Humanitarian Promises, Political Realities: The Effectiveness of International Organizations in Crisis

From escalating tensions in North Korea to deadly hurricanes in Central America, today’s global risk environment presents profound challenges for individuals, states, and organisations. Climate change, globalized communication technologies, cyber dependencies, urbanization, growing wealth disparities reflect global trends that contribute to uncertainty, deep interdependencies, rising vulnerabilities. One of the most profound challenges for mitigating such risks and responding to disasters is the inherent complexity of today’s risk environment. Risk and disasters lie at the intersection of the physical and the social. They are intimately connected to psychosocial, cultural, political processes as well as economic, engineering, environmental practices, policies. This paper introduces international crisis management with an emphasis on understanding how risk and disasters are constructed and how we might best manage disasters and disaster risk in a globalized world.

The Evolution of International Organisations

International Organization IO is an institution drawing membership from at least three states, having activities in several states, whose members are held together by a formal agreement. This refers to an international treaty between sovereign states establishing an organization with specific agreed upon tasks to deal with a specific issue, usually of a transborder nature. It minimally comprises a collective mechanism for adopting decisions among the member states and a secretariat assigned to implementing these decisions. An IO thus possesses a certain problem solving capacity that may be relevant during international crises. In degrees that vary across IOs, member states have delegated their sovereign powers to the secretariats, least so in intergovernmental bodies such as the G7 or G8 or G22 and most in the EU, where the Commission and the ECB exclusively decide upon and implement, respectively, competition and monetary policies. Because of their international legal status and the prominent role of states, IOs differ from non-governmental organizations, which may be important players when IOs are involved in crisis situations.

An IO’s precise role, the limit to which it possesses agency, varies a great deal. International organizations can act as a platform, forum or agent. Conceived of as a platform, an IO provides the stage on which member states display their positions to domestic or international audiences and continue their interstate struggles. The UN during the Cold War comes close to this description. Looked at as a forum, an IO is still dominated by its member states, their preferences, their mutual power relations, but the secretariat might serve as a broker both in tabling certain issues and in helping member states to find acceptable solutions. Member states may subsequently delegate the implementation of these to the IO. Seen as an agent, the IO secretariat can be an effective power player itself, sometimes promoting international policies that conflict with the preferences of powerful member states. An IO may thus play different roles in anticipating, preventing, solving an international crisis.

Subjectivity of the Term Crisis

In this new global context, events frequently occur which are labelled a crisis, be they in the realms of traditional security interstate conflict, new security intrastate conflict, refugees, internally displaced persons, the economy financial crisis, the environment natural disasters, man-made emergencies such as oil spills, health spread of viruses, sheer human survival hunger, shelter. The impact of such crises and the expectations with regard to International Organisations have increased because of the influence of international media and the development of new information technologies such as various kinds of social media. This raises the question of which role IOs actually play during such crises.

In times of crisis, international organizations IOs are often called upon for help. Such crises may have domestic and transnational features. In 2012 the domestic revolt in Syria, which had started the previous year, escalated and the United Nations UN was asked to help work toward a permanent solution. When in 2011 the situation in Somalia caused the population to flee across the border, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR was instrumental in providing shelter, food for those in need. Another example is the involvement since 2008 of the European Union EU, the International Monetary Fund IMF, the European Central Bank ECB in trying to solve the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis. The involvement of IOs in times of crisis comes as no surprise, since IOs are usually founded to meet transborder problems. Many governments, public opinion, civil society actors naturally turn to IOs for solutions, all the more so when a situation occurs for which no obvious intergovernmental exclusively between states solution seems within reach.

Increased regional cooperation itself is often a response to globalization. It has strengthened supranational institutions through the role of law, particularly in the EU, thereby creating a situation in which not only member states but also citizens can apply for IO assistance.

The Effectiveness of International Organizations in Crisis

What permeates through the literature is that an IO’s authority during crises is a very precarious and feeble asset. In general, IOs derive their authority from their mandate, their technical expertise, observing the informal rule that they should avoid turning member states into their enemies. The mandate of the UN on security issues has gradually expanded over the years. In the 1940s and 1950s the UN sometimes served as a forum for states to display their differences during a crisis. Major states used it to put pressure on smaller states for example the US using the UN to force the Netherlands to give up the Dutch East Indies. Many states looked upon the UN as a nuisance. After the deployment of the UN Emergency Force to save the faces of the United Kingdom UK and France during the 1956 Suez Crisis, the UN mandate was extended to include peacekeeping. Despite fierce resistance particularly from France and the Soviet Union because of the UN intervention in the Congo 1960 to 1964 this has evolved into peace enforcement and eventually the Responsibility to Protect R2P, which allows the UN to interfere in the domestic realm of sovereign states in 2011 put into practice in Libya. Most of the attention is paid to the effects of IO action. This is true for studies in most domains. Studies of IOs and interstate crises tend to focus on an IO’s contribution to four aspects of the relevant crisis: de-escalation and termination of the crisis, isolating the problem, reducing its intensity, advancing a definitive solution. The results are mixed, difficult to interpret. The alleged success of the UN in contributing to a definitive solution to violent conflicts in Angola, Cambodia, Namibia in the 1980s seems due to the stalemate and the poor prospect of quick gains for the warring parties rather than to UN actions. However, because the UN offered a face saving opportunity to end hostilities, it contributed a key element in solving these conflicts that no other global agent could provide. International organization presence in conflict situations may help stop hostilities and prevent the conflict from spreading, but may render a definitive solution more difficult when the conflict becomes frozen, as has been the case in Cyprus since 1974. This suggests that IOs may not always be the solution, but can also be part of the problem, an element often overlooked.

IOs continue to have to avoid turning important member states into their enemies. From this perspective, a crisis may pose a threat to an IO’s authority and therefore to its long term viability. It may become a crisis for the IO itself. This was already obvious during the Cold War. Fighting the Korean War 1950 to 1953 under the UN banner and inventing the idea of peacekeeping in 1956 incurred the wrath of the Soviet Union, provoked a major financial crisis for the UN, almost brought about its collapse. The politicization of the UN system in the 1970s and 1980s discredited this system in the eyes of its major contributors, the US and the UK. From a principal agent perspective, the principals the member states monitor their agents IOs and may decide to take back the authority they had previously delegated to them. Sometimes the threat comes from unexpected sides, when IOs have to compete with other IOs to maintain their authority. In the 1970s the oil crisis triggered a Western response in the form of the Financial Support Fund, but this caused intense rivalry between the IMF and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the 2000s the IMF was increasingly considered to be obsolete and faced competition from new international credit facilities such as the Chiang Mai Initiative.

International Organizations and Crises in the Twenty First Century

The meaning of security has been broadened to include many more interrelated transborder issues than violent conflict alone, such as climate change, transferable diseases, human rights, depletion of resources, as recognised in the 2000 UN Millennium Declaration. As a result, many more events than previously can be framed as a crisis. Because globalization and regionalization has reduced the policy autonomy of governments, states increasingly look to IOs to solve problems. This is a double edged sword. Success may bring praise to IOs, but failure could put their reputation at risk. This development is reinforced by two additional factors. The first is the growing influence of international media, which contribute to framing events as crises and which, by monitoring the performance of IOs, affect their standing in the world. The second factor is the risk that IOs themselves, because of heightened expectations and their expanded mandates, become increasingly part of the process of framing events as crises, thus raising the stakes for themselves as organizations. The agencies of IOs on the ground have developed clear emergencyscenarios, as the UNHCR has in refugee crises, while at the same time the crisis provides a push toward centralization of decision making, bringing IO leadership to the fore. At such moments the IO’s reputation will be at stake. Its leadership will then walk a tightrope, as it needs to act effectively on the ground without alienating its major member states. It is thus vital that an IO portrays itself as a neutral, impartial actor, better yet as a technical problem solver, rather than as an actor who through its choices can be accused of taking sides. However, this need to avoid partiality may hamper timely and effective operations on the ground.

Crises do not only constitute a threat. When managed and framed successfully, they can be an opportunity to gain political legitimacy and to push through pet policies. From an IO perspective, well managed crises are likely to boost reputation, provide additional resources, strengthen mandates. For example, during the 2003 SARS crisis, the World Health Organization WHO managed to turn the challenge posed by a non-focal, multi country outbreak of a hitherto unknown disease into an organizational success by framing the crisis as a severe threat and pushing non-compliant member states into releasing information and cooperating.

However, IOs do not always exploit opportunities to promote their self-interest. For example, in the 1990s the UNHCR had a chance to expand its mandate, but chose not to. The organization was formally responsible for giving shelter to refugees, individuals who cross national borders. When so called failed states such as Sudan suddenly had massive numbers of internally displaced persons, the UNHCR had the opportunity to obtain a formal expansion of its mandate and was invited to do so by some of its major member states. The organization was internally divided and in the end opted for a pragmatic solution, deciding to help internally displaced people on a case by case basis. This example makes it clear that understanding an IO also requires looking into its internal power struggles. In general, the crisis management literature highlights organizational aspects such as decision making and information processing, which contribute to a better understanding of an IO’s real capacity to act in times of crisis. Crises provide good opportunities to examine ad hoc responses, personal contacts, informal practices. International organizations are of particular interest here due to their complex structures, with secretariats, expert involvement, member state influences. In the IO environment we can expect bureaucratic struggles to take place between IOs and member states, between member states themselves, between IOs, and within the various departments of the IO. The character and outcome of these processes have important implications for how crises are framed and managed. To manage crises effectively, IOs depend on their member states’ willingness and resources. For example, the European Commission can use its regulative power but has no resources of its own. It depends on member states to act in accordance with its decisions. In the same way, the WHO depends on its member states for implementation. Even though the management of SARS was considered a success, it also highlighted a system that depends on member states’ ability and willingness to respond to a public health threat. In this case, Canada lacked the capacity to do so and China lacked willingness. Thus, the potential mismatch between member states’ local decision making capacities and the IO level which requires coherence may constitute the largest challenge to an IO’s effectiveness during a crisis.

Conclusion

The nature of the problem and the tasks required to solve it are important, as are the manner in which the situation is framed. The empirical analysis shows that the better IOs are at framing the situation in accordance with neutrality and impartiality, the more the response is to be decentralised in their favour. If member states at least the most powerful perceive an IO’s handling of a situation as lacking in neutrality or endangering vital member state interests, then centralisation is more likely to occur. Overall, crises provide opportunities for IO scholars to deepen their understanding of the factors that impact IOs’ abilities to act autonomously.

Gurleen Kaur
Independent Researcher

Disclaimer:
The analysis and conclusions in this article are solely those of the author. Asia in Global Affairs does not bear responsibility for the content or for any interpretations that may be drawn from it.