Attachments
I. Introduction
More than three decades ago, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/182 provided the blueprint for the current humanitarian system, marking the international community’s commitment to providing humanitarian assistance through strengthened coordination.
From the creation of the inter-agency standing committee (IASC) and the 2005 introduction of the Cluster Approach, via the 2011 Transformative Agenda, to the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and ‘Grand Bargain’, the system has since continuously strived towards clear(er) leadership and coordination, and shared accountability for collective outcomes in the main areas of humanitarian response.
At the same time, evidence suggests that these ambitions and commitments are not always translated into reality. Agencies that have assumed cluster leadership responsibilities since 2005 have not sufficiently prioritised this role within their institutions, which in combination with the confusion surrounding the meaning and impact of cluster ‘coleadership’ has led to a dilution of leadership and accountability.
Likewise, commitments to collectively address priorities such as a principled approach to humanitarian action, the centrality of protection, localisation, or accountability to affected populations have been given insufficient attention in inter-agency coordination, especially at the country level, for too long.
Why is it so difficult to turn commitments to work collectively and effectively towards a shared goal into a reality?
HERE’s research has shown that an important reason is that collective leadership is not realised to its full potential.
Understood broadly as a dynamic process of working collectively in view of a shared goal, collective leadership calls for everyone in the humanitarian system to take responsibility for the success of the system as a whole – not just for their own area of interest or mandate. This paper will discuss some of the factors that appear to undermine the collective ambition in the humanitarian system by focusing on the interface between collective ambition and individual agency. It appears from HERE’s research that beyond their commitment to collective approaches, there is little practical incentive for agency leadership to put the collective ahead of the individual mandate.
Agencies’ internal systems, processes, and, perhaps most importantly, their mindsets are focused on what they achieve as an agency.
The environment in which they operate reinforces this by stressing the competitive need for funding, resources, and space.
After an explanation of how this paper methodologically fits into, and builds on, HERE’s current and previous research, it will outline in more detail how it understands and approaches the concept of ‘collective leadership’ in the context of the wider humanitarian system. The paper will then discuss current barriers to its realisation in practice, including agencies’ internal systems, but also external factors. The paper concludes by suggesting possible ways to offset the existing incentives that predominantly encourage individual agency performance and accountability at the expense of the collective.