Analytic Dynamics in Engaging Crises-Affected Societies

    

Analytic Dynamics in 

Engaging Crises-Affected Societies:

Non-State Actors in Preserving & Advancing

Self-esteem Integrity and Innovativeness

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, Addis Ababa University

Trustee, Africa Humanitarian Action

costy@costantinos.net

A dialogue starter think piece - CX, MMXIII Vol X No IX

 Towards the implementation of the Common African Position (CAP) and the commitments of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS):

The Role of the Non-State Actors for Effective Humanitarian Action

Sheraton Addis, Addis Ababa, 15 August 2016

    One outcome of the WHS is the ‘Global Alliance for Humanitarian Innovation that will accelerate transformative improvements in humanitarian action by creating a shared space for the development of innovative tools, approaches and processes’. The CAP too underscores that ‘effective and mutually reinforcing partnerships are of paramount importance in humanitarian action’. Far more critical in determining both the level and quality of dialogue and strategic humanitarian partnership is the political and economic context in which crises–affected societies find themselves. Hence new ‘rules’ of engagement must be based on the fundamental perception, that peo­ple can be the handmaiden of human secu­rity. While participation is a common strand used by humanitarian agencies, it is not used from the perspective of empowerment that leads to critical thinking, which is the main theme of this think piece.

      Nonetheless, beyond platitudes and good inten­tions, engagement of non-state actors and crisis-affected societies, is not premised in an ethic of em­powerment. True, humanitarian action has saved millions of lives, but the sustainability of its inter­ventions raise fundamental questions as they are not augured on indigenous adaptive strategies, that nurtured a survival niche long before institutional aid came to the scene. By a way of contributing to mend these infirmities, we may theorise such an engagement as a dynamic interaction of policy, strategy, organisation and process.

      This brings up the issue of conceptualising the engagement as a work­ing process, which balanced against strategy, determines what makes for real, as opposed to vacu­ously formulated sloganeering. It suggests itself, seems within reach only to elude, and appears read­ily practicable only to resist realisation: a tendency to narrow the endeavour to the terms and catego­ries of immediate, not very well considered, participatory action, naïve realism, as it were. Those who best understood the lessons of the 20th century were not the ideologues asking, what is to be done? They were those asking, how can people be freer to find their own solutions?

Key words: humanitarianism, WHS, CAP, non-state actors, crises-affected societies

See lecture here