Power Shift | Change is so incremental that it’s not happening

Melissa Fundira Welcome to Power Shift, a podcast from The New Humanitarian and the Center for Transformational Change. I’m Melissa Fundira.

Each episode, we bring together decision-makers in aid and philanthropy, and those affected by their decisions, for candid conversations. This podcast asks: What’s possible when two people on different points on the power spectrum try to build relationships of trust through dialogue?

Here’s where we’re at today: The global humanitarian system is in crisis. Its biggest donors are cutting support. And this threatening the lives of millions of people who have grown dependent on aid.

But the system was already shaky. It’s dominated by big international players. It sidelines grassroots groups. It doesn’t listen to people who use aid. And it hasn’t fully reckoned with its colonial origins. Past reforms have stumbled, but if humanitarianism doesn’t change, it will simply become irrelevant, as many say. 

So, can honest, one-on-one dialogue be part of a new start – a shift – in power? 

Nadine Saba If you're seeing the reality as we are seeing it? Why are things not, you know, moving? People who are usually high-ranked in a bureaucratic and kind of in headquarters in organisations are not usually in touch with the field.

Fundira Nadine Saba directs the Akkar Network for Development. It’s an NGO she created to support the needs of people in her hometown in Lebanon. She’s been speaking with Michael Köhler who has over thirty years’ experience in international cooperation, aid, and foreign policy, including leading the EU’s humanitarian aid arm, ECHO.

Saba And I was surprised to see that, no, he does know a bit of the field. So it's not only the theoretical, but at the same time also, if your understanding that, then others in similar ranks are understanding that, and why are we still having what we're having to go through? 

Fundira As ambassador and what’s known as a sherpa, Michael and Nadine are responsible for steering the Grand Bargain process from different ends of the power spectrum. The Grand Bargain is the big humanitarian reform process, and it's now nearly a decade old. But many critics say it’s falling short of its goals. Some have lost hope that it’ll ever reach them. Michael concedes there’s still more work to be done. 

Michael Köhler Objectively speaking, many of our problems simply come from the fact that we are badly organised. I wouldn't think that, for example, there's a lot of lack of resources – financial resources, instruments, and so forth. There is an abundance of such resources. It's only that we, frankly, often don't combine them in an intelligent way. That we don't organise ourselves in a very good way. The fact that, you know, we need $50 billion a year to satisfy humanitarian needs right now on the globe, yeah, that's a big number. But if you look at what we offered, for example, in the COVID crisis or in other crises in over the past years, in terms of financial assistance, $50 billion worldwide, I wouldn't say it's peanuts, but it's something that can be managed, and the public budgets have the possibility.

Fundira And Nadine says the issue is merely a symptom of the world we live in. 

Saba It’s how the world is functioned. It's how countries are interacting with each other. It's how nation states are interacting, and it is about an imbalance of power within the world.

Fundira Michael and Nadine sat down together four times over the course of two months. In the last episode, which you can find in The New Humanitarian’s podcast feed, they got to know each other, and started to lay out their differing thoughts on what it would take to deliver more effective and efficient aid, which are essentially the goals of the Grand Bargain. In this second, and last, half of their conversations, we find out if they’re able to reconcile those differences. 

Srivastava … wanted to make sure that we bring forward this time?

Köhler Nothing on my end. Last time feels like a long time ago, but it's a nice memory.

Saba Exactly. I do not remember what we talked about last time…

Köhler So, Nadine, let’s agree that we would contradict ourselves this time.

Saba Hopefully not!

Fundira I just had one random question. Since we last spoke, have the two of you been in Grand Bargain meetings together, like in the past, or no, you haven't seen each other since the last call? 

Köhler No, absolutely not. In my part of the world, it's holiday time, actually.

Fundira Sure. 

Saba No, I mean, with everything going on, I don't think I had the time to remember what happened in the last three sessions.

Köhler Yes, same here, and obviously, I feel very much for Nadine as the situation in and around Lebanon gets hotter and hotter.

Fundira Just a few weeks after this conversation, the crisis in Gaza escalated. Nadine was set to join a panel organised by The New Humanitarian in New York City, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, but just days before the event, Nadine’s flight was cancelled. Israel had bombed Lebanon. The few available flights out of Lebanon were booked up within minutes. Thousands in the country were killed. Many more were displaced.  For Nadine, her predicament – even before this current crisis – highlighted a key barrier to fixing humanitarian aid.

Saba If we look a bit towards the country states, towards member states who are at the same time in some situations playing the role of the donors who are providing resources for humanitarian aid, and at the same time, are also actors on the geopolitical scene. And this is where I believe this intersection between politics, human rights, aid, and crisis is where we need to rethink where we are in this world in terms of humanitarian actors, and what is the function of the humanitarian sector in this conjuncture of politics, humanitarian support, and ultimately, economic interest as well. This is how the world is. This is where we are. Not all the conflicts or the crises are just natural made. A lot of them are man-made.

Saba The Grand Bargain is a trendsetter in a sense. Some of the topics that are discussed in the Grand Bargain are later on picked up by others foras, by other organisations to build upon it. And this is one of the, I would say, strengths of the Grand Bargain. But at the same time, it could be a weakness, because we might not always have the executive arm to be able to ensure that whatever we're trying to push, or whatever we're trying to suggest, is concretely happening within the sector. So, I see Michael is nodding a bit his head. Well, I'm not sure how much this resonates. But at one point, I understand that change is incremental, but at the same time, things are getting extremely hectic on the field and on the ground. And it feels like you're incapable of doing anything, and this is where I believe frustration grows, and we get into a vicious cycle, in a sense, because we're frustrated, we’re not being able to push things, and it just goes around.

Lina Srivastava Nadine, I just want to get a sense. You have mentioned the frustration a few times in our last conversations, and today as well, which is, you know, understandable. I'd love you to flesh that out a little bit. What are the conversations that are happening…

Fundira Moderating their conversation is Lina Srivastava. She’s the founder and director of a social enterprise called the Center for Transformational Change.  

Srivastava … When you talk about this frustration of not being able to move within the sector because of external power imbalances that are brought on by nation states or donors, what are people saying and what are they asking for?

Saba Well, people are not a homogeneous group. Crises are not the same. And this is where I believe the system needs to be more agile and more flexible in understanding that there is no silver bullet, that what works in Lebanon might not work in Yemen, might not work in Myanmar, might not work in Syria. I think we keep on repeating this. This is one of the very small examples that lead to frustration. The second example is, if we look to Gaza, if we look to Myanmar, as you mentioned, if we look to Sudan, if we look to Yemen – do you think people believe in humanitarian aid anymore? Do you think people who are living in those cities, in those villages, and those settlements do believe in humanity in humanitarian aid and the humanitarian sector? That's another example of frustration. That's another example of the imbalance of power. It might feel like I'm being too emotional, but this is the reality. This is how people are living, and this is how people are dying. And this is where the frustration is. You cannot go and tell somebody, ‘You know what, explain to me why are you frustrated?’ Well, I'm frustrated because I don't have access to clean water? I'm frustrated because I don't have access to food? I'm frustrated because I'm in displacement? Frustration is a very small word to describe that. And local organisations are coming from this context, so they feel the frustration double, because not only are they feeling it in their own flesh, in their own bodies, in their own lives, they feel it double because they believe that they have a certain responsibility. And they believe that… they have believed in the sector, and the sector has failed them. So, this is where the frustration even grows bigger.

Köhler I listened to you, not only with great interest, but also with my own little frustration, because, you know, every paragraph that you finished, I said, ‘Okay, now I would like to react to that,’ and then you said something new, and then I was like, ‘No, I have to react to that,’ and now there's total turmoil, so to say, in my brain, and I don't really know where to start. But one of the big challenges of humanitarian aid today is the protractedness of crises. And, you know, this leads to a situation where in the cases that you mentioned – the Palestinians, the Syrian refugees, the Rohingya, and many others – for years, and years, and years continue in their suffering, and the only form of assistance that they get is humanitarian aid. So automatically, you start kind of using humanitarian aid as a synonymous expression for aid and for solving the problem, which humanitarian aid is rarely not being made to solve, but just to alleviate, to ease. Now, if you add to that – and there become to the point of localisation – if you add to that that these traditional structures of humanitarian aid are still very much that Western donors and Western organisations help people that are not in the West. Then it looks like, let's say, a benign form of foreign interference. So, if you're suffering in a protracted conflict or crisis, and you see for 10 years that you station gets from bad to worse, then you think it's perhaps this form of aid that I get, and that de facto makes me survive because I get food, I get health and so forth, health assistance, but in little doses is not enough. It is that – and that comes from the West – that basically should be totally different in order to make my life more dignified. The diversion of aid, the insufficiency of aid, sometimes the low quality of aid, sometimes the fact that humanitarian principles are not perfectly well implemented but there may be elements of partiality and of bias, for example, because we're all human beings, and nobody of us performs perfectly. So, there's kind of an overcharging of expectation, very understandably, with respect to what humanitarian aid should and could do. And I don't say that this is not justified, I think it's justified, but that we should take it as a stimulus to think first, how to do humanitarian aid better? And secondly, how to implement it as part of a larger framework to address crises? Because the framework that we have is, clearly, no longer performing.

Saba Well, it's, it's good to hear that that is an acknowledgment that the framework is no longer performing. So, at least we're agreeing on that. It's interesting when we, as humanitarian practitioners, are talking, we’re a bit elitist, where we know more than what the others know, or we can do things better than what the others do, which is not always true. And I think one of the points that will allow us to recalibrate is to be a bit humble in how we perceive our role and how we deliver our mission. We need to be humble to accept that there is a limitation, and that we cannot do a lot of the things that are needed to solve a crisis or to solve a conflict, and we need to go back to others and see. I would agree with the fact that, what are we supposed to do as humanitarians, and the fact 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 donors’ fatigue, where people are bored of one crisis and need to go to somewhere else, and funding goes to somewhere else, and resources are allocated to somewhere else, and people remain in a very miserable situation.

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 a lot of time, decision-makers on the humanitarian sector scene, because, at least in some of the contexts, it's that dual political dimension that is hindering the delivery of aid.

Köhler I don't share that impression totally. Maybe because I'm coming from another end, so to say. If you look at it: Who are the main donors of humanitarian aid, and how are they organised? Then you come to the very clear understanding that, for most of them, these are rather potent states and they finance humanitarian aid from their foreign affairs budget. [I’ll] give you one example. When – was it now, about two years ago – the big earthquake happened in Türkiye and Syria, of course, there was a lot of support immediately for Türkiye. but one pr two days later, search and rescue teams went also into Syria, and in all parts of Syria. So, you know, people and countries and states mobilised systems, although they are at odds with the Assad government, although they have certain political positions in the civil war there or in the conflict, and that didn't hold back in any way aid for the sector. So, you know, one can always wish for a better solution, but I think that the firewall that exists between foreign policymaking in a foreign ministry and the humanitarian department works relatively well. When there's a new crisis that emerges, and when a country is very much concerned by that crisis, then of course, it uses or looks at its toolbox, and if it finds humanitarian aid in the toolbox in order to address that crisis, it will also activate humanitarian aid. Why did we have these huge increases in international humanitarian aid funding as from 2015? It was because of the crisis in Syria, and because of the pouring out of so many Syrian refugees from Türkiye, from Lebanon, partly from Jordan, to Europe. Now, you could call this a political element, but it was a very welcome one, because we got much, much more money, money that otherwise we would never have had for the humanitarian sector.

Saba Well, I do have to disagree with the example of Türkiye and Syria, and the earthquake. I mean, we have seen on TV, people in Syria trying to get the rubbles with their own hands. We have been hearing from people that there was nobody to the rescue. And a lot of time, even if we had the search and rescue team who do not have access to the needed equipment, what are we doing? If they don't have access to the big vehicles who are able to remove the rubbles, what is the team capable of doing in this perspective? So, at least in that example, I would have to disagree on the fact that there was this, if I may say, this equality in dealing with communities and with populations. So, in this perspective, again, going back to what the humanitarian aid is delivering and what the people are perceiving about humanitarian aid, I am here to speak a bit about, not the technicality of humanitarian aid, I'm here to say that this is what the people are telling us. This is how people are reacting to us. For them, in different contexts, humanitarian aid is not being able to deliver. When you talk to somebody, and you try to explain that there are the rules, and that we need to abide by this, and we need to abide by that, they look at you like ‘Oh, okay. We need to abide by this and that, but nobody needs to abide by what we need?’ So, in this session, I'm not here to explain and to go into the technicalities of how humanitarian aid works. I'm here to say, what the people are feeling and what the people are perceiving. The people are perceiving that we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. Because when they look at us, when we arrive to the field, and when they are there with nothing in their hands, they are looking at us to be able to deliver. They are looking at us to be able to make their needs met. And in a lot of times, we cannot do it.

Köhler The kind of, or I should say, the cause or the reason why we have humanitarian aid has so much changed over the past years in quantity, and perhaps to a certain extent, quality. It's no longer the short-term intervention that you do after a disaster, a natural disaster, or perhaps a short war. Today, we have humanitarian aid as the main tool to manage the humanitarian consequence of a crisis, of a war, and probably 10, 15, 20 years after the war. So, the sector is totally overwhelmed. First, by the amount of aid that is needed, and secondly, by the fact that now we're operating in a world of political consequences and political considerations. If you look at some of the major donors and analyse the figures, you know, how much humanitarian aid are they giving, say in 2005, and how much now 20 years later, then you will probably see that humanitarian aid has grown exponentially, and in certain cases, matches almost the same country's expenditure for development aid. So, big bureaucracies have been building up, snd that leads to a situation, as Nadine said, basically that, without any bad will or so, you have different services with different postures, different egoisms and interests, and different political masters coming from different political parties in a coalition government, and so forth, and that makes that makes coordination extremely difficult. But if you wait for some sort of push from the inside to reform the system, this is going to be difficult, because it requires a lot of leadership that has to overcome a lot of vested interests in the established services and institutions. I sometimes speak about the humanitarian industry, and then people look, you know, in a strange way, but I think it's an industry because first, you can make money. I mean, I perceived my salary when I was still in active service from that. And you know, people produce something. They produce welfare, if you so want, they produce improvement of humanitarian situations, they have interests, and there's a market out there. And in the same sense, you have a development industry, and you have a peacebuilding industry. And where you have industries, you have corporations, and you have people who have interests, and you have overheads, and you have the possibility to win or to lose. So, every reform of that sector will have winners and losers. Now, I think what Nadine and I have been talking about for many hours now is to have the people who need the aid on the winning side. But we have to acknowledge that there are also people on the implementing side that don't want to lose. And when we go for reform, we have to do it in such a way that the case for reform is so compelling, and the losses for those who have something to lose are so digestible, that there is a chance to implement them, not through dictatorial means, but through the force of conviction and commitment.

Saba Well, it is true, it is an industry. It's the reality of things. But it's… my fear is that waiting for the moment where presenting it in a way of ‘it's a win-win situation’ is not going to happen.

Köhler Nadine, you have to create that moment. It's not waiting for the moment.

Saba Well, are we creating it?

Köhler Not yet, but by talking about it, we hopefully create more awareness, and at some point, we need to have leadership to pick up on that. The question: Who should provide that leadership? You will have your ideas about that, I might have my ideas about that. But you know, it's like in certain religions, you wait for the Messiah. We don't know when the Messiah will come, but you need to work in such a way that he or she could come at any moment.

Saba I'm not that convinced. Let me put it that way. Because ultimately, that means we're waiting. 

Köhler Active waiting

Saba Maybe, but still waiting. But if active waiting is just having something that's coming parachuted on people, as a lot of things have been done previously, then no. So, in this mindset, when we're speaking about creating this moment, and about pushing for it to happen, it needs to have a component of being people-centered. At the moment, most of our interventions, even if we want to label them and if we try to label them as people-centered, but we get lost in the technicalities, and the details, and the logistics, and sometimes it's difficult for us to remember that it is people-centered. And my fear is that whenever we're thinking about any new tools, or any new systems, that we open the Pandora's box and we lose whatever we have gained in this perspective. And this is where a bit of my fears and pessimism comes in in terms of what is the waiting in this and how and how to make it happen.

Srivastava You both are members of the Grand Bargain. What is your opportunity, your possibility, to lift up these perspectives on duality, the perspectives and the needs of people who are affected by this, who don't know about international humanitarian law, or how it affects their lives? Where's this listening happening? Is it?

Köhler No, not really. Not really. I mean, the Grand Bargain was not created to create it to be a forum for this kind of discussion, and I think there's an increasing call for it to be the kind of body, forum – you know, I avoid the word institution, because it is not an institution at all – but the kind of arena where we discuss these questions, and where we discuss them, sort of say, with a way to produce very concrete results. Because the Grand Bargain has a certain technical charm. When we speak about localisation, when we speak about quality funding, when we speak about, for example, accountability to persons or to people, which is, I think, very close to what Nadine just mentioned, this is not meant to be philosophical. It's meant to produce commitments, and perhaps sometimes also new instruments, that then the signatories would commit to implementing, and is being tracked. This is being reported about. But we have not yet, so to say, come to the founding moment, where world leaders would come together and say, ‘Listen, let's be honest, the state of the world is terrible.’ We have conflicts and we have problems that we could not envisage 10 or 15 years ago. Our toolbox is nice, but it's incomplete, and we need to show more results, more commitment, but perhaps also think about some new tools in order to address that. That moment still has to come. If Grand Bargain decisions and discussions can contribute to that, contribute to creating awareness, then I'm all in favour. I'm not sure whether the Grand Bargain as such would be the right forum for it, but we need to be part of the game, of course.

Srivastava Nadine, how does that moment come?

Saba When would that come? 

Srivastava How. Or when. 

Saba When is the million-dollar question that I don't think anybody has an answer to. How would that moment come? I that, ultimately, the humanitarian aid and the whole system needs to look further, needs to talk amongst each other – whether in terms of peacebuilding, whether in terms of development – to avoid needing this amount of funding. Because this is getting into cycles, and each couple of years, we're seeing this type of cycle where geopolitical changes happen in some donor countries, aid is firstly, kind of targeted, and then for some time we try to find an equilibrium, we're trying to find a way of coping with it, and then we move ahead. But we're still not going towards the root of the problems. Yes, some of the root of the problems are too hard to solve, but some of them might have a potential issue for a solution. I believe we're not having that willingness, and we're not really dealing with it. It's easier to send money for humanitarian aid than to delve into the issue itself. It's easier to reduce the amount of aid than going back and having such a retrospective look and saying, ‘Well, we did not really do well in that period,’ So, while I agree on the risks, on the trend, on the need to have a different perspective, I believe that this perspective should not be only linked to humanitarian aid, [it] needs to be further approached, and needs to be more elaborated to include as well… I mean, sometimes governments from the countries that we want to work in, whether local, whether national. I know that in some places you have sanctions. I know that in some places you have different political considerations. But some things need to change. How and where? It really depends on the context. Crisis in Lebanon is different than the crisis in Sudan, different than the one in Yemen, different than the one in Myanmar. So, I don't have the silver bullet. I don't think any one of us has the silver bullet. But I believe that we need to be a bit more bold into having this retrospective look towards what we are doing. Are we just curing, you know, a symptom? Are we really digging into the diagnostic of the problem, the root of the problem?

Srivastava So digging a little deeper into this, there are some recurring themes, right, that have come up in your conversations over the last three or four interviews, which is, number one, there needs to be more integration from within humanitarian aid across different themes, across different subsectors. There has to be more integration with peacebuilding, development, rights, etc. That is inherently a political, a political theme. The other theme that's come up is this question of where power lies, right? That's why we're doing these conversations. So the first question is this idea of integration, this idea of: What does humanitarian aid take control of? Who has power to decide who does that? Is that the Grand Bargain? Is that someone else?

Köhler I think the Grand Bargain has not yet evolved to becoming the forum for discussing the future of the sector, as such. It is still relatively technical, and still looks at individual instruments, where we should basically agree what we want to do with the Grand Bargain in the future. Do we want to end it in 2026, as foreseen? Do we want to, let's say, continue it but keep it technical? Or do we want to turn it into the platform where basically the entire future of the sector – as a part of international aid, as a part of a more generic and a larger approach of going about crisis fragility – is being discussed? These are roughly the three options that I see at this moment in time, snd I think the jury's out. The jury's out because there are pros and cons for each of the three approaches. But I think the discussion that we will conduct here needs to be informed exactly by the things that we're discussing here, in this podcast. That is: Where does humanitarian aid stand? And what does it take in order to ensure, not the future of sector, but to ensure that humanitarian aid can deliver for the benefit of the people in need in the future?

Srivastava Nadine, I know you missed a little bit of that. Welcome back.

Saba Thank you. Electricity cut. I'm sorry.

Srivastava There's a power imbalance right there. So, we were talking a little bit about the Grand Bargain itself, and whether it is at the moment fit for purpose, and where does it go from here?

Saba Well, for some local and national NGOs, they do have some doubts in terms of the progress that the Grand Bargain had shown towards its own commitments. So, some of them have been even asking, ‘Isn't too tokenistic when we're speaking about the Grand Bargain? And when why do we need to still participate in it when a lot of the commitments are still… I mean, we haven't even reached those goals.’ I do understand a bit where they're coming from. I do understand that positioning, because I believe that there was a lot of expectation around the commitments of the Grand Bargain. And there was a lot of, you know, this euphoria of having this commitment, whether at the World Humanitarian Summit, and afterwards. And I believe that a lot of the people who were genuinely wanting to make a change felt that they had a lot to deal with, whether in terms of structures, internal systems, processes, and things that were not mostly visible to others. But at the same time, it was also this risk aversion, this unwillingness to change that had led sometimes to the bottlenecks, or to the fact that things were not progressing as some of the stakeholders would have wanted to be. Now, it is still, at least, one of the few spaces where you have most of the stakeholders sitting together at the same table. And I'm here speaking about the different constituencies of the sector – local and international organisations, UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and the donors. So, I think that the Grand Bargain still has a lot of potential, but I'm not sure that there is the will for the Grand Bargain to live up to its potential.

Köhler The Grand Bargain is almost like the mirror in which you look every morning once you get up, you know. Igf there is no mirror, you don't really know what your face looks like, and whether the night was tough or not. So if you have a mirror, then you look into it, and you start to reflect them. You say, ‘Well, maybe I should sleep a bit longer,’ 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. And if there was no Grand Bargain, there would be no mirror. I mean, every donor, every implementing organisation, every partner, every local organisation will do just, you know, as they want to do. There will be nobody to, basically, remind them of how it should be. When you think about the future of the Grand Bargain, the question really is: Would anything be better without the Grand Bargain? I think no. Would it be worse without the Grand Bargain? I believe, yes, it will be worse, because we wouldn't have this kind of platform that reminds us the need to get better, to reform, to open up to share power. And then the question, if come to the conclusion that yes, actually the Grand Bargain –  although sometimes it may be a little bit nasty, so to say –  is this rather force of good and something that helps us to grow the right way, then we can discuss how to make it more efficient. And we can make it perhaps a bit more binding, certainly. We can give it more clout – that we can discuss. But I personally believe that, as kind of, you know, voluntary the Grand Bargain is, it is something that has this big advantage of bringing together everybody in the sector and being, basically, the only platform where reform needs are being discussed transparently, and that is that is a good reason to reflect on whether it is worthwhile to continue with it.

Srivastava Nadine, do you see evidence of that intentionality? Are you hopeful that the Grand Bargain is a place that you might see some experiments in power shift?

Saba Well, usually when I'm asked such questions, I ask the people: Do you want the diplomatic answer, or do you want the real answer? And most times, I would say both. I mean, I am not sure. Honestly, I am not sure. Because sometimes it feels, yes, there is this willingness. But then, a lot of times, when things get difficult, people go back to old habits. People go back and fall back in that comfort zone, towards putting things as usual put towards kind of conducting business as usual, rather than having this intentional will to change, this intentional will to live up to the commitments, this intentional will to include local and national NGOs to further, for example, the financing, to ensure that local and national NGOs are at the table, to ensure that communities are consulted, to ensure that all these difficult questions that we tend to ask ourselves in the sector… because a lot of times when we're discussing it in in such a setting, yes, it's everybody or most of us agree. But when we go on practice, when we go down to the field, and when things get a bit difficult, most of us tend to go back to our comfort zone, tend to go back to what has been working for the last 10, 15 years.

Srivastava Michael, same question to you.

Köhler I think your question is well-intended, but if you allow me, I would slightly rephrase it. I don't think the Grand Bargain is the place where change happens. Because change has to happen where the action is, and the action is in every organisation, with every signature. So the Grand Bargain is not making a change. The Grand Bargain is like a sounding board, where if you've just done well, you can create, kind of, a majority view of how things should be done. And you can do this by creating consensus or, in a way, peer pressure.

Saba I do see that change is incremental. But I fear that it's getting so much incremental that it's not happening. As a local and national NGO, this is where the expectations and the reality do hurt a lot. Especially that as we are speaking about refining the sector and refining our tools, crises are exacerbated and exacerbating around us. As a local and national NGO, it hurts double, because you're part of the community at one, and you're part of the sector as well, and you can see where the limits are, and you can see where things could have been easier or better.

Köhler If everybody acknowledges that change is there, but it’s incremental and it’s basically slower in pace, then this is an excellent starting point to discuss how we can do better. If we all start from that basis of acknowledgement, I think we’re on the right track already. At the same time, Nadine, with all respect, and you know the sympathy and the admiration that I have for you, but who would listen to you and to your NGO was there not the Grand Bargain, because there you are being listened to. You have been part of the game, you can use this resonance board of the Grand Bargain to make your voice heard, and bring in your point of view. Otherwise, you would be a very respectable NGO in Lebanon that would have much less, basically, resonance in, you know, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris or New York. If you speak in the Grand Bargain in Geneva, you know, you are not only a respectable NGO, but you're a respectable member of the forum where change is being discussed. And therefore, I think, the Grand Bargain has its benefits, despite the incremental nature of change that so far it was able to produce.

Saba I want to interject, I cannot not interject on this, because it is exactly that because the humanitarian sector is made that way that I would need the Grand Bargain to get the recognition, where I'm doing a lot of the work on the field. So, even though I do agree that it is the space, and I've said it before, that it is still the space where we are all sitting at the same table and discussing equally, but it is also because the humanitarian sector has been made, for the last decades, mainly for international actors and not for local ones, that I would need to be in the Grand Bargain to get that recognition. Otherwise, if the sector has been made differently, if the sector has been made to onboard local and national NGOs from the beginning, it would have been a different story. No?

Köhler Yes, but now we’re at risk of getting philosophical. I think we were all individuals in a long chain of other individuals and structures. Nobody of us has the privilege, or perhaps the – how should I say, it’s almost a curse – to start from scratch. We are all the children of developments before us, and the only thing that we can do is to leave this world in a better state after us, so to say. So let's agree on trying to be forces of change for the better. And then if that is our common ground, you can criticise me for everything I do, because you could come to the conclusion that the Grand Bargain, or I, or my colleagues get it totally wrong. But we are unfortunately not God the Creator. We are human beings who can be improvers. And, yeah, I’m ready to learn from you, and if you give us good ideas of how we can do better the Grand Bargain, the doors are wide open.

Saba I mean, action speaks louder than words. That's why we're still participating at the Grand Bargain. Even though I said some of the constituency is like ‘Why are we still in that space?’ And for me, it's like, because it is where we need to be.

Köhler The nice final word.

Srivastava I want to thank you so much. The discussion between you is so rich, and I really want to thank you so much. We just want to know if anything's changed for you during this process of talking to each other and talking to me.

Köhler I think nothing fundamentally changed, except that I think Nadine was so eloquent that I understand things that I think I knew about in theory much more practically right now, much more vividly, in a way. And I would like to thank you for that, Nadine. It was really a pleasure.

Saba I want to thank you as well, Michael, because it's always good to hear the perspective from the others. And it has always been, I mean, you have been very respectful in disagreeing and realigning things. So, thank you as well for that, and to seeing it from the perspective, not only I would say from a donor, but the perspective from somebody who is heavily involved in the reform of the sector. So, thank you for that.

Fundira When we started this experiment, one of the questions we asked ourselves was: What's possible when decision-makers and those affected by their decisions try to build relationships of trust? Now, the five hours of conversation between Michael and Nadine may not have changed the world, or even the sector, but it brought our guests to a bit more of an understanding of where the other is coming from, and that’s a start. But what did Lina Srivastava take away from moderating their discussion? I sat down with her at the end of our recordings for a debrief. 

Srivastava You know, what was really stark for me is how they think of change and reform in such different ways. And that is, that's obviously, part of that is positionality, right, of where they sit on the power spectrum. But part of that is just the different ways that they approach humanitarian aid. From a local perspective, that is very much about the practical, tactical, tangible aspects of administering and delivering humanitarian aid and working with people who are receiving it, versus, you know, sort of, the framework builders, right, to a certain extent. And being accountable to different people. Like, they're each accountable to very different groups, which is, like, one aspect that I wanted to dive deeper into that we didn't quite get to. The question of, like, who they feel they're accountable to as participants in the Grand Bargain, but also, like, in their sort of day jobs. But, you know, it was interesting that Michael was saying that the Grand Bargain, that forum, is not the place to, quote unquote, make change. You know, I'm not the biggest fan of reform efforts, right, as someone who believes in wholesale transformation and systems change. But at the same time, reform is a, it's a change effort, right. And so, you know, and he wasn't exactly saying that, but he did start out saying, well, you know, the the premise of the question I was asking was flawed in his mind, because the Grand Bargain is not a place to make that kind of change. It is a place to reflect. 

Fundira But that’s part of change. 

Srivastava Which is part of change. Which is part of change, because you have to... You know, I was trying to get back to that question of, you know, a lot of the countries that are asking for accountability for their donor money, they have basically created that wealth off the back of the countries that are receiving aid. There's a vicious cycle here, right? And that those two frames of, you know, who has the money, who gets to deploy the money, how they deploy the money, and who they're accountable to go, goes straight back to the question of colonisation and decolonisation, right? Even though we're not really using that term in this conversation, right? We're talking very much just about, quote unquote, power shift.

Fundira You know, I was looking back at some of the questions that we started with when we invited people to take part in this project. And one of the questions was: What is still irreconcilable, even when you do build a relationship of trust between two people on different ends of the power spectrum – and I would say that they absolutely did build a relationship of trust, there's a lot of respect between them. But one of the things that I definitely found was irreconcilable, or that they never quite seemed to be on the same page, was about at what level of power they're willing to shift things. And it seemed as if Michael was articulating one vision, where the general power structure of who is, you know, makes decisions, and who has the resources and who gets to set the terms of the game is still very much set by the Global North, but then you can tinker within that so that there is maybe more consultation in terms of how the Global North makes decisions. Whereas Nadine's vision is, obviously, more a vision of shifting power is deeper than that, that the sector and the world at large is organised in such a way that the only place where I can be taken seriously by people who hold power, and money, and as you said, because of because of colonialism and imperialism, is if I show up to this space where ultimately you set the terms of the of the game. And they kept on speaking from two different places. Like, I really think that Nadine kept trying to make the point about how the issues in the sector have to do with geopolitics and the way that the world is organised. And Michael, who has this, like, very deep intimate knowledge of the humanitarian and development sectors work, kept speaking at a very practical level about what's possible within this sector, in a way as if it's divorced from politics. That's one thing that was never quite reconciled. And probably, I think it's fair to say that these things can't be reconciled in the course of four hours.

Srivastava You know, that desire of people who are trying to sort of look at reform, or look at the state of the health of the humanitarian sector, to keep believing that any of this is apolitical really holds back shift. It's all political.

Fundira And it’s also political for our next duo, who take on the issue of refugee rights and refugee response. Raouf Mazou is the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations at UNHCR. Hafsar Tameesuddin is a Rohingya refugee, human rights defender, and the co-secretary general of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network

Hafsar Tameesuddin Still, people do not appreciate what is it like to be born as a stateless person? What does it feel like to be only get to resettle to another country five years ago and you have to catch up with your degree? You have to try very hard, you know, to be embraced and respected in those positions. People feel like you are incompetent. What does it feel like? And I feel it’s very underrated and unappreciated.

Raouf Mazou You know, I'm listening to Hafsar, and what I think is that she has the power, because you have both the lived experience and the more institutional approach through your functions. From outside, one may look at somebody who works for UNHCR in a leadership position as a person who are in a position of power, as such. But again, the ability to resolve the problem is not here in Geneva at headquarters. The ability to resolve the problem is in the various locations around the world where the problem is.

Fundira How much does Hafsar’s testimony resonate with Raouf? How much will it influence his future decision-making? And who truly has the power to radically improve refugee rights? Listen to our next episode of Power Shift to find out.

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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.