23 years ago, the Kosovo war resulted in large-scale displacement of people in Europe. Now, the continent is going through a similar experience with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite the distance in time, parallels can be drawn in terms of lessons to be learned for humanitarians.
Michael Mosselmans, Head of Humanitarian Division at Christian Aid – one of the 15 member charities of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Appeal - interviews Margie Buchanan Smith, co-author of ALNAP paper ‘From Kosovo to Ukraine: lessons from the humanitarian response to conflict and displacement in Europe’.
Margie shares key lessons from the international humanitarian response to the 1999 Kosovo crisis and highlights why these should be considered as part of the 2022 response in Ukraine.
Margie, I found your paper a useful exercise. I think those of us working on the DEC Ukraine Appeal will really value the lessons you’ve extracted from the Kosovo response. How did the paper come about?
I managed the evaluation of the DEC Appeal Fund Response to the Kosovo crisis in 1999. When the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine began this year, there were similarities between the two responses, particularly in conversations with agencies scaling up to respond. I realised, although it was long ago, that some of the learning from Kosovo is still relevant and could be quite valuable for the response in Ukraine.
There are many differences between the Ukraine crisis and the Kosovo war, but there are also some clear similarities. What are the similarities that stand out to you?
The first big similarity is the huge population displacement in Europe.
Displacement
During the Kosovo crisis, there was an initial outpouring [of people] from Kosovo into neighbouring countries, then a movement back in. There was also displacement within the country itself. In Ukraine, these things are happening on a much bigger scale. In both cases, people have talked about ‘the largest population movement since World War II’.
Kosovo refugees fleeing their homeland, 1999. Credit: UN Photo/R. LeMoyne. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
There is the large-scale disruption of infrastructure, including civilian infrastructure, schools and houses, that happened in Kosovo and is happening on a much larger scale in Ukraine. Then we have the dominance of protection needs in both crises.
Do you see similarities between the humanitarian responses, too?
Yes. Unlike with protracted crises when international agencies often have huge amounts of experience and a long-term presence, humanitarian agencies responding in Kosovo and Ukraine had little to no presence in the countries before the crises began – resulting in a weaker relationship, if any, with local actors.
"...the record amounts of funding raised for both responses. It’s great to see, but such a generous and rapid outpouring of funding can have implications for humanitarian response that are really important to think through."
Then, and this is a significant similarity, we have the record amounts of funding raised for both responses. It’s great to see, but such a generous and rapid outpouring of funding can have implications for humanitarian response that are really important to think through.
The outpouring of funding for Ukraine certainly has been generous. The DEC Appeal for Ukraine has received more funding than the past six DEC appeals combined. What are some of the implications we should consider when dealing with such a well-funded response?
The first lesson we highlight in the paper is the importance of being guided by humanitarian principles and sector standards. When resources are in short supply, agencies are required to make conscious decisions to ensure those in greatest need are being prioritised – in line with the humanitarian principle of impartiality.
When a response is particularly well-funded, like in the cases of Kosovo and Ukraine, agencies can feel pressure to prioritise certain activities in order to spend money fast, meaning it can be easier to forget that moral compass. Sectoral standards like ‘assessment’ ensure our response is driven by assessment of need rather than by perceived need or external pressure.
I would also draw attention to the risk of the international response becoming politicised. There’s always a risk of that in conflict-related crises, but it’s more acute when a lot of the funding is coming from the public and governments in the West – which have taken a very clear political stance in relation to the Ukraine crisis, as they did with the Kosovo crisis.
"...when you have an extremely well-funded and high-profile crisis, financial and staff resources get drawn away to it from other poorly funded crises across the globe."
Finally, a really significant implication is that when you have one extremely well-funded and high-profile crisis, financial and staff resources get drawn away to support it, from other poorly funded crises across the globe. That happened during the Kosovo crisis and we’ve seen it since with the response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Now, we hear UN appeals for Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen are at less than 20% funded. It’s terrifying. We need to do a better job of balancing our responses.
Our [Christian Aid’s] perspective is that the Ukraine response isn’t overfunded, it’s correctly funded. The other crises are underfunded. An enormous number of people in the UK contributed to the DEC Appeal for Ukraine who didn’t contribute to any of the previous ones. We need to capture this newfound enthusiasm for humanitarian work to help us in future crises.
We need to ensure that enthusiasm is guided by humanitarian principles, too. How do we tell the public that the Ukraine crisis is having knock-on effects elsewhere? How do we shine a spotlight on those other crises so the western public, and western governments, look at them all equally? That was something we really wanted to draw attention to in the paper.
From the Kosovo response, we know that high levels of funding being raised in a short space of time can result in humanitarian agencies feeling pressure to spend money quickly. What can the sector learn from this?
The first lesson is that while the immediate humanitarian response needs significant funding, it’s important to ensure long funding timelines. This means money doesn’t have to be spent immediately and can instead be allocated to a properly funded rehabilitation effort. An enormous rehabilitation effort will be needed in Ukraine when the conflict ends. It will be extremely expensive.
The second lesson is about how we deal with the issue of the Ukraine crisis drawing resources away from other crises. We need to find ways for some of the resources mobilised for the Ukraine crisis to be made available for other extremely poorly funded crises, too.
You say in the paper that the Kosovo response was crowded, with many international actors arriving on the scene. UN coordination structures and responsibilities have changed since then, but you identified some learning about coordination that’s still relevant. Can you share it?
Yes, there are two things I want to draw attention to. Firstly, don’t break ranks. When an international humanitarian response is particularly well-funded, when agencies feel pressure to spend money fast, there can be a tendency to act unilaterally: finding local actors to work with and projects to fund – that happened to some extent in the Kosovo response. Regardless of large sums of funding being made available to different agencies, the message is ‘coordinate, coordinate, coordinate’. At the end of the day, a coordinated response will be a much stronger response.
"Regardless of large sums of funding being made available to different agencies, the message is ‘coordinate, coordinate, coordinate’. At the end of the day, a coordinated response will be a much stronger response."
Secondly, something that worked quite well in the response to the Kosovo crisis was when individual agencies – some of which were part of the DEC – made resources available to local coordination bodies. Sometimes they made funding available and sometimes they seconded staff with experience of coordinating large-scale humanitarian crises. This approach could be used with local authorities in Ukraine or with authorities in neighbouring countries.
We all know that the humanitarian system’s enthusiasm to give more power to local and national actors has been a major theme of humanitarian policy rhetoric in recent years. Did the response to the Kosovo crisis teach you anything about localisation that may be relevant to those of us in Ukraine?
Yes. Since 1999, the sector has hopefully got better at working with local actors and regarding partnerships with local actors as a partnership of equals. One learning from Kosovo, though, is the importance of being very, very clear about what the international agencies need to learn from the local actors, and vice versa – particularly when those relationships didn’t exist before.
"Conflicts are never linear processes, crises are never linear processes, and there’s no guarantee they’ll take the trajectory we think they’ll take."
In the Kosovo crisis, and I think this is the same in Ukraine, national actors had access to large numbers of volunteers who were much better placed to support communities than international agencies. At the same time, an important contribution of the international agencies in Kosovo was to support the local actors in their awareness of international standards of humanitarian response and in disaster response capacity. It’s about looking at it as a two-way relationship where each has something to learn from the other.
In the paper, you identify that many international agencies were poorly prepared for the Kosovo crisis – caught off guard by the massive and sudden movement of people – but you also note some good examples of agency preparedness and agility. Can you share any learning that might help in the response to Ukraine?
Absolutely. The idea of ongoing preparedness and agility are really important concepts. Conflicts are never linear processes, crises are never linear processes, and there’s no guarantee they’ll take the trajectory we think they’ll take. What we have now in the sector is a big focus on adaptive management. I think the Ukraine crisis, and what we’re seeing today in terms of population movement, calls on us all to put that adaptive management in place.
One learning from Kosovo is the importance of humanitarian agencies doing continuous analysis of the political context so they can identify different scenarios that might happen, rather than pinning their response on one expected trajectory. Drawing on the knowledge of local partners and staff is key to this.
Another is the value of collaborative planning and preparedness efforts. If agencies do contextual analysis together and share their scenario planning, they’ll produce a more coordinated response and will be in a better position to collaborate in terms of implementation.
An important area you cover in the paper that might be less well-known, is the way that the Ukraine crisis is impacting different ethnic groups. Why is understanding the needs of different groups so crucial to an effective humanitarian response in Ukraine?
There’s always groups that we see first in terms of suffering from the crisis. They need the response, but it’s also about looking beyond the most obvious groups and identifying more marginalised ones that also need support.
In the Kosovo crisis, the Roma communities were already highly marginalised within Kosovo society – they were more hidden, overlooked more easily. Displaced Roma often moved to other Roma communities elsewhere in Europe, but those other Roma communities were similarly marginalised. We know there are Roma communities in Ukraine so it’s important to draw attention to that particular group.
"We know from many humanitarian crises, the importance of not giving up on the hard-to-reach population – that message is as relevant for Ukraine as it is for any crisis."
In a highly polarised conflict in Europe, it’s also important to ensure groups behind certain conflict lines are supported. In the Kosovo crisis, that included ensuring displaced Serbs were given the same amount of attention as displaced ethnic Albanian Kosovars. In Ukraine, that means doing as much as possible to reach groups within Russian controlled areas, for example. We know from many humanitarian crises, the importance of not giving up on the hard-to-reach population – that message is as relevant for Ukraine as it is for any crisis.
If you had to highlight just one lesson from the paper for us to keep in the forefront of our minds, which one would it be?
I would have to go back to the humanitarian principles: maintaining our neutrality and independence of political agendas and providing a response that’s guided by need. Keeping those principles as our moral and ethical compass will help us to do the best job possible.
Thank you, Margie, for bringing attention to such important lessons at this early stage of what will be a protracted humanitarian effort in Ukraine. When we evaluate what we’ve done in Ukraine, let’s hope we find that agencies took on board some of these insights.