Ukraine Urban Recovery (part 5): Protecting the Vulnerable in Ukraine and Elsewhere – Vetting Aid Providers

 (A continuation of discussions drawing on Brutal Catalyst: What Ukrainian Cities Tell Us about Recovery from War to be released by KeyPoint Press in autumn 2024; sign up for release notification at www.ukrainecities.com)

Most aid providers—whether states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), faith-based, domestic, international, or in some other form separate from or combining one or more of these—are legitimate, well-intentioned, capable, and competent. Most. Unfortunately not all. Parsing between those that are and others that fall short is a longstanding and as of yet unmet need during and in the aftermath of disasters, war included. Some of those falling short consist of nothing more than thrill seekers or funding pirates as were found operating in and outside Mosul in 2016-2017 Iraq. “Medical NGOs” included the little if at all qualified who posed for cameras or sought to partake of donor largesse, in at least one case a “medic” tearing the bandage off a sucking chest wound to demonstrate how and why it was first applied. (For more on this instance, read of the frustrations experienced by Dr. Aaron Epstein during operations in the vicinity of Mosul in Russell W. Glenn, Come Hell or High Fever, available free at https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/come-hell-or-high-fever. Also available in paperback online from the Australian National University Press and Amazon.) In other cases, groups—or, more often, individuals within groups—have interests beyond rendering assistance, intelligence collection among those primary. This is too often the case with members of domestic or international aid organizations, accusations of alleged participation by such individuals in the October 7, 2023 attacks on Gaza reflecting the actuality or fears of this reality. In other instances it is those seeking to use aid group legitimacy as a platform for propaganda or criminality as was found in Sarajevo at the end of the last century.

That those with unfriendly intentions so easily find their way into crisis zones is unsurprising given the turmoil characterizing unsettled times. Chances are the task of vetting goes unfulfilled if already hyper-busy host nation officials do not or cannot find the resources to scrutinize aid groups’ legitimacy. There are exceptions. United Nations-sponsored deminers undergo well-defined vetting before receiving funding in today’s Ukraine. David McMahon, head of the UN’s Mine Action Project Unit in Ukraine, observed one can

go on the Ukraine Ministry of Defense website and see there that there are, I believe, thirty-five demining organizations certified to work in Ukraine. That number has grown exponentially since November of 2023. The United Nations Office for Project Services has its own pre-qualification system where we independently vet the credibility of organizations that work with the UN. We would…first make sure any organization working with us in the field of mine action has Ukrainian certification and then ensure that they have UN pre-qualification, because there are organizations that have absolutely no experience in the field. [Interviewer question: Are there organizations that somehow avoid certification?] There is humanitarian demining and military demining. There are probably former combat engineers who are part of volunteer battalions or volunteer units. In humanitarian demining, I have no evidence of it, but I have heard of farmers who are using uncertified and uninsured organizations to demine. You do have uncertified people who will go do demining with metal detectors. I have no evidence of that, but I know it exists. (from Russell W. Glenn interview with David McMahon as appears in Brutal Catalyst)

Some of the $27.8 billion in United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) aid delivered to Ukraine since February 24, 2022 (Source: “2022 Year in Photos: Supporting Ukraine During Wartime,” USAID, undated, https://www.usaid.gov/ukraine/multimedia. Image in public domain.)

Aid providers inherently compete for what are inevitably limited resources during a crisis. These might include bandwidth for internet usage, storage at airfields or other transportation nodes, housing (often in short supply due to internally displaced persons moving to avoid contested areas), fuel, and too many others to list. Some aid groups’ limited administrative or logistical capabilities see them turning to—even expecting—that military or other more robust on-the-ground organizations provide them aid in the form of security, transportation, communications, or information. Vetting such groups is sometimes further complicated by their limited agendas in combination with constrained capabilities. Better funded and broader-based organizations will remain for most if not the entire duration of a crisis, continuing to render assistance well beyond the time a catastrophe features in international headlines and public interest. Others by design or limits on internal resources focus only on challenges existing immediately after initiation of a crisis event or for some other limited duration, meaning vetting is not a one-time requirement but rather one continuing during and in the residual months or years after the worst of suffering.

That there are thousands of aid organizations worldwide—or organizations rendering aid, such as various countries’ militaries or aid components such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or the United Kingdom’s aid component of its Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)—and often hundreds in a crisis-stricken region further demonstrates that vetting is no trivial undertaking. Nor is how to approach the requirement straightforward. Guidelines are necessary. Responsibility to vet is of limited value if not backed by the authority to approve, deny, and allow or disallow entry into and participation during a crisis response. This implies creation or pre-event existence of international or national standards, “pre-event” being the much preferred alternative. The same is true of the organizations doing the vetting. While there is call for an overarching vetting authority [likely representing the government(s) experiencing the crisis, as many crises have no respect for international borders], functional area expertise is essential, the above-noted case of demining and disposal of unexploded ordnance being a case in point. Such niche-meeting capabilities are vital, but without international recognition of and commitment to taking on vetting responsibilities, they will be but isolated best practices. Aid recipients and the otherwise vulnerable in Ukraine and elsewhere will continue to suffer malpractice and subjection to ill-intensions pending assumption of responsibility by an entity such as the United Nations or one or more independent and sufficiently robust response organizations.

The answer to last blog’s trivia question:

Question: Fighting stopped in the Third Punic War (Carthage v. Rome) in 146 BC. Within a half century, when did it formally end?

Answer: A mere 2,131 years after the last of the Third Punic War’s battles in 146 BC. Formal termination ended on February 5, 1984 with the signing of a peace treaty by the mayors of Carthage and Rome.

Next trivia question (an easy one this time):

What actor in the classic film The Longest Day played Private John Steele, the 82nd Airborne Division soldier whose chute caught on the tower of the church in Sainte-Mère-Église, France? (Steele, BTW, was taken prisoner on D-Day but escaped soon thereafter. He would live until May 16, 1969.)