The Tipping Point:
Humanitarian Crisis, Early Action & Disaster
Resilience Management: CAR, SS & Sahel
Strategic partnership and extent of new global
humanitarian donor’s involvement
Costantinos Berhutesfa
Costantinos, PhD
Professor of Comparative
Public Policy, Graduate School, AAU, costy@costantinos.net,
Trustee, Africa Humanitarian Action www.africahumanitarian.org,
African Union Peace and
Security Council
Open Session on
Humanitarian Situation in Africa
African Union Hall, 19
August 2014, Addis Ababa,
Abstract
The complex
political, economic, social and cultural phenomena of state failure are little
understood with states such as Central African Republic, South Sudan and Sahel
states plagued by rampant corruption, predatory elites, absence of the rule of
law and severe ethnic or religious divisions. The ability of states to strip
people of their rights to livelihoods security, behind the thin veneer ‘non
interference in each other’s internal affairs’ is increasingly being
challenged. Nevertheless, while the African Union’s political evolution may
allow such novelties, how do the Responsibility
to Protect projects pursue their goals consistently in varying contexts,
but do so without resorting to a self-defeating, overly scripted and stage-managed
political ‘play’? The world knew that
the crisis in these nations was coming. Why didn’t we act early enough to stop
the genocide in these countries? How
else can we engage crises societies and states so that they can protect
themselves meaningfully?
Transitions from
crises states to effective and capable states can be explained with reference
to two institutional factors: institutions and rules. The central hypothesis is
that the relative strength of local institutions determines the rules of the humanitarian
principles that are installed. It requires a plural set of organizations which
promote and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition. Hence, the
UN, AU & donors’ strategies should focus on the different stages of capacity building
of crises states: conflict prevention, containment and peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction in the social, political and economic spheres. Strategies need to be simultaneously ‘objective’,
dealing with substantive issues and
the institutional mechanisms for response, and ‘subjective’, in developing the awareness, understanding and
expectations at all levels.
Key words: humanitarianism, conflict
prevention, containment and peace-building and post-conflict
reconstruction
