Date: Mon Nov 17 14:38:39 2014
Any lessons from Operation Lifeline Sudan?
JUBA, 17 November 2014 (IRIN) - When Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) began 25
years ago, it sought to extend a helping hand to the millions in need and
caught up in the second Sudanese civil war (1989-2005).
Today, the international community is grappling with a costly South Sudan
crisis. In the past 10 months, thousands of people have died, many more have
been injured. At least 1.4 million South Sudanese have fled their homes,
with about 469,000 crossing into neighbouring Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and
Uganda. A large-scale humanitarian operation is under way with the aid
community seeking US$1.8 billion in 2014.
IRIN looks at lessons that can, or have already been, learned from the OLS
experience.
Coordinate, coordinate
OLS was the largest-ever coordinated humanitarian effort that "allowed the
participation of donors and NGOs who were either unable or unwilling to
mount relief efforts on their own or under other auspices", notes a
<http://www.securelivelihoods.org/publications_details.aspx?resourceid=329>
report by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC).
According to the report, cooperation among NGOs was a "product of OLS in
general and the ground rules negotiations in particular."
<http://www.unocha.org/what-we-do/coordination/overview> Coordination
remains critical in the aid response. The UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is tasked with the responsibility "bringing
together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies".
The OLS ground rules called for "humanitarian assistance to populations in
need, regardless of affiliation," said Dan Maxwell, a professor at Tufts
University and the SLRC's team leader. The UN and aid agencies would
negotiate with the warring parties for access to deliver food and other
relief. While OLS would come in for consistent criticism - from both the
international community and the protagonists, OLS operated for about 16
years, ending in 2005 after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA).
Engage with all parties to tackle security and access constraints
As in the OLS period, logistical, political and security constraints are
plaguing today's relief effort in South Sudan.
Access by road has remained challenging during the rains, forcing aid
agencies to rely heavily on increasingly expensive air assets. According to
some aid workers, it was cheaper during OLS to use air assets, as relief
items were flown from staging areas in neighbouring Ethiopia, Kenya and
Uganda. At present, most aid is flown in from Juba, which is far from
crisis-affected areas.
<http://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/first-food-aid-convoy-sudan-reaches
-south-un> Cross-border deliveries to South Sudan from Sudan have recently
begun.
South Sudan ranks third in the world after Afghanistan and Syria in terms of
insecurity for aid workers. According to OCHA, 74 access incidents were
reported in September (compared to 58 in August) mainly involving "violence
against personnel/assets with several incidents of assault, harassment and
ambush/hijackings especially in Central Equatoria, and arrest/detention and
threats in Unity and Jonglei". In August, a UN helicopter was shot down in
the outskirts of Bentiu, in Unity State.
In South Sudan, the Humanitarian Country Team - which comprises the UN, the
International Organization for Migration, international NGOs and Red
Cross/Red Crescent Movement representatives - "extensively engages with all
parties to the conflict to inform [them] of the impact of access constraints
on humanitarian programmes," notes an
<http://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/south-sudan-crisis-humanitarian-acc
ess-snapshot-1-30-september-2014> OCHA access snapshot.
"OCHA's access team - engages with all parties to the conflict to overcome
constraints and facilitate access including assurances for flights and
convoys," it adds.
Negotiate with conflict parties to avoid misunderstandings
Negotiating with parties to the conflict enabled OLS to become the first
relief effort in an active "non-international conflict", which "expanded the
realm of possibility surrounding emergency relief and humanitarian
response," notes the SLRC report.
Alongside the coordination capacity and official umbrella of OLS, negotiated
access introduced "the concept of 'humanitarian governance', or the use of
humanitarian aid and human rights principles to influence the behaviour of a
state or of non-state actors," it adds.
The SLRC report draws parallels with the OLS era, when assistance for
SPLM-controlled areas was perceived by the government in Khartoum as support
to the rebels. An independent evaluation from the UN Department of
Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) acknowledged: "While OLS agreements recognize
ultimate [government of Sudan] sovereignty, in practice, the Southern Sector
has developed a tenuous autonomy in relation to the warring parties."
Indeed, OLS critics viewed negotiated access as "the programmatic expression
of the acceptance of continuing violence".
OLS activities were restricted by the parties to the conflict. People living
in areas such as the Nuba Mountains - along what is now Sudan's southern
border - remained largely cut off from assistance.
There were few "alternative means for delivering aid", according to SLRC's
Maxwell, who said that ignoring the process of negotiating access could have
proven dangerous to aid workers and destabilized the entire operation.
A vital lesson from OLS, says the SLRC report, is to continue to engage with
both sides in a conflict while respecting sovereignty.
Back in the 1980s negotiating access with conflict parties led to criticism
that OLS was perpetuating the conflict - with the assistance provided to
displaced people, in and from the south, viewed as providing less incentive
for the southern factions to stop fighting.
OLS's shift from only emergency relief to more of a development agenda in
the southern sector post-1991 was viewed "as an attempt by Western
governments to assist the SPLM/A in resisting the Khartoum government's
onslaught," said the report.
In the <http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unmiss/background.shtml>
current crisis, the Juba administration has expressed anti-UN sentiments
amid misperceptions that the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) was
supporting the rebels.
Make the most of local networks
OLS was criticized for "passing over opportunities to hire local staff" and
for having failed to adequately consider Sudanese observers' and
beneficiaries' views, according to the SLRC report.
Luka Biong, the director of the Center for Peace and Development Studies at
the University of Juba, noted that then, "International NGOs were becoming
de facto governments. They forgot the institutions that are out there."
Biong added: "The idea that traditional institutions are broken during the
war is not an ultimate conclusion." For Biong, the lack of an exit strategy
meant that when a crisis ended and agencies began to leave, there was no one
left to carry on the work.
In recent years, more local staff have been recruited into international aid
agencies. In an August
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/aug/19/w
orld-humanitarian-day-south-sudan-peace%20> op-ed, the humanitarian
coordinator in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, said: "Before the crisis
[pre-December 2013], nine in 10 staff members with international NGOs in
South Sudan were South Sudanese."
The conflict has, however, affected the deployment of local staff from
different ethnic backgrounds to some hotspots. "The ethnic tensions fuelling
the violence meant that some South Sudanese aid workers were not able to
work where they were most needed, as their lives were potentially in
danger," added Lanzer.
But local networks are crucial in the response. Kibrom Tesfaselassie, who
leads UNICEF's
<https://southsudan.humanitarianresponse.info/system/files/documents/files/8
SthSUDAN_RRM_30.08.11Updated.pdf> rapid response missions to some of South
Sudan's most isolated and insecure areas, told IRIN his team is only
deployed after "community leaders connect with partners on the ground and
request that there is a need."
Despite this, resentment remains with the Juba administration recently
rescinding a directive <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29230036>
banning the hiring of some foreign workers to give more jobs to local staff.
Stay flexible
While OLS was set up in a different context and can only offer limited
guidance to navigating South Sudan's current political framework, veterans
of past humanitarian campaigns say lessons remain. John Ashworth, who has
extensive experience in peace-building work in Sudan and South Sudan, but
working through church groups rather than through OLS, said that
flexibility, was crucial.
The OLS system was "very inflexible", said Ashworth. "Things on the ground
could change quite quickly. But trying to get that message back to a
logistics department. they could actually be several weeks behind real
time."
According to the SLRC report, "the timing of food aid delivery was often
delayed: hampered by logistical problems and poor infrastructure, as well as
from bureaucratic, political, security and environmental constraints."
While the current response is more nimble, a lack of resources is often a
problem.
"You can do everything if you can pay for it," said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam's
country director in South Sudan. The
<https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/SouthSudan/2014%20South%20Sudan/SOUTH%20S
UDAN%20CRP%202014_MYR.pdf> South Sudan Crisis Response Plan, which has
received 70 percent of the
<http://fts.unocha.org/pageloader.aspx?page=emerg-emergencyDetails&appealID=
1024> $1.8 billion required, is facing competition from other ongoing
international crises, including the
<http://www.irinnews.org/webspecial/ebola/index.html> Ebola outbreak in West
Africa.
Address underlying causes, exploit peacebuilding opportunities
OLS was criticized as being unsustainable and that it "only responded to
immediate needs and failed to address underlying causes of the crisis",
notes the SLRC report.
Despite attempts to encourage more local food production in the mid-1990s,
"the massive food operation was often not tied to any sustainable
improvements in people's own livelihoods - and indeed [there was]
controversy over whether it should be or not."
While OLS did not set out to end hostilities between warring parties in
Sudan, it had some peacebuilding dividends, which critics argue could have
been pursued further. "There was a profound connection between OLS and
opportunities for peace-making, even if peace was not its stated aim. The
operation was mounted to ameliorate the suffering caused by war-induced
famine; hence, the final solution to the problem lay in achieving peace,"
notes an
<https://www.du.edu/korbel/criic/humanitarianbriefs/hollyphilpot.pdf> OLS
review.
In the response to the current crisis, livelihood support is a key component
alongside the provision of food, health care, shelter, sanitation and other
basic needs. In April, Lanzer called on the parties to the conflict to
consider a
<http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/140429_TL%20press%
20statement_Month%20of%20Tranquility.pdf%20> "month of tranquility" to
enable people to move freely to farm or tend to livestock or "or even to
seek asylum in neighbouring countries if they so wish".
Before the current conflict, aid agencies in South Sudan were
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/99133/south-sudan-turns-a-corner> shifting
towards development. Speaking during the launch of the 2013 Consolidated
Appeal Process, Awut Deng Acuil, South Sudan's then minister of humanitarian
affairs and disaster management, said: "Placing resilience and national
institutions at the forefront of aid work will help create a South Sudan
which is better able to care for its citizens in times of crisis." The
conflict, however, stalled these plans.
<http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201406181340260588/Aid-agencies-rely-
heavily-on-increasingly-expensive-air-assets>
http://www.irinnews.org/photo/Download.aspx?Source=Report&Year=2014&ImageID=
201406181340260588&width=490
Photo: <http://www.irinnews.org/photo/> Stephen Graham/IRIN
Aid agencies rely heavily on increasingly expensive air assets
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)