Vocabulary of Humanitarian Commons

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(from Vocabulary of Commons, article 52)

by Mihir R Bhatt1

Vocabulary of Humanitarian Commons

Commons are key to protect communities from disaster risks and provide resources to draw on when a crisis strikes. It is the village pond that irrigates drought–affected fields and step wells that offer drinking water to people migrating from drought–hit areas in search of work. It is the wetlands that absorb river swells or delay droughts, acting as mitigation measures of nature. The commons are even more important to the poor, to protect themselves from disasters and rebuild after disasters. In drought areas, the poor feed from roots, vegetables from riverbeds and drink water from holes made in riverbeds.

This chapter looks at the interplay of the concept—Vocabulary of Humanitarian Commons—from the bottom up. It is for those who are interested in reflecting on vocabulary and humanitarian commons, or both. Vocabulary is defined as ‘a list or collection of the words or phrases of a language, technical field’ used to communicate.2 Humanitarianism is defined as ‘concern for human welfare’ and, in times of crisis, it may refer to the willingness to reach out to a fellow human being.3 Commons is defined as ‘of or relating to the community as a whole, public’ and may refer to the shared ownership, use, and production of physical or non–physical goods, services, or ideas.4

The need for a vocabulary of humanitarian commons

Based on ongoing field visits in six disaster affected states in India and in Indonesia, Solomon Islands and Fiji, it is becoming evident to me that vocabulary is impoverished in terms of richness of humanitarian words or words representing the concept of the commons. The English vocabulary just does not have enough words to describe and explain the concepts of humanitarianism and commons or their interplay. Vocabulary is dominated by top–down ‘charity’ words such as ‘relief’, ‘rehabilitation’, ‘humanitarian intervention’ or ‘humanitarian victims or beneficiaries’. These concepts grew out of the experience of the West going to ‘poor’ and ‘helpless’ countries to save their lives and help them recover from loss. Certainly this started out as a humane act which, once institutionalised and well–funded, attracted other interests. The past century and a half of international humanitarian experience of the West, say since the founding of the Red Cross movement in 1863, to pick a random but important landmark, has added mostly certain kinds of words in terms of humanitarian vocabulary. The vocabulary has evolved from the outside in a top–down way. Similar limitations may be found in other languages of the East, but there are no studies yet to say so. Vocabularly of humanitarianism is understudied in English, and other languages. I find this odd.

Individualised not community approach

The vocabulary of humanitarian work is dominated by individualised responses, including those with a focus on victims, and not on his or her community. Moreover, responses often do not address what two individuals may have or do have in common. The individual is seen primarily as a victim, isolated and distant from others. It is assumed that victims do not help each other, while I find that victims are the first and most substantial responders in a humanitarian crisis. The focus of vocabulary is on structures and less on social change concepts or ideas. Commons of humanitarian action such as coastal forests or wetlands, activities such as needs assessment, tools such as early warning signals, or activities such as the dissemination of evacuation warning are broken into individual commodities or commandeered by the state or institutions. Coastal forests of mangroves are cleared to build individual homes for victims. This, in turn, makes the coast and victims more vulnerable to the next tsunami while removing a common source of fuel, fresh air, and greenery for human beings and entire eco-system for other living beings. Low–level wetlands are ‘reclaimed’ by filling in sand or stones to build community centres or cyclone shelters causing severe flooding each monsoon and wiping out a colony of coastal trogs or visiting birds. Cities are made safer by embanking riverbeds which provide fresh air and water to all and source of livelihoods to vegetable growers and washer women, among others. River’s own capacity to swell or shrink is taken away.

Furthermore, individual response agencies conduct needs assessments of food and water or shelter. Rarely are these assessments completely shared in order to maintain individual control over information instead of for common use for provision of relief. Relief needs information. Common or shared information on relief needs makes relief more effective and less costly. But information collection agencies, though humanitarian, do not always or fully share the information with other agencies, authorities, or even local actors or communities. As if information is colonised. The irony of colonising humanitarian commons is often missed in what is called strategic positioning of humanitarian agencies. Existing lateral warning signals across communities that are commonly shared for centuries are disregarded to build top–down, distant, often space technology–dependent electricity–powered warning signals that still do not reduce the risk of those vulnerable who are not reached in the last mile. The words that are leading our thoughts and actions are top–down ‘targeting’ or ‘deliver relief’, away from humanitarian spirit to humanitarian business trying to achieve ‘humanitarian results’, away from common recovery to individual interests. Sure, humanitarian response has many players with many motives but it seems that recently common interest is being colonised for individual or institutional gains.

Erasure in law and standards

Key humanitarian documents, such as the Sphere Handbook jointly created by INGOs and the UN system which provides very useful and well–meaning guidance on the provision of water, shelter, health, and many more relief services to humanitarian workers, have little or nothing to say about not using village grazing commons for building shelter or common village ponds or wells for exclusive use of certain disaster victims or certain response activities. The handbook, does, however state: ‘Shelter solutions should be planned to retain existing trees and other vegetation to maintain the soil stabilisation’ (Sphere handbook 228).5 Similarly, in the Guidance Notes section, the handbook states: ‘where the need to provide shelter for affected populations has a significant adverse impact on the environment, e.g. through the depletion of local natural resources, efforts should be made to minimise the long–term effects through complementary environmental management and rehabilitation activities’ (Sphere Handbook 228). Additionally, the handbook mentions that impacts on the environment should be taken into account when conducting needs assessments and planning for disaster response (Sphere Handbook 123). However, loss or damage to humanitarian commons is not mentioned. Nor the need to rebuild or reconstruct such commons as a part of relief to recovery process.

The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), agreed to and adopted by 138 countries, though not a purely humanitarian framework document, makes no direct reference to commons—physical or social or economic— to reduce disaster risk. It makes a passing reference in stating that vulnerability to natural hazards is increased by ‘Destroying forests and wetlands, thereby harming the capacity of the environment to withstand hazards’.6 It then goes on to recommend the sustainable management of ecosystems. Furthermore, under Social and economic development practices, it refers to the need to protect ‘critical public facilities and physical infrastructure, particularly schools, clinics, hospitals, water and power plants, communications and transport lifelines, disaster warning and management centres, and culturally important lands and structures through proper design, retrofitting and re–building, in order to render them adequately resilient to hazards’ (Hyogo Framework for Action 2005, 11).7 Still, the handbook omits explicit discussion of the communal value of these resources particularly the ways in which communities can contribute to and benefit from protecting and strengthening them. The contribution of such commons, say wetlands, grazing fields, river banks, common water ponds, community forest, and more in balancing risks of droughts and floods is not directly addressed.

Moreover, the role of commons in preparedness and risk reduction and the threats to commons are overlooked or bypassed. And we know that, for example, it is the common tree forest on the coastal areas that reduce the risks of tsunami which coastal communities face in Tamil Nadu or Kerala on the Indian coast. Furthermore, we know that it is the common groves of coastal coconut forests that slow down advancing cyclones in coastal areas in Andhra and Odhisa in India. We know that step wells in Gujarat acted as the last source of drinking water in arid areas. The 2005 National Disaster Management Act of the Government of India does not say a word about humanitarian commons. As a result, the enabling policy environment that it promotes such as a series of guidelines on floods and droughts and others are without direct reference to commons. The same applies for institutions— village disaster committee or district mitigation fund—that this Act creates. Reducing risk has been a common effort for flood or cyclone vulnerable communities for centuries. Community commons are the source and resource for these efforts. The Act weakens these efforts of citizens, especially the poor.

The two key Acts at the state level, Gujarat State Disaster Management Act No.20 of 2003 and Orissa State Disaster Management Policy 2005, do not address commons. Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act, No.13 of 2005, is evading commons. Instead, it mentions protecting the environment from the consequences of disaster (Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act 2005, 1).8 Under ‘disaster counter–measures’ it includes: ‘to mitigate the effect of such disaster on [any] property belonging to an individual or the State’ (Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act 2005, 17). Thus no mention is made to mitigating the effects of disaster on common or communal property nor means of recovering commons once they are damaged or lost. Less evasively, under its definition of ‘resources’, it mentions equipment and property ‘considered essential for the life of the community’ (Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act 2005, 18). However, again, it makes no direct reference to the concept of commons.

This is odd. Because if we go to Gujarat and look at the most vibrantly recovered five families affected by 2001 earthquake, at least three in rural areas would attribute support of village commons—physical and social—as one of the two main reasons for their robust recovery. Similarly, if we go to the families who are still struggling to recover— Dalits or disabled or women headed households—in rural areas or slums of Bhuj or other towns in 2001 earthquake affected Gujarat, they have survived and struggled drawing from, again, commons— physical, social, or economic—around them. The picture in East coast of Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2004 is not much different.

The Indonesia Disaster Management Law No.24/20079 is also evading the word and therefore the concept of commons. It does refer to the environment, public or community services, and management of natural resources, community social facilities, and community housing repair.10 But it does not draw on a long Indonesian tradition of natural, social, and economic commons that sustain life on thousands of islands. In Aceh, the Adat law that is traditional to local communities starts with commons and moves to individuals in its approach to life, and also to crisis. The key actor, mukim, aims at protecting common property, common tradition, common interest, and so on both during crisis and non–crisis periods. Far more efforts are needed, I found, to integrate the Act with this tradition to make humanitarian response in Indonesia nurture its traditions of commons.

There is so much talk about community–based disaster risk reduction (DRR) but hardly any mention of community commons in most tsunami recovery documents. Some of the largest projects such as UNDP’s Disaster Risk Management (DRM) programme, did not directly address issues related to the use of commons in 169 districts and 38 cities in India.11 It does, however, mention a few initiatives to developing different types of commons. First, a Government of India report on the UNDP programme mentions setting up IT centres at the district level to enable the community to access information on DRM (GoI n.d., 12).12 Second, in a guideline for repairing buildings in earthquake– affected areas in Jammu & Kashmir, rebuilding community facilities and ensuring the long–term safety of community buildings is highlighted (National Disaster Management Division, Ministry of Home Affairs 2007, 14).13 These initiatives are important and must be built on at a larger scale with more investment in them so that commons do not appear as an accident but as a rule in most DRR efforts within preparedness and recovery. The World Bank project to rebuild Gujarat after the 2001 earthquake provided funding for, inter alia, reconstruction in agriculture, education, and transport but had limited direct emphasis on commons (ADB 2008,1).14

The humanitarian deficit: Victims not citizens

It is as a result of these disaster responses and others that I often wonder if our vocabulary of humanitarian commons is so limited and almost useless—for our policies, institutions and local actions—because we have not given due importance to liberal arts in humanitarian response and studies? Engineering and economics, management and administration, applied sciences and statistics push aside languages, history or the arts. Earthquake engineering dominates DRR or risk financing leads the recovery process. Discussions on humanitarian complexities are rare, humanitarian philosophy and worldview even rarer. Contradictions of inhuman acts of humanitarianism—such as providing repeated relief to flood victims but not reducing risk of flood itself—are underplayed.

To me it seems that the humanities are closest, if not central, to humanitarianism, not only as words but also as ideas and the meanings the two words suggest. Each time I meet a victim, or a survivor, in India or Indonesia or Sri Lanka this closeness is reinforced in my mind. Each time I read a report or an evaluation of the humanitarian system from the affected country or responding country, from the international NGOs or local actors, or even the UN system the separation of humanities from humanitarian is shocking. Humanities help humanitarian response create not just a beneficiary but a competent democratic citizen who has personal interests and common concerns, both. Humanitarianism is about a person as a whole including what is and held in common between two or more persons and not just about being a victim. Beneficiaries are expected to receive relief with thanks, and at the most, under recent human rights approaches they have the right to relief. But they remain recipients, not owners, or autonomous or free citizens, capable of thinking beyond self interest to public good for all.

Consequences of the deficit

Recently, as I have shown above, the thinking and actions about the aims of humanitarianism have gone too far, both in the global North (i.e. the donor countries) and in the global South (i.e. the recipient countries). More and more ‘Northern’ countries are advancing the idea of victims as recipients, even in most human rights debates, and not a citizens. Agencies ‘give’ the victims rights. The rights are not inherent to victims as citizens or human beings. In fact, countries that increasingly fall into both categories—such as India, China, or Indonesia—have yet to show the connectedness between humanities and humanitarianism in their recent remarkable recoveries after 2001 and 2008 earthquakes and the 2004 tsunami. India is borrowing Acts, standards and accountability frameworks that are developed in the West for the South without due thought or fundamental questioning. Good ideas must be borrowed and used, but also enriched with reflection.

These humanitarian recoveries, not only the humanitarian response, are anxiously focused on economic growth, first national, and later, with mixed results, on the economic growth of individuals and communities but not on the protection, preservation, or growth of community commons. Money from the World Bank is borrowed to protect ‘growth’ and not the well being of citizens and their eco–systems. Not that economic growth is not important after a disaster for a country or a community— the economy must recover—but perhaps we somewhat thoughtlessly treat humanitarianism—response and recovery—as though its primary goal were to help victims to be economically productive and contribute to the national GDP rather than to think critically about rebuilding communities and countries as citizens see fit. Victims do not have to recover as less poor or vulnerable but can in fact become active citizens if given a chance. And it is such citizens who create and protect commons, not victims or recipients of humanitarian system. In fact the opportunity to rebuild and expand commons damaged and destroyed by development is being missed in preparedness for and recovery humanitarian crisis.

I wonder if this short–sighted and narrow focus on humanitarian skills for fast–growing GDP or top–down charity has eroded our ability to hold authorities and ourselves accountable for violating humanitarian commons; reduced our sympathy for the victims and vulnerable, poor among them, who build, protect, and use humanitarian commons; and damaged our competence to deal with complex global humanitarian crisis. The loss of these basic capacities jeopardises the well being of citizens and the hope of a better world where commons are built and protected and not plundered, traded or sold after a humanitarian crisis.

The way ahead

Humanitarian workers must enrich the vocabulary with their experience of commons with the poor and excluded communities that face disasters. Humanitarian agencies and workers have paid more attention to fitting in their nuanced experience to existing categories that humanitarian system sets up, often well meaningly. The agencies and institutions will not often enrich the vocabulary by contesting existing words and their meanings as they survive on the use of these concepts.

It is the communities that have the experience and insight that can change the vocabulary. In order to enrich the vocabulary of concepts such as humanitarian commons humanitarian workers must address the growing distance of humanitarianism from humanities by far more direct, honest, thoughtful reflective, and self critical writing of their own work. In fact what is even better is inviting ‘victims’ themselves writing their experience in their own words and vocabulary.

So what shall we do? In response to these hopeless situations we must resist efforts to reduce humanitarianism to a tool of economic growth alone or economic activities of buying, selling, trading and damaging humanitarian commons. Rather, we must work to creatively reconnect humanitarianism to the humanities to give them a chance to develop their capacities to be vibrant citizens of their communities and of their country and to pursue self interest as well as common concerns. Perhaps the time has come to develop a worldview that should demand stronger and deeper bonds between humanities and humanitarianism if both vocabulary and commons are to be enriched after, before, during or between a humanitarian crisis. And in this process the victims should have first say, in their own words.

Endnotes

1 The author, with All India Disaster Mitigation Institute ([email protected]), is currently reviewing UNDP’s global contribution to disaster preparedness and early recovery.

2 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vocabulary

3 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanitarianism

4 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Commons

5 http://www.sphereproject.org/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,17/Itemid,203/lang,english/

6 http://www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/docs/HFA-brochure-English.pdf

7 http://www.unisdr.org/eng/hfa/docs/Hyogo-framework-for-action-english.pdf

8 http://dmhr.gov.lk/dm_act_english.pdf

9 http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/EHA_CP_Indonesia.pdf

10 http://www.jointokyo.org/files/cms/news/pdf/DISASTER_MANAGEMENT_LAWS_AND_ITS_ANCILLARY_REGULATIONS.pdf

11 http://saarc-sdmc.nic.in/pdf/india/file5.pdf

12 http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/EQProjects/goiundp2.0.pdf

13 http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/techAdvGroup/DevCurri/SummaryOfTAG.pdf

14 http://www.adb.org/Documents/PCRs/IND/35068-IND-PCR.pdf