HOW HAS NGOs WORK IN CONFLICT-AFFECTED REGIONS CHANGED SINCE THE 1990s AND WITH WHAT CONSEQUENCES?

With the shift of international relations in 1991, due to the end of the Cold War, the humanitarian world also got affected by significant transformations. Indeed, with the changing nature of conflict and the emergence of “new wars” there had been a decline of violence, but contrastingly, an increased decentralisation of it (Kaldor, 2007, p. 50), contributing to the blurring of boundaries between civilians and the military. This constituted a challenge for both non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and for those working within it, as it became difficult to guarantee that aid would only go towards civilians and would not instead fuel the conflict. Although nowadays the crises are smaller, they tend to last longer, and therefore require much more humanitarian aid and assistance. Conferring to the latest statistics, “of the 58 countries that received assistance in 2014, 49 (or 84%) of them had received it every year or the last 5 years, and 40 of them (or 69%) were on their tenth straight year of receiving humanitarian aid” (ALNAP, 2015). According to Goodhand, this situation is fomenting the wave of “new humanitarianism” which is transforming NGOs work and pushing the organisations towards greater politicisation. As the conflicts tend to last longer, it becomes harder to simply provide aid and relief, without engaging in peacebuilding and finding a solution that would bring sustainable peace to the country. But some critiques believe that this new role only constitutes an excuse for NGOs to intervene in conflict-affected regions and have their dire on the situation. Many who believe that NGOs are getting too involved are “minimalists”, a school of thought who considers that NGOs should go back to their original duty of simply saving lives. The “maximalists”, on the other hand, believe that the principles on which humanitarian aid was established (i.e. neutrality, impartiality and independence) are outdated, considering the way the world has changed since then, and feel that NGOs can no longer simply assist by bringing food and medicines, but should rather get involved in implementing a long-lasting peace. The aim of this essay is to prove that none of these schools of thought is better than the other, because both have their pros and cons; but that each conflict needs to be tackled by a unique humanitarian response and that the “one-size-fits all” model isn’t conceivable while analysing conflict-affected regions. There have been many important changes in the role and work of NGOs since the 1990s, but for the purpose of this paper we will focus on how and why there has been an increased presence of NGOs in peacebuilding operations and the consequences that this has brought. This will be the aim of the first paragraph. While the second and third paragraphs will be dedicated to the analysis of two case studies: Mozambique, where NGOs have contributed to the building of a viable structure for sustainable peace after the civil war, and Afghanistan, where the involvement of NGOs in peacebuilding hasn’t been as successful.

According to Abiew (2012, p.207), during the Cold War, NGOs were crucial organisations because they assisted those countries in which the most powerful Western nations were reluctant to intervene. For the West, concerns about foreign conflicts were less important than the tensions of the time between the two superpowers. Foreign struggles seemed too far away and unreachable to them (Boyce, 2002, p.62). But with the end of the conflict, humanitarianism moved from its role of emergency aid and relief agency, to a fundamental actor in conflict-affected regions. Whilst before the 1990s NGOs were mainly concerned about short-term relief operations and delivered assistance and relief purely based on the populations’ needs, such as “distributing food, clean water, and sanitation equipment to distressed populations; providing shelter for homeless victims; and repairing salvageable structures” (Aall, 2005, p.122), after the Cold War, there had been a shift towards greater commitment and involvement in the affected regions. This growing interest is seen as the first step towards establishing a long-lasting security and peacebuilding process in the affected countries. After the September 11 attacks, an important shift in international politics allowed for the inclusion of human rights and humanitarian values into the international political framework (Goodhand, 2006, p.15) allowing for a greater freedom on operation orders, which empowered NGOs to engage in conflict-affected regions with the ultimate goal of saving citizens’ lives and initiate the process of peacebuilding (UN Agenda for Peace, 1992). But the purpose and outcome of their actions has often been contested and criticised by those who consider that this increased role in peacebuilding, goes against the principles which have guided humanitarian action since its beginnings. Indeed, as Clare Short, former Secretary of State for DFID (MacFarlane, 2011) said: “in the eyes of many people, humanitarian aid has lost much of its moral currency”; although it has always been seen as a symbol of solidarity, humanitarianism is now regarded as one of the causes of ongoing violence, and is blamed for becoming too politicised, and NGOs are accused of being too involved in conflicts that are not theirs to fight. They believe that humanitarian aid should simply ensure that those in need are equipped with the basic provisions for survival. But this is becoming increasingly harder, as, “simply by applying the label ‘humanitarian’ the normal rules of sovereignty are suspended” (Goodhand, 2006, p.90) and NGOs can intervene without the government’s consent. Furthermore, when it comes to peacebuilding, critiques accuse NGOs of not engaging enough with those they are trying to help. Moreover, by “blurring the lines between state goals and NGOs objectives” (Abiew, 2012, p.210), Western governments seem to be promoting their own national interests rather than those of the populations in need. The politicisation of aid incites NGOs and donors to be selective and favour to help certain countries at the expense of others, who might be just as deprived as the others. Fox (2001, p. 282) goes as far as considering this new humanitarianism as a new type of colonialism: “the spectre of big resource-endowed NGOs ignoring state sovereignty and marching into states, supported by Western armies and declaring the correct way to resolve a local conflict, is suspect”. Indeed, most of the times, NGOs and peacemakers try to establish sustainable peace without understanding the conflict a priori, nor the way in which the society in which they intruding, works, and can therefore fuel further conflicts that might not have emerged had they not intervened. For those who support this idea, mainly adherents of the minimalist school of thought, NGOs involvement in peacebuilding

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