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[image: IRINnews logo] <http://www.irinnews.org/> humanitarian news and analysis Table of contents 1. Aid reform: Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas <#14efb2e8dd3246b1_1> 2. Church v state: a worrying dynamic for Burundi <#14efb2e8dd3246b1_2> ------------------------------ *Aid reform: Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101819>* [image: lead photo]DUBAI, 4 August 2015 (IRIN) - Aid policy experts are talking about improving delivery and doing things better, finding new financing streams, and, most of all, localising response. But can you really just push money down the chain to local organisations and expect better results, or is it time to take a candid look at the entire humanitarian architecture and rethink the incentive structure? A key challenge for the sector, with its complex and competing interests, is its sheer size: international NGOs (INGOs) are now larger, more numerous and more corporate than ever before. “Big international organisations have become hugely successful in terms of fundraising and marketing… monopolising the best funding opportunities, choking off opportunities for everybody else,” said Lydia Poole, an independent aid policy consultant. “Everybody is evangelising about the need to change, and INGOs are championing the need to increase funding to local and national actors,” she told IRIN. “But I fail to see how that's going to work in practice because it is essentially an existential challenge to them.” *SEE: It’s all about the money <http://www.irinnews.org/report/101694/it-s-all-about-the-moneyhttp://www.irinnews.org/report/101694/it-s-all-about-the-money>* Speaking on aid reform in late July, Kyung-wha Kang, the UN’s assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy emergency relief coordinator, called for the power balance to be radically altered. “I think turning the whole system on its head so that we see the international system shrinking and the local capacity growing is how we want to proceed,” she said. Kang imagined an “ideal world” where local communities were more resilient and self-reliant, national authorities were there to help, and “the international humanitarian sector is really reduced to a minimum, stepping in where only absolutely necessary to do so.” Oxfam's recently-released research on the subject is entitled "Turning the Humanitarian System on its Head <https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/turning-humanitarian-system-its-head>". *SEE: The humanitarian economy <http://newirin.irinnews.org/the-humanitarian-economyhttp://newirin.irinnews.org/the-humanitarian-economy%20http://newirin.irinnews.org/the-humanitarian-economy>* For Sandra Aviles, a senior advisor on programme development and humanitarian affairs at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the issue of “market share” and the fact that the aid industry is “a business” are major roadblocks to reform. “If we don’t look at some of these architectural issues and incentives head on, we are not going to really tackle the problem of funding,” she told IRIN. *Time to deconstruct?* In parallel with this soul-searching on aid reform ahead of next May’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, researchers at the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), part of London’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI), have embarked on a two-year project entitled “Constructive deconstruction: rethinking the global humanitarian architecture.” We can’t just give more money to local organisations to keep on doing things we’ve been doing all this time and expect it to work. The research aims to get a better understanding of how the humanitarian sectors’ systemic relationships, power structures and assumptions influence output, in order to come up with meaningful reform ideas. “Until we start to look at the incentive structures in the international aid system, the way that NGOs and UN agencies are funded, and the way that the business model of the humanitarian system works, nothing is going to change,” Christina Bennett, HPG research fellow told IRIN. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) is also trying to take *a sideways look <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/438773/ITT-TORS-Effectiveness-Coherence-Accountability-Humanitarian-System.pdf>* at the aid system. It is employing a team of researchers to analyse “the effectiveness, coherence and accountability of the humanitarian system to help inform its financing model, also under review.” “We can’t just give more money to local organisations to keep on doing things we’ve been doing all this time and expect it to work,” Bennett said, calling for a “mind-set change.” It is time, Bennett said, for humanitarians to think of themselves as a “network” or “constellation of actors,” rather than “a hierarchical system or a formal bureaucracy.” “Being networked means sharing information,” she added. “It’s about having complementary ways of working, adopting a more market-based approach where you’re asking who is most effective and efficient and who is able to specialise, not who is bigger and attracts more money and has more flags out in the field.” Taylor Seybolt, associate professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Ford Institute for Human Security, supported Bennett’s call for a more network-based approach. “The idea of a network,” he said, “is that you can find a balance between the best aspects of a hierarchical system and of a market system. "Hierarchical systems are stultified and slow to respond, whereas markets are more nimble and prone to failure of individual enterprises, which in a humanitarian context wouldn’t mean losing only money, it would mean losing lives. So it’s not an approach to aspire to." *Supply and demand* The power of the supplier (INGO) – over the consumer (the aid beneficiary) – is another big problem, as is competition between agencies for funds and profile. The current humanitarian business model is reactive, inefficient and predominantly supply-driven, giving end users very little say about what kind of products and services they receive,” explained Aviles. "I see some things happening in our sector and I think, we are just not in the business of helping affected populations. If we were, we would do things very differently from what we are doing.” Seybolt diagnoses the peculiarities of the system with economic theory: an oligopoly of donors (a limited number of suppliers) and an oligopsony of aid agencies (a limited number of consumers).“ There's no magic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that's going to fix all of this stuff. It is more complicated than that. Aviles, who is also a part of the Future Humanitarian Financing (FHF) initiative, which is looking at new approaches for emergency aid funding, said there were too many “non-incentives” in the system. “It sounds perverse, but there are no incentives for humanitarians to look at exit strategies and therefore look at the way they are doing business or look outside of their sector for solutions.” *Opportunities* Bennett believes the WHS is a “perfect opportunity” to address the systemic issues. But while there has been plenty of discussion about what changes are needed, not enough people are asking the “hard questions.” “We need to turn the business model around and get to those incentive structures. Until we do, a lot of this debate is lip service and we won’t be able to get to the heart of why we’ve not been able to put our localisation agenda into practice.” Poole, who worked on the FHF’s May report, Looking Beyond the Crisis, which advocates reforms such as multi-year financing and a fundamental change in the division of labour, also welcomed the WHS spotlight on humanitarian funding, but said the debate was too “circular.” Calling out the idea to set a target for how much aid money donors should spend “locally,” she said: “I find the focus on this fixed funding target so disappointing because it's just such a simplistic response to what is quite a complex problem. “Everybody seems to be looking for big ideas, big fixes and big pots of money, but those things just don't exist. There's no magic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that's going to fix all of this stuff. It is more complicated than that. It’s about how you tweak the system so that the incentives are different.” lr/bp/ag Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101819> ------------------------------ *Church v state: a worrying dynamic for Burundi <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101824>* [image: lead photo]BUJUMBURA, 4 August 2015 (IRIN) - The growing schism between the Catholic Church and Burundi’s political leadership is a particularly worrisome aspect of the fallout from President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term, which has already seen dozens killed in protests and 175,000 people, mostly women and children, flee the country since April. More recent signs of violent instability a decade after the end of a 13-year civil war include the weekend assassination of Adolphe Nshimirimana, an army general and intelligence chief said to be the second most powerful man in the country, and the serious wounding in a shooting incident of Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, a leading human rights activist. The Catholic Church has played a key role during years of talks between opposition groups and the government, dialogue designed to shore up peace since the end of the war, which claimed some 300,000 lives. On 21 July, Nkurunziza won a predicted landslide victory in a presidential election. The Catholic Church had been among the first bodies to speak out against his candidature, which was widely condemned as being in violation of the constitution and the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Accord signed in 2000. Deeming the entire electoral process flawed, the church cancelled its plans to deploy some 6,000 observers during the poll. Supporters of the president responded by intimidating and threatening a number of bishops and archbishops. Intelligence agents appeared in churches, monitoring sermons. The East African Community report on the elections concluded that “successive efforts to build consensus through inclusive dialogue among Burundi stakeholders have not been successful,” and called on all stakeholders to re-engage in candid and inclusive dialogue to find a solution to the political impasse. According to Father Emmanuel, a priest who chose to use a pseudonym because of his own security concerns, that is going to be difficult. “They’re no longer listening to the priests and the bishops. If the church and the state are not on good terms, the consequences will be severe.” Aside from its key role in political dialogue, the church manages numerous health and educational facilities, with its staff being paid salaries by the state. This support, according to Emmanuel, now looks uncertain. The Arusha agreement lay at the heart of the church’s condemnation of Nkurunziza’s third term bid. Mike Jobbins, the head of Search for Common Ground, a peace-building NGO, described that deal as “the Magna Carta of independence; a commitment to power sharing, to ethnic balance, to sacrificing individual interests in favour of peace and security in the country.” The Catholic Church in Burundi, with support from the Vatican, was instrumental in bringing warring parties to the negotiating table and drafting the agreement. While not a legally binding document, its provisions, which include a two-term limit, have Burundi’s post-war dispensation. “The Arusha agreement is not perfect, but it’s the best we have,” said Gabriel Baregensabe, who has been a priest for 42 years and the secretary general of the Bishops’ Conference of Burundi for the past decade. He said the decision not to back the president was a difficult one for the church. <http:///Photo/Details/201505132029450891/Recent-turmoil-in-Burundi-was-punctuated-by-a-failed-coup-in-May> Photo: Desire Nimubona/IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/photo> Recent turmoil in Burundi was punctuated by a failed coup in May “The bishops gathered and took their time to ensure that they were doing what was right for the people and that they spoke the truth accordingly, because they knew what they were saying would mean war,” he told IRIN. The bishops had decided that defending the Arusha accords was, on balance, best for the people. If dialogue continues to falter, the church’s decision could indeed mean war. Opposition leaders and dissident generals who backed a failed coup in May met on 30 July in Addis Ababa to discuss how to form a unified front against Nkurunziza. “We cannot exclude the use of force,” Anicet Niyonkuru, president of the national opposition council and leader of Burundi’s CDP party, told journalists. The Sunday killing in Bujumbura of spy chief Nshimirimana was carried out using small arms and rockets. The general was widely thought to have orchestrated the crackdown on street protests against Nkurunziza’s third term bid, which began in May. African Union Commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma described the killing as a “barbaric act that is likely to further destabilise the country.” She urged the Burundian government, opposition political parties and civil society "to work very closely together to find a lasting solution to the current crisis.” But the government no longer sees the Catholic Church as an honest broker in such dialogue, as was displayed by a recent broadside from presidential spokesman Willy Nyamitwe that only a few months ago would have been unthinkable. “People are dying,” Nyamitwe said. “Grenades are launched at dawn on our citizens. Have you seen any bishop condemn this? No. Because they’re implicated.… We can’t say they are people who present a model of morality.” “That was his way of telling us to shut up,” said Father Emmanuel, who lives in an opposition neighbourhood that has been a flashpoint for violence over the last three months. He said this attitude from the president’s office was only adding to citizens’ disquiet. “They ask themselves: ‘If the political authorities dare to attack our pastors like that, then what will become of us?’” After three months of arrests, torture, grenade blasts and after-dark shootings, people are deeply afraid, tired and worried, Father Emmanuel said. Some are experiencing a crisis of confidence in the church, one of the few places where they found peace and solace and where political affiliations could be cast aside. “There’s no longer any hope. The ruling party has announced that it’s going to continue. Others have announced they’re going to start fighting. People are coming to us, left and right, calling for help,” he said. “People are asking, ‘what should we be doing?’ We can give them God’s word, but people don’t know how to turn that into a concrete reality. It feels like we have no more lessons to give. People are starting to condemn God.” A Burundian political analyst working for a European diplomatic mission who preferred not to be named said he believed Nkurunziza needed both the international community and the Catholic Church. “Nkurunziza can change,” the analyst said. “If they [the Catholic Church] fight him, there won’t be peace, won’t be human rights, won’t be democracy. They will do everything they can to keep the channels of negotiation open.” jh/am/ag Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101824> ------------------------------ Copyright © IRIN. All rights reserved. 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