The Do No Harm Approach

The implementation of the “do no harm” approach will be evaluated by examining how the relief-to-development continuum contributed to GoS strategies, and the consequences of INGOs that decided to withdraw from the Southern sector.

According to Duffield (2002), aid was complicit with wider forms of oppression to which displaced Southerners living in the North were subject. The aid-based IDP identity reverberated with state forms of decentralisation and developmental ideas of self-sufficiency articulate with the commercial need for cheap agricultural labour. Development strategies tended to reinforce the subordination of Southerners rather than enhance their autonomy. Rather than providing a solution, INGOs were part of the wider system of dominance in which southerners struggled to survive. (Duffield, 2002: 83).

When examining the impact of aid on social and political dynamics in Northern Sudan, it is not relief per se that is under discussion but very largely developmental relief (Duffield et al. 2000: 103). As previously mentioned, the increase in developmental aid resulted in a decrease of emergency aid. The lack of sufficient food sources, including food aid, forced Southerners to migrate to Khartoum or transition camps (the border areas between Northern and Southern Sudan).

The migration of Southerners to the North resonated with the GoS military strategy. Large-scale displacement of southerners had the military purpose of weakening the SPLM/A and its supporters and serving as an incentive for Southerners to support factions allied with Khartoum (Duffield et al. 2000: 104).

Internally displaced Southerners provided the necessary cheap labour on which North Sudan’s commercial agriculture depended (Duffield, 2002: 84). The exploitive relationships between IDPs and Northern Sudanese was repackaged by INGOs as food-for-work projects, despite the fact that IDPs in Northern Sudan were subject to a wide range of unequal and highly exploitative relationships, which ranged from slavery, non-sustainable share-cropping arrangements, casual agricultural and urban labour, domestic services and so on. Thus, IDPs were subject to dominant networks and power relations linking local merchants, commercial farmers, government officials and military officers. Furthermore, INGOs were, albeit unknowingly, complicit in strengthening these exploitive networks, by encouraging the implementation of development programmes. For example, rehabilitation programmes run by SCF, including agricultural development programmes in Southern Darfur, micro-credit schemes and seeds banks, contributed to the government strategies (Duffield, 2002).

In the Southern sector, INGOs adopted a stronger stance on the “do no harm” approach. However, their actions illustrated that INGOs were ineffective in determining the cost-benefits of implementing this approach. In other words, how do INGOs know that their humanitarian programmes are fuelling the conflict and, more importantly, how do they determine that their withdrawal will be more beneficial to the affected population than the continuation of their programmes?

CARE in Western Equatoria used the “do no harm” analysis to determine whether to repair feeder or trunk roads as part of a grain-marketing project. On the basis that trunk roads could be used for military purposes, it chose to limit its

assistance to feeder roads. The decision had costs as the project only did the bare minimum to keep the market going. Repairing trunk roads could have enhanced food security, but the improvements might also have benefited the SPLM/A. There is no relevant calculus for assessing the cost-benefits of such decisions (Bradbury et al. 2000: 59).

In March 2000, the SPLM/A demanded that all OLS partner INGOs that were operating in SPLM/A controlled areas sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), stipulating the conditions under which they may operate. INGOs complained that the MoU violated the customary principles of neutrality and independence. Thus, eleven INGOs refused to sign the MoU, including MSF, World Vision, CARE, Oxfam and SCF, and had to evacuate their staff from South Sudan (Maaroufi, 2000). The INGOs’ claim that the MoU threatened their independence and neutrality was valid. However, considering the fact that INGOs were mere extensions of the GoS in the North sector (Karim et al., 1996) and that their humanitarian programmes contributed to the government’s military and economic objectives, their decision to withdraw from the Southern sector seemed hypocritical. Furthermore, INGOs have signed operative regulations with the GoS’ Humanitarian Aid Commission, which was created by the GoS to control distribution of aid to displaced people, and to control employment and appointments of senior national staff with INGOs. According to the SPLM/A “[t]he MoU was prepared in good faith and in the spirit of transparency and accountability so that both the NGOs and the SRRA can approach their duties and roles responsibly” (Nhial, 2000). The refusal to sign the MoU led to some accusing INGOs of not wanting to be held accountable for their poor performance by the SPLM/A (Harragin, n.d). Furthermore, those INGOs which decided to sign the MoU stated that due to institutional weaknesses within the SPLM/A, they did not have the capacity to exert complete control over INGO programmes.

Taking into account the lack of development and self-sufficiency in Southern Sudan, the withdrawal of Oxfam, World Vision, CARE, MSF and SCF and the

cessation of their relief programmes had dire consequences on the beneficiaries of these programmes. In Yambio, for example, World Vision had run primary care and mother-and-child units for 10 years. When World Vision pulled out due to the MoU, all the centres closed with local staff unable to keep facilities going. Illness and death increased by 50% from March 2000 and of this 40% resulted from diseases that could have been treated with simple primary care (Bower, 2000; WHO; 2000). The ratification of MoU, which would not have had a significant impact on World Vision’s programmes, might have been preferable to a 50% in increase morbidity and mortality. After renegotiating the terms of the MoU, the INGOs returned to Southern Sudan. This example illustrated that INGOs need to calculate carefully the cost-benefits of the “do no harm” approach as the withdrawal of INGOs may have disastrous consequences for beneficiaries (Bower, 2000; WHO, 2000).