The MDGs and the Humanitarian-Development Divide

This 2-page opinion piece, emerging from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), explores the following question: how does the international humanitarian agenda relate to the broader development agenda, and specifically that articulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

Author James Darcy describes some of the distinctions that have been made between the humanitarian and development agendas, as follows:

Humanitarian:

• Strong moral (categorical, universal) imperative to alleviate human suffering
• Emphasis on actual or imminent threats to life, health, subsistence, or security
• Strategy involves identifiying a "crisis", understood as a dangerous deviation from the prevailing norm
• Action characterised by relatively short-term horizons and limited goals
• Largely non-aspirational - little intrinsic concern with social justice, empowerment, sustainability
• Poverty a contingent factor, not a defining concern.

Development:

• Progress has become closely associated with, if not defined by, poverty reduction.
• The concept of poverty has itself evolved beyond its direct concern with human needs and capabilities to include social and political dimensions, reflected in a concern with rights issues such as access and social justice, and voice and accountability.

To go some way toward bridging what appears to be a divide between these two agendas, Darcy makes a claim that practitioners aligned with both approaches might share: "The achievement of the MDGs by 2015 will be a hollow victory if those who are worst off - including many of those living in fragile states - see little or no improvement in their living conditions." He points out that insecurity and the limited capacity of countries to absorb and spend aid in an effective way such places impedes the ability to achieve even the medium-term objectives ("targets") set by the MDGs, however much funding is available. This does not, however, preclude the establishment of realistic goals for key indicators (e.g., health, nutrition) and for the (re-) establishment of services and systems while ensuring basic minimum provision for all in the short term. However, he stresses, "the same sense of imperative that drives humanitarian intervention in acute crises needs to inform our responses....Without this, the very notion of 'longer term' becomes an irrelevance for many."

Given these reflections, Darcy disavows a crude distinction that divides the world into "crisis" states on the one hand and "normal" states on the other. The distinction, he suggests, is inadequate to describe the reality of people's lives; encouraging local ownership and definition of performance targets helps prevent oversimplification. He provides several examples to illustrate the sense in which "[t]he relief/development distinction can seem irrelevant: people simply need help in the daily struggle to survive with dignity." For this reason, he concludes, "[o]ur responses should be driven not by our ideological preoccupations, but by the dictates of each situation and by our common humanity."