Opinion: A new aid model can better assist communities in pariah states

World leaders are struggling over how to engage with pariah states and groups. Using the traditional model of humanitarian aid as a form of political engagement is not the answer. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are currently divided over how to engage with Myanmar’s military junta ruling the country since the February 2021 coup, while much of the West is adamant in its refusal to countenance doing so. In contrast with Myanmar, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, an internationally ostracized leader, has now been welcomed back into the fold of Arab world leaders. There are no indications of the Myanmar junta changing its approach as a result of Western sanctions and isolation, nor has the Assad regime seemingly softened its hard-line attitudes toward finding a political solution to the conflict affecting Syria for more than a decade. In the absence of any political action, humanitarian aid is typically the default response to local populations’ acute needs. But the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate in contexts of contested regimes such as Myanmar is very limited. We believe that a new, complementary model is needed, one that focuses on supporting and empowering local governance structures, especially those in the hardest-to-reach areas. The emergence of a new normal A recent paper, prepared jointly by Chatham House and the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, estimated that close to 50% of the populations living in fragile and conflict-affected states were in contexts “where relations between major donors and national authorities were ‘politically estranged.’” Thus, rather than remaining outliers, contexts such as those prevailing in Myanmar and Syria are now becoming part of the new normal. These contexts have emerged from the increasing number of situations where the central authority has either lost or is unable to retain control through structural weaknesses (for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Mali, or South Sudan), implosion (Central African Republic, Libya, Somalia, initially Syria, or Yemen), extraordinary miscalculation (Myanmar), or any combination of the three. We’ve seen time and again how these authorities then resort to the massive violation of international norms and rules to attempt to remain in control. Once a dominant, frequently ruthless, central authority collapses, the often artificially constructed state fractures. In many such contexts, local governance structures emerge from this collapse. As has been seen in Myanmar and Syria, these entities operate as alternative administrations, meeting the needs of their constituencies and ensuring the continued provision of basic services. It is important to understand that however dramatic and intense the conditions local populations are confronting, they continue to function. In many instances, communities confronting long periods of violence develop tightly knit structures with greater capacity for resilience. It is on these structures that any international effort in contested political settings needs to be built. The pitfalls of humanitarian aid as a political tool When situations become politically more complex and the legitimacy of the regimes involved are questioned, rather than continue engaging with the contested forces in power, Western donors disengage and turn to the application of economic sanctions and restrictions on structural development aid. In many ways, humanitarian aid ends up replacing political engagement. Unfortunately, the reach and impact of traditional humanitarian responses are even more limited in contexts of internationally contested governments. The restrictions placed on engaging with pariah regimes or the constraints placed by these same regimes limit the ability of international humanitarian organizations to negotiate access. However much the commitment to localization, the need to abide by the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence of action complicates the ability of international humanitarian organizations to accept the more distant relationship that working with local civil society structures necessitates. Delivering local support without legitimizing authoritarian regimes A new form of international engagement needs to be defined that is complementary to existing humanitarian approaches. New approaches need to be found that don’t rely on multiple levels of contracting, rigid logframes, and extensive reporting, which are simply unworkable in these highly volatile and often dangerous contexts. Direct support to communities and populations legitimately resisting oppressive regimes is the suggested approach. Such an approach is not new. There are examples of international support to local community mechanisms — known under the umbrella of community-driven development projects — in highly constrained and risk-laden circumstances in places such as Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and Yemen. While their precise shape varied, in all of these cases smart designs and a willingness to adapt procedures meant that thousands of communities could be reached. No money went to the sanctioned regimes, and reviews done later found that these programs had less rather than more corruption than more traditional models did. These and other similar efforts have demonstrated that well-designed community and local governance-type programs can reach people living in poverty without legitimating internationally contested regimes. Yet these cases tend to be the exception, triggered by particular configurations of individuals working around the restrictive rules rather than enabled by an appreciation that humanitarian aid, while vital, is not enough. Farmers living in poverty in Myanmar need help repairing village irrigation schemes so they can plant and harvest without waiting for stop-and-start food aid; urban poor in Syria need the garbage to be picked up and school buildings to be repaired. Not allowing such services to be restored when alternatives are available turns the political isolation of odious elites into unnecessary daily suffering for those living in the poorest conditions. What this means in practice Donors need to find the political will to engage with local communities in contexts of contested authorities. Supporting local community structures means donors accepting the need for more structural-developmental type interventions, such as supporting credit schemes, engaging and empowering local councils or other locally accepted bodies, and using nontraditional financial networks — for example, hundi cross-border transfers — to reach isolated or vulnerable communities. Doing so demands that the international community be willing to accommodate new ways of thinking: • Give front-line officers more power to make informed and flexible decisions. • Streamline or even do away with complex logframes and detailed reporting — these not only sap energy, but they can also put front-line workers in direct danger. • Make much more use of local knowledge and local organizers inside the country, as Samantha Power, head of USAID, has been arguing for some time now. These should be people who can tell who is legitimate and who is siphoning off aid from needy communities. • Sustain front-line support over time so that local groups aren’t dealing with organizational whiplash from stop-and-start, short-term project support. This is not to say that there are no trade-offs between accountability and effectiveness in these situations. Sanctions and monitoring still matter. But the balance has swung too far toward formalisms that end up being too complex and too difficult to use in unstable or dangerous environments. Creative thinking is needed on how to reach legitimate local groups in streamlined but still accountable ways. This is a problem for donors to solve — but it can be solved. Supporting local governance structures directly can even have an added political benefit. Facilitating the emergence of a bottom-up form of locally accountable and tested governance can, in the long term, serve as the basis for a far more viable model of national governance. In this new reality of internationally contested governments, a new form of international solidarity with populations legitimately resisting oppression needs to be found. Approaches that support open-ended processes rather than well-defined outcomes need multiyear commitments rather than short-term funding cycles. And such a level of engagement does not fit a traditional humanitarian approach.