Power Shift | Do we want to relinquish power, or not?

Michael Köhler

Why should a sector, why should an industry, why should big organisations change, as long as they don't feel the heat? You only change in response to a crisis. You never really change, only because you have the feeling we could do much better. No, you need to be forced, basically. You need to have the feeling that if we don't change course now, we are going to run into a wall.

 

Melissa Fundira

A crisis can be an opportunity. A moment that forces people to finally fix what’s not working. Well right now, humanitarianism is in the middle of an existential crisis. The United States – the world’s largest humanitarian donor – dismantled its foreign aid funding, nearly overnight, and other donors, like the UK, are also cutting back. It’s shaking the foundations of a global aid system that was already in crisis. So, some are now wondering: Is this finally the moment for change?

 

But, the world has been here before. Moments of crisis that we hoped would lead to real change: Black Lives Matter. COVID-19. Sexual abuse scandals. Genocides that the global community vowed would be the last. 

 

There have been many reform promises. But, it’s hard to argue that the system has fundamentally changed. After all, that’s part of the reason why the US aid cuts have been so damaging.

 

So, if there’s a massive wall blocking the road ahead, what keeps humanitarians from correcting course before it’s too late?

 

Köhler

So, there is the self-interest of organisations. There's the inertia. There's the natural resistance of human beings against change. We all like our cozy little places - you know, my home is my castle. You change only if you really feel that there is no other way out. But, the other thing is change has a cost. Change has a cost in financial terms, but even more in terms of power, influence, access to resources. And that’s unpleasant.

 

Fundira 

There it is. Power. Precisely what we’re digging into on Power Shift. This episode is the start of our experiment in dialogue, which asks: What happens when people from across the power spectrum, who are rarely in the same room together, sit down and talk? And more specifically, can those conversations move the needle when it comes to existing power imbalances in humanitarian response?

 

World Humanitarian Summit Video

The World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 will determine how to make aid better, safer, and more efficient. 

 

Fundira 

The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit was a key turning point in the discourse around power and aid.

 

World Humanitarian Summit Video

It's a chance for the world to pull together and make humanitarian aid a global priority.

 

Fundira 

Behind the scenes, local organisations and Global South actors lobbied donors and major humanitarian agencies for more local power and funding. As UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima put it at the time. 

 

Winnie Byanyima

For the first time we have people talking face-to-face with those who hold power.

 

Fundira 

Those conversations led to the Grand Bargain – arguably the most ambitious attempt to reform the entire humanitarian system today. In 2016, it was seen as a unique agreement forged between some of the largest donors and humanitarian organisations committed to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian aid. Nearly a decade later, the Grand Bargain now includes 68 signatories and three Ambassadors who are tasked with overseeing the whole process. One of those Ambassadors is Michael Köhler, who is also the former deputy director general of the European Commission’s humanitarian arm, ECHO.

 

Köhler

The Grand Bargain is almost like the mirror in which you look every morning once you get up, you know. If there is no mirror, you don't really know what your face looks like, and whether the night was tough or not, so to say. If you have a mirror, then you look into it, and you start to reflect a bit, and you say: Well, maybe I should sleep a bit longer tomorrow; or I should perhaps live a little bit more healthy tomorrow; or I should relax; or I should look less grim. So, the Grand Bargain basically reminds you of unpleasant truths. If there was no Grand Bargain, there would be no mirror. I mean, every donor, every implementing organisation, every partner, every local organisation, would do just as they want to do. There would be nobody to basically remind them of how it should be.

 

Köhler

Also holding up the mirror is Nadine Saba. Nadine directs the Akkar Network for Development, an NGO she created to support the needs of people in her hometown, Akkar, in northern Lebanon. She is also part of the NEAR Network, which currently represents the interests of Global South NGOs in the Grand Bargain process. People who represent different constituencies like NGOs or donors are known as Grand Bargain Sherpas, and Nadine is only one of two from the Global South. Our Power Shift colleague, Lina Srivastava, had some questions about the term. 

 

Lina Srivastava

I've learned that in the Grand Bargain process, you are called a ‘Sherpa.’ How do you feel about that? The first time I heard that, I was like: Wait, what? 

 

Nadine Saba

Yes indeed. It was the first time I heard that term. And I had to google it and to understand what Sherpa means. And then, I had a friend who did climb the mountain, and he had a Sherpa. And then, he had a picture taken with his Sherpa. And I'm like: Okay, now I understand. I think it's because it said that within the facilitation group, we help, you know, the ambassadors to climb that mountain.

 

Srivastava

I'm South Asian, so we often talk about how Sherpas are the true leaders and the ones who truly…but there's a very colonial aspect to the term.

 

Saba

But, you know what? It's not only me who is called the Sherpa, but also the person who's representing the donors’ constituency, the person who's representing the UN constituencies.

 

Fundira

Michael and Nadine are two sides of a large reform process. They’ve been in the same virtual meetings, but they’ve never spoken one-on-one. Grand Bargain Ambassador to Grand Bargain Sherpa. One leading high-level meetings from his home in Brussels, and the other contending with real-life humanitarian crises on the ground as both a local organisation leader and citizen. What happens when they meet face-to-face? How does power play out between them? And how might it shift?

 

This is Power Shift, a podcast from The New Humanitarian and the Center for Transformational Change. I’m your host, Melissa Fundira.

 

Köhler

Nadine is there?

 

Fundira

Yes, Nadine is here.

 

Saba

Hello.

 

Srivastava

Good afternoon. Good morning. 

 

Köhler

Yes, of course, for some of you it’s morning. 

 

Fundira

We brought Michael and Nadine together for the first time in June of 2024, and they would meet again three more times over the course of seven weeks. What you’re about to hear are excerpts of their first two conversations.  

 

Köhler

I was a bit under time pressure. I'm just out of a Grand Bargain video conference and so I didn't have time to prepare a coffee. So, if my voice runs dry throughout the interview so to say, please accept my apologies in advance. 

 

Fundira

Were you both in a meeting together again? 

 

Köhler

Yeah, Nadine, you were there? Sorry. I didn’t see you there, because you didn’t take the floor apparently, yeah? 

 

Saba

Yes, I was. I did not. 

 

Köhler

Okay. Okay.

 

Fundira

Michael, you're good to go? Nadine, good to go?

 

Saba

Good to go.

 

Fundira

Lina, good to go?

 

Srivastava

Good to go.

 

Fundira

Alright, I'm going to hand it over to Lina, and I’ll be here in the background.

 

Fundira

Our moderator on this Power Shift journey is Lina Srivastava. She’s the founder and director of a social enterprise called the Centre for Transformational Change.  

 

Srivastava

So, I'm welcoming you officially to Power Shift. It's a podcast series from The New Humanitarian that seeks to bridge the power gap in aid and philanthropy. So, in each episode, we're going to be bringing together decision-makers and those who are affected by the decision-makers' choices, featuring pairs of speakers like you from different power positions - shall we say - within the sector. And we want you to engage in candid and open dialogue about where we find ourselves today. So, the sector has acknowledged to certain extents, through the Grand Bargain and other ways, that it wants to shift power to people - for lack of a better term - on the ground, right, in community. And it wants to think more strategically about the question of local agency. So, no matter one's opinion about it, the Grand Bargain has emerged as a main vehicle towards sector reform. And you two are very much at the heart of that. But before we even get to, sort of, your work, I want to know who you are as people. What explains who you are today? So, Nadine, I'm going to start with you. Where do you come from?

 

Saba  

So, I come from a village in Akkar called Bqerzla. Akkar is one of the most deprived areas of the country of Lebanon, and we're literally on the borders with Syria, and this has been a marginalized area for the last decades. It's telling to me that when I see where the area is, and how it's not moving, in a sense, it is disheartening. I remember when I was a child, I was brought up between Akkar and between another area called Koura, because technically they had better schools in that area, and we had to be going back and forth to get a better education. This is one of the drivers of where and why I am where I am now. 

 

Köhler  

Well, my Akkar is Lower Saxony, which is the centre north of Germany. I was born in the local capital, Hanover. When I went to primary school, I was one of the very few students at primary school, who spoke the local dialect and not the dialect from other regions of Germany, or even regions that were no longer German after the Second World War. I joined University after my high school studies, and I studied history - that is very important, because this explains how I look at things. When I see something, I always look for the origins. I always look back, how did it come to be? And when I've done that, automatically, basically, the idea comes, is it good like that, or does it need to change?

 

Srivastava

So, Nadine, what is something that you'd like to make sure that Michael knows about you?

 

Saba  

I would say I’m vocal. And being a lawyer by learning and by profession, I usually tend to argue on certain things. So, you would have to bear that with me Michael, on this. Because I tend to kind of build arguments and go back to the same idea until I'm convinced that others have different perspectives, and these are as well valid. 

 

Köhler 

Well, the first thing will give Nadine an advantage. I have no clue about law. I mean, I did some international law university, but I've never gone to court. I've never had a lawsuit in my life. 

 

Saba  

Lucky you. 

 

Köhler

So, you have a natural advantage in that. Well, it may still come, right? But maybe Nadine would be surprised to hear that the first time I went to the part of Lebanon she comes from in 1981. So, I have a little bit of an insight of where she's coming from. And therefore, I have a natural sympathy for her way of presenting things, and probably the references that she will come up with, from the Lebanese and greater Syrian crisis experience. 

 

Saba 

That is surprising, actually. What was your impression the first time you came to Beirut and Akkar, because I have - when I have friends coming over - I'm like: Yes, we'll go to Beirut. You'll see all the nice things - the blingbling - and then, you come up to Akkar, you go through Tripoli, and then you see that the country lives at least on two - if not, three - different levels. So, did you have that impression already the first time and you still have that, or did it change?

 

Köhler

Yeah, definitely. I did have this impression. But, you know, at that time, this was shortly after the Civil War. The country was even more divided than today. In Tripoli, I met people who would never go to Beirut because there were roadblocks on the way that they didn't have trust to pass. And I was one of the very few people in a way - that's at least what I felt - that were allowed to go everywhere. So, I had the feeling that, you know, as a tourist, I could basically do whatever I want if I didn't try to bother people too much. I mean, today, I'm laughing about is that when I went to Sidon, to Seida, you know, there is the castle in the sea that was built by Saint Louis, by the French king, in the middle of the 13th century. And I was - as a Crusader historian - I was interested in the castle, and I went into the castle. What I didn't know is that that castle at that time was occupied by Palestinian, by PLO forces. So, they arrested me, because I took too many photos, and I took those photos, because I was interested in the castle, you know, as a historic monument. So, that shows you how naive I was. So, I spent the day there under arrest, but then with a lot of nice talking and many packets of Marlboro, and a lot of Arabic, and so forth, they found out I was innocent and harmless, and they released me. So, I have some nostalgic experience of how Lebanon was divided at the time.

 

Saba 

Oh, wow, that is really surprising, Michael. I mean, you know a lot about the country.

 

Köhler 

Well, not so much, but I like it very much, I have to say, and I like Lebanese food.

 

Saba

You're welcome. You'll buy me the drink, I'll buy the food. 

 

Köhler 

Wonderful. Wonderful.

 

Srivastava

Our job is done here. You’ve gotten to know each other. So, let's get a little bit deeper into the question of humanitarian aid work. So, Michael, do you want to begin?  

 

Köhler 

I had many many different jobs, and I came to humanitarian aid proper, very late, only in 2019. At that time, I was already a senior manager in my organisation in the European Union. I had spent decades in development aid and other areas of cooperation like energy cooperation, maritime cooperation, security cooperation, and so forth. So, my motivation to go for a job in humanitarian aid at that time was that, in my work, especially in Northern Africa and Middle East, I had come to see many humanitarian needs and situations, but also many projects, and I thought that humanitarian aid was basically the other side of the same coin that also development aid was one side of. So, after I had served for six and a half years on my previous job, I said: I want to do something new and learn something new, but I don't want to change radically. And then this humanitarian aid job came up, which basically started to change a lot of my life for the time I did it. So, for almost five years, I was then a manager of humanitarian aid, and now I have become, if you say, one of those people who try to reform humanitarian aid. I'm no longer in the management function. I'm more in - let's say - an advisory and reflective function.

 

Saba  

I came by chance to this sector. It was not my intention. I had come back from an internship in the US, and I had two offers for joining a law firm; one in Lebanon and one in Abu Dhabi. And I was a bit confused, and not knowing what to do, and then I had a friend who had been working with an international organisation, and it has been working on projects on the electoral law reform in Lebanon. And she told me: We might need some help, and with your legal background and your legal work, it could be something fit to you. And I started that job, and I was always telling them: It's only momentarily. I'm going back to law, I'm not going to be staying in this work. And then we had the Narh al Barid conflict which was very close as well to my region, and afterwards, there was a good development project for the communities that were affected by that conflict, and that was in Akkar, and that made me do the shift of going back from Beirut to Akkar. [I] started working with that international organisation, and I found that this is not really going well. The project was written without almost no consideration for the real context, for the - not only what we want to do, but also what the actual resources are. Because we might want to do a lot of things, but the actual resources do not allow us to do that, whether in terms of people's resources, whether in terms of soft and hard infrastructure. And then came the idea that no, we need to do something that responds to the needs, and thus creating a small, little nongovernmental organisation in Akkar, which was, I mean, which was aiming to work mainly with youth, women and local municipalities and local governments. And then, we started and with the influx of the Syrian refugees, you could not shy away from the needs of the groups who were there. I remember at one point, I've been told by my team, that our organisation was called in one of the IGS, the ‘widowed organisation,’ because we were supporting mainly women heads of household, and this is how it came and then, for the people, they do not care what you do, the people have needs, and they come to you with their needs, and they ask you to fulfil their needs, and at one point, you need to look at this and say: What can I do? And how can I liaise and make sure that all the people in the community get their needs met? And this is how the organisation grew and grew exponentially, so this is, in a nutshell, how I came through this, and I still believe that I would want to mainly only practice law, which I'm trying but not happening.

 

Srivastava

Michael, I see you smiling. Is there a reflection that you have on what Nadine just said?

 

Köhler

What I like is that she didn't have a plan, and, as I didn't have a plan to join humanitarian aid, but that somehow, by chance - if chance exists - by chance, we both ended up in it, and then somehow we found a job to do. Not in the sense that, you know, we found - how should I say, a pay grade or so. Well, it's also true, you have to survive and care for your material needs - but we had the feeling that there is something that needs to be done, and needs to be done better. And I think what is perhaps a difference with respect to Nadine's background is that my approach was not so much to help people practically, people in need, people from my own nationality, or people from a neighboring country. But rather, I thought that we need to become more effective and more efficient in managing crises, and in helping people that are caught in these crises. First, I did it from a development point of view, and then I did it from a humanitarian point of view. People get into it not because they plan so; not because they want to make a career; not because they are too idealist; but they come already with a backpack of experience; then they see if something needs to be changed, and they pull up their sleeves and say: Well, this is now my job. This is what I want to do. By the way, it doesn't mean that maybe in five or ten years, we're still going to do the same thing. Maybe we will move to other things. And I find this very healthy, not only to bring in - let's say - a dose of professionalism, and - how should I say - outside thinking, but also because I often have the feeling that the humanitarian sector is a bit too self-referential. We need to have more outside experience, outside thinking. We need to be able to talk to other communities, for example, the climate people, the development people, the peacebuilding people, the diplomats and so forth, or the finance people. You know, when I was at ECHO, sometimes I talked to our field offices, you know, ECHO has about 51, 52 officers in the field, and told them: Well, maybe you have to spend more time on the golf course. And then they were looking at me like an outlaw. And I said: Well, it's at the golf course - sorry to say so - that you're going to meet the World Bank representative. So, if you want to think about new financial endeavours, and new access to finance or so, speak to other communities, not only to the people that you meet every day. So, of course, this was a metaphor, I don't want my people to spend all their time on golf, but…

 

Srivastava 

I like the fact, Michael, that you brought up the sort of the visual of the golf course, or the metaphor of the golf course, because it's a metaphor for power, right? In so many ways, it’s financial power. It’s political power, right? It’s bureaucratic power. It's all these different people who golf together, are often like making deals together. And it's - especially in the West - it's where sort of deals are made and relationships are formed. It is a metaphor for power, and I want to talk a little bit about the concept of power. How do you relate to the concept of power? How do you define it? Is it something that you talk about quite a bit in your work? Nadine, why do you relate to it?

 

Saba 

Well, on different levels, I would say. For a lot of the communities where we work, we do hold the power, because we are facilitating, or we're providing services. So, at one point, when you have this power, you have as well the responsibility of making sure that whatever is channelled through you is reaching the people that are in need. At the same time, we are not that much in power in a country such as Lebanon, where the environment is extremely volatile. So, even though you have the plans, even though you might have the resources, sometimes you do not even have the capacity to get those resources. I'll give you an example. When we had the energy and fuel crisis in Lebanon, we had the possibility to buy fuel, but the fuel was not there. So, no matter what resources I had, and the power I could get from these resources, I was not able to get what I needed. So, I do not see it as a static concept. I see it more as a living concept that is changing depending on the situation and depending on the interlocutors that we have. At the same time, I see that sometimes, resources and money are sometimes mistaken [for] power. Whereas, it's not always that. Sometimes we do have the resources, we do not have the power, and sometimes the power comes from the fact that we do not have the resources, because that makes us coming from a very - if I may say - not clean, but from a very purist perspective, in terms of how we define power, and how we define the relationships between humans in a community.

 

Köhler

Power is a difficult concept. For many people, the word power, especially, I think, in non-Anglo-Saxon languages, has a rather pejorative meaning. Because people really think not of power, but of abuse of power. And that, of course, makes a discussion on the role of power in our sector, sometimes a bit difficult because it stirs up emotions, rather than clarifying. Now, I wanted to have power. Why did I want to have power? Not in order to abuse it, but I felt that, you know, if you want to shape things, if you want to make a contribution, you need to get active. You need to have access to resources to do so. And therefore, from my perspective, having power means to have access to a number of resources that you need in order to bring about things, change things, or implement things. What you need to keep in mind and what, as an official in a big organisation you see every day, is basically, there is absolutely no such thing as absolute power. There is not, you know, this kind of binary situation where one has power, and somebody has no power, there is an unfair relationship between the two, and you know, the one who has power will overwhelm the powerless. I mean, that is what we find in the fairy tales, and what we find maybe sometimes in history, but in reality, in today's world, even those who have power are under an enormous number of constraints, and also enormous number of supervisory mechanisms, that they have to take care of, that they have to heed, that they have to take into account. And that also those people who think that they're on the rather powerless side should understand, if they want to have a meaningful conversation about a fairer division of the power relationship with the one that he or she thinks has power. That was my personal approach. Now, if I look at it structurally, then I think, of course, there is a difference between those who have resources and agency, and therefore power, from the perspective of the powerless. They may not always be aware of the fact that they have power. You know, in the parts of the humanitarian sector that I know, so far there has not been a discussion about power. For example, if we speak about localisation, we speak about localisation as a logical consequence, either of becoming more effective, or of having a fairer way of operating. The word ‘fairness’ is already something that replaces the notion of power in a way. Although behind that, if you break it down, you could also come to the notion of power as one of the ingredients of fairness. So, exercising power, in my view, is absolutely essential. The question is, how enlightened are you in doing so? How aware are you of the consequences? And are there checks and balances? There needs to be an entire system in place to make the use of power meaningful. 

 

Srivastava 

We unfortunately have lost Nadine right now. I don't know, Melissa, if you're gonna if she can come back? 

 

Fundira

Yeah. Oh, she's actually just arriving. 

 

Srivastava 

Wonderful.

 

Fundira

To Nadine's point about things being a bit out of your control in Lebanon, she knew that a power cut was coming.

 

Srivastava 

Welcome back. 

 

Saba  

That was not in my power.

 

Srivastava

Welcome back. Well, we solved the entire problem of power-sharing while you were gone, Nadine. But Michael, I just wanted to ask, what do you think you personally have the power to do? And what misconceptions do you think people in the sector have about how much power you have to change things in the sector?

 

Köhler 

So, as I'm out of active professional life, and I'm an unpaid Grand Bargain Ambassador right now, I don't have the material means of power any longer. I would hope - I'm not sure I can claim that - but I would hope, that at least, I have a little bit of authority in the sense that people listen to my views, that they reflect on the way how they're doing things because they discuss with me, and that sometimes I have kind of a convening power - another form of power - where I could bring together the Linas, the Nadines, the Melissas of this world, in order to discuss something, in order to make a situation better because together, we can invest our knowledge, our intelligence, and our energy into this, and come to new solutions. So, today, I'm hopefully in a position of having some authority, and I'm not crying everyday that I have no more sheer power.

 

Srivastava

Nadine, I want to ask you, where do you see yourself? I mean, you're sort of, I guess, in relationship to Michael say, you are quote, unquote, closer to the ground - and again, these are very imperfect terms - but you're sort of closer to community, shall we say. Where do you think that puts you on the power spectrum? And does that give you, sort of, more power, or less?

 

Saba 

I mean, first answer would be, I do exercise a certain power. However, exactly, as Michael said, there is no limitless power. There is no power out of nowhere, ex nihilo. It doesn't come like this. It comes within a context. So, in my small context of Akkar, I do have the power. In a more global context such as the Grand Bargain, I would say my power is linked to how much I know, to how much I am involved in the type of conversations, and the type of discussions, and the type of fora where I can present the perspective of the ground, where I can get access to some evidence-based data, where I can participate in some in some discussions. And this is where I would say, knowledge is power in this sense. In a lot of times, local and national organisations are the weakest point, or the weakest part of this chain, because they do not have always access to such types of fora, or such types of groups where high level discussions are made. And this is where I would say, the specificity of the Grand Bargain, because it allows for such a discussion, and it allows for such an exchange. So, there is a bit of privileged power, because you get to participate, you get to shape certain things. I was able to relay a bit, the message from the field to the boardroom, because a lot gets lost. It goes back to the fact that oftentimes we forget that when we're exercising this power, we're speaking and we're impacting people's lives. It's not numbers, although it can be looked at in terms of quantitative impact as number, but ultimately, it is not a number. So this is where I believe the human dimension of power needs to be relayed and needs to be always reminded. And this is where, I think my power comes from, from the fact that I know what is on the ground, that I've been facing the challenges of some of the people who are on the ground, to relay it, and to say this is what's happening, and this is where your decisions in the capitals, in the boardrooms, in those ministries are impacting the people's lives.

 

Srivastava 

Is there something that you want to say about where you think power needs to shift in the sector, and where the barriers exist?

 

Köhler

I think we should first think, why would we want to change power? You know, there's this good old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't think that changing the power relationship should be a goal in itself, so to say. It should be the consequence of getting better, and helping people better, so to say. And therefore, before we change power, we have to figure out and say what we really want. What do we want to do better? How do we do it better? And if that then entails a change in the present power structure, then I'm all in favour, and then we have to manage that. But I don't think that one should approach it from the angle of: Well, there is a power relationship, and now we have to change it, and then we shall see what happens with this. 

 

Saba 

It's not like you want the power for the sake of getting the power. It's, you want the power because certain things are not working well, and one of the problems is that the power does not lie within the hands, or does not lie - to the extent that it needs to be - within the hands of the local groups, of the local communities, of their own involvement in the actions that are impacting them. And this is where you look into: Where is the bottleneck? Why are we at this point, with this type of needs, with this increasing number of people in need, whereas humanitarian action is already there, in different contexts, in different countries, and the people are not only still not having their needs met, but we're seeing an increase in needs. And we're seeing an increase in - I wouldn't say inaction, but - we're seeing an increase of people not really caring about what others are facing. So, this is where I think we need to look into why we need to have the power shift? And where does it need to happen?

 

Srivastava

You know, anyone who is familiar with the Grand Bargain knows how reform efforts are being framed, what the questions of effectiveness and efficiency mean. But when you say, you know, you want to make the sector more effective and efficient, what does that mean? What does effective and efficient mean to you?

 

Köhler 

Effective or efficient is a technocratic expression for making humanitarian aid fit for the future, in order to remain relevant - and remain relevant means, not only to do good things here and there for people in need, this already is fantastic, but basically harness the means, the instruments, the finance - in order to really help people in a world where we have an increasing number of humanitarian crises. And that means that in order to ensure this effectiveness and efficiency, we do not only need to do a little bit of improvement and repair work, we probably have to think of, let's say, a root and branch reform of the entire sector. In other words, I don't think that if we want to make humanitarian aid fit for the future, humanitarian aid in ten years, or fifteen years from now, can look as it looks right now. We have to preserve all the good things, but we have to open up to new ways of doing, but also new actors in the sector. And, that I find a very interesting task, because if we don't do this, we will simply not be in a position to deliver aid to the extent necessary. If you just think of a crisis like Sudan right now, where only five percent of the needs are financed and the world is basically turning their back to this crisis. So, if we don't want to have lots of Sudans, if we want to really help people in need at a - let's say - significant scale, we have to change. And at the same time, I cannot imagine that in the world of 2035, humanitarian aid can be relevant, if we have only two or three major donors, and we have only about 15, 20 major operators in the sector, most of which are based in either Northern America or in Northern Europe. We are living in an increasingly globalised world. We have emerging nations. We have emerging organisations. And if we don't put all this on a more solid footing, so to say, I believe that our sector will lose basically its relevance, which would mean that we are not up to helping the people that are hungry, that are starving, that are missing healthcare every day, and that would be, not only a moral dilemma, I think it would be a major failure for the sector as it stands right now.

 

Saba

So, from my perspective, the efficiency and the effectiveness of aid is related directly to the people who are affected by these crises, and the fact that they are able to get their services at minimum. So for me, it all goes back to the people. I think we ought to ask ourselves a couple of questions on how we are measuring the effectiveness and the efficiency. Is it as per the standards of the donors? Is it as per the standards of the intermediaries? Or is it with respect to the impact that we’re leaving within the people? And when we're looking at the impact as well, is it only responding to the immediate needs, because we always have in the humanitarian sector this sense of urgency. But, sometimes this sense of urgency or emergency by itself is sometimes an impediment to the efficiency and effectiveness of aid, because if we did not have that sense of urgency, and we had these resources, would we have put them into action the same way that we're doing it now when we're having such a crisis? And this is where I believe the discussion around efficiency and effectiveness needs to be shifted a little bit. So far, it has all been dominated by one side of the cycle, whereas it is obvious, everybody’s saying that things need to be changed. But, at the same time, things need to be changed how? Second, things have already started changing. By the fact that we're asking these questions, we are already starting to kind of put the change into perspective. So for me, this is where the urgency of the action kind of disempowers the affected communities, and not only the affected communities, it's also the local system. It's also the local context, because communities are not coming out of nothing. I mean, the crisis that came didn't come out of nothing, it's not something that just arrived. There are some precursors that are some triggers that led to such types of crises.  

 

Köhler 

Actually, I'm struggling with the notion of urgency. Of course, you could say that humanitarian aid is about addressing human suffering. And when a human being suffers in whatever way: hunger, diseases, whatever, there's always urgency, obviously. But, we all know that most humanitarian operations today, and what Nadine is doing in Lebanon, I think, is a case in point, are happening in a, well, you use the word ‘chronic,’ I think more commonly used is the word ‘protracted’ situation. So, if an urgency becomes protracted, it becomes routine. If I know that, probably I need to operate in Lebanon, not only now but also in five years now, then logically, I should work differently from the way in which I would respond to an onset disaster like, for example, an earthquake in Nigeria or so. Somehow, you know, very often in the humanitarian sector, we work with a toolbox which is no longer adapted. It’s like when you’re a mechanic and want to repair a modern, electric car, but you still have the toolbox for the old, diesel-driven car. What do I mean? We have these short-term contracts. We are all about speed and fastness. We want to avoid that people are dying, so we have these very flexible, quick instruments. Now, of course, everybody knows that Nadine is totally right, that, you know, if I know that the needs are there still, after three or four years, I should not start with an eight or twelve month contract, I should come with a three years, or five years contract. That allows our colleagues who implement aid to be much, much more efficient, but this is not really happening. And if you ask colleagues in headquarters of donor organisations, or of implementing partners: Why don't you do this? Although they all understand this logic, they say: Well, if we do this, we lose flexibility. Give you an example. If you have, say $100 million, people have the feeling that then I have to make choices that are very hard to make. Because I can give a three years contract to Nadine, but maybe to her colleague - I don't know, Fatima - I cannot give the contract then because the money goes to Nadine. So, that is a very simple argument why, although everybody agrees, we need to have more multi-annuality, in reality, there's only sluggish progress in this direction. And it gives, to be honest, the people who have access to resources, a feeling of losing - well they call it losing flexibility - but you could also call it losing power, losing the influence to shape things. The other point that I would like to make is, I hear Nadine, very, very well when she says: You need to take the situation on the ground into account. You cannot simply set the rules at headquarters, somewhere far away thousands of kilometers away from where the situation evolves, and then, you know, you assume that this really goes in the right direction, and the local NGOs can work with this and it really helps the people. This is totally right. And I think everybody in the humanitarian sector would agree with it, and will probably also say: Well, we are deeply convinced, if you sit in Geneva, or New York, or in Brussels, or in Rome, or in Oslo, or so, we're all convinced that we are working for the people that are in need. We are not bloodless administrators and robots, so to say, that are implementing rules, but we really want to be effective in that sense. We want to ease human suffering. But, the people who have decision-making power over resources don't operate in a vacuum. They operate in a political environment. They operate in an environment where you have lots of checks and balances. The terms ‘effectiveness’ and ‘efficiency are,’ at least in my professional practice, or have been used most in my professional practice, by auditors. The auditors are not humanitarian specialists. They may have an open heart, but they’re auditors in the first place. They are not Nadines or Michaels, right. So, they are there in order to check whether from a financial point of view, and from the point of view of whether we achieve our targets, we are doing the right thing with the way, or in the way, how we implement our resources. When they find, either cases of inefficient use of resources of money, when they find cases of abuse, of misuse, or when they perceive a risk of so to say, a black hole, a lacuna, something you know, that could go wrong, maybe it has not yet gone wrong, but you know, a clear lack of control, they will simply send you a very bad letter and will tell you: You have to do something about it. And if you don't do this, we go public. We go to the Parliament. We go to the press, and so forth. And that then leads to a situation where all the donors and all the implementing partners that need to have more money, and that need to go back to those people who give the money, and convince them by saying: We do our job properly, basically, jump on their knees and say: Okay, we will address this case of lack of optimal implementation, and we will put out new guidelines and set up rules and so forth, that we will implement across the world and across the place, and then you know, this will apply regardless of whether you're in Peru, or Lebanon, or in the Central African Republic. So, it's very often this kind of external element that there are control instances that perceive a real or a putative risk, so to say, that say you have to do something about this, that leads us then to come up with general rules, and it's like a pendulum that swings in different directions. When there is a scandal, when you see, for example, a case of a massive aid diversion - and this happens every year somewhere - then, you know, the pendulum swings in one direction, and you will see clearly that new controls come in, in order to give those people who are managing the aid system, the possibility to say: We have put in all the necessary controls, now you can give us gain the money that we need to contract Nadine. But, then for Nadine, of course, it looks different. Because she sees that we come and say: Well, you can get money, you can get perhaps even for three years, but now we need to have three new reports. And we need to have an ex ante assessment on how gender compatible it is, what you're doing, and so forth. So, she feels there's more control, more bureaucracy, more totally crazy things that headquarters are asking for, that might make her life difficult, and make it in particular, difficult for local organisations, local NGOs that are very, very far away from the logic of headquarters, to comply with all these things.

 

Saba

Isn't it an easy excuse to go back to the fact that, you know, there have been some scandals, that have been some aid diversion? Isn't it like, really easy to say that this is why we're a bit reluctant to change? I mean…

 

Köhler 

Well, Nadine, I didn’t say it’s the only reason. I said it’s one of two reasons. The other reason is, you can call it tradition. You can call it inertia. You can call it the own weight of institutions, and you know, institutions are not only, for example, USAID, or the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also, the big NGOs are big, traditional administrative systems with a tradition. This is a factor in every form of human organisation, and one should not criticise it. One should only criticise if there is no culture of reflection, of questioning whether we are still on the right track. You and I, we’re together in the Grand Bargain. The nice thing about the Grand Bargain is that it's one of those platforms where you have interlocutors from all sides. It's not only donors talking to donors. It’s not only NGOs talking to NGOs. And it's not only the UN talking to the UN. We can ask each other critical questions and also take each other by the hand and help us in a collegial way, but I don't have a much better set of instruments, so to say, in order to overcome this. I'm a little bit afraid that sometimes when you are working on the frontline, as you and your colleagues in Akkar and so forth are doing, you may underestimate the complexity of the reality at headquarters level. And it is difficult to understand that. I mean, you know, in principle, it should be very easy, you get a budget at the beginning of the year of - I don't know - two or 3 billion dollars, or Euros, and then you can distribute it to the places and to the organisations that are coping with need. It sounds very easy and straightforward. But if you just see the political landscape in some of the major donations right now, you feel that there are very strong political forces that basically in every election campaign, go to the voters and say, you know: There's no surprise that there is no more money for social housing, and no more money to support poor families in our country, because we're wasting all our money with development and humanitarian aid. Let's stop that. Let's give more money to our own people, and then the world will be a better place. So, if you have no good arguments on effectiveness and efficiency to address this kind of political discourse, you're basically back to the wall. And that is unfortunately happening in quite a number of countries right now.

 

Saba

So, this is why I say it's easy for us to go back and, and mention the issue of risk, the issue of compliance, the issue of diligence, because yes, it does exist, but at the same time, as we tighten the rules and make them different, the people who want to do aid diversion will think of other ways to also bypass those rules. So, at one point, it's not enough to make rules, as long as we're not really looking into a different perspective to aid and how we're delivering aid, and how we're conceptualising aid. It's not only how we're dispersing the money, it's also how we're designing our way of working. So, it does feel like that the accountability is mainly towards the people who are giving the money, which is understandable at one point, but at the same time, it has to be also reciprocal towards the people who are receiving that aid. So, it's on both ends of this spectrum that accountability needs to happen. And this is where I believe, even though we're saying accountability to affected populations, and this is kind of the new buzzword - if I may say now - it's also at one point, how are we defining this accountability? And who is affected? If I want to think about climate, we're all affected. Whether I am in the Global South, or you are in the Global North, we're all affected, in different proportions, but we're affected. If I'm somebody who has just fled my home with nothing in my hands, I just have my papers, and sometimes I might not even have my papers, and whatever you're going to give me I'm gonna be grateful. Is it what I want? No. Potentially not. If you come and do a survey with me, I'll tell you: Yes, that's great. Because I already have nothing. I came in with nothing. So, also, how are we defining this accountability? And based on what are we measuring it? How are we seeing aid? And what it is? I mean, what started with a movement of solidarity between people to exactly as you said, less suffering, less torment for people in distress, is getting to be an industry. And, are we losing that sense within that industry?

 

Köhler 

Well, I'm one of the people who actually uses the word ‘industry’ very often when speaking about what humanitarians are doing. It's not a mainstream expression, I would say. Most people would speak about the humanitarian sector, about humanitarian organisations, or whatever. Few people speak about the industry. I like the term I have to say, because there's a lot of money involved. There's also something that the word ‘industry’ transports, not only money in absolute terms, but basically jobs, you know, and all the humanitarian organisations, implementing organisations live on their overheads. So, getting a contract, getting a grant, that means that I can keep my people in place. If I do not do that, then I'm in a really, very bad situation, like, for example, the International Committee of the Red Cross had to face over the last year, they have to lay off maybe 25 percent of their staff and so forth. And this is really bitter, because these are colleagues, these are people who have shown their worth in the field. They have gone through many dangerous situations. They have done incredibly good things. And all of a sudden, you have to tell them: I have no money to pay you, so goodbye. It was nice with you for 20 years. Very tough. 

 

Saba 

It's interesting that we're going back to the headquarters, because it feels like the whole system has been done in a top down approach, while what we're asking here is to kind of reverse it. At one point, the whole question goes back to: Do we want to relinquish power or not? And do we want to have a viable partner at the table, speaking together, and having this kind of peer-to-peer, rather than this donor recipient approach? I mean, even in our terminology, we do not choose in our work, ‘participants,’ we use ‘beneficiaries.’ I mean, these are very small signs of how we have been formulating, how we have been envisioning the system to be. The system has been built in a way to go top-down from donor, to intermediaries, to local communities, even local organisations at one point, did not really have their place within the system. We are at this point where local organisations are like: We are here. And, at this point intermediaries are asking: Okay, so what do we do now? How do we accommodate this change? What does that mean for us? What does that mean for donors? And how do we do it? And this is where I'm saying: Isn't it a very easy excuse to go back to the risk, and say: Well, because we have those risks, well because we have those compliance, because we have those rules? Because there is as well, this perception around local and national organisations, that they are more prone to corruption, more prone to being manipulated, more prone to having some political pressure. So, there is this sense of, you know, what we are still afraid of how much they are involved, and how much they can really lead in that response. It is there. We feel it. We sense it, even if it's sometimes put in a very diplomatic terminology, but what do we do now? We have an aid sector that is questioning how it's being delivered. We have a larger number of crises in the world than we had 20 years ago. We have crises that are getting forgotten. That doesn't mean that the people do not exist. That doesn't mean that the people are not suffering. That doesn't mean that we're not being able to deliver. And at the same time, we are sometimes fighting about which rule is better. So, isn't that a bit contradictory? We are all acknowledging that change needs to happen. And I do understand that change is incremental. And it is true that people would be often led to change because of a crisis, because they are feeling the heat. But, we are feeling the heat. It's not silent for us. I mean, we have, within the Grand Bargain, different outcome documents related to the role of intermediaries. We have different outcome documents related to localisation. But, where is the political will to put that into practice? I mean evidence is there. [It] is true that sometimes when you have checks and balances within an institution, when you have some thresholds, when you have some safeguarding, it is better. But, I'll give you an example. You might do due diligence for my organisation, and you might come and tell me: Do you have all your policies? And yes, I do have all my policies. I have all my ducks in a row. I can show you the policies. Am I implementing these policies? Can you come and sit down with me every single day to check if we are implementing this? You cannot do it for a local organisation. You cannot do it for an international organisation. You cannot do it for a UN agency. So, there is this bit of trust that needs to be reinstituted within the sector to say that, yes, we are trusting a bit - and here I'm speaking more about local and national NGOs - to be innovative in their ways of working. At the same time, we’re saying, we don't want to have the same results, but we need to keep on the same modus operandi. Aren't we in contradiction? Crises are changing in nature. Why aren't we changing the nature of our response? So, the question here goes back into a very simple one. Are we relinquishing power? Are we keeping it in the hands of the donors? And, if we're keeping it in the hands of the donor, how much are they attuned to what is happening on the field? Not much. And I can tell you, one of the fears for our own organisation, is when we started accessing institutional funding, and we started to work more and more on our policies, one of the fears that I had, is that because we have all of these policies, would we be losing our flexibility to be in the field fast enough, quick enough, and in an open way, to be able to accommodate the diverse needs that we have? But, it has been the same as well for international organisations like 50 years ago, 60 years ago. Donors were happy to take a risk with them. Why wouldn't they take a risk with local and national organisations? Not all interventions of intermediaries and INGOs have been successful from the beginning.

 

Köhler

Trust doesn't fall from heaven. It is based on an assessment. It's like, you know, if you want to marry somebody. Yes, you should marry somebody because you fall in love. But basically, falling in love is just the most romantic expression of trusting somebody. You trust somebody, you look at the person, and you have the feeling: that is somebody that yes, I could imagine spending my life with. That is somebody that I could imagine having a family with. That's somebody reliable. Somebody who will help me, protect me, and somebody you know, that I like. It's a bit like that. I don't want to over romanticise humanitarian aid. We just spoke about an industry here. But, it's something like that. Now, the problem is that local NGOs, from a donor perspective, are the new kids on the block. Twenty years ago, so to say, or ten years ago, nobody knew local NGOs. And some donors - you know, I had the privilege of working with a donor organisation that has more than 50 officers on the ground, so we know many local NGOs. But, if you come from a small or midsize donor, who doesn't have a huge diplomatic network, or outside offices, you will never meet Nadine unless she comes to Europe, to Geneva, or to New York, or so, for some discussions. So, how can I start this kind of romantic trust affair with Nadine’s organisation, if I only know her from, and through reports? And that's I think one of the problems that we have right now with localisation, that many people say: Yes, we would like to be local, but frankly, we don't know who we can trust. And starting to operate in this regard, and building up a structure that can inform us, will have enormous or will generate enormous administrative costs. We need to build up a system that basically enables us to reach out to each of these local NGOs. That is very, very difficult. The problem of our debate here, and the problem of - excuse me to say so, Nadine, of your arguments, I can subscribe to almost everything you have said - is that we are using arguments that are totally convincing for people who are members of this industry, who are inside the industry. The notion, for example, of accountability to beneficiaries is something that is self-evident for people who are doing this work. The problem is it is not evident at all to the people who are not doing this work. Now, when I go to members of my family in my home country, who are taxpayers, and who are ultimately the ones who give us money for this kind of work, and I tell them: Well, I have to be accountable to you as my donor, as my taxpayer, but I also have to be accountable to Syrian refugees in the north of Lebanon that Nadine is taking care of, their first question will be: Why the heck? I mean, we are giving our monies to help these people survive. We are doing something really good. They are surviving. What the heck is this accountability to them? We need to explain better to people outside the sector why we think we need to go those steps that Nadine is recommending, and I'm afraid we have not yet done enough of this. We have not yet done enough to go beyond the confines of our sector, explain the narrative of humanitarian aid, and explain basically why something like localisation, and something like putting trust in local organisations, and also accountability to beneficiaries, is something which is actually also good for the donors, because it could lead to a situation where we're using their money in a much, much better way.

 

Saba

Working on the field, a lot of times, local and national NGOs, also international NGOs, are being accused of so many things, are being accused of being instruments in the hands of embassies, are being accused of implementing different agendas, are being accused of, you know, changing some dynamics within a certain country or within a crisis. So, the open communication in terms of addressing donors and host communities is one of the recipes, and one of the opportunities to build trust around the humanitarian sector, around humanitarians, and their interventions. So, whether it is within an international organisation or within a local organisation, the possibility of something bad happening remains present. So, even if we do the certification, even if we do the assessment, the due diligence and all of this, the risk is always there. 

 

Köhler

Yes Nadine, but risk management is not about avoiding risk, it's about bringing it down to an acceptable level.

 

Saba

Which is true, but are we giving the local NGOs the same opportunity of bringing it down to an acceptable level? Sometimes we're not.

 

Köhler

No, we aren't, we are not yet. But, I think the first thing, I think we are within the same direction, is to explain why we should do so. Because it may be obvious for you, but it's not obvious for everybody, at least in the traditional setup.

 

Saba

And that's the job, to change that traditional set up. That's why we're doing this reflection, I hope.

 

Köhler

Exactly.

 

Fundira

This was the first of two conversations Michael and Nadine had in June of 2024. What they didn’t know at the time was that life would soon change drastically, especially for Nadine. Just a few months later, in September, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah reached fever pitch, with Israel invading Lebanon and launching devastating airstrikes that killed thousands and wounded and displaced many more. Civil society leaders like Nadine had the double burden of filling the void of a weakened Lebanese state, while also fearing that they, too, could be the victims of the next airstrike. Several months after that, the US election would send the humanitarian sector into survival mode. Michael and Nadine didn't know it yet, but the issues they discussed and debated – that they reached consensus on, or disagreed on – would only become more urgent, and strike directly at the heart of the difficult questions humanitarians face today: Who holds power? What obligations do donor governments have to affected people? To their own constituents? Does humanitarian aid have a role to play in a rapidly changing world? And why should some countries be aid-dependent to begin with?

 

On the next episode of Power Shift, Nadine challenges Michael on the role of donor countries as both humanitarian actors, and instigators of humanitarian crises. 

 

Saba

It's not for us to solve the conflict, it's for us to ease and to alleviate the suffering. But at the same time, what we're doing is only band aid. And ultimately, it's leading to a point where there is donor fatigue, where people are bored of one crisis and need to go somewhere else, and funding goes to somewhere else, and resources are allocated to somewhere else. And people remain in a very miserable situation. So, I would have loved to hear from Michael a bit, his take on the duality of the donors being actors on the geopolitical scene, and at the same time, decision-makers on the humanitarian sector scene. 

 

Fundira

Listen out for Michael’s response, and Nadine’s pushback, on the next episode of Power Shift.

__________________

 

Power Shift is a production of The New Humanitarian and the Center for Transformational Change

 

This podcast is hosted by me, Melissa Fundira, and moderated by Lina Srivastava. 

 

Power Shift is produced by Lina Srivastava, Freddie Boswell, and Melissa Fundira.

 

Our editor is Irwin Loy. 

 

Our theme song is Chill 2.0 by Barno.

 

Sound engineering by Tevin Sudi.

 

You can find transcripts of all podcasts on our website: thenewhumanitarian.org/podcast  

 

If you or anyone you know would like to participate in future Power Shift conversations, email us at [email protected] with the subject line: POWER SHIFT

 

Thank you for joining us on Power Shift.