The central claim in the first part of the thesis [sections one to six] is that humanitarian relief that is given with strict adherence to the non-intervention norm results in the virtual abandonment of populations in distress. This claim is supported with examples of the humanitarian relief activity of the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] during the period from the Second World War to the 1990's which show that the traditional humanitarian principles have failed. In light of this I formulated seven principles that embody a new type of humanitarianism that is. politically y engaged, culturally sensitive, and actively promotes human rights. The new principles are supported by rule utilitarianism and are a clear departure from the traditional approach of the ICRC which conducts their relief activity in strict operational neutrality. I maintain that humanitarian relief should no longer be given without question and unconditionally regardless of the circumstances.

This thesis explores accountability in international aid to the Republic of Georgia in 2008-2009. Conceptualizing accountability as the obligation to manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders with often divergent interests, it challenges the common assumption that making aid more accountable per se will automatically lead to better aid. Instead, it argues that accountability relationships reflect power relationships; power influences which stakeholders' expectations are met, to what degree they are met, and what kinds of accountability demands by which stakeholders are viewed as legitimate and therefore entail an organizational obligation to respond. After discussing the links between power and accountability in international aid, with particular reference to donors, NGOs and the Georgian government, the thesis proceeds to explore how power and accountability relationships have influenced the allocation, management and implementation of international aid in Georgia, focusing on the aftermath of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia. Based on extensive fieldwork in Georgia during 2008-2009, the thesis examines the influence of power and accountability relationships on emergency relief operations, the composition of an international aid package worth USD 4.5 billion, donor involvement in formulating state policy on internally displaced persons and the subsequent donor-financed provision of housing to the displaced, and the provision of bulk food aid to conflict-affected Georgians. This thesis concludes that accountability relationships in international aid reflect power relationships. As aid recipients wield little or no power over donors and NGOs, these aid providers often can (and do) ignore the expectations generated by this stakeholder group, instead giving priority to managing the competing expectations of more powerful stakeholders. Therefore, the widely observed lack of effectiveness of international aid is not due to an overall lack of accountability within international aid, as is commonly believed. Rather, aid is often ineffective at relieving human suffering and generating pro-poor development because aid providers are primarily accountable to powerful stakeholders with little interest in making aid more effective.

This dissertation explores the construction of humanitarian insecurity as a social problem; more particularly, it suggests the rise of a moral panic about a perceived "new and growing threat" to humanitarian actors in the post-Cold \Vax era. Whilst there is nothing that has radically changed in the nature of the threat to humanitarian actors throughout the twentieth century and earlier, the grmving perception of "shrinking humanitarian space" has encouraged the adoption of security policies that deepen the conditions for some of the problems that humanitarian actors face today. By linking moral panic theory with Bourdieu's social theory, this thesis shows that disproportionate reactions to humanitarian security can be sociologically understood, not as a collective mistake in understanding, but, rather, as a meaningful response to effects of hysteresis in the field of humanitarian aid. Particularly, it shows that the collapse of faith in the pre-modem humanitarian system and the rise of new ways of working "on" rather than "in" conflict precipitated a deeper sense of disorientation about what humanitarian actors stand for in the post-Cold War era. This, in turn, has provided a fertile ground for a moral panic about humanitarian insecurity to take root and flourish, as well as for humanitarian security experts to promote the adoption of a 'culture of security' across the aid community in an effective way. By encouraging reflexivity about the social processes and relations through which specific types of knowledge on humanitarian insecurity are transfonned into power, this dissertation helps develop a critical criminology of aid that breaks with expert and media predispositions towards the status quo and engages with the ways in which existing power structures directly contribute to the very "problem" of humanitarian insecurity.

The post-Cold War international environment presented the humanitarian world with challenges and opportunities, and a new humanitarianism emerged as a response to them. The changes in the nature of humanitarian action were complex and profound, as it expanded in terms of actors, agendas and resources and gained unprecedented prominence. The need to understand this new humanitarianism calls for an original approach, capable of accounting for complex power relations and their effects at different levels, from the global to the local. The thesis uses Michel Foucault's later theorising on biopolitics and governmentality, positioned within his wider thinking on power, to interpret the policies and practices associated with the new humanitarianism in general, as well as the dynamics of two specific international assistance efforts: the post-200l conflict-related assistance effort in Afghanistan and the post-2000 Chernobyl-related assistance effort in Belarus. With a view to understanding how biopolitics as a life-promoting power can produce negative effects or turn lethal, the thesis discusses Foucault's thinking in conjunction with alternative accounts offered by Agamben and Esposito. This discussion informs the theory application exercise, which offers a productive way of operationalising Foucault's theorising and concludes that the new humanitarianism, and specific assistance efforts informed by it, can be understood as neoliberal regimes of governing, reliant on biopolitics, discipline and sovereignty. The empirical studies in this thesis show that, while negative biopolitics of containment, abandonment and invisibility characterise both assistance efforts, the purposes of biopolitical governing are specific to particular contexts. In challenging the dominant problematisations and considering their implications for the assistance provision in Afghanistan and Belarus, it contributes to opening up possibilities for resistance and for alternatives ways of addressing humanitarian needs.

The objective of the thesis is to identify what constrains development assistance agencies giving a higher priority to ensuring that basic needs are met. Support for basic needs is taken to include all spending to address unmet needs in terms of water supply and sanitation, primary health care, primary or basic education and literacy. It also includes all development agency funding for housing, social employment and 'community development' projects targeted at low income groups. A statistical analysis of all project commitments for a range of development assistance agencies over a number of years showed that most allocate less than 20 percent of their funding to basic needs while some allocate less than 10 percent. This analysis also showed some evidence of increased priority to basic needs in recent years, especially for the concessional loan programme of the World Bank. Interviews with a range of staff from the World Bank, UNICEF and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and a review of these agencies' internal documents sought to establish the main constraints on an increased priority to basic needs. The constraints can be divided into four sets: the institutional constraints linked to an agency's internal workings; conscious policy choices made within the agency to limit funding for basic needs; external influences, including commercial pressures, consultants and influences from the governments that fund the agencies; and the political and institutional constraints within recipient countries - for instance recipient governments not prioritizing basic needs projects or their limited capacity to support basic needs provision. The thesis shows that development assistance agencies' own internal structures often constrain funding for successful basic needs projects. For instance, many basic needs projects are relatively cheap and staff intensive to develop but within most agencies, staff are under pressure to spend relatively large sums and to minimize staff time when doing so. Many agencies also have the institutional legacy of structures set up to fund large capital projects and difficulties in changing these structures to reflect new priorities, including a higher priority to basic needs. The incapacity of recipient governments to implement basic needs projects and, in most nations, the lack of alternative implementors is also a major constraint. The thesis emphasizes how research to date has given too little attention to these constraints. It also discusses the ways in which agencies are seeking to overcome these constraints and the need to do so if a renewed emphasis on poverty reduction is to be effective.

A concern with respect for local culture, practices and customs emerged in international humanitarian assistance in the 1990s. This concern is clearly necessary as humanitarian assistance operations have frequently suffered from an inadequate appreciation of the local context, which has negatively affected the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian aid, as well as the security of aid workers. The emergence of respect for culture, however, also raises questions about the relationship of this norm to the traditional humanitarian principles, and in particular of the possibility that some cultural norms and practices may run into an irresolvable conflict with the normative framework underpinning international humanitarian assistance. The issue of culture in the humanitarian context has thus far been under- researched. The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the conceptual and practical implications of the commitment to respect culture for international humanitarian assistance both at the level of principles and policy. First, the existing normative framework underpinning international humanitarian assistance is described through an examination of international legal documents, and aid organisations' statements of principle and professional guidelines. Second, the emergence of the norm of respect for culture in international law, in the principles and guidelines of aid organisations, as well as in academic research is discussed. Third, the conceptual tools of normative political theory are applied in order to examine the interaction between the existing normative framework, on one hand, and the norm of respect for culture, on the other. In particular, types of potential conflict between the two, and possible ways of addressing such conflicts are discussed. Fourth, the implications of respect for culture for gender issues in the humanitarian context are also examined. Finally, the findings from the conceptual analysis are brought onto an operational level through a discussion of their implications for humanitarian policy and practice.

This thesis examines the experience of humanitarian relief charity in the Sudan from 1986, the creation of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) in April 1989 and its experience to 1996. This historical analysis also situates OLS within the international relief system. OLS experience generally provides an important case study in the mixture of motives and views in contemporary international affairs and the subsequent difficulty we have in theorising within that experience. Throughout 1989-96, OLS was able to establish an environment on which the rights of internally displaced persons to relief food and security was possible. This was within the context o f a continuing civil war, where relief objectives were at odds with the military objectives of the combatants, the diverse views of the donor governments, and the technical difficulties of delivering aid in such circumstances. The instruments used by OLS to gain access to those needing aid involved the use of humanitarian norms, principles and agreements to shame and, sometimes, sanction those denying access. These rhetorical devices are relevant to other war affected areas and constitute a useful development in humanitarian intervention. The theoretical implication of this development for our understanding of international relations is briefly explained in the conclusion.

Many of the recent armed conflicts have taken place in cities of the Developing World. In the resulting emergency situations, water supply and sanitation are among the most essential services to restore. They form part of the urban services available to the city dwellers that are commonly managed by local water sector institutions. This is, in principle, acknowledged by aid agencies but partnerships between them and water sector institutions do not always happen because of concerns such as: independence vis-a-vis the local government; possible corruption arid inefficiency problems; and political obstacles. Moreover, agencies prefer short-term structural rehabilitation to long-term institutional development, for which they do not always feel sufficiently qualified and experienced. This study tackles the problem by determining how these partnerships influence the performance of aid operations, in particular in terms of efficiency I effectiveness in the case of emergency response and of sustainability and coverage in the case of rehabilitation. It is based on a number of case studies selected in: Kabul (Afghanistan); Jaffna (Sri Lanka); Monrovia (Liberia); Beni (Democratic Republic of Congo); Port-au Prince and Port-de-Paix (Haiti), and Grozny (Chechnya in the Russian Federation). For emergency operations, findings show that partnerships tend to take place when the type or level of technology involved and/or security conditions do not allow the aid agency to work independently from water utilities. Partnerships do not necessarily influence efficiency I effectiveness in the short term but are beneficial because they prepare for rehabilitation. In terms of rehabilitation, findings suggest that current practice maintains a separation between large-scale rehabilitation projects and community-based projects focusing on specific neighbourhoods. This has a detrimental effect on sustainability and fails to address the needs of the most vulnerable populations. The study recommends a more coordinated approach that involves a reform of funding patterns, in order to reconcile sustainability and universal service.

No abstract available / Development Studies / D.Admin.

No abstract available / Development Studies / D.Admin.