The forgoing sketch has established the centrality of multilateral food aid to the overall humanitarian effort but has said little about the operational nitty- gritty. In particular, we want to focus on two core questions: Whom was the aid designed to help? And how did the donors try to ensure that aid was getting to intended beneficiaries? Before turning to those questions, it is important to outline the principles on which the humanitarian community operates. During the postwar period, the public humanitarian relief system centered on the UN agencies, particularly the World Food Programme, has developed a well-articu- lated set of norms governing the implementation of relief operations. These principles received at least rhetorical support from most of the major national donors—with the exception of China—as well as the overwhelming majority of the NGO community.
The desire to articulate clear norms among the humanitarian community is not simply an exercise in idealism; it is also designed to solve a particular set of incentive problems that can emerge in any humanitarian operation. In the absence of normative constraints, differences among donors and competition among them can lead to a race to the bottom: a willingness to turn a blind eye to diversion, a tendency to exaggerate aid effectiveness, and even the empow- erment of groups who bear responsibility for causing the humanitarian crisis
86 DILEMMAS OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
TABLE 4.2. Total humanitarian assistance, by donor organization (millions of US$)
Within
Appeal Outside Appeal Multilateral
(through
UN) Bilateral UN Agencies NGOs (including
Red Cross) Other TOTAL
1996/7 34.39 11.28 0.00 4.67 0.00 50.35
1997/8 158.38 105.79 1.80 26.49 0.00 292.46
1998 215.87 92.06 0.00 27.16 0.00 335.09
1999 189.89 41.64 0.00 4.32 0.00 235.85
2000 153.10 58.58 0.06 12.48 0.00 224.22
2001 247.97 61.16 1.51 66.80 0.15 377.59
2002 220.01* 79.24 2.98 58.60 0.00 360.83
2003 133.10 9.64 1.62 42.34 0.00 186.70
2004 151.51 121.39 2.20 24.76 0.63 300.49
2005** 0.00 61.09 0.68 1.80 0.00 63.56
TOTAL 1,504.23 641.87 10.85 269.43 0.78 2,427.16
* Includes $99.32 million carried over by the WFP
**2005: Bilateral data includes WFP data not listed in UN-OCHA.
in the first place.4 These incentive problems can be exacerbated when private transnational groups act as subcontractors for the official donors, as has been the case in North Korea (see Cooley and Ron 2002).
The basic principles governing delivery of humanitarian aid are straightfor- ward (Reed 2004:9). Aid should go to those in greatest need based on objective and systematic assessment. Access to aid should not be determined on the basis of age, gender, social status, ethnicity, and political beliefs (Ziegler 2002). Aid delivery should be transparent, enabling agencies to confirm that it is distrib- uted to the target group. Donor agencies should also be allowed to assess the impact of aid, which requires direct and ongoing contact with the affected populations.
These basic norms, as well as principles of accountability within donor coun- tries, drive the related insistence on thorough monitoring of aid. The WFP has a standard operating procedure embodying reciprocal obligations on the part of donors and recipients. The WFP’s responsibility to the donor governments is
The Aid Regime 87
to ensure that donations are used properly. Recipient governments are respon- sible for facilitating WFP oversight. Under the standard WFP agreement, the recipient government guarantees that commodities reach specified target ben- eficiaries and that improper diversion does not occur. Within a given time frame, the government agrees to account for all contributions by providing the WFP with an audited report containing specified information on the volume of food (and subsidies) received, the number of beneficiaries, location of distri- bution centers, losses incurred, their causes, and measures undertaken to limit those losses. Agreements also call for assessments that allow donors to gauge the impact of the aid effort on beneficiaries’ nutritional status. Agreements specify in some detail the required monitoring, including repeat visits to all distributional units and the freedom to make spot checks, and further specify that recipient governments will facilitate the internal movement of WFP staff necessary to executing these duties (GAO 1999).
The NGO community is much more diverse than the public humanitarian aid machinery, and we do not pretend to treat its contribution thoroughly;
other excellent accounts of their operations exist (most notably Flake and Snyder 2003). Although the NGO contribution is relatively small in financial terms, the private humanitarian community has had a substantial influence on the broader politics of aid to North Korea. On occasion, consortia of NGOs have been involved in the monitoring and even delivery of food. Moreover, the on-the-ground experience of the NGOs makes them an invaluable source of information on the country, and their conflicts with the North Korean govern- ment mirror closely the constraints facing the WFP.
Difficult ethical dilemmas in Bosnia and Central Africa in the 1990s pushed the NGO community to codify voluntary norms that overlapped at a number of points with those governing the multilateral aid effort.5 Among these norms are prior understanding of basic conditions; evaluation of effectiveness; partici- pation by recipients in the design management and monitoring of programs;
distribution of aid through a transparent system that can be monitored and adequately audited; and impartiality, or the distribution of aid in a fair and equitable manner.
North Korea severely challenged the NGO commitment to these humanitar- ian norms, and the community has been deeply, even bitterly, divided on the propriety of staying; these debates are worth tracing in some detail. Beginning in mid-1998, the first of a series of highly publicized withdrawals by European and American NGOs took place, beginning with Médicins du Monde in July 1998, Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) in September 1998, and Accion Contra la Faim in the spring of 2000 (Schloms 2003). These NGOs had several things
88 DILEMMAS OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
in common, including a focus on medical issues, which of necessity required ongoing contact with patients, and a belief in the importance of training, which meant ongoing contact with doctors and nurses. These European NGOs also shared an approach to humanitarian assistance in which relief and concern for basic human rights and the empowerment of civil society were seen as closely linked. All issued strong justifications for their actions, and MSF quite explicitly criticized those who chose to stay and thus created tensions between the North Korean government and the entire NGO community (IFRC 2000:84). This first wave of departures was followed by still other withdrawals, including CARE and Oxfam (McCarthy 2000; Smith 2002; Schloms 2003; Flake 2003; Reed 2004).
In the wake of MSF’s highly visible departure, the humanitarian agen- cies outlined a statement of humanitarian principles in November 1998; this was subsequently updated in April 1999 and March 2001.6 A working group comprising all the resident humanitarian agencies established benchmarks for gauging progress on these norms, which is regularly recorded in reports by the OCHA. The humanitarian community also issued consensus statements, although these statements seem to have had the objective of reassuring the North Korean authorities following highly publicized departures as much as showing joint resolve. Before turning to the question of the extent to which WFP and NGO norms were met, it is first important to consider the question of whom food aid was intended to reach.