?
Professor Kapila
Thank you for inviting me. It is good to be here. The humanitarian system could be better designed if it started off by listening to the people, which is what the consultation for the World Humanitarian Summit did. I should declare an interest here, because I am acting as special adviser for the World Humanitarian Summit, but I will be very frank and independent in my answers. Thousands of people around the world said, “Thank you for the great generosity of the world, but do not expect us to be grateful.” What they are looking for is not charity; what they are looking for is dignity. Unfortunately, the rituals of the world humanitarian system, as it has grown up, have turned unfortunate people into beggars. The agencies at work in the humanitarian system—good people and good organisations—have had such perverse incentives placed upon them that, to some extent, they have become dishonest. To answer your question about a better system, Stephen, there are a couple of points. First, we have to have a separation of powers between those who judge what the needs are and those who fund them. At the moment, the system is that you are judge, jury and executioner at the same time. You go to the ground as an organisation, a UN agency or an NGO, and you decide what the needs are, you write an appeal, you get the money, you decide how to spend it and then you judge for yourself whether or not you have been successful. No other public enterprise operates in this particular way. When you take your car to the garage to have it serviced, that is fine, but then you go somewhere else to have its MOT. Separation of those powers is important. The second important difference that has to take place is that we must have independent accountability for the performance of humanitarian organisations, and that includes the donors, in the same way that we have the independent body set up here in the UK. I do not see why that cannot happen on a global level.
Chair
Do you mean a global version of ICAI?
Professor Kapila
Yes.
Chair
Say more. Tell us a bit more about how that might work.
Professor Kapila
How that might work is very simple. I can imagine the appointment by the UN Secretary‑General, the General Assembly or some combination of an independent commission of people who have no vested interests in any of the organisations that are the beneficiaries of the billions coming from donors like DFID. There should be no conflict of interest. At the moment, there is a revolving door. One day you are working for DFID; another day you are working for the UN; and the third day you are receiving the benefits of that. This body of people must be completely separate from both the givers of the funds and the intermediaries responsible for spending them, whose only purpose is to make sure that what is done with the money is done in the best interests of the people on the ground. They should be able to rule without fear or favour, without politics or patronage. That lack of accountability and democracy we have in the global system is the root corrupting influence of why everyone is so dissatisfied with the humanitarian system at a time when the world has never been more generous in giving money to it. That is the paradox. I do not see many of the solutions and discussions I have heard, including evidence in front of this Committee, as grappling with the fundamental core of the problem, which is to reinforce confidence in the system and bring it to a different level of maturity and accountability.
Chair
You were in the gallery. You heard Nigel’s questions on the Inter‑Agency Standing Committee. How do you see what you are proposing, which I am going to call the global ICAI, fitting with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee?
Professor Kapila
Can I start off by saying that I have been a long suffering veteran of the IASC? Unlike many of the people who have given you evidence, I have sat in the IASC, on its committees, working groups and so on, representing different organisations, depending on who was paying me at the time, in the UN system or, indeed, even the Red Cross, because the Red Cross is an observer in the IASC. I do not know why you and others are fixated on the IASC. It is just a committee. If agencies of the UN system want to get together and meet up from time to time to discuss their business, I do not see what the big deal is. I also hear that donors and Governments want to join the IASC. That is a very bad idea, because you will fall back into the problem of confusing the powers. Either you are a donor giving money and holding to account those who are spending your money; or you become part of the action and the operational policy‑making machinery. What you cannot do is both. The IASC issue is a non-argument. I used to spend my time trying to delegate my attendance to some junior person, because they were mostly boring meetings. The real decisions are not made there. The real decisions are made among the leaders of organisations, as part of the normal interactions of diplomacy and working on common problems and issues at the country level or at the global thematic level. The committee is just a mechanism for normal interactions and normal diplomacy in the world. It is no big deal.
Mr Evans
It sounds as if you think it should be wound up.
Professor Kapila
If agencies want to have a committee to discuss things, why not? No one has yet invented a system when they wanted to discuss things, other than to have a committee. It is called an IASC. It has done some very good work, for example setting up norms on various issues. I remember the work I did with it on guidance for HIV, in relation to people with AIDS who were caught up in emergencies and so forth. It does useful work, but it is not the great block to change that I hear from some of the narrative I have read.
Chair
I put to the previous witnesses the point that the Minister, Desmond Swayne, made to us last week, when he said he saw the main way in which the UK and DFID could exercise influence as through money rather than through seeking institutional reform. Do I take it that you are, at least in part, disagreeing with that, with your advocacy of a new body?
Professor Kapila
I can only speak from personal experience. In this case, let me start off with the DFID experience, where I was the head of the conflict and humanitarian affairs department at a time when budgets were beginning to go up. In my part of the show, I presided over the giving away of hundreds of millions of pounds to institutions of all sorts—global institutions, international institutions. I can tell you that the use of money to bribe a bully is not the way to change a world system. You can buy compliance with sums of money, according to projects, for a period of time, and everyone will be grateful to you for a period of time, but it does not last. Firstly, organisations are very resilient. The word was used earlier on, but organisations are themselves very resilient to cope, and then someone else comes along and offers them more money or better support. Money is good to change behaviour if that is done in a morally appropriate way, but, as to the idea that you can buy change by just throwing money, we live in a very rebellious world. As I travel around the world, I find that, on the one hand, people are grateful for the generosity of donors, including DFID. On the other hand, they are angry. They are angry because nobody likes to be at the receiving end of charity. Unfortunately, the largess of the UK, which I am very proud that our Government are so good at giving, has to be tempered with a degree of humility and a degree of gentleness. I am afraid the UK cannot buy its way, just because it is a generous donor. The world does not work that way anymore.
Chair
That is very fair. To be fair to the Minister, so I do not mischaracterise his evidence, I think he was saying that the UK would prefer to use its position as a major funder to argue for change, rather than looking at institutional changes in the world humanitarian system.
Professor Kapila
May I come back to that? I think this is a little bit of a cop out.
Chair
I thought you were saying that earlier, but you did not quite say it in the previous answer.
Professor Kapila
I would certainly agree with the Minister and others who say that now is not the time to get into huge bureaucratic battles about changing mandates. By the way, there is nothing wrong with the mandates. Read the vision statement and mission statement of any agency you can think of: beautiful words, beautifully written, nothing wrong with them, as relevant today as they were 50 years ago in terms of their intent. Mandate is not the problem. The problem is the way in which organisations, because of the humans who inhabit them—and this is part of human nature, territoriality and so on—have grown, metamorphosed and become distant from the clients they serve. That is the problem. Therefore, that is where the big debate should be. How do we bring back the word “human” into “humanitarian” and, in doing so, influence the behaviours of the leaders of these organisations and those who work in them?
Jeremy Lefroy
You mentioned at the beginning, Professor Kapila, that the key is to listen to people. They are looking for dignity, not charity, which is something I am sure we would all agree is vital. What happens in cases where you have grave humanitarian crises, as we saw after and during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, for instance, and the refugees, those who need the aid, are under the influence of some pretty awful people—in that case, the Interahamwe in Goma and elsewhere? If you are not really able to get through to the people who really need it, because they are being influenced or, in some cases, controlled by forces that are not benign, how will we get through there? I do not think that is the only instance where that has happened, where political actors who have a real agenda have controlled the humanitarian space in a refugee crisis.
Professor Kapila
Indeed, as it happens, I was myself in Rwanda in 1994 during the hundreds of killings, representing ODA, the predecessor to DFID. In those extreme circumstances, there is no alternative but for the international community to do the best it can to get the access it needs and to do it in the most robust way possible. But those are extreme circumstances. There are others. I was involved in Darfur. I was head of the UN in the Sudan when the Darfur genocide happened, and I was also in Srebrenica. Those are extreme circumstances. The thing about extreme circumstances is that they make very bad case law. They are good cases, but they make very bad law. By and large, in the vast majority of situations, it is perfectly possible to work with local authorities, even bad Governments, and local communities to improve humanitarian access. There is a certain patronising influence in the West: we think that the only people who can be trusted are our organisations or us, the international system. By and large, from my experience, including under some pretty horrible regimes, I have seen that, apart from the extreme situations, a lot can be done on the ground, if only we have the patience to operate on the ground. All Governments are not bad. My problem with the humanitarian-development divide, a question I hope you are going to ask sooner or later, is that the humanitarians think that basically all Governments are bad; only they can be trusted with the purity of their ideals; and only they are capable of neutrality, impartiality, humanity and the rest of it. It is like a little ideology. The reality is much more nuanced than that. It is time that we became a little humbler as humanitarians and realised that most humanitarian relief is done by locals without external assistance, and most assistance is provided by Governments themselves to their populations before the international donors come in. That is the channel that we have to work on. I hope the summit will take us closer in that direction.
Jeremy Lefroy
We saw an example of that during our visit to Nigeria a couple of weeks ago, where Pauline, Fiona, Lisa and I visited an internally displaced people’s camp in Abuja. All the aid there was being given by local people. The school was being run by local mosques and churches, and others were giving the day-to-day requirements for those people. We have seen that in action. It seems that, with 2.2 million IDPs in Nigeria at the moment, all of work that is being done for them is being done by the Nigerian states, the Nigerian Government and the Nigerian communities themselves. That reinforces what you are saying.
Professor Kapila
Absolutely. What you saw was fairly typical of many situations around the world. I have just spent a month in Lebanon looking at the situation of the Syrian refugees, and the Palestinian refugees, who have been lying there for 70 years, in addition to the Syria refugees. There is a lot of international aid coming in, but by far the greatest quantity of aid in the most acceptable way is being delivered by the local communities, including the host populations, incidentally.
Dr Cameron
I am very interested in what you are saying about bringing the “human” back into “humanitarian”. How do we enable local actors and organisations to play their part and to be fully involved? What would the mechanisms look like to ensure that happens on the ground?
Professor Kapila
Humanitarian delivery is a retail affair but, unfortunately, our system works wholesale. In the translation from wholesale to retail—to the corner shop, where each individual’s monetary transaction takes place—something is lost. The only answer to that is to really start from the bottom up. That is not a new statement; everyone says that, but it requires an awful lot of patience, an awful lot of risk‑taking and an awful lot of time to work one’s way up. It is very difficult to do when you are under pressure and you have to respond to donor applications. The EU says, “We have X million for this thing; we need proposals in by next Monday”, and then you have to craft those proposals in the appropriate format and so forth. You need to take a long‑term and more open‑ended approach, starting with the grassroots and being prepared that you will not be able to show results in the way DFID would like. DFID’s approach, for example, is to count everything that moves. If it cannot be counted, because it cannot be linked to UK aid, they will not fund it. I deplore that approach. I have seen many donor agencies take a reductionist approach, instead of looking at these as complex, interrelated and long‑term problems, the outcomes of which cannot be measured simply in numbers of immunisations, numbers of babies saved and how many malaria tents you have given out. That has to change, and that would then incentivise local players to start thinking about these things in a different way.
Pauline Latham
You have partially answered what I was going to ask you, but I will ask it anyway, in case you want to add anything to it. The idea of aligning humanitarian and development assistance is not new, so why do you think calls for change have failed in the past and what does DFID need to do to ensure lasting future action?
Professor Kapila
The humanitarian‑development debate has been going on for at least as long as I have been in the business, in different roles, which is 20 to 25 years. The reason it has not progressed as much as we would like is because I am not sure the culture wants to be shifted in the institutions concerned. It is actually quite a comfortable life. We have funds. We have mechanisms for this, that and the other. There is a whole set of rituals and bureaucracies, which are very familiar, in the way money is given out. We take a categorical approach: “This is a humanitarian problem; this is a development problem.” I remember, when I was the United Nations resident and humanitarian co‑ordinator in the Sudan, my struggle was that this school was funded by humanitarian aid and that school was funded by development aid. They were exactly identical schools, but some countries only did humanitarian aid to Sudan, which was a priority at the time, and some said, “We will do more development.” We had an almost impossible problem, trying to address the issue of children’s education, with which no one would disagree. We need to completely shift the paradigm. It is not about changing institutional structures and systems; it is about changing mind-sets and taking, as the Secretary‑General’s report for the World Humanitarian Summit says, an outcome‑oriented approach and working according to an outcome of problem‑solving, as opposed to according to categories.
Pauline Latham
Going back to the schools issue, your practical example, supposing they were DFID‑funded, how would they have acted differently?
Professor Kapila
What we did was to stop issuing a humanitarian appeal. We called it the consolidated, all‑Sudan, all singing, all dancing appeal. We tried to get all donors’ funding not necessarily into a common pot, but at least aligned to a common framework or a common approach. This is incidentally what the World Bank has also been trying to do. Its new fragility, conflict and violence group is trying to find a new mechanism whereby we might more effectively help countries that face a development challenge and have a humanitarian challenge at the same time and, through common assessments, without defining them one way or the other, come to more objective‑oriented approaches. Then we hope that the bilateral donors like DFID will respond in a flexible way. DFID is quite flexible. It is good in that regard, but it can do much more in terms of moving towards common approaches. The danger is—and I see this in various proposals—a fund for this, a fund for that, £1 billion for this, £500 million for that. I see these proposals coming out. Unfortunately, all that will do is to create more transaction costs, more different categories, if you like. We have to reduce the gaps between different categories and sectors, rather than add to them. The only way to do that is in a very slow and steady way. There is no quick fix. This is the job of a generation, and maybe the World Humanitarian Summit is the starting point for reforms like that.
Pauline Latham
When you said about DFID counting everything, one of the reasons they do that is because they are accountable to the British public, who are paying for this. They have to be accountable back to the British public. I understand why you dismiss that as being irrelevant. It is not, for the British public. We, as politicians, have to get over to the British public that aid is a good thing, and we have to prove it. That is extremely hard when you have a very cynical public out there. It is very easy to say when you are down there doing the job, and I understand that, but we all have to be accountable and we cannot forget that.
Professor Kapila
I was not disagreeing with you, but there is a difference between countable and accountable. As others have said, not everything important is countable and not everything countable is important. My point is solely that, if we are trying to show accountability and show to the donor public the good that is being done with their resources, we need not to dumb down our communications with the general public. I appreciate that you are a politician, and I dare not argue with you.
Chair
I believe you.
Professor Kapila
The point is that I really think you do the British public a disfavour when you think either that they are so selfish that everything has to be sold according to the national interest, or that somehow they are, in a sense, not generous. Look at the generosity in relation to the refugees and migrants. The generosity of the British public was far greater than that of the British Government when it came to getting refugees in. We will not get into that debate if you do not want to.
Pauline Latham
Some, not all.
Professor Kapila
Okay, some. My main point is, yes, by all means count what is countable, but do not dumb down the whole issue. The reason the MDGs failed in some areas and worked in other areas was because they did not address the uncomfortable issues in between. The SDGs are much better, even though there are many of them, as opposed to the smaller number of MDGs. The main point is to realise that the complexity of the human developmental endeavour cannot be reduced down to counting a few numbers and then using that to sell to the uneducated public that we are doing good—aren’t we wonderful and aren’t we leading the world? That is dishonest.
Mrs Grant
You are making a really important point. My understanding is that, to get the culture change we really need, there has to be more long‑term thinking and joining up, possibly doing things that cannot be ticked, crossed and given points for. Having said that, the world has just agreed a set of goals, 169 targets and 17 goals, and I am not sure that, within that, we have the unaccountable element that you are referring to. I just wonder what your thoughts are on that. I agree with Pauline that the accountability has to happen, but there should also be, within the system, a way of getting credit for the unaccountable element, if you see what I mean. I wonder whether perhaps we have missed an opportunity with the SDGs and whether something could have been incorporated.
Professor Kapila
Work is ongoing on the measurement framework for the SDGs. They have only just been approved. Having been involved in the MDGs—at that time, I was in DFID—the translation from the goals was very slow; the SDGs are much faster. I am more optimistic, in the sense that we will have both quantitative and qualitative measures by which to measure progress. I hope we will also allow diversity. The SDGs are as relevant in East Anglia as they are in east Africa. This is the great progress of the SDGs conceptually, compared with the MDGs. If we take that approach, we have to allow licence for each country or territory to translate it into its own needs. This will genuinely make it more sustainable, as in sustainable development goals, and allow ownership at the community and the ground level. Let the people also decide what the measures of accountability are. Remember, by the way, that, as important as British aid might be, it is not the most important element in the development of nations. As we know, the number of countries that rely on foreign aid is a reducing number, which is a very good sign. Other resource‑transfer instruments are becoming far more important. A more holistic approach, as envisaged in the excellent DFID aid paper last year, is taking us in that direction. I am optimistic that the SDGs provide a broad framework for both development and humanitarian work. A slogan of “do not leave anyone behind” is particularly relevant to our business, which is the billion or so crisis‑affected people around the world.
Fiona Bruce
To what extent does a successful outcome of this summit depend on high-level political commitment? Can I ask you to comment on the question that I think you heard me ask earlier, regarding this key responsibility to be addressed of “political leadership to prevent and end conflict”? How do you think that would look, ideally?
Professor Kapila
Political leadership to end conflict would look like beefing up and giving teeth to the mechanisms of compliance with the international rule of law. What that means is supporting the International Criminal Court and the growth of other courts; internal compliance with international humanitarian law and other mechanisms; and a policy of zero tolerance. The UK’s good leadership of the work on female genital mutilation and the summits held over recent months were an excellent example of that. The UK’s diplomatic efforts should be directed at working with countries that are an obstacle at the moment, and trying to have greater accountability for that. The Prime Minister could signal that by attending the World Humanitarian Summit, considering that he himself was on the committee that helped adopt the SDGs. The UK is such a major player, as we all know, on the humanitarian side. I know that he is important; he has the EU referendum and the G7 to worry about, but I cannot think of a more important signal of political leadership from the UK than for the Prime Minister to at least show up in Istanbul. Many countries in the European Union have told me that they are watching to see whether David Cameron turns up; and then they will decide whether the leaders of other countries will turn up, so it is really important that the UK Prime Minister turns up personally. To your earlier question about what success would be, do you mean success of the summit or success of the humanitarian system improvements?
Fiona Bruce
I mean in terms of a successful outcome of the summit. How much does that depend on high-level political commitment? With regard to the phrase “political leadership to prevent and end conflict”, what would that look like, particularly the “prevent” part?
Professor Kapila
First, the World Humanitarian Summit should not be looked upon as an end. It is the beginning of a new chapter. The best outcome for the World Humanitarian Summit would be a framework or a broad agreement in principle on the critical strategies or directions of travel for the future, and political commitment to doing that, for example by reforming the international architecture. That does not mean getting into the weeds of UN agency reform, but at the higher level that I talked about at the very beginning of our conversation. It would mean having a plan of action that is deliverable. I could maybe see, for example, the emergence of some strategies, which might be reviewed, harmonised with the period of the SDGs, which is 2030, and movement towards some goals and targets specifically for humanitarian populations, for example minimum‑service packages for crisis‑affected populations. After all, we have targets for children at school and so on. I do not see why we cannot have targets for life‑saving needs and ends. All of that requires strong universal political commitment. What would be quite wrong—and this could be anti-political, if you like—is if this is seen simply as a Western liberal push. The real political leadership has to be universal political leadership from all the continents and cultures in the world, especially taking on board the different styles in which humanitarianism is expressed all around the world. It is not just what we think in the West that is important here. The other countries—China, India and the African nations themselves—are the most important players in how we start addressing the gaps in the system and making a real difference to the lives of the most vulnerable people. The real politics—and here the UK Government can add its wise counsel—is to really ensure that it does not come over as preaching; it does not come over as telling the world, “We are leading”. Every third sentence in the great policy paper we were talking about says, “The UK is leading”. I can tell you that these kinds of statements go down very badly around the world. It might be fine for a UK domestic audience, but there are many leaders in the world. Real leadership is how to bring other people together, and that is where is the politics really lies.
Chair
Which African countries do you think are ready to rise to that challenge of leadership at the moment?
Professor Kapila
Many African countries are willing to rise, but they do not want to be told that they have to do it this way: for example, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, even Uganda, despite some of the political issues there.
Chair
You would say the current South Africa is now ready to rise to this sort of challenge.
Professor Kapila
Everyone has different capabilities. They have different interests and preoccupations. Obviously, in the same way that the UK is worried about migration to Europe, they are worried about issues in their region. That is only right and proper. In my travels around these countries, talking to the Foreign Ministers and others, I see that there is a consciousness—more than a consciousness. There are also regional organisations, such as the African Union, and sub-regional organisations, which are gathering in capacity and strength. We have to create space for them. If you do not give people space, you cannot at the same time keep on blaming them for not rising to the challenge. The way politics is done in the humanitarian area has to change. This is why I used the word “humbleness” earlier on.
Chair
We are running out of time, so we will have to race forward slightly.
Jeremy Lefroy
Very quickly, turning to the international financial institutions, for instance the World Bank, some people have suggested that the eligibility for IDA assistance should be changed and should be on need rather than income levels, so that countries that are above the middle‑income bracket, which is $1,215 at the moment, but have substantial problems with refugees are able to access some long‑term financing from this. Of course, we know that it is a rather arbitrary level. We have seen countries like South Sudan go in and out over a period of years. I wonder what your view on that is. If the World Bank took a lead, I think other IFIs would follow.
Professor Kapila
I was recently in Washington DC at the World Bank, at this fragility, violence and conflict forum, where some of these issues were being discussed. I had just come back from Lebanon, where I saw the fact of this very personally. Personally and professionally, I am very sympathetic to more flexibility, a loosening of some of the definitions and taking, as you said earlier on, an outcome or problem‑oriented approach. Definitely, middle‑income countries that are hosting refugees should be given some kind of additional deal that allows them to host these refugees and, at the same time, not compromise their own development. This can only be a win-win and a good-good. In the longer run, whether or not one should be changing threshold figures of LICs, MICs and so on is a highly technical argument and, to some extent, the answer depends on the incentives that would send to countries. The fact is that, if you are a middle‑income country, you are a middle‑income country and you have to take your responsibilities as a middle‑income country. I can see a middle‑income country with problems being helped, but whether we should change more than that requires much more discussion.
Mr Sharma
Thank you very much for your very passionate responses to all the questions. My question has been generally addressed by you already, Professor, but I still think there is more you can add. My question is in three parts, so that is why, looking at the time, I have put it all together. First, what benchmarks should be used to gauge the success of reforms? Secondly, for the purpose of the summit, humanitarian assistance seems to be defined as external intervention only. Should the aim of national capacity-building be to reduce this reliance on external assistance? Finally, without setting outcome goals, is there a chance that business will continue as usual? You have already touched on some of that.
Professor Kapila
They are also interrelated. Let me start with the last one, which I think is the answer. Very definitely, outcome goals are needed, because, without both countable and accountable outcome goals, we are not going to see any change in the business. The real challenge is exactly defining those goals, because I am sure we will have huge arguments about what is a suitable outcome, but the answer is yes. As to humanitarian action, we have to remember that humanitarianism is the most ancient of instincts in humanity. It was there before humanitarian organisations came into existence, and before donors and recipients came into existence. That common and universal humanitarianism is what we have to incentivise further. The idea that humanitarian aid means external assistance is completely wrong. There are plenty of figures to show that most humanitarian assistance is local, and that is the best. How to trigger more of that is the real reform that is going to be needed. That is what the WHS is all about. Your first question is the most difficult one: what would the benchmarks be, or what is the best way to judge results? I would say they should be measured in the way that people at the receiving end of this decide they should be. If they feel valued, if they feel their dignity is restored, if they feel they have had a say in how their lives are governed and if they are enabled to sort out their problems—these, by the way, are all measurable; they are not as qualitative as I am making them sound—then we will have succeeded. I can tell you what is not a benchmark. What is not a benchmark is what percentage of humanitarian appeals are funded or how much money is going into humanitarian aid as a percentage of GDP, GNI or ODA. These are inputs; these are not benchmarks. The amount of money we spend on humanitarian aid is not a cause for celebration; it is a commemoration of our failure. When the UK issued a press release recently saying it had passed the billion‑pound mark on helping in Syria, I went into mourning, because what that displayed was not that we are generous—I hope we are generous—but simply: “Oh my god, what a testament to failure.” The real benchmark is if we change the quality of our international co‑operation, as a consequence of the comprehensive nature of actions that are taken to address humanitarian needs and turn them into human opportunities.
Chair
Thank you very much. Helen has the final question, which relates to what you just said.
Mrs Grant
It does. The summit seems to be based on doing more with what is available, rather than attracting more. Do you think that is the right approach in terms of narrowing the gap between needs and resources? Do you think we might have missed a trick with the summit in relation to putting more pressure on other countries to commit to 0.7%?
Professor Kapila
It reminds me of my time in the UK National Health Service, where the needs were always increasing and there was always a gap. I guess it is the same nowadays. The summit is right that, before asking the world for more, it must do better with what it has. Throwing money away at problems is not necessarily a recipe for solutions. That is not to say that more money could not be useful, and the needs have certainly grown a lot while humanitarian aid contributions have not kept up with them. But the first thing to do is definitely to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of the current spending, from all sources—private, government and so forth. Your second point is exactly why the summit is taking place, which is that, by making it a world humanitarian summit, every country in the world is invited to the table. It is not a UN meeting; it is a world humanitarian summit. It is a combination of we the people and we the Governments. Doing that sends the signal that our common humanity dictates a common human response. That means all countries and all Governments have a role to play. By and large, from my own consultations around this, we are gratified by the response we are getting. People like being put on the same table as both rich and poor countries and finding common solutions together. It is the only way to address what is basically a common problem for all of us.
Chair
Mukesh, thank you very much indeed for a fantastic evidence session. It was really great to hear from you. You have covered an extraordinary amount of ground in three‑quarters of an hour. Thank you very much indeed.
Professor Kapila
Please do some good with this and get some things done; and get the UK Prime Minister to come to Istanbul.
Chair
We will do our best. Thank you very much, M Oral evidence: The global humanitarian system, HC 675 6