Here are thoughts on two issues relating to the World Humanitarian Summit about to take place 23-24 May: (1) MSF's announcement that it will not participate in the WHS and (2) the official WHS round table on natural hazards.

(1) MSF.  MSF has pulled out of the WHS (see http://www.msf.org/en/article/msf-pull-out-world-humanitarian-summit & https://www.irinnews.org/news/2016/05/05/msf-pulls-out-world-humanitarian-summit). 

Its concerns mirror those of some critics of both Hyogo and Sendai processes, that they fail to deal with root causes and that their emphasis on multi-stakeholder responsibility and the non-binding nature of commitments reduce pressure on national governments. 

MSF also believes that the MHS has taken on so many issues that it makes humanitarian assistance in its classically neutral and impartial form disappear into development. I have also heard similar things, though more muted, from earth scientists and engineers who think that DRR has too broad a definition and doesn't take the physical reality of natural hazards enough into consideration. Even more relevant are the concerns expressed by DRR practitioners that their work (and funding) not be swallowed up as a subset of work on climate change adaptation (or an even larger 'new development agenda').

Considering that 75 of his hospitals have been bombed, one can see what might have led to MSF's view, and, as I've said, there is some similarity in their criticisms and those of what UNISDR has rolled out over the years. Nevertheless, I think their wrong to have pulled out.  What do you think?

I think in this light, the GNDR position paper achieves precisely the right balance and tone. It is focused on humanitarian response while pointing out the synergies and other links with prevention/ mitigation and recovery.  See attached or go to http://www.gndr.org/news/events/whs.html and scroll down to the link to this position paper.

At the end of this note I have quoted three key paragraphs from the MSF statement if you are too busy to check out their web announcement.

(2) WHS ROUNDTABLE. The WHS has issued a very weak statement as background on its roundtable on natural hazards (go to https://www.worldhumanitariansummit.org/key-documents#round-tables-linking and click on Natural Disasters and Climate Change.) 

The statement is appalling.  It constitutes a great leap backwards to the technocracy of the first half of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), 1990-1994. There is mostly emphasis on crisis management and funding, with absolutely no mention of DRR except to say that partnership with science should be strengthened to provide better models. There is also heavy emphasis on private sector involvement. If this means out-sourcing and privatization, increasingly seen in health care and lifeline infrastructure such as water supply, the result could be catastrophic in its own right. There is a certain amount of rhetoric about community resilience, but in the context of worldwide policies of austerity, the poor and marginalized in 'communities' have little to fall back on. Social protection as a duty of government is never mentioned in this roundtable document, and needless to say, nothing is said about the creation of disaster risk by business-as-usual economic activity, especially international investment. The document laments the displacement of 184 million people between 2008-2014 by natural hazards and climate change. If one added up all the people displaced during this period by all the foreclosures and evictions after the banking collapse and by all the land grabs and all the urban redevelopment and gentrification, I am reasonably sure one would come up with a far larger number!

Annex: MSF quotes

"As shocking violations of international humanitarian law and refugee rights continue on a daily basis, WHS participants will be pressed to a consensus on non-specific, good intentions to ‘uphold norms’ and ‘end needs’. The summit has become a fig-leaf of good intentions, allowing these systematic violations, by states above all, to be ignored.

"Summit participants, whether states or UN agencies or non-governmental organisations, will be asked to declare new and ambitious “commitments”. But putting states on the same level as non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, which have no such powers or obligations, the Summit will minimise the responsibility of states. In addition, the non-binding nature of the commitments means that very few actors will sign up to any commitments they haven’t previously committed to.

"We hoped that the WHS would advance these vital access and protection issues, reinforcing the role for independent and impartial humanitarian aid, and putting particular attention on the need to improve emergency response. Unfortunately it has failed to do so, instead focusing on its ambitions to “do aid differently” and “end need”, fine-sounding words which threaten to dissolve humanitarian assistance into wider development, peace-building and political agendas."

Dr. Ben Wisner
Aon-Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London, UK
& Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania
& Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."