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Military in HA
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1. Context for military engagement in humanitarian response
From the 1990s traditional humanitarian and military actors have increasingly found themselves
crowded together in both natural disasters and complex emergencies. Trends both in external
operating environments and internally amongst military actors, concerning both their perceptions of
their mandates and their means of achieving their military objectives, have driven this increasing
proximity.
Firstly, natural disasters have increased in frequency and severity and domestic and foreign
militaries have increasingly been called upon to respond, particularly in large scale emergencies. In
1994 the Oslo guidelines were ............
The 1990s saw a spike in the number of civil conflicts, which as they declined and moved towards
resolution in a number of cases, drove a dramatic expansion in the number of multi-lateral
peacekeeping operations globally. Multi-lateral peacekeeping operations are in high demand and a
widely accepted response to civil insecurity in a world with increasing levels of violence against
civilians. Multi-lateral peacekeeping operations have also seen a dramatic expansion in Expansion of
spheres of engagement for multilateral peacekeeping operations, with the UN now rolling out the
‘integrated’ peacekeeping and civilian missions where the mission itself has a growing range of
responsibilities including coordinating refugee and IDP returns, coordinating protection actors,
coordinating international support to census and elections. The legal mandate for peacekeeping
operations has similarly crept into previously uncharted waters. For instance, the EU Military
Operation in Chad and Central African Republic (EUFOR Tchad/RCA) is ‘intended to help create the
security conditions conducive to a voluntary, secure and sustainable return of refugees and
displaced persons’ and is also specifically mandated to ensure protection of the large displaced
populations in Eastern Chad and to facilitate the free movement of humanitarian aid and personnel.
Perhaps the most significant and consistent mandate expansion of peacekeeping operations is into
the responsibility to protect civilians. Prior to October 1999, no UN mandated peacekeeping
operation included the explicit provision of a mandate to protect civilians. Since the mandating of
UNAMSIL in October 1999 however, 58% of some 19 UN mandated peace operations have included
a mandate to protect civilians.1
1
Holt, V., Berkman, T. (Sept 2006) The Impossible Mandate? Military Preparedness, the
Responsibility to Protect and Modern Peace Operations (Henry L. Stimson Center: Washinton DC)
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Integrated mission
The global war on terror has driven a distinct trend in the involvement of military actors in
traditionally civilian fields of engagement including humanitarian response, funding and
implementation of early recovery activities, as an adjunct to military activities and objectives. These
tactics are confined principally to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, (perhaps could also
make the case for HA to Ethiopia and Somalia) but they consume such a huge volume of resources
and have prompted such vigorous debate between humanitarian and military actors, that it warrants
study as a unique and significant global trend.
Many militaries
2. Role of foreign military actors in natural disaster relief
Trends
Timeliness vs Oslo principle of last resort........
Arguments for the use of military assets include that they place little burden on local resources, can
operate under extreme conditions for extended periods of time, can be deployed rapidly and
The most common forms of assistance are indirect i.e. mainly logistical support to enable access for
humanitarian personnel and relief goods, followed by medical operations.
Policy Framework: The Oslo Guidelines
According to UN policy, following a natural disaster, an UNDAC assessment team should be deployed
at the request of the affected government and the UN resident or humanitarian coordinator and a
request for military assets be communicated via OCHA to respective assistance provider
governments. In practice, this rarely happens and governments often make bilateral offers and
arrangements.
OCHA in fact manages a register of available disaster response assets and personnel which an
UNDAC team should be able to browse like a shopping list. In reality such a mechanisms is only as
good as the information it is populated with and countries do not regularly provide information.
Meanwhile, WFP and UNHCR maintain information on transport and communications ‘service
packages’ from donor governments that may be called upon.
In practice, almost all military assistance is agreed bilaterally or in some cases, through regional
standing arrangements (ASEAN, FRANZ, CARICOM).
Bearing the costs
Military humanitarian responses are typically much more costly than civilian ones. However,
because military assets are kept in a state of readiness, procurement and running costs are already
covered by military budgets.
Cost sharing across military and humanitarian budgets is common, though measures are put in place
within some governments to limit the impact on humanitarian budgets.
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The US DoD bears the full cost of their deployment for disaster relief operations. The Australian DoD
will bear the cost if it is less than AUS $10 million.
In other countries cost sharing mechanisms and formulas have been developed. In Belgium, Japan,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK the defence ministries are partly reimbursed from
humanitarian budgets for certain expenses.2
Many countries will request additional extra-budgetary funding if a disaster is large in scale.
The extent to which cost sharing of military humanitarian contributions is reported as ODA is not
currently tracked though DI is currently working on bridging this information gap.
3. Role of multilateral peacekeeping operations
Trends
By the end of 2008 there were nearly 200,000 uniformed and civilian peacekeepers under UN and
non-UN command across over forty missions, a record high following several years of growth at a
rate of 15 – 20%. (ref CIC global peacekeeping)
% of peacekeeping operations with CHVII and POC mandates
Policy Frameworks
Bearing the costs
DPKO reports funding levels in millions of dollars at current prices over a calendar year. Costs
recorded for UN operations include core operational costs, including costs of deploying personnel,
per diems and direct non-field support costs (e.g. the logs base in Brindisi). Funds are raised through
assessed contributions, of which 6% is eligible to be reported as ODA. Is it also topped up by nonassessed contributions though?? And would this count as ODA?
UN peacekeeping budgets do not include programmatic costs such as DDR, which are financed from
voluntary contributions. How do we track this??
2
See p24, Wiharta, S.,Ahmad, H., Haine, J., Löfgren, J., Randall, T., (2008), The effectiveness of
Foreign Military Assets in Natural Disaster Response, SIPRI
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4. Humanitarian action as a non-kinetic military tactic
The most concerning trend in the last decade in the relations between humanitarian and military
actors is the explicit instrumentalisation of humanitarian aid as part of the military tool-kit to achieve
war aims in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the “Commanders’ Guide to Money as a Weapons System,” a US army manual for troops in
Afghanistan and Iraq, aid is defined as “a nonlethal weapon” that is utilized to “win the hearts and
minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the insurgents.” Such statements are
diametrically opposed to ISAF civmil guidelines and there is an increasing body of evidence to
demonstrate that the assumption of a consequential link between providing aid and realizing
security goals is incorrect. (reference Peter Walker)
In addition to increasing risk to humanitarian actors, reducing the areas they can safely operate in
and stimulating a fierce defence of core humanitarian principles of neutrality and independence
from within the humanitarian community, this trend has also resulted in some surprising trends in
the funding of humanitarian aid.
Huge volumes of donor dollars have been programmed through the US Department of Defence,
meanwhile humanitarian funding though the UN consolidated appeal for Afghanistan consistently
falls well short of requirements.
5. Stabilisation: the convergence of conventional aid, the military and
foreign interests
The Stabilisation Unit is a UK Government inter-Departmental unit that helps improve the UK's
ability to support countries emerging from violent conflict. It is jointly owned by the Department for
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International Development (DFID), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence
(MOD) – it’s three ‘parent departments’.
he Stabilisation Unit is a UK Government inter-Departmental unit that helps improve the UK's ability
to support countries emerging from violent conflict. It is jointly owned by the Department for
International Development (DFID), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence
(MOD) – it’s three ‘parent departments’. (See Hilary Benn Address to Parliament 16th Sept
2004).
Set up in 2004 as the Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU) it was renamed the Stabilisation Unit
in late 2007 to better reflect the nature of its role in supporting management of MOD’s £269 million
Stabilisation Aid fund, as annouced as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), October
2007. The CSR indicated that;
Definition of stabilisation concept from the UK Government’s Stabilistion Unit
“Stabilisation is the process of establishing peace and security in countries affected by conflict and
instability. It is the promotion of peaceful political settlement to produce a legitimate indigenous
government, which can better serve its people.
Stabilisation often requires external joint military and civilian support to perform some or all of the
following tasks: prevent or reduce violence, protect people and key institutions, promote political
processes and prepare for longer-term development.”
How Stabilisation Relates to Humanitarian Aid
The distinction between humanitarian, development and stabilisation activities is sometimes not clear
cut. Stabilisation can be seen as filling the gap between emergency humanitarian assistance and
longer term development assistance, though, as the definition above shows, it is more than that.
The most fundamental distinctions are between the explicitly political aims of stabilisation (aiming to
promote peaceful political processes); the strictly neutral role of humanitarian assistance; and the
apolitical poverty-focussed rationale for development activity.
Sometimes these may be in tension, when, for example the UK is simultaneously aiming to deliver
both humanitarian and stabilisation assistance; this needs active management. In other situations,
such as where poverty is not a major issue, stabilisation may be needed when there would be little
justification for development activity.
http://www.stabilisationunit.gov.uk/index.php/home/stabilisation-concept
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Created: 23 November 2009
Last saved: 9 February 2016