The IRC has recently released a study of reports on studies of the Ebola crisis. Their conclusion is that these reports ‘offer valuable solutions, but they also perpetuate problems by ignoring fundamental realities.’  That is because these reports ‘reflect a persistent weakness of the global conversation about health systems: the erasing of politics.’  And now, for a bit of shameless self-promotion, IRC singled out our ODI report for not falling into this trap, for correctly saying ‘what most reports, and indeed most health systems efforts, failed to recognize: that any effort to improve health systems can only succeed if it is based on an understanding of the politics involved.’

What does the Ebola response tell us about the World Humanitarian Summit?

The fast-approaching World Humanitarian Summit holds the promise of a better humanitarianism, meaning it also holds the risk of repeating the same mistakes that have doomed so many of our good intentions in the past. Of course, there are multiple mistakes that undermine implementation of the humanitarian imperative. Shortcomings and gaps as well. Not multiple, but thousands.  But in some ways, there is only one mistake that needs fixing. We need to replace talking about what we should do with talking about how to do it. And in particular, how to do it given the incentives, architecture, political dynamics and culture which govern the ecosystem of humanitarian aid.

Thus far, and the Ban Ki Moon’s recently released report reinforces this weakness, the Summit process has traded more heavily in attractive ideas than in an analysis of how history might avoid repeating itself.  New and intriguing recommendations surface, and yet they resemble the sector’s standard recommendations, conclusions and lessons learned in the degree that their feasibility is wishful. As the UNSG admits, the measures he proposes are not new, a “testament to the failure to learn from the past and to embrace necessity and change more forcefully.”  (UNSG ¶170).  It does not help that the UN’s #1 humanitarian, ERC Stephen O’Brien, has proclaimed that the system is ‘broke’ but ‘is not broken.’

How do we change our stripes? By ending the gravy train of funding for technical evaluations, dismissing rather than embracing so-called ‘lessons learned’ approaches (see here for one of my previous blogs on lessons identified but not learned), and basing analysis on a thorough political economy of the given situation.  In other words, at the system level and at the organization or project level, stop promoting reforms based on an overly simplistic understanding of the problem. Top aid thinkers Ben Ramalingam and John Mitchell explain it a lot better than I could:

Two broad sets of reasons for this lack of change are widely cited. One is that there are many drivers of change for the sector, of which the reform agenda is only one. Reforms, moreover, are seldom, if ever, the most prominent of the internal drivers. Others include organisational interests, professional norms, donor interests and so on. These serve to reinforce the status quo of the sector. … The second set of reasons relates to the reform efforts themselves. Seldom have change and reform efforts attempted to change the fundamental rules and incentives that underpin humanitarian aid effectiveness.

The paramount question is whether we will do better in the future by examining how and why we failed in the past, replacing the question of what do we want to achieve.  In this regard, the Ebola outbreak and response signaled (once again) the need for a more transformative agenda, one that avoids wishfully imagining the dawn of a new age where global public good trumps political self-interest, and instead addresses both the shortcomings of humanitarian action as well as their underlying causes.