Humanitarian Negotiations with Armed Groups

The Frontlines of Diplomacy

Ashley Jonathan Clements, Ashley Clements

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032239545
• eBook ISBN: 9781000768978
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Humanitarians operate on the frontlines of today's armed conflicts, where they regularly negotiate to provide assistance and to protect vulnerable civilians. This book explores this unique and under-researched field of humanitarian negotiation. It details the challenges faced by humanitarians negotiating with armed groups in Yemen, Myanmar, and elsewhere, arguing that humanitarians typically negotiate from a position of weakness. It also explores some of the tactics and strategies they use to overcome this power asymmetry to reach more favorable agreements.

The author applies these findings to broader negotiation scholarship and investigates the implications of this research for the field and practice of humanitarianism. This book also demonstrates how non-state actors – both humanitarians and armed groups – have become increasingly potent diplomatic actors. It challenges traditional state-centric approaches to diplomacy and argues that non-state actors constitute an increasingly crucial vector through which international relations are replicated and reconstituted during contemporary armed conflict. Only by accepting these changes to the nature of diplomacy itself can the causes, symptoms, and solutions to armed conflict be better managed.

This book will be of interest to scholars concerned with conflict resolution, negotiation, and mediation, as well as to humanitarian practitioners themselves.

1
The negotiator’s weak hand

• Sources of power asymmetry;
• Power, politics, and principles; and
• Conclusion.

Humanitarians routinely strike poor deals and are compelled to make unconscionable concessions in their efforts to reach and protect conflict-affected civilians. Analyses of humanitarian negotiation processes frequently attribute these poor deals – either implicitly or explicitly – to the weak bargaining position of humanitarian negotiators. This “weak hand” described in the introduction purportedly leads to unbalanced agreements that generally favor armed groups. Some humanitarian agencies operating in Somalia, for example, reluctantly consented to “buy” access from armed groups through unofficial taxes. Some used armed escorts from militia to provide their security in contravention of humanitarian principles, whilst others reportedly withdrew from frontline operations entirely, working only in more stable regions.¹ Ken Menkhaus attributed such compromises to the hostile political environment that “placed humanitarian aid agencies in an exceptionally weak bargaining position as they sought to maintain neutrality, protect their staff, and gain or maintain access to famine victims.”² Soledad Herrero similarly argued that humanitarian actors regularly negotiate from a position of weakness because they have no enforcement mechanisms; “they lack weapons, they do not control the territory, and they cannot impose sanctions.”³ Humanitarians negotiating with parties to the conflict during the war in Bosnia also negotiated “from positions of considerable weakness,” observed Mark Cutts, and therefore “met with little success at the negotiating table.”⁴

Parties in a negotiation are formally equal. Each side may veto a proposed agreement and continue negotiating or they may withdraw from the process and pursue their best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA, that is, the results attainable without negotiating, also referred to as a “fallback position,” “reservation price,” or “security point”). Yet, two parties entering a negotiation may also face enormous differences in the skills and resources they wield, as the observers cited above recognize all too well. One party is thus often perceived to be more powerful and in a stronger bargaining position than the other. Indeed, Max Glaser described this dynamic as an “inherent weakness” that precludes humanitarian organizations from changing the conditions within which they operate and negotiate.⁵ In their influential 2004 handbook on humanitarian negotiation, Deborah Mancini-Griffoli and André Picot similarly identified this weak negotiating position as a key dilemma that characterizes the practice,⁶ the key causes of which are explored below.

Sources of power asymmetry

Negotiation scholarship and evidence from practitioner studies suggest a range of factors that contribute to the inherent power asymmetry within humanitarian negotiations. These range from structural issues, such as the competitive nature of the humanitarian system, through to processual issues, such as staff turnover.

Dependence

Conflict between parties is inherent in all forms of negotiation. Humanitarian negotiations, however, often experience very little overlap between the interests of humanitarians and those of the armed groups with whom they seek agreement (or low “interdependence” – the belief that each can benefit from reaching a negotiated agreement). Armed groups are often motivated by short-term goals military or long-term political ends, with little or no regard for the well-being of civilians or their international reputation. In contrast, humanitarians rely heavily on their counterparts within armed groups to realize their interests related to access and civilian protection. This creates a power imbalance that can undermine the viability of negotiated agreements, can encourage armed groups to negotiate in bad faith, and may increase pressure on humanitarians to make heavy concessions that result in highly unbalanced agreements. These inherently unequal power relations parallel Richard Emerson’s assertion that power within social relations is predicated on the dependence of one party on the other.⁷ Rebecca Wolfe and Kathleen McGinn describe this inequality as an “asymmetry in dependence,” in which A is more dependent on reaching an agreement to satisfy their interests than B. This in turn can foster an “asymmetry in influence” between the two parties, in which A is better able to change the position of B than B is able to change the position of A.⁸

In Angola, for example, União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) was initially receptive to negotiation during the early 1990s. Richardson attributed early success to the group’s desire to support its constituents and enhance its international standing. But amid intensified hostilities, strategic losses, and international condemnation, the rebels became increasingly unconcerned either with their public image or with the welfare of Angolan civilians. Interdependence thus waned over time at the cost of negotiated outcomes.⁹ Negotiations in Yemen took a similar turn. The Houthis initially sought international legitimacy during the Saada Wars of the early 2000s and consequently were receptive to humanitarian negotiation. By mid-2015, however, international condemnation had alienated the rebel movement, which then perceived there to be few reasons to negotiate amid escalating hostilities.

In contrast, access negotiations in Myanmar were seen by Kachin rebels to be of value to the group by enhancing their legitimacy and reducing the burden of caring for displaced civilians. The KIA were therefore highly receptive to international demands related to the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Yet interdependence appears to have been far lower for protection-related negotiations, likely because of limited awareness of international norms among Kachin civilians and their strong support for maintaining combat effectiveness – even at the cost of compliance with international norms.

Humanitarian negotiations are therefore frequently characterized by unequal levels of dependency. Humanitarians generally perceive themselves to be dependent on armed groups for realizing their objectives more often than armed groups perceive that they need humanitarians to achieve their goals. This asymmetry places humanitarian negotiators in a particularly weak position and may mean negotiations do not take place at all until interdependence grows. Nevertheless, as the later chapters of this book demonstrate, the skill of a negotiator and the range of tactical options available to them can overcome this imbalance. Indeed, the party with the greater range of tactical choices may enjoy their own “asymmetry in influence,” as is often the case with humanitarians.

Competition

Perhaps equally significant is the occurrence of competition between and within humanitarian organizations (ingroup competition), as well as between humanitarians and international political or security actors (out-group competition) during humanitarian negotiations, as detailed below.

Ingroup competition: Humanitarian organizations seeking access and promoting the protection of civilians often compete with one another. The humanitarian system’s independent actors and diffusion of power leads to its members facing alternating pressure to compete and to cooperate with one another. Achieving coherence – let alone coordination – in humanitarian negotiation is consequently a frequent challenge for negotiators. Different mandates, interests, and needs within a resource-scarce operating environment often encourage agencies to negotiate independently, thereby duplicating efforts and potentially undermining the efforts of other negotiators looking to strike their own deals. This dynamic was evident during triadic negotiations between the UN, the Sudanese government, and the armed opposition movement (the SPLM/A) during the 1990s. The lack of coordination among humanitarian actors significantly weakened the humanitarian negotiating position, argued Masood Hyder, and was exacerbated by the lack of support or clarity from headquarters. These tensions were fueled by competition between agencies as well as competing priorities between operational agencies and those prioritizing human rights approaches.¹⁰ Antonio Galli similarly contended that despite the recognition among humanitarian actors of the need for a common policy covering negotiations with Hamas over access to Gaza, “the varying positions of different organizations” proved too significant for agreement to be reached.¹¹

This dynamic builds on Robert Putnam’s concept of a two-level game – that is, the notion that international negotiations take place both domestically to generate support and internationally in search of agreement.¹² In Yemen, too, competition among agencies undermined coordination and allowed them to be played against one another, negatively affecting humanitarian access. The overcrowded negotiation space allowed their counterparts in the Houthi Movement to effectively “shop around” for more malleable or weaker partners, as detailed in the following chapter. Hoffman and Weiss cautioned that, in many war zones, such competition risks exposing the sector to rampant manipulation and weakens the humanitarian bargaining position.¹³

Yet even highly centralized negotiations led by a single UN agency can face a conflict of interest that undermines negotiated outcomes. In Bosnia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was the lead agency and therefore mandated to negotiate on behalf of the humanitarian system. Even within this centralized process, however, competing priorities became apparent and internal divisions undermined the humanitarian negotiating position. As Cutts recalled, “those responsible for negotiating humanitarian access with the warring parties often contradicted and undermined each other.”¹⁴ A similar dynamic emerged in Yemen during the Saada Wars, in which OCHA’s negotiators experienced tension between their responsibility to negotiate access and the terms that their constituents (other humanitarian agencies) were willing to accept. Richard Walton and Robert McKersie recognized this as the tension a negotiator faces between their role as “bargainer” and that of “representative” – what they term the “boundary role conflict.”¹⁵ This tension is perhaps more pronounced during humanitarian negotiation than during many other forms of negotiation (such as trade negotiations or arbitration) because concessions are seen as a refutation of ingroup standards¹⁶ – specifically, of humanitarian principles.

Divisions are also seen within humanitarian organizations themselves. Agencies can be internally divided when staff have differing political allegiances or are from different ethnic groups, leading to inconsistency and confusion during negotiations. Or managers, negotiators, and policy makers within a given agency may disagree on appropriate concessions to make and what issues constitute red lines, particularly when they confront a clash of norms, as discussed below. Large agencies can also have multiple mandates, meaning they may have responsibilities for development and peace-building work as well as running humanitarian operations. These different mandates often compete with one another. In Angola, Anna Richardson observed that humanitarian negotiations were used as a trust-building measure between parties to the conflict in an attempt to bolster a national peace process. Actors involved in humanitarian operations were often the same as those involved in peace talks, and the two became blurred in the eyes of combatants. As prospects for peace broke down, she argued, the linkages between humanitarian assistance and the peace process ultimately undermined humanitarian negotiations.¹⁷

Outgroup competition: The second element of competition that leads to power asymmetry a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The negotiator’s weak hand
• 2 Yemen: the Houti ascendance
• 3 Myanmar: a return to arms in Kachinland
• 4 Overcoming power asymmetry
• 5 Advancing the frontlines of humanitarian negotiation
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Glossary of access terms
• Selected bibliography
• Index