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February 2, 1999
Speakers: Nan Buzard, Project Manager, the Sphere Project; Joelle Tanguy, Médecins sans Frontières
On February 2, 1999, the Carnegie Endowment’s International Migration Policy Program hosted a luncheon discussion on the Sphere Project, an initiative launched in July 1997 by a coalition of nongovernmental actors to establish minimum humanitarian standards in disaster response. Led by the steering committee for humanitarian response (SCHR) and InterAction, a group of over 150 US-based development, disaster relief and refugee assistance agencies, the Sphere Project also includes VOICE (Voluntary Organizations in Cooperation in Emergencies, a network of humanitarian NGOs throughout Europe), the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), and the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA). The meeting brought together many participating members of the Sphere Project, as well as scholars, policy analysts and representatives from government agencies to debate the project’s direction and impact. This report summarizes their discussion.
Kathleen Newland, Senior Associate and Co-Director, International Migration Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment
"The attempt to establish minimum humanitarian standards goes back at least to 1990," said Kathleen Newland in her introductory remarks, "when a Nordic initiative led experts to produce the Turku Declaration – one of the early attempts to marry the specificity of humanitarian law with the broadness of human rights law. Like many efforts until now, the Turku Declaration didn’t have more impact because it lacked concreteness. Although it has been easy to identify standards in the abstract, it is difficult to translate them in practice. Through the Sphere Project, hundreds of organizations and individuals have tried to establish real, concrete standards. Yet their effort has been controversial. Is it realistic to expect a single set of standards to be useful in all circumstances for all humanitarian NGOs? What are the inherent dangers? That is the subject before us today."
Nan Buzard, Project Manager, the Sphere Project
Before beginning a graphic presentation of the Sphere Project, Nan Buzard passed around copies of the project’s handbook and its Humanitarian Charter.
"Why did this broad-based coalition of actors come together?" she asked. "Because so many are involved in humanitarian response, emergencies have become more complex, there is a concern for accountability, and funds are increasingly tied to performance." Buzard said the Sphere Project aims "to improve the quality of response and accountability."
With the Humanitarian Charter as the base of the project, its core principles are "meeting essential needs and restoring life with dignity in any kind of calamity," according to Buzard. These standards address five sectors of assistance:
- Health services;
- Shelter and site selection;
- Food aid and nutrition;
- Sanitation; and
- Water.
The major goals of the project’s first phase, in 1997 and 1998, were to develop the Humanitarian Charter and minimum standards, and to gain broad acceptance for them. In Phase II, the project will work on: dissemination (education and training); implementation (working with NGOs to use the document as a program tool); gender and protection issues; field studies; evaluation; and publication (the next due out by fall 1999). However, Buzard noted the project’s deliberate exclusion of United Nations agencies and governments from the process, due to a concern that their involvement would have slowed it down considerably.
Finally, Buzard cited some key concerns about the project, many of which are not new. First, she acknowledged concern about the use of standards as a common program tool and for setting explicit goals. "A primary concern is that donors will use these standards against NGOs. But that is not the intention of the management committee. Ours is positive. We see that standards could be used as a strong advocacy tool," said Buzard.
A second concern focused on the roles of state and non-state actors that set the political framework of humanitarian assistance. "NGOs are informal and legitimate actors, but they don’t necessarily have a role in securing humanitarian space," Buzard said, referring the audience to the Humanitarian Charter.
A third concern is that there be a proper assessment of standards, which Buzard said the Sphere document addresses in its analysis of minimum standards. She also addressed a fourth concern that standards will obstruct innovation. "There is no instruction on how NGOs should manage themselves. We understand that flexibility is key," she said.
Lastly, Buzard addressed the concern for the standards’ universality, explaining that field reviews will seek to answer the question: "Are standards applicable in different situations -- other than stable, camp-based populations?"
Joelle Tanguy, Médecins sans Frontières
Seeking to clarify the debate as it exists internally within the Sphere Project as well as externally in larger networks, Joelle Tanguy examined the impetus behind the Sphere Project – in which her organization participates – as well as its potential consequences.
"The impetus for Sphere was Goma, 1994," she said. The pressure came from donor states anxious to see mechanisms for coordination of NGO efforts, as well as from the frustrations of NGOs themselves.
"Funds are allocated under conditions of performance," Tanguy asserted. "We must keep that perspective on this project because it might define its direction."
As a participant, Tanguy said she endorsed the project from a technical perspective, but urged that the Sphere tools not be mistaken for goals. The project does not articulate a vision or sense of direction for humanitarian assistance; nor does it clarify its relationship with political or military actors. These are often the areas where the most troubling dilemmas are found.
She stressed that the standards’ universality "is by no means clear, but the project is looking at a number of initiatives to see how, having been projected from the environment of the 1980s and early 1990s, those standards still can apply now when many actors are no longer working in traditional refugee camps (as in Sierra Leone, for example)."
She emphasized that Sphere has achieved a way for disparate NGOs to communicate with each other – not an easy task – but she questioned whether a ‘single beam’ was the right concept for NGO coordination. MSF feared that such an approach could constrain NGOs’ flexibility and the division of labor among them.
Tanguy also noted that "there are a number of cases where performance standards basically do not apply" – as was the case with the presence of MSF and ICRC in Kigali in 1994. When a situation is desperate, humanitarian agencies must do the best they can regardless of benchmarks. Their presence may be extremely important even when performance is impossible. She said this case showed how the Sphere Project’s first phase needs to be reviewed with regard to protection and the role of state actors.
"We are aware of our weaknesses as a community and we need to strive to increase our professionalism. But at the end of the day, preset standards will never replace a professionalism that requires vision and flexibility. If we had stuck strictly with the principles of Henri Dunant (founder of the Red Cross movement), we would probably not be alive as a community today." Tanguy concluded that the temptation to rely on "technicity" is very strong because there is a certainty to technical issues, which is globalized and legitimized by projects like Sphere.
DISCUSSION
Karen AbuZayd, regional representative to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, commented that her agency "didn’t feel deliberately excluded" from the Sphere Project’s development. There has been "a lot of interchange" in developing and clarifying protection issues in Phase II, she said.
Geri Sicola, of Catholic Relief Services, asked Tanguy: "What is another way of dealing with the technically sound aspects [of the Sphere Project] and taking into account a moral architecture for our work?"
Tanguy said that MSF, which deals with medical guidelines, was aware when it entered the Sphere Project that there would be "loose levels of requirement." MSF may adhere to its own, higher standards that cannot be imposed across the group of NGOs. For example, an organization that chooses professionals will have different standards from one that employs volunteers. But all NGOs have to revisit their standards constantly.
Kathleen Newland said she thought the need to establish standards was undeniable, but asked: "Is there a danger in how they are going to be used?" She likened humanitarian assistance efforts to a "well-tuned car without a roadmap," and pointed to instances (most recently in Kosovo) in which an assistance mission has led directly into political intervention.
Anita Mengetti, from the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), offered an anecdote. During her high school years, her mother advised her on dating: "Never lower your standards. But I’ll understand if you grant waivers occasionally." Mengetti said that OFDA has always considered standards in funding decisions, "but it would be a misstatement to say we don’t know the realities of the field," She noted that many donors worked previously for NGOs and make field visits. OFDA asks agencies: Are you observing the Sphere guidelines? If not, why?
Paula Lynch, of Populations, Refugees and Migration at the U.S. Department of State, added that her agency uses the Sphere guidelines simply as a tool to familiarize staff with humanitarian emergencies. Her agency doesn’t even require an explanation for not adhering to Sphere standards. Lynch acknowledged the utility of the standards in "getting NGOs to agree to the same guidelines in crises," but pointed to a "huge gap" between the Humanitarian Charter and the Sphere standards. She also said that NGOs’ fear that standards could be misused by donors is flipped on its head by donors, who fear that NGOs will demand more funds in order to meet the standards.
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, of the Carnegie Endowment, and Ed Schenkenberg, of ICVA, both raised the question of competition among NGOs. "One of the biggest dangers," Schenkenberg said, "is that agencies will sign on to the Sphere guidelines out of fear that they will lose donor money otherwise." He noted the importance of internal mechanisms for debate about accountability.
Paula Newberg, an independent consultant, asked three questions:
- To what extent do these standards try to address both natural disasters and complex political emergencies? Do humanitarian or human rights standards emerge more?
- Where are the standards that tell agencies when to walk away from a crisis? There need to be guidelines that tell agencies when, if they cannot deliver, they should leave – including international and local NGOs.
- On the concept of coordination, to what extent is this a negotiated settlement that accepts pluralism or provides a tool?
Responding to Newberg’s second point, Tanguy revised the question to ask: Can a guideline determine when to walk away? This question leads the community to weigh methodology versus vision, suggesting a third phase for the project that asks, "How as a community do we envision our actions?"
Ron Waldman, of Columbia University viewed the Sphere Project as a "constant evolution in the acquisition of knowledge", and refuted the idea that the history of the project begins with Goma. "Many things have been learned over the past 20 years, and finding minimum standards has been difficult to negotiate," he said. "Many times, in policy discussions in the field, there is a dialogue among people who are not speaking the same language and not working toward achieving the same minimum standards to prevent excess mortality… To dictate process would be to stifle creativity and innovation, but to hold the bar at a certain level is important." He also emphasized that, while standards may be aspirational, the Sphere standards are truly minimum standards. If they are not met, lives and health will surely be lost.
Jim Bishop, of InterAction, challenged the notion that the project has its origins in government pressure. "It came out of the bowels of the NGO community and its agony over Goma," he said. He envisioned "a compliance regime within agencies – not directed from outside the NGO community – that addresses protection at the campsite and not in a macropolitical sense." He looked forward to the Sphere Project’s upcoming effort to weave protection into its standards.
Frank Sieverts, of ICRC, asked: "To what extent are we taking account of the potential leadership role of people in need (to whom we are accountable)?" He spoke of empowering those in refugee camps to set their own standards and urged sensitivity to local conditions. These comments led Sieverts to note the project’s connection to long-term development standards, and to question the extent to which the Sphere Project is "truly devoted to the emergency stage."
Kathleen Newland emphasized the importance of the "relationship between humanitarian assistance and the legal framework in which it is being delivered.
"The very technocratic terms of the standards contribute to the cloaking of the sequence of humanitarian assistance and political outcomes. That is a seamless web," said Newland, adding that participants must be aware of both parts "in thinking about concerted action."
Tanguy reminded the group that MSF is still part of the process and believes the Sphere Project is "a worthy endeavor." She argued, however, for the need to raise awareness of its context.
In response, Kim Maynard of Mercy Corp added her perspective: "This is not the be-all end-all. First, it’s an incredible effort. This discussion alone is worth a lot. But it has limitations like every study or effort should."
Buzard thanked the group for the "caliber of discussion" and made her final point that the Sphere document is a tool – "how it is used it up to all you members of the NGO community."
-- Report by Nicole W. Green