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From: IRIN <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:42 PM
Subject: SECURITY: New report on R2P challenges humanitarians
To: Elisabeth Janaina <[email protected]>
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*SECURITY: New report on R2P challenges humanitarians
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94827>*
[image: lead photo]LONDON, 10 February 2012 (IRIN) - The UN recognizes the
international community’s Responsibility to Protect (R2P) civilians during
conflict, and this philosophy has quickly become embedded in peacekeeping
and peace enforcement missions, but a new report questions some basic
humanitarian assumptions.
R2P evolved in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in
realization that states could no longer be relied on to protect civilians,
so the onus was placed on the international community to prevent gross
human rights abuses, a belief that has since been cited as a reason to
intervene in places like Libya and Syria.
Yet the reality - reinforced by a new study from the UK’s Overseas
Development Institute (ODI) entitled Local to Global Protection in Myanmar
(Burma), Sudan, South Sudan and Zimbabwe
<http://www.odi.org.uk/events/details.asp?id=2798&title=hpn-network-paper-local-global-protection-myanmar-burma-sudan-south-sudan-zimbabwe#details>-
is that in conflicts and crisis people almost always have to provide their
own protection, for themselves, their families and their villages.
ODI’s Humanitarian Practice Network <http://www.odihpn.org/>set out to see
what protection there was for communities facing real and serious crises in
two areas of Myanmar, in the Sudanese province of South Kordofan, in
Jonglei State in South Sudan, and in Zimbabwe. Their researchers asked
people what they saw as the most serious threats they faced, what they
themselves could do about the threats, and what they thought of any outside
help which might have been available.
Nils Carstensen, who coordinated the project (known as Local to Global
Protection <http://www.local2global.info/>) said at the London launch of
the report on 8 February: “We had an annoying sense of disconnect on
several levels; a sense of disconnect between much of the talking and
writing about humanitarian protection, and the impression that this... was
not being mirrored by any actual improvement for those in need of
protection. Also there was a disconnect between our own international
efforts at protection, and then a multitude of local, or community based
local activities aimed at protection which seemed to be running in a
different stream.”
The threats faced were many and various: aerial bombardment in Kordofan,
cattle raiding in Jonglei, being trapped in the middle of a long insurgency
in Karen regions of Myanmar, hunger and destitution in areas hit by Cyclone
Nargis, political harassment and impoverishment in Zimbabwe. But they also
cited threats that did not fall into the normal humanitarian categories of
rights abuse - threats to their cattle, for instance, or other aspects of
their livelihoods, or threats to their solidarity and life as a community.
They also all considered their own actions to protect themselves as more
important than anything done by outsiders. “They saw official efforts,”
said Carstensen, “as rather modest, in fact non-existent, or even
counter-productive.”
*Get out of the way
*
The most widespread protection strategy was also the simplest - people got
out of the way. Karen villagers took refuge in the jungle, people in South
Kordofan fled into the Nuba Mountains. There they survived using their
knowledge of wild foods and medicines, and crops and livestock which would
tolerate difficult conditions. Elsewhere people moved to towns, to refugee
camps on even to neighbouring countries to look for work.
Read more The LRA - not yet a spent
force<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94794>
Moving beyond violence in
Jonglei<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94706>
Paying high price for military
incursion<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94641>
Security in Karamoja,
Uganda<http://www.irinnews.org/photo/Default.aspx?id=33>
Soldiers' Stories <http://www.irinnews.org/film/?id=4786> Being prepared
for the worst was important, staying alert to threats and having enough
savings or cattle or stocks of food. And people relied on each other, on
sharing and solidarity and mutual help.
The weak also sought protection by trying to ally themselves with the
strong. Community leaders and religious leaders with good connections could
negotiate concessions or protection for their people. Individuals might
rely on family connections or pay bribes to officials. Zimbabweans bought
ruling party cards regardless of their actual political affiliations.
In the conflict areas of Myanmar, having a son join an armed group might
help. “My nephew became a Peace Council (PC) soldier in order to protect
the family,” one Karen villager told the researcher. “As someone connected
to the PC we can travel freely and get no trouble at checkpoints.”
Some of these strategies had significant and negative consequences,
Carstensen said.
Others could be actively supported by outside agencies, but might lead to
places where they would be reluctant to go. Promoting alliances with armed
actors would be anathema to many humanitarian actors. And how should they
respond to victims who want to arm themselves for their own protection?
Some villages in Myanmar have even taken to laying their own landmines to
keep intruders out, which the country researcher Ashley South said was a
“dilemma” of risk for protection.
*Give us guns*
Protection issues have been particularly fraught in South Sudan where
government disarmament programmes have left villages feeling vulnerable to
those without guns. Drum warnings and unarmed patrols can only do so much.
Dinka interviewed by the author of the Jonglei study, Simon Harrigin, were
baffled by being offered capacity building workshops to discuss protection
issues. “If you want to help us,” they responded, “provide us with guns.”
Harrigan argued conventional systems rely on a law structure which is
currently non-existent in this part of South Sudan, and that disarmament
might not be the best solution in the present security vacuum. “Everyone is
saying disarmament, disarmament, disarmament, but who is providing
security?”
Asked by IRIN what the consequences of compulsory disarmament might be
where voluntary disarmament had failed, Harrigan said: “People have been
fleeing to the marshes since 1991, and know exactly where to hide weapons
when forced disarmament comes along. So they will be off like a shot to the
`toich’ [low lying lands suffering seasonal flooding] to hide their guns
[with any forced disarmament programme].”
What the report highlighted was that full-scale peacekeeping missions were
seldom the answer to protection at village level.
Nuba representatives at the launch event were particularly critical of the
UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), comparing it unfavourably with the much more
modest Joint Military Commission which preceded it. Salaam Tutu, of Nuba
Mountains Solidarity Abroad, told IRIN: “UNMIS don't have direct connection
with local people. We look on them as foreigners, not as people who have
come to give us protection. The JMC, if there was any problem in a village
they would try to solve it, but UNMIS don't do the same.”
*Hair extensions and conflict*
The report recognized effective protection as understanding what local
people see as priorities, and being flexible enough to respond even to
unconventional requests, like demands, in South Kordofan, for guitar
strings, beads and hair extensions so that, even in the middle of
protracted war and hunger, the community could still celebrate weddings and
other occasions with music and dancing.
Justin Corbett, author of the South Kordofan/Nuba section of the report,
said at the launch: “Psychological needs came up again and again… What I
mean is the needs that go beyond food and water.”
[image: '']*You don’t give hair extensions when people are dying in a
war, say we [the humanitarian community]*[image: ''] “The reason why NGOs
were worried about this [hair extensions] was donor compliance and how this
might look publicly. How strange - isn’t it - that the very people who are
protecting themselves and identify what they think might help them, we
[then] find the mainstream humanitarian mechanism can’t actually deliver
that, because it doesn’t fit into our [humanitarian] box. You don’t give
hair extensions when people are dying in a war, say we [the humanitarian
community].”
The head of ODI's Humanitarian Policy Group, Sara Pantuliano, said the
report’s findings were a “very damning account of the ineffectiveness of
international effort…
“The structures we have set up,” she said, “have moved us, as international
aid actors, more and more away from the people... They have made the
response not nimble enough, more risk averse, more constrained and less
able to engage with the specificity of the local situation, where there may
be initiatives which we could strengthen.”
eb/go/cb
Read report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94827>
------------------------------
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