Democracy is arguably declining around the world and democratic space is shrinking for many people. There are currently more people living in countries with authoritarian tendencies than in countries making democratic progress. Humanitarian Advisors calls on all people to stand up for democratic principles, human rights, and international law.
It must be remembered by all that there is no development without peace; no peace without development; and nothing without respect for human rights. A revival of international law is required. The current international system is growing more disrespectful of international law. Governments are no longer pursing or securing consensus amongst their own populations, let alone their allies. The increase, after a period of decline, of proxy wars is making mediation and peace settlements extremely challenging. At the same time, there must be a recognition and acceptance by the international community and the UN Security Council P5 members that the use of a veto by one of the P5 should be seen as a failure, or at least bad taste. The failure of the UNSC to advance peace agenda is concerning and an increasingly worrying trend. We have democracy crises, multilateral cooperation crises, and trust crises. Solutions require togetherness and this is failing. If we put the human back at the center of our focus, build trust back, and demonstrate success, our multilateral systems will again provide the peace dividends they were designed to support.
Similarly, political actors, pursuing populist agendas must be debated rationally and transparently. The facts of accepted international law cannot be washed away with a tweet. The right to asylum cannot be capped – it is an absolute right enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Do we want fortresses or diversity? We know that diversity leads to peace and to prosperity, and our politicians and civil society must do a better job at discussing these issues with the voting population. It is a failure that there is only one measure of success when it comes to migration: how many migrants are coming in? Economic growth is not considered – if it was, there would be a general welcoming and increase in acceptance of migrants. The financial benefits of migration are undisputable. Similarly, the demographic benefits are not considered or discussed by main stream media or political parties. Most western societies require the demographic benefits brought by increased and planned migration.
In countless contexts we see that health is the new battle field. The deliberate and strategic targeting of health facilities and health professionals from the very beginning of a conflict is now common place. We do not need new laws, we need a new international social contract. We need renewed taboos. States will still play an important role, but we need people to feel that what they are doing is wrong. Many European states are involved in wars (through a variety of measures including proxy forces, special forces, intelligence assets, weapons sales) and they cannot cover up or make up for these actions with increased foreign assistance funding.
Humanitarian actors also need to reshift focus. People’s need for internet for survival is sometimes more important than the provision of food. Having up to date and relevant information is so important for communities affected by humanitarian crisis and humanitarian actors need to respond to this. We need to be asking, what are the humanitarian needs of tomorrow? In the last ten years we have seen a significant increase from affected communities in their desire for rapid provision of education, employment, and mental health services. These are seen by affected communities as priority humanitarian needs along with food, water, shelter, and health care.
We have all seen the challenges caused by and face by social media companies when it comes to managing and using personal data. Humanitarian actors are also collecting, storing and using a huge amount of extremely sensitive information about health data, population movements, birth and death information and so much more. How we manage data, as a trusted actor, needs to be robustly considered. What rights and opportunities do program participants have to influence or decide how their data is used is rarely discussed and even more rarely stated in organisational policy. At the moment, this is a gap in our practices and processes and needs to be considered uniformly across the humanitarian sector.