Financing for Development Emergency Preparedness & Response Sub-Cluster of the Regional Coordination Mechanism

Conflicts, corruption, disasters, poverty and pandemics have often threatened Africa with a calamity unforeseen even during the Great African Famine of the eighties that affected 150 million Africans. While many proposals for remedial action have been formulated for vulnerability and poverty that haunt the region, real commitment to collaborative processes at inter- and intra-organizational level has always been limited. Mobilizing the action required has also remained a daunting challenge, as many practical and structural constraints militate against commitment by individual groups to organizational initiatives nationally and regionally. The tragedy, which took such a heavy toll of life over the past years, has highlighted fundamental weakness in the international humanitarian partnership. The complex political, economic, social and cultural phenomena of state failure are little understood with states plagued by rampant corruption, predatory elites who have long monopolized power, an absence of the rule of law and severe ethnic or religious divisions.
Nonetheless, 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. While the African Union’s political evolution may allow such novelties, how do the responsibility to protect (R2P) and right to assistance (R2A) projects pursue their goals consistently in varying contexts, but do so without resorting to a self-defeating, overly scripted and stage-managed political ‘play’?. Transitions from humanitarian crises to effective and capable states can be explained with reference to two institutional factors: institutions and rules. Hence, new global donor strategies should focus on the different stages of humanitarian 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.
See full lecture here or https://www.academia.edu/14018394/Financing_for_Development_-_Emergency_Preparedness_and_Response_Sub-Cluster_of_the_Regional_Coordination_Mechanism