Gulf Between "Experts" And Vulnerable Communities
In the United Kingdom, Lord Heseltine’s recently released review has once again pointed to the importance of shifting the focus of resource distribution, provision of services and ultimately decision-making to the community level [No stone unturned in the pursuit of growth, 31 October 2012]. Not for the first time are those concerned with sustained socioeconomic growth reminded that local communities need to be empowered and incentivised to achieve success.
Community focus is also not new to those who are concerned with preventing, preparing for and responding to humanitarian crises. “Community” has become a mantra when it comes to well-intentioned calls for dealing with the plight of the vulnerable and disaster-affected. Yet, the focus on community in all too many instances suffers from several misunderstandings and misconceptions.
Some of the most poignant misunderstandings arise from what has been an increasingly recognised gulf between so-called experts and the communities themselves. In Heseltine’s report, the former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister calls for relocation of London-based civil servants to regional centres. The fact of the matter is that such transfers of experts and the knowledgeable by no means guarantee an understanding of the needs, dynamics and priorities of the communities, themselves. This was all too evident when it came to dealing with communities that were facing or recovering from humanitarian crises. In post-Tsunami Aceh or pre-Katrina New Orleans, experts are all too often inclined to propose and fund solutions that do not relate to the needs of those who are intended “beneficiaries.”
The fundamental problem is that too few experts know how to listen. This profound failing is further compounded by what one means in the 21st century by “community.” To whom, in other words, should one be listening?
The humanitarian sector – in its 20th century iteration – was born principally out of responding to communities that were geographically defined, more often than not in rural areas. This perception of community has been sustained with an emotional persistence that increasingly defies reality. It is not by chance that, despite long-running evidence to the contrary, most in the humanitarian sector only walk up to the fact that “the case load” was moving into urban areas. Yet, if this realisation underscores the tenacity with which the sector sticks to deeply rooted perceptions, it will have even greater difficulty in adjusting to the realities of a far more complex, multidimensional concept of community.
A community, be it in Somalia or Sweden, is a network of many simultaneous and contending streams of groups, activities, inputs and needs. In virtually all communities there are overlapping functional communities, less determined by geography and more by activity. In a related vein, the role of diasporas in determining the make-up and culture as well as the resources of “community” is in a time of intense migration around the world an ever greater determinant of the constituent parts of a community. Added to these facets of a modern understanding of the term is the issue of social networking and the growing array of related digital communications that, too, defines community. And, yet, none of these necessarily come together as a single hub in which all the simultaneous and contending streams can be understood in a consistent way over time.
There is a growing recognition that the humanitarian sector as well as the wider international system will have to get used to dealing with rapid change, uncertainty and complexity – a more than challenging environment for planners and policy makers. With this in mind, those with humanitarian roles and responsibilities will also have to make related adjustments when it comes to dealing with communities – for the old concept will neither serve them or their cause. Listening will be ever more essential, but in the emerging concept of community, ever more difficult.
By Dr. Randolph Kent. Dr. Kent was a member of the senior advisory panel on the UK government-commissioned, HERR review of UK emergency response, under Lord Ashdown, which reported to DFID in June 2011; he contributes chapters to the annual United Nation’s Global Assessment Report; is a member of the World Economic Forum's Advisory Council on Disaster Management. Prior to founding the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s, he served for 25 years as the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Kosovo and Rwanda, Chief of the UN Emergency Unit in Sudan; Chief of Emergency Prevention and Preparedness in Ethiopia; and Special Advisor to the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs from 1995 to 1996.
