Centering the Moral Imperative and Local Leadership in the Next Chapter of U.S. Humanitarian Aid

Foreign policy is often discussed as either strategic maneuvering or an expression of our moral values. However, in the case of humanitarian aid, it is possible to be both. Humanitarian assistance represents the best of America. It helps people in need and responds to global emergencies, saving lives and reducing suffering. It also demonstrates U.S. leadership and generosity. Prioritizing robust and effective U.S. humanitarian assistance is essential to U.S. foreign policy goals and a moral imperative.

First and foremost, effective humanitarian response upholds the sacredness and dignity of human life and supports the world's most vulnerable families and communities in shaping their own future, particularly in their most difficult times. The Catholic Church teaches that wealthier nations have a duty to assist poorer countries and recognizes that international aid is a moral obligation that advances the common good. Central to the Church’s social teaching are respect for human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity. These principles—common to many religious traditions—can help inform how U.S. international assistance efforts can proceed.

Decades of American leadership have also demonstrated that swift, strategic action prevents today’s crises from spiraling into tomorrow’s instability, and U.S. leadership in supporting humanitarian crises brings unmatched goodwill and strengthens America’s position on the global stage. Humanitarian leadership that is based in strong principles and standards, and deployed strategically, helps advance U.S. objectives while helping people in need.

As the U.S. government (USG) begins a new chapter of humanitarian assistance through the State Department, ensuring that it is effective, adequately funded, efficient, ethical, accountable and locally led will be critical to its success.

Based on decades of experience and partnership, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has learned that humanitarian assistance is most effective when it is:

1. Aligned with global and American standards of excellence

‍At its core, humanitarian assistance should save lives and alleviate suffering, while upholding and restoring the dignity of those who are affected by the crisis. As laid out in the Core Humanitarian Principles and global standards, humanitarian action must be committed to certain basic ideas:

• Humanity must be the principal driver for responding to crises, whether triggered by conflict, violence, or natural or man-made disasters. Responding to humanitarian and development needs must supersede short-term transactional political interests.
• Humanitarian action must be based solely on need, with priority given to the most urgent cases. Assistance should not be provided based on race, creed or nationality.
• Neutrality, which requires humanitarian actors to refrain from taking sides in hostilities or engaging in political, racial, religious, or ideological controversies, and independence ensures humanitarian actors to be autonomous. They should not be subject to control, subordination, or influence by political, economic, military or other non-humanitarian objectives.
• A commitment to solidarity and subsidiarity that ensures humanitarian action advances the common good, reflects the voice of those most affected, and protects every human’s inherent dignity. Solidarity affirms our moral responsibility to care for and stand with others, whose flourishing are bound with our own. Subsidiarity asserts that decisions and responsibilities should be handled at the most local level capable of addressing them effectively, with higher levels of authority supporting, rather than replacing, local initiatives.
• Humanitarian action should ensure that communities are better prepared and more resilient to potential future crises, by addressing both lifesaving needs as well as initiatives that support transition to recovery, and address root causes.

These principles are rooted in international humanitarian law and are central to global norms of aid response. They are designed to ensure aid optimally meets the assistance and protection needs of affected populations, and there is a long tradition of American support for their adherence.

2. Adequately and appropriately funded

‍Humanitarian response must have adequate resources to be effective. In particular, International Humanitarian Assistance (IHA) and Food for Peace Title II funds are critical to meeting lifesaving needs. These funding sources allow the U.S. government to provide in-kind and market-based assistance to people in crises with food, water, nutrition, health care, shelter, and additional basic needs support.

These funds can also work with communities to recover from crises and prevent future humanitarian need. For example, providing safe learning environments for children in refugee camps, or activities to support agricultural recovery in communities through access to seeds or fertilizer, can help meet their families’ food and income needs again and transition off emergency aid. Beyond specific funding accounts, humanitarian assistance should be able to utilize a wide range of “tools in the toolbox” to allow for contextualized responses that reach as many people as effectively and efficiently as possible. This usually includes using some mix of U.S. commodities, cash, vouchers, and/or local and regional procurement.

In addition to the quantity of funding, mechanisms need to be agile. In the past, procurement, contracting and awarding, modifications, payment, and adaptation of awards could be burdensome and slow. In addition, while large private organizations are able to pre-finance some activities, this is not the case for smaller and local responders.

Funding for humanitarian assistance should allow for rapid and flexible responses and be simplified to promote locally led responses. There are effective, proven mechanisms to do this, and we are encouraged by the recent uptake of approaches such as:

• Rapid response funds which pre-allocate money to certain regions, pre-register eligible response organizations including local organizations, and have a streamlined approval process, to allow for the quick release of funds when crisis triggers are met;
• “Crisis Modifiers” in awards supporting longer term health or food security objectives, which allow funding to be reallocated to emergency response when needed; and
• Country level pooled funds, such as those used by UN OCHA and the START Network, which allocate funding to the humanitarian community within a country facing an on-going emergency and give organizations on the ground the ability to determine priority needs for this funding.

3. Equipped with strong systems of oversight

Ensuring the American people’s trust in aid requires strong accountability, transparency in program procurement and implementation and effective communication about its impact. This requires U.S. aid agencies to allocate funding for monitoring, community feedback mechanisms, and strategic evaluations of programs.

Oversight systems must also uphold participant dignity and privacy through strong data protection standards. When humanitarian response involves the collection of participant data for monitoring or accountability purposes, every effort must be made to safeguard this information and reduce the risks to impacted communities.

4. Implemented by effective partners, prioritizing and advancing local leadership

Civil society organizations that can ensure effective, efficient and sustainable program implementation are critical partners for the U.S. Government (USG). To ensure implementers can continue to play this crucial role, the USG must:

• Support relationships on the ground: Regardless of whether they are local or international, implementers’ greatest assets are their relationships on the ground and with affected communities.  To develop partnerships with local civil society, government, universities, the local private sector and communities, implementers need support and time for relationship cultivation and management.
• Recognize the importance of local actors as strategic partners: Local organizations and faith-based groups, local government, and local business are all essential stakeholders to ensure the effective implementation of humanitarian aid. For humanitarian response, local actors are already on the ground when an emergency hits, know the context well, have networks already established to be able to respond, and are able to support sustainable recovery. The USG should elevate the essential role of these actors and invest in them accordingly, including creating channels for direct engagement with the USG.  
• Prioritize localization progress in new funding mechanisms: Right now, there are opportunities for the USG to advance an approach to humanitarian and development programming that strengthens local leadership and country ownership. As the State Department embraces new models such as macro awards, UNOCHA partnerships and other funding mechanisms, it can ensure resources are allocated and administered in a way that supports localization, and in doing so, advances U.S. interests. Specifically, State Department humanitarian programming can:
  • Engage and authentically partner with local governments, civil society organizations and faith-based institutions
  • Increase funding to local organizations as directly as possible.
  • When implementing through international entities, require that implementers channel at least 25% of funding onward to local organizations.
  • When implementing through national and local entities, provide adequate and fair cost recovery through indirect cost recovery (ICR) or de minimus for the necessary operation of their organization.
  • Support transition planning including funding capacity strengthening programming to enable effective and efficient USG project transition to local government and civil society.
• For its funding channeled to UNOCHA, the U.S. can ensure its funding supports localization progress by:
  
  • Ensuring that country-based pooled funding has governance mechanisms that facilitate local actor engagement and decision making, including around funding priorities and allocations.
  • Requiring that implementers, including UN agencies, channel at least 25% of funding to local organizations, as directly as possible.
  • Ensuring fair cost recovery to all implementers, including local actors.
  • Holding firm to clear and fair procurement criteria and strong accountability measures, including high standards of financial management consistent with what the USG now requires of its nonprofit and FBO partners.

5. Committed to protecting the dignity of all aid program participants

Ensuring humanitarian programs recognize, protect and elevate the dignity of their participants will strengthen their quality and effectiveness. Putting dignity at the center, can ensure that aid’s impact is not just about siloed sectoral results but also anchored in the improvement of vulnerable people’s lives. When humanitarian projects intentionally incorporate measures that ensure respect for participants’ dignity into activity design, systems, processes, staff training and norms, it can lead to increased utilization of services, adherence and impacts. This can be done by first recognizing that all people have inherent dignity that can be elevated or diminished and that programming can contribute to acknowledging and respecting that value through its implementation and activities. In practice, this can involve practical considerations like ensuring protected waiting areas, shade, drinking water, and sanitation facilities for people waiting to receive emergency aid. Dignity can also form the cornerstone of an emergency response sectoral such CRS’ Safe and Dignified Homes shelter approach. Using this approach, CRS implements shelter programs that uphold the dignity of displaced families by supporting end-to-end housing needs, from emergency shelter immediately after displacement to transitional support to long-term reconstruction; including ensuring access to safe sanitation as part of shelter support; and designing shelter solutions together with communities and local authorities. Protecting human dignity also contributes to stability by building trust in local systems. In so doing, humanitarian programs can play a role in fostering positive relationships between a donor country and residents of countries receiving assistance.

Effective humanitarian assistance saves lives and promotes peace, justice, security, and human dignity. As U.S. assistance enters a new phase, there is an opportunity to build a more effective operating model. This model should be rooted in the moral imperative and hold close to the values and humanitarian principles to ensure it most effectively supports those in need.