Editorial (Humanitarian Aid on the Move No. 22)

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the weaknesses of the humanitarian sector in the face of a global and systemic crisis. International aid organisations were subjected to significant constraints, limiting their ability to take action due to movement restrictions, but also due to the stigmatisation of staff, lack of trust within communities and the system’s lack of agility. Despite these difficulties, humanitarian organisations did show a great deal of adaptability in order to pursue their programmes and deploy their COVID-related activities. But the pandemic brought home the fact that international organisations only have a marginal role to play in responding to a multi-sector crisis of this scale.

For their part, national and local actors were often better placed to gain access to and communicate with people, particularly to disseminate public health and prevention information, to identify priority cases and deliver vital assistance. Despite all the constraints, new forms of activism and grassroots action blossomed all over the world to bring about change or provide assistance.

The health crisis and its secondary effects highlighted shortcomings and inequalities of all kinds, in both the Global South and the Global North, which sometimes led to genuine humanitarian and social crises. At the same time, the pandemic boosted certain issues that the aid sector has been talking about for years (the increased role of local actors, the environmental footprint of aid, integrating climatic risks into project design, etc.).

The global crisis caused by COVID-19 therefore appears to be an opportunity and a decisive moment to reorientate the way humanitarian action is implemented. By raising questions about its approach and its operational methods, it has forced the sector to rethink the roles of different actors and the way that international aid functions. These issues are all the more important as the current crisis could just be a ‘foretaste’ of crises to come due to climate breakdown and its multiple consequences.

On 22-24 September 2020, we were able to hold the Autumn School on Humanitarian Aid, with around thirty people (respecting relevant protective measures!) present at Groupe URD’s headquarters. In the light of recent work carried out by Groupe URD (the COVID-19 Observatory), the Autumn School underlined the need to rethink and reinvent the operational methods of the international aid sector so that it can fully play its role in meeting the challenges ahead and counter the inward-looking tendencies of societies in all crisis contexts, both in the North and the South.