Humanitarian priorities in countries affected by conflict

By which criteria should humanitarian aid be distributed? The gap between global humanitarian needs reported by the United Nations and the funding available to meet these needs is growing. According to the humanitarian principles, the selection of aid recipients must be based on need alone. The project argues that this need-based principle provides insufficient guidance. To address this shortcoming, the project will undertake an ethical investigation of which further principles we should employ when distributing scare humanitarian funds. The project is organized around three main themes. Firstly, how should humanitarian organizations prioritize between groups with equally severe needs when one group is more expensive to help than the other? What role should cost-effectiveness play in this choice, and should it be weighed against other values, such as distributive justice? Secondly, how should humanitarian organizations respond to belligerent parties' attempts to stop or distort the distribution of humanitarian aid e.g. through blockades or taxation? Should humanitarian organizations prioritize efforts in such areas over efforts that could help more people elsewhere? Thirdly, humanitarian aid can have both negative and positive indirect consequences, for example on the environment or on conflict dynamics. To what extent should such wider consequences be factored in when choosing how to allocate humanitarian aid? The project will explore these questions and develop empirically informed ethical arguments for how they should be answered. The partner institution for the project is the Department of Philosophy at American University of Beirut. The research conducted will be of general relevance to the distribution of humanitarian aid but will be particularly informed by the context in Syria and Lebanon. Results from the project will be published in academic journals and disseminated in seminars and conferences with both academics and humanitarian aid workers.

The vast majority of people in need of humanitarian aid reside in regions affected by violence and conflict. At the same time, there is not sufficient funding to address everyone in need. This gives rise to the morally difficult and pressing question: By which criteria should aid be distributed in these regions? According to the humanitarian principles, the selection of beneficiaries must be carried out on the basis of need alone, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress. This project demonstrates that this principle is not without problems. Firstly, the principle does not provide guidance as to how aid should be distributed among potential recipients whose needs are universally high and who cannot all be helped. Secondly, the principle does not specify what role considerations of cost-effectiveness should play in the distribution of limited resources. Thirdly, the principle does not take indirect effects of humanitarian aid on conflict into account. These difficult and important problems with the needs-based principle for selecting recipients for humanitarian aid have received insufficient scholarly attention. The project will systematically explore these questions and develop empirically informed ethical arguments for how they should be solved. The project’s outcome will both advance scholarly research and inform humanitarian practice. While the questions addressed in the project are of general relevance to the distribution of humanitarian aid in fragile states, the project will have a particular focus on Syria and Lebanon. Findings from the project will be published in academic journals, and disseminated in policy briefs, seminars and through various outreach activities including training sessions for practitioners working in the humanitarian sector.