29. A Humanitarian Irritant

Lars Peter Nissen: 00:11

Welcome to Trumanitarian. I'm your host, Lars Peter Nissen. This week's guest is Dominic Naish, who has worked for various humanitarian agencies as a contextual analysts. The contexts were different, the organisations were different, but the feeling he was left with was always the same. Namely, to be more of an irritant and an obstacle to getting things done than a help to the people he worked for. In the end, he decided to leave the humanitarian sector. When I was editing this episode, my wife walked by and asked me, and you're worried that you're having the same conversation all the time. So I had to think a little bit about that. Listening again to the conversation, I came to the conclusion that while it's true that there are other episodes on this pod that have dealt with the issue of how we understand context, how we analyse, how we shape the humanitarian narrative, Dominic brings something new to the conversation. Firstly, he delivers a very precise, almost surgical analysis of the problem at hand and several times during our conversation, I realised that he was expressing ideas I have been thinking about for a long time, with a precision that I often lack. Secondly, he sheds light on the obstacles we have in the field for better uptake of analysis. I have for years been arguing that we massively under invest in analysis as a community. I think that's finally changing, more and more organisations are developing their own analytical capabilities, but are they using it, is the question. And I think Dominic's experience brings a really interesting and somewhat troubling perspective to that conversation. Finally, I think it's really important to give voice to young professionals who enter the humanitarian sector, but simply have to give up after a few years because it no longer makes sense to them. I think those of us who remain behind have to reflect on how we can create more conducive work environments for talents, such as to Dominic, so that we can retain them. But have a listen and make up your own mind. I enjoyed the conversation very much and I think you will as well.

Dominic Naish, welcome to Trumanitarian.

Dominic Naish: 02:25

Thanks very much for having me.

Lars Peter Nissen: 02:27

This conversation came about because a friend of mine tweeted at me on Twitter and said, Hey, have you read this new article in HPN? It's really interesting. And I looked it up. And I agreed with him. I think it's an excellent piece that you've written, it's called "Not a priority: the lack of contextual understanding in humanitarian missions". You used to work in the humanitarian sector for about five years with different agencies. Today, you're a senior analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and you've written this piece in your personal capacity, so it doesn't reflect the initiatives, positions... So just explain a bit. Why did you write this piece? And what's actually your argument?

Dominic Naish: 03:13

Thank you. So there were a couple of motivations for writing the piece. The main one, the primary one, was a conviction that this problem of humanitarian NGOs not really understanding very well the context that they work in, and therefore the effects that their actions have, is really a sectoral problem that happens across different organisations, all across the humanitarian sector. My own experience was across three different organisations (so, by no means all the humanitarian NGOs, very far from it) but they were three very different types of agency. And I encountered such similar types of barrier to my work as a contextual analyst. And also from speaking to peers and colleagues who work for other organisations doing similar types of work. So many of them said, Yeah, I can really see my own experience in that. So a big motivation for writing the piece was to try and address the humanitarian sector as a whole and say, This is a topic that I think is really important, it's widespread, and it needs to be a part of the discourse.

Lars Peter Nissen: 04:38

So what are the consequences of this lack of contextual analysis?

Dominic Naish: 04:44

I think there's really very many of them on a number of different levels. I think it contributes to the sort of top down colonial elements of the international humanitarian sphere. I think it contributes to the gap between national and international staff. I think it lessens the impact of programmes on their own terms. I think it makes impact less sustainable. It's harder for agencies to leave or have exit strategies that really make sense and mean that they're ending their existence in a way that is as smooth as possible. I think it lessens their ability to do good advocacy. There's a really broad range, and I think it's all avoidable.

Lars Peter Nissen: 05:38

So I would agree with most of that. But at the same time, I'm also left with this feeling, and I'm sure you feel the same way, that my colleagues in the humanitarian sector, they're not stupid, they're not ill intentioned, right. I think the some of the most impressive people I know work in the humanitarian sector. So why do we have this systemic problem? What's the root cause?

Dominic Naish: 06:01

Absolutely, no, I agree with that. And I think my analysis... it's really key to my analysis is that this is not about individuals. Individual humanitarians, whether they're in senior leadership positions, or otherwise, so often are, as you described, they're very high-functioning, intelligent, well-intentioned. It's not about individual people. It's about how the sector is set up as a set of institutions. It's partly that funding... I mean, this is a common problem across many types of, sort of, humanitarian issue. But short term funding cycles create a perverse set of incentives, were just getting through your programme cycle, just getting through your workload and applying for the next round of funding, becomes such a crucial priority for everyone, that everything else is relegated in importance. I think there's also a sort of societal element that, as institutional bodies, based in the Western world, based in predominantly rich, often ex-colonial countries, there's a sort of residue of the mindset that we can just step in and solve the problem. That, you know, the people who are poor or affected by war, or who suffered a natural disaster, they can't, for whatever reason, really contribute to our understanding. We know what we need to know, you know, there's there's a set of technical skills and resources that we've got. And, you know, that's the important thing. And I think, also, stemming from both of those root causes is a sort of cultural thing of, Deeds, not words. People who come into the humanitarian sector, I think, tend to be very sort of action oriented, anyway. And the sector makes them even more so. You know, there's such a pressure on getting stuff done and the sort of kudos that an individual and an organisation gains is through hitting your targets, you know, saying I can be effective, even in situations of great stress and difficulty. I think another element, which is important to touch on is the primacy of the technical in contemporary humanitarian operations. Because I think that speaks both to the analysis and also to the sense making process, and as you just described it. What do I mean by that? I mean, that, it seems to me that a lot of humanitarian operations regard problems as technical with technical solutions. So you know, if humanitarian work is just, you know, building the correct amount of showers and latrines per 100 refugees, or getting the correct amount of nutrients into the hungry child, then context doesn't matter, right. Two plus two still equals four, whether you're in a boardroom in Geneva, or whether you're in a camp in a war zone. The context really does become just a sort of a curiosity because all you're there to do is to apply this technical procedure. And your challenges are therefore just sort of logistical. So I think that's maybe one element of the problem, or another way of phrasing an element of the problem. But it also speaks to the sense making process. Because if you're open to the idea that providing solutions, so to speak, isn't technical, that it's much more relational and there's an inherent sort of political element to it, then, yeah, your whole sort of approach to what it is that you're trying to do changes. And I think that's where the change in sense-making really needs to take place, you know, and being open to more complexity and more sort of problemitizeation of what it is that you're trying to do.

Lars Peter Nissen: 10:56

So that's very clear. You basically say there are three root causes here. One is just the funding, the operational grind, you know, the, just feeding the beast, basically, and the short funding cycles and all of that. And secondly, the whole institutional framework, that our perception of our own role as the fixers, the guys who come out to, you know, take care of business, and so let's take care of it. And then thirdly, this cowboy mentality, if you want. You know, let's get the trucks rolling. That's a clear analysis. I'll challenge you a bit on that later on but what's your solution? And what are your recommendations?

Dominic Naish: 11:40

Well, clearly, in some of those root causes, there's things that need to be done on a very large scale, long term basis. And in the piece, I consciously decided not to go down that avenue, I think that's a slightly separate conversation from the one I want to have. I focus on a couple of operational changes that I think humanitarian NGOs could make, sort of here and now, without having to drastically change the way they work. So there's two things that I suggest, and they go very much hand in hand. They're separate, but they have to both happen at the same time. The first should be that senior leadership teams in country, at country level, should be judged on their contextual sensitivity or their their country programme's contextual sensitivity, as a nonnegotiable performance indicator, in the same way that they're held responsible for keeping the budgets in order, maintaining workable relationships with the national government, and hitting certain quantity and quality targets of programming. They should be nonnegotiably assessed on the contextual sensitivity of the operation. That's one. The second thing is that the capacity to do good contextual analysis and thinking in country has to be credible. So the second step, the second thing I recommend, is to make it an institutional norm for every international humanitarian NGO, to have a small team of people who do this. You could call them, researchers, analysts, humanitarian affairs... The title doesn't matter so much, but the point is, you have at minimum two, preferably more, and at minimum, one national staff as part of this team, and you thereby sort of create the capacity for an organisation to be doing good research, good background assessments, and and the sort of slightly intangible work that that I'm talking about.

Lars Peter Nissen: 14:06

Great. And I agree with that. I think I think those are all good things and I've always found it baffling that basically, as an industry, we spent more money, evaluating how things went wrong after the fact than we do on assessing and analysing upfront and getting it right, right? You I know a whole bunch of people who make their living as being very good consultants, evaluating operations left, right and centre, whereas, I think it's better now, I think the community has grown over the past 10 years, but humanitarian analysts used to be very, very hard to find. I think it has... it is... has begun to change. And I think there's a growing recognition of the problem, but I don't think we're there yet. What I'd like to discuss with you, and again, I really liked your piece. It's... I think you've managed to very eloquently, more eloquently than I normally am able to, to express this quite fundamental problem for us. But I'd like to take you up on your problem analysis. Why does this happen? And it's not that I disagree with what you say. But I think there is a deeper level to the problem that that's, that has taken me a long time to come to terms with and really understand. And it is that I think... I simply don't think we have the right understanding of the relationship between evidence base and decision making, is one thing. I think, very often people assume that if we have better contextual analysis, we will get it right. But, the fact is that you can have the best contextual analysis in the world and still make the wrong decision. And actually, you can have very limited knowledge and still get it right. I think what assessment does force, or analysis, a better evidence base, whatever you want to call it... I think what that does for us, is that it enables us to learn over time so that if we document and make it transparent, Why did I choose to go lift three months ago, because of these assumptions, because of this evidence, whatever, then three months later, you can say, well, actually, I should have gone right. That was a wrong decision to make so I can now go back and see why I was wrong. And that enables institutional learning. And I don't think that that has entered... That's one thing that I don't think people understand. They tend to think we got the assessment, we got it, right. But there is a decision to be made. And that decision can be wrong and can be right. For me, that's actually not the point. The point is, can you be accountable? Can you learn over time. That's one aspect that I I often struggle to communicate when when I try to talk about these things. The second thing is the architecture, how do we actually set up the sense making process. And there I think, what we are really... what we do is we impose almost an operational logic on a sense making process, in the sense that we... the Grand Bargain, talks about one consolidated view coming out of the HCT so that we know what to do. And again, that sort of assumes that there is one answer, and then once we found the answer, we do that. That's not how sensemaking works. So for me, it is more about having contrasting and complementary perspectives that are connected. So in other words, we need to talk together, we need to share data. And we need to really celebrate our disagreements and pick them apart and figure out why we disagree. And we have to be able to live with the ambiguity of there not being one simple answer to a situation. That... and I... that's where... I think that's the deeper level that I don't see reflected in your... the way you describe the problem. What do you think about that?

Dominic Naish: 18:07

No, fair enough. I think there was two extremely pertinent points that, you're right, I don't really touch on in the piece. But I would, perhaps slightly opportunistically, argue that my suggestions do speak to those issues. I think your first point about the evidence base, to me that's really about what the humanitarian does. Is it just a purely life saving emergency intervention? No, it's not. Let's be honest, if the humanitarian sector is this huge, sprawling, long-term thing that it does everything from women's rights to education to health, short-term, often long-term, years, if not decades... And I would argue that part of the decision making process is trying to understand, what is the humanitarians role? And what is not the humanitarian role? And I think having a team of contextual analysts will help to answer that question and separate out the truly humanitarian, the stuff that's defensible, and the stuff that is more opportunistic, more sort of mission creep. So yes, I think that is a huge problem. But I would argue that having more contextual analysis, as opposed to sort of needs analysis would would help.

Lars Peter Nissen: 19:46

I think that's a very fair point. And I think another way of saying what you just said is, we have a tendency to focus on doing things right and less on doing the right things. And I couldn't agree with you more that what we need is a deep contextual analysis for us to understand what do the humanitarian principles mean in this context? And how do we then position ourselves to be most effective in restoring the agency of people affected by crisis and protecting their basic rights?

Dominic Naish: 20:16

Precisely, I completely agree with that. And I think on your second point, this is one of the reasons why I'm convinced that analysis of the type I'm talking about contextual analysis. It's got to be a team effort. Because there are so many actors that humanitarians need to speak to... you know, ideally, a humanitarian country operation would be speaking to, not only their peer organisations, but development actors, academics, emergency services, you know, fire, police, religious authorities, such a broader range of of actors than people normally have time to speak to. You know, normally in the humanitarian sector, even coordinating among the humanitarian NGOs is a huge challenge, let alone building up meaningful relationships with this huge range of other actors. So again, I think just having the capacity to say, look, we are getting the perspectives of these civil society organisations, these, you know, other people who are not strictly necessary for delivering an end product, but are essential for understanding what's going on and who's doing what in the sort of broad scheme of things.

Lars Peter Nissen: 21:39

So again, I agree. But I could also say, Yeah, but that's not interesting. What's interesting is, why don't we? I mean, basically, what you're saying is, if you want to operate in a context in a country, you need to understand what's going on in that country. That's, what's technically is known as, a no brainer. Yet we don't. And so, again, if I can challenge you, I think what you have to dig down to is the underlying (and you do mention this, to be fair)... is the underlying incentive structure which enables us to operate without knowing what we're doing. And I actually... I laughed quite a bit when I read the first part of your article, where you basically say that the new way of working is that now we will start thinking. I thought that was quite... and not just doing. But I think, how do we reverse that incentive structure? How do you make it something that you have to do to get the funding?

Dominic Naish: 22:40

My personal experience suggests that donors are very open to new information and more sort of sustainable and cost-effective types of programming?

Lars Peter Nissen: 22:59

I agree with that. But how do you change that from a nice to, to a need to?

Dominic Naish: 23:03

Well, I mean, at the risk of going in circles, I think it's about incentivizing the country leadership in such a way that says, Look, if you can't show us in HQ in you know, Geneva or Brussels or wherever you happen to be headquartered... If you can't show us demonstrably how this programme is contextually sensitive, then, you know, you're not going to get another good mission, your you're not going to get your contract extended. Or on the other hand, if you can show us this and you're doing a really good job of it, then you know, you're on the fast track, you're going to the top of the tree. Because to me, it's about two things. It's about individual people, because they make up institutions, but it's also about institutional culture. Whether do those two things coincide? Leadership. So you have to change how the executive leaders are seeing what it is they have to do.

Lars Peter Nissen: 24:00

The answer is that, and this is a very complex conversation, but I mean, the answers that I have come up with is... On one side, I think there's a lack of institutional diversity. I think, inevitably (and I speak from my own experience of being a country director in operations and so on) you will be in the operational crunch. It's very, very hard to break and to sit down and drink tea and chat about what happened 15 years ago in terms of this conflict, that is difficult to achieve. It really is. And so it's not likely that you will see a fundamental change just because we hire a few more analysts who can sit in a corner and write stuff. I think the answer that I'm coming up with is that, the problem is we are letting the organisations that are involved in response, and actually will focus on response in what they do, we let them also shaped the humanitarian narrative. And I think, of course they need to have a massive input into that. But you can't get it right without also having operationally independent actors who inject real time analytical input into decision making. If you try to build it from the different agencies who are involved in wash or health or protection or whatever they're doing, you... it's very hard to cancel out those operational biases without somebody who's not operational and therefore is incentivized to think holistically about the crisis. And if you sit inside an organisation, as an analyst, your job is to help your country director make better decisions. And so that will already shape your focus on doing things right instead of doing the right things.

Dominic Naish: 25:41

So, for you, the answer is to have two separate types of organisation working in the humanitarian context

Lars Peter Nissen: 25:51

Or more. I think we have to have more institutional diversity. And of course, I work with at ACAPS, and that's exactly what we tried to be. We tried to be an operationally independent input into humanitarian decision making. That doesn't mean we are unbiased, we get plenty of things wrong, but it means that if we get them wrong, it's not because we had to do something about nutrition in the Northwest, and therefore only focused on the Northwest and ignored the South, it's because we weren't good enough. And then I think, introducing that operationally unpolluted input, a voice into the choir of voices trying to make sense out of this crisis, will help the system evolve.

Dominic Naish: 26:38

Potentially. I mean, I think I would see it the other way in that if you have an external voice saying, Here's more information, his advice, here's a broader perspective, that country director that head of programmes will say, ultimately, that's a third party and I'm not accountable to them, I need to do what I need to do. So for me, that voice has to come from the inside. It's a little bit like if you... this is a an imperfect analogy, but I think you'll you'll see what I'm getting at. If you have a surgeon who says I don't have time to put on a mask and a gown and gloves and deal with disinfectant. I've got a guy dying on my table right there. I just gotta get in there. I'm sorry, I don't have time. You know, ultimately, that's their responsibility or their irresponsibility. It has to be on that surgeons boss or that hospital to say, Look, this is an impediment, no getting around it, it does slow you down to put on this protective gear. But it's also imperative. Even in a life or death situation, you have to take the time to do it properly. And if it's some third party regulator, or, you know, someone else saying, Well, this is how we do it, or... you know, ultimately that person can be ignored. So I think it has to come from inside, it has to come from the organisation who takes it upon itself to say, this is how we do it.

Lars Peter Nissen: 28:16

So I'm not arguing that. Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that you can outsource your analysis. I think it is the responsibility of every single humanitarian organisation to think about and justify why they are present in a given context and why they do what they do. So it's not a question of either or so, Somebody externally delivered an analysis and now let's do what they say. It's more like reading to newspapers. It's more like would you invest your pension money in a company based on what that company says about itself? Well, I'm sure that would enter the equation, but I'm sure you would also, before you throw in all your your money, you would also want to hear what an independent stock analyst has to say about that company. And I think that's my point. Why don't we have independent stock analysts?

Dominic Naish: 29:08

Sure, no, I can definitely agree with that. And the more accountability that can be introduced, the better. You know, the more people who are invested in a humanitarian response, whether it's journalists or analysts or civil society, definitely the better. And I think that raises or begins to touch on another really key issue in this debate, which we haven't sort of addressed yet, which is the role of local knowledge, local organisations, local research, or academic or other types of institution, who don't have to do their homework because they already know. You know, why international NGOs struggle so much to listen to those people? Because one sort of answer to this whole topic that we're discussing is, cut out the middleman. Just ignore the international NGOs completely and start funding local NGOs. That a... I think there's quite a broad consensus that we need to be doing a lot more of that. And I certainly agree with that. But again, I think the way to get there is, you've got to have some bridges. And I think having better analysis done by the internationals who, like it or not, are currently plugged into institutional donors, that's the way to begin to bridge that gap.

Lars Peter Nissen: 30:48

The thing that always gets me, and I like you're thinking about cutting out the middleman, but the thing that always gets me is that, if you go to any major NGO, I can tell you, there's one part of that organisation that is brilliant at making evidence based decisions and uses data like there's no tomorrow like state of the art. That's their fundraising department. They know exactly how to target different people, what works, what doesn't work, they know which street to put their faces on so they can get recurrent contributions. It's it's fantastic to watch that. And it's utterly depressing to then contrast that to the way in which data information decisions are made on what we actually do, which is watching humanitarian operations, in which you describe vary well in this piece. And so, again, I fully agree that we have to democratise the way in which the humanitarian narrative is shaped and then obviously, we need to have the populations affected by crisis have a major voice in this, not the only voice but a major voice. And we have to have the local civil society have a major voice in this. And we are not... right, with the experts flying in from the outside and doing a more or less haphazard analysis, and then we get money and we do stuff. iIt's a bit of a simplistic way of describing things, of course, but for me, that is more or less what it boils down to. And for me that... it's so depressing that this is not the centre of the humanitarian discussion, because this is how we figure out are we are we doing the right things. And instead, we're running around, figuring out are we doing things right, without asking is the purpose... are we really purpose driven? Are we really principled? And we have to come to terms with that.

Dominic Naish: 32:46

Yeah, I was thinking as you were speaking, and you use the word principle at the end, just there. I think, coming back to my own experience in the sector, I sometimes felt as though the principles of neutrality and impartiality were actually slightly misused in this sense, and became almost a contributing factor to the lack of awareness and accountability as you're describing. And the... I'm paraphrasing here, but the logic is almost, because we're neutral and impartial, It's good for us not to know the details of the politics, the history, the economics, because if we don't know, how can we be biased. And I think that's possibly one of the reasons why people think, actually, there's no harm in not knowing. It's quite good for us because we're neutral.

Lars Peter Nissen: 33:47

But it is good for us in the sense that it makes our life easier. And anybody who thinks that a stronger evidence base will make their life easier is... doesn't understand how this work. It will make life more difficult, because it will make it clear what choices we are making, but it will make our work better and more impactful. I really hear what you're saying on that principle discussion. And for me what what that boils down to is two very different conceptions of what... or two very different perceptions of what principles actually are. The way I would look at them is, the principles is what we aspire to achieve and that we know we probably never will be able to. But it's like a measuring stick that shows us how much short did we fall off the target this time. So that's the... it's what keeps us in check. It's the guiding principle. And I hear another version of them which is, these are the things we have to comply with our we are bad professionals or bad people or bad humanitarians. And for me that's a very naive way of thinking about them. It's also a very institutional way of thinking about them. I think part of the problem is that institutions we have are set up to squash any risk and uncertainty and create predictability. And if you look at it from that perspective, the way of thinking about neutrality, for example, it makes sense. But that's not the reality we live in.

Dominic Naish: 35:27

Yeah, and I think you've touched upon a couple of key things there. And one of them, which I really agree with, is the sense of being the good guys. That, you know, where we're very professional and high functioning. But more importantly, we're good. You know, our motivations, our intentions, altruistic, human. And I think what this breeds on an institutional level, rather than an individual one is, is exactly what you just said that there's no space for saying, Maybe we got this wrong, or We did that really badly. It also becomes unspeakable to say, you know, Let's try doing it a different way. Because that's risky. And if you're always the good guy, then, you know, you can't take the risk of being the bad guy, because then who are you? So I think that's a really important point. And also, just to go back to something you said a little before that, absolutely, it's going to make it harder, you know. Contextual data, doesn't make one's life easier. It unquestionably makes it harder. And one of the reasons that my own experience was often very difficult, I think, was because I was an irritant, basically. My job in questioning why my organisation was doing things, or how, it on a day to day, week to week operational level, that was an impediment to getting on with the smooth running of the ship. And, therefore, you know, as an individual researcher in an organisation that isn't necessarily incentivized in the right way, that person just gets sidelined. And you know, me and my peers experienced that in so many different settings.

Lars Peter Nissen: 37:26

So after five years as a humanitarian irritant, you decided to call it quits, left the humanitarian sector, more or less frustrated, and went into a different industry? Is that how it was?

Dominic Naish: 37:39

Yeah, I sort of... I don't know if I left so much as I just ran out of steam. I didn't have the energy to accept another mission or apply for another job. So it wasn't that I consciously said I'm gonna go and search for something else because I thought of something better to do. It was more a sense of, I'm just exhausted, I can't keep pushing sort of against the tide. And then yeah, as it happened, I was very fortunate to be offered a position in a in a think tank where I am now. And yeah, I cannot very easily see a route back into the humanitarian world for me, even if I wanted, which, given the way I left, I'm not sure what would I do?

Lars Peter Nissen: 38:38

But where you are now in a think tank? Is that more satisfying? You're more at home there?

Dominic Naish: 38:46

In many ways. In many ways it's a very good environment for me, you know, as someone who cares about learning, understanding, analysing, I'm now in an institution that is completely geared towards learning and understanding and analysing. So in that sense, it's... you know, it's a sort of hand-in-glove fit. But I do miss, honestly, the sense of being on the ground and being only one step away from making a difference, quote, unquote, as opposed to two or three steps away. So there's still a lot of elements of the humanitarian world that I still really... you know, when I hear about my friends were going off to do different missions there's still you know, a big part of me that thinks I, I want to do that.

Lars Peter Nissen: 39:48

You know, Dominic, I am thinking that it's that we have a problem if we lose people like you, because you you have presented such a clear analysis of some of the basic problems we have. And It really pains me that you... not run away, I think you're more just let go. Just stopped hanging on after five years. I fully understand that choice and I'm really happy that you are in an environment now where learning and analysing is sort of the focus of things. And I wish we would find a way of creating more conducive work environments for your profile and your skill set because we desperately need that. But first and foremost, I want to say a big, big thank you for writing that article in HBN, I think it's an excellent piece of work and please go read it, if you're listening to this. And thank you for not giving up in that sense, but to continue striving on to improve the way we do business. And we hope to have you back some day.

Dominic Naish: 40:50

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity, Lars Peter, I've really enjoyed being able to speak with you.