It's time to reclaim the lost ground on humanitarian access and reassert the right to aid
Denying aid to those in need is increasingly used as a tactic of war, leaving millions of civilians suffering. In the wake of Cyclone Mocha, tens of thousands remained without aid in Myanmar due to the junta's refusal to allow humanitarian access. Their suffering mirrored that seen in Syria's northwest in the wake of February's devastating earthquake.
In civil wars, offenders assert sovereignty and territorial integrity to head off international interference and it is increasingly difficult to garner support for the counter-argument. Too often, this crime is going unnoticed or contested, its perpetrators unpunished, and the suffering all-but forgotten by everyone except those affected as soon as access can be restored. A dangerous precedent is being set that tells violent regimes everywhere they can deny their people's basic needs with impunity. It is time to end this slippery slope, reclaim the lost space, and reassert the right to humanitarian aid.
The world is plagued by more conflicts that last longer. This is coupled with a geopolitical environment and multilateral institutions that are less able to end wars or cooperate on solutions to the problems they create than they have been in recent history. As we've seen in Syria, Myanmar, and Ethiopia's Tigray region, in many of these crises', the state or de facto state party not only fails to protect the population, but arbitrarily and systemically denies humanitarian aid access in order to pursue a military or political victory. Often this is accompanied by a litany of other breaches of international law, including attacks on humanitarian infrastructure and civilians. While these breaches of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) were historically regarded as a ‘scarlet letter’ they are increasingly a strategic component of warfare that is being seen as a winning strategy by these violent regimes, while others like them watch and learn the wrong lessons.
Offending states, and their international backers, tend to assert sovereignty or territorial integrity as a way of dissuading outside actors from getting involved in tackling these abuses. When this happens, the international system grinds to a halt; failing to resolve conflicts or protect civilians, and struggling to deliver humanitarian assistance to those in need. This further degrades international laws and norms and reduces the space for principled humanitarian action. Humanitarians try to address access denial through subnational operational responses, but solely approaching the challenge at this level helps to further entrench the dangerous precedent that is being set.
It is past time for a reset. A high-level strategic shift is needed. A mandate-setting agreement codifying aid access without consent in contexts where arbitrary, systemic, or strategic aid access denial occurs through a USNC or UNGA humanitarian declaration or resolution would address this. However, the current geopolitical environment is unlikely to produce the necessary consensus. Even where consensus exists, such as the UNSC Resolution 2417 on the use of starvation as a weapon of war, it has not led to action.
Political quagmire does not remove the urgency. Instead, a strategic effort to reclaim the space should take place across a wide range of policy and sectoral interventions, supporting principled humanitarian action, building the case for high-level action, and ensuring these abuses do not go unpunished.
Arbitrary, systemic, and strategic aid denial is not well defined. Many states and de facto states who block humanitarian access as a strategy are careful to give the impression of compliance by stalling and limiting access through procedure, giving the appearance that bureaucracy rather than malice is the culprit. Rather than expelling an organization they deny or delay visas. When accused of blocking, they offer temporary or limited access before closing it off again, giving the impression that subnational negotiated access may be achievable. As such, it tends to be difficult to get the aid system to view access denial as systemic or a tactic of conflict. It is even more difficult to get this to occur rapidly.
Defining, measuring and reporting humanitarian aid denial by states in civil wars is a first step. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) found that “at the operational level, many actors do not regularly share information about BAI [Bureaucratic and Administrative Impediments], even with the structures created to address these issues.” Humanitarians prefer to stay silent in the hope of maintaining their operations.
As such, this should be done through an independent organization that can utilize a range of research methods where access is challenging, laying out population and needs information, and granular and systematic monitoring of access challenges, denial, and attacks on aid structures. This should cover details of a host of indicators that make up arbitrary or systemic denial, provide evidence of starvation, and document attacks on infrastructure. A systematic, global, longitudinal approach to data collection would highlight the size, frequency, and impact of the problem as well as providing trend-lines over time. It would also remove the ability to equivocate about what exactly is happening.
Information should be used to inform regional diplomacy, and (alongside OCHA reporting) provide necessary data for UNSC members to address these concerns, at both a country level and across global trends. Public advocacy and dissemination of this information through the media would help to promote prevention or action where it has been slow and build understanding of this problem.
Pursuing accountability and justice for the arbitrary denial of assistance or the war crime of starvation must also be a priority. Only then can the culture of impunity that currently exists around these actions be ended. Investigating denial through commissions of inquiry, OHCHR, or other human rights or legal investigatory bodies and organizations should complement legal and accountability actors pursuing criminal cases where possible and feasible. The ICC’s new jurisdiction following the December 2019 statute amendment to include starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in non-international armed conflicts should be utilized rapidly. Universal jurisdiction and other legal processes could also be used to bring cases as soon as possible, with promising developments in Tigray and Ukraine. This pillar of work should also include sanctioning those responsible for these crimes where appropriate, as has begun to be seen in some cases.
Moreover, bringing greater recognition of the denial of aid––and the war crime of starvation––within peace negotiations and transitional justice processes should also underpin this work. Too often, these crimes are forgotten as soon as the access concern is remedied, even if the affected population remains under the control of the party responsible for these actions and that party maintains the same political posture. Impunity for these actions and a lack of guardrails in international peace deals only create the conditions for continued denial, and ultimately undermines the prospects for longterm peace by failing to address the damage done to the affected populations. Where systemic denial has taken place, peace agreements should not only specify the need for aid access, but also contain clear benchmarks, agreements, guarantees, snapbacks, and monitoring of access and operational space to prevent recidivism, as well as restoring trust and providing accountability to the affected population through transitional justice processes.
Only by documenting, highlighting, punishing and tackling the drivers of this problem, at both a local and global level, the lost ground be recovered. This work must start now.
For more on why this is essential, see my recently published report 'Convoys, Cross-border, Covert Ops: Responding to state-led arbitrary aid denial in civil wars. Lessons from Syria, Myanmar, and Ethiopia.'