Following the Cold War, the intra-state conflict has brought about instability in many countries; undermine peace and security, lead to human rights abuses and retard socio-economic development. These clashes are mostly between state forces on one hand and armed groups on the other, or among two or more armed groups. Women and children have been the most victims of many atrocities, human rights abuses and the harsh climate conditions during these conflicts.
The devastating effect of these conflicts takes a heavy toll on civilians and their livelihood, especially as their assets such as farms, shops, warehouses, and factories are targeted and looted by these military and other armed groups.
Annan et al. (2006) in a study on war-affected youth in northern Uganda reported that many households suffered substantial asset loss such as cattle and their homes during the war. Bruck (1997) added that Mozambicans lost 80 percent of cattle stock during that civil war and during the civil war in Burundi there was plundering, destruction, and theft of assets both by government and rebel forces.
Furthermore, conflict leads to mass displacement, shortage of food, and water, and destroys health care educational systems. At the national level, war changes economic growth outcomes – investment declines, capital flight increases, production falls and tax inflows reduce drastically. Also, governments divert most of its expenditure to procure arms and ammunition to provide security.
Consequently, due to the fact major part of the state’s fiscal resources is spent on security, they have challenges honoring most of its social obligations.
It is in this respect that humanitarian assistance comes to offer relief to victims of the unrest. These activates may come in the provision of personal security, food, water, clothing, skill development, education, health care, and mitigating harsh climate conditions.
Relief organisations operates within a framework of principles which part of the Code of Conduct for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (IFRC, 1994). These principles are as follows:
The International Committee for the Red Cross defines humanity as “being concerned with the condition of man considered solely as a human being regardless of his value as a military, political, professional or other unit and not affected by any political or military consideration” (Pictete, 1958).
To satisfy this condition, assistance must be given to every person who is in need; without discrimination and to both sides of the conflict.
The principle of neutrality of relief organization requires them not to align with any of the warring parties. They are not to choose side or favor any particular group but to offer assistance to anybody in need of the relief at both sides of the conflict.
More so, relieve organizations are not to participate in the hostilities either directly or indirectly, supporting one side against the other or giving an advantage to a weaker party.
Pictet (1958) outlines three elements of impartiality: non-discrimination, proportionality, and subjective distinction. Humanitarian assistance should be without any discrimination on the basis of gender, race, color, religion, faith, wealth, political affiliation or any other criteria.
It further states that assistance should be advanced on need bases, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress. If the need is equal on both side of the conflict, the principle of impartiality stipulates that the relief should be offered as required. Also, a recipient should not be innocent or guilty, good or bad before deserving or undeserving of assistance.
Humanitarian organizations as Non-governmental organizations are to provide their relief services without any influence from the government or any armed group. They are autonomous from political, economic, military, and other objectives that any actor may hold and also not to succumb to the whims and caprices of any side to a conflict.
A number of challenges confront humanitarian organizations in their quest to provide relief services. These challenges are outlined below:
Relief services involve a number of activities such as procurement of goods and services, transporting the items, setting up camps, data collection to assess need levels, and hiring of staff.
These activities are prone to corruption such as bribing customs officials to gain entry, an individual beneficiary paying bribe the distribution officials in order to receive assistance, diversion of funds paid to the local agency for their operations, provision of sub-standard goods, overestimation of people requiring assistance, etc. For example, investigations by aid agencies in Sierra Leone showed that the distribution of food did not reach all of the needy but was diverted to those close to the chiefs (Farnthorpe, 2003). Sexual harassment and exploitation is another feature that emerged from the study conducted by Care International in Burundi where food aid was dependent on giving of sexual favors by women to administrators in charge of food distribution.
Humanitarian organizations are to work independently from any side of the conflict. However, governments have the authority to grant or reject any form of entry to the country. This has led to the government interfering in the work of these aid agencies. Though covered by international laws on relief, humanitarian organizations have had to succumb to the pressures of government in order to offer assistance to those in need. For instance, Jens Laerke, UNOCHA Deputy Spokesperson is quoted to have said, “the Government determines the non-governmental organizations that the UN agencies in Syria are permitted to work with and if agencies in Syria did not accept this, they would not be able to save so many lives by delivering critical supplies and services to millions of people across the country” (UN News, 2016).
Due to the fact that many relief works work in the midst of conflict, they have fallen victim to attacks leading to many deaths. The 2018 Aid Worker Security Report accounts that a total of 139 aid workers were killed while 174 others were kidnapped or injured in various attacks. The report further identified South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as the most lethal places to be an aid worker in 2017.
The use of conditionality in development aid has been an established practice within the donor community including UN agencies, Oxfam, or USAID. However, as development aid has significantly decreased since the end of the 1980s, humanitarian aid has borne the burden of becoming an important channel for donor countries. For example, UNICEF in the face of Taliban’s restrictions on girl’s access to education, the incapacity to change this policy, as well as its own inability to continue its work based on the impartiality principle, decided to discontinue the national-level support that it had been undertaking for the education of Afghan boys only. The results of conditionality have worsened the situation since the Taliban decided to expand the restrictions to boys nationwide
According to Duffield (1998), humanitarian assistance is increasingly becoming the preferred response to complicated crises. Hitherto, services that would traditionally would have been provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross are now undertaken by a number of the UN Agencies and other Non-governmental Organisations willing to deliver relief in the midst of the immediate aftermath, of war (Borton et al., 1994).
Humanitarian assistance has become one of the most effectual and practical ways of mitigating the hardships conflict and natural disasters bring on the populace. It is a noble service, however, must not replace the social responsibility of any government but go hand-in-hand with the developmental agenda of the nation.
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