Research relating to humanitarian crises has
largely focused on what international aid
agencies and donor governments do in
response to disasters. Much less attention has
been given to analysis of the role of the affected
state in responding to the needs of its own
citizens. Given the central role of the affected
state in disaster response, this is a notable
omission. The role of states is clearly recognised
in law and in key statements of principle.
According to the key UN humanitarian
resolution, Resolution 46/182 of 1991, the
affected state has ‘the primary role in the
initiation, organization, coordination, and imple-
mentation of humanitarian assistance within its
territory’. Similarly, the Sphere guidelines
‘acknowledge the primary role and respons-
ibility of the state to provide assistance when
people’s capacity to cope has been exceeded’.
For better or worse, the work of international aid
actors depends on the consent of states:
whether a state is strong or weak, abusive or
concerned for its citizens’ welfare, it is still the
central determinant of whether or not humani-
tarian actors can be present in crises. 

In recent years, the role of affected states in
responding to disasters within their borders has
begun to attract renewed attention. In part, this
is a result of the increasing wealth of some
developing countries, their growing willingness
and ability to respond to disasters without
external assistance and their emergence as
providers of external aid themselves.

1

India, for

instance, rejected offers of international help
following the tsunami in 2004 and the South
Asia earthquake in 2005, and Mozambique’s
successful response to floods and a cyclone in
2007 shows that it is also possible for African
governments to assert greater control over relief
processes.

2

In development policy, donors have

refocused on the role of the state, signing up to
principles of aid-giving that emphasise harmon-
isation, alignment and the national ownership

Towards good
humanitarian 
government

The role of the affected state in 
disaster response

HPG Policy Brief 37

hpg

Humanitarian

Policy Group

September 2009

HPG Policy Briefs aim to provide an
objective guide to the key policy issues
on a given topic. Readers are
encouraged to quote or reproduce
materials from this publication but, as
copyright holders, ODI requests due
acknowledgement and a copy of the
publication. This and other HPG Policy
Briefs and Reports are available from
www.odi.org.uk/hpg.

For more information on HPG’s work on
the role of affected states in emergency
response, contact paul.harvey@
humanitarianoutcomes.org.

Overseas Development Institute

111 Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JD
United Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300
Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399

Websites: www.odi.org.uk/hpg
and www.odihpn.org

Key messages

• One of the goals of international

humanitarian actors should always be to
encourage and support states to fulfil
their responsibilities to assist and protect
their own citizens in times of disaster.

• Too often, aid agencies have neglected

the central role of the state, and
neutrality and independence have been
taken as shorthand for disengagement

from state structures, rather than as
necessitating principled engagement
with them.

• States should invest their own resources

in assisting and protecting their citizens
in disasters, both because it is the
humane thing to do and because it can
be politically popular and economically
effective.

Paul Harvey, Humanitarian Outcomes

Overseas Development 

Institute

1 A. Harmer and L. Cotterrell, Diversity in Donorship:
The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid,
HPG Report 20 (London: ODI, 2005).
2 G. Price and M. Bhatt, India: A Case Study in the Role
of the Affected State in Humanitarian Action, HPG
Working Paper (London: ODI, forthcoming 2009);  C.
Foley, Mozambique: A Case Study in the Role of the
Affected State in Humanitarian Action, HPG Working
Paper (London: ODI, 2007).

HPG Briefing 37 crc  5/10/09  2:54 pm  Page 1

of development strategies. Likewise, the disaster risk
reduction agenda stresses the importance of host
government involvement, domestic resilience and
governance reform.

Understanding state roles

Broadly speaking, the roles and responsibilities of
states in relation to humanitarian aid are four-fold:
they are responsible for ‘calling’ a crisis and inviting
international aid; they provide assistance and
protection themselves; they are responsible for
monitoring and coordinating external assistance;
and they set the regulatory and legal frameworks
governing assistance. These functions are of critical
importance to the initiation and management of a
relief response, and are crucial in determining its
effectiveness. As the case of Myanmar’s response to
Cyclone Nargis shows, without state consent in
some shape or form relief is very difficult to give,
whatever the circumstances and however grave the
crisis. In Sudan, the expulsion of aid agencies in
March 2009 underlines the extent to which the
whole aid enterprise relies on the acquiescence and
support of the host government.

Definitions of what constitutes ‘a disaster’ typically
include a clause to the effect that events are on such
a scale that local capacities have been over-
whelmed. This implies a need to analyse the nature
and capacity of the state.

3

This is more than a

technical question: making such an assessment is
an inherently political act, and political con-
siderations often weigh heavily as donor govern-
ments decide whether and how to intervene.
Humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe and Darfur, for
instance, is delivered through international organis-
ations, bypassing the state because donor
governments are at odds with the regimes in Harare
and Khartoum and see them as actively involved in
creating the humanitarian crisis. Aid decisions may
also be influenced by perceptions of corruption
within recipient countries.

The growing literature on fragile states provides a
useful typology for analysing state roles in disaster
response. Three broad categories or typologies can
be tentatively identified:

4

•

States where there is an existing or emerging
social contract between the state and its
citizens, by which the state undertakes to assist
and protect them in the face of disasters.

•

States that are weak and have extremely
limited capacity and resources to meet their
responsibilities to assist and protect their
citizens in the face of disasters.

•

States that lack the will to negotiate a resilient
social contract, including assisting and protect-
ing their citizens in times of disaster.

Where states are meeting their citizens’ needs in
times of disaster, international humanitarian actors
are more likely to play supportive roles, building
capacity, filling gaps and advocating for more
effective responses. Where states are weak but have
some willingness to meet needs, a combination of
substitution and capacity-building will probably be
appropriate. States that are unwilling to assist their
people or which are themselves actively involved in
creating a crisis are clearly the most difficult to deal
with; in these circumstances, a combination of
substitution and advocacy, to encourage states to
fulfil their obligations, is likely to be necessary.

Aid agencies are in the main not very good at
assessing capacities as well as needs, although
some tools for capacity analysis have been
developed. These include Save the Children’s Child
Rights Situation Analysis (CRSA), which provides a
foundation for understanding the state’s responsi-
bility as a duty-bearer for child rights. Monitoring and
evaluation of humanitarian assistance likewise tends
to focus on what international aid agencies are
doing, and neglects government roles.

Reconciling development and
humanitarian principles

Key humanitarian, developmental and fragile states
principles tend to be viewed as discrete entities,
applicable to separate actors. Yet there is plainly no
simple distinction between the humanitarian and the
developmental realm. There is a need to consider the
extent to which these sets of principles are contra-
dictory or complementary, and to think through how
multi-mandate agencies in particular can maintain
simultaneous commitments to independence,
neutrality, government ownership and capacity-
building in disaster-affected states.

The principles of independence and neutrality are
central to how humanitarian actors position
themselves in relation to the state. What these
principles mean in operational terms is, however,
little understood or analysed. Often, neutrality and
independence are taken as shorthand for dis-
engagement from state structures, rather than as
necessitating principled engagement with them. 

In many contexts, donors are simultaneously
committed to the OECD-DAC Principles for Good
International Engagement in Fragile States and
Situations, the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness
and the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative
(GHD). This entails balancing a commitment to
respecting the independence of humanitarian action
with a commitment to ‘state-building as the central
objective’ of engagement with fragile states and

2

hpg   

Policy Brief 37

3 S. Collinson (ed.), Power, Livelihoods and Conflict: Case
Studies in Political Economy Analysis for Humanitarian
Action, HPG Report 13 (London: ODI, 2003).
4 Adapted from R. Chandran and B. Jones, Concepts and
Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations: From
Fragility to Resilience, OECD/DAC Discussion Paper, 2008.

HPG Briefing 37 crc  6/10/09  11:28 am  Page 2

3

respecting countries’ ‘ownership’ of development
strategies. Thus far, debates about fragile states and
linking relief and development have tended to
concentrate on the need for humanitarian actors to
become more developmental. An equally important
question, however, is why humanitarian principles
should not apply just as well to development actors.
Likewise, greater attention needs to be given to what
a humanitarian commitment to ownership, align-
ment and harmonisation might look like, and
whether or not this could be compatible with
humanitarian principles. There is no reason why the
Paris Declaration’s principles of harmonisation and
alignment should cease to be applicable at some
hard-to-define point when development ends and an
emergency starts.

In conflict contexts, where the state is unable or
unwilling to meet the basic needs of its citizens,
international humanitarian relief remains the aid
instrument of last resort. Working with the state may
not be possible or desirable, either because it does
not control the parts of the country where services
are needed or because donor governments are
unwilling to engage for political reasons. Where this
is the case, longer-term approaches which align with
government to the extent possible are often still
called for. 

While there are undoubted tensions, it is possible to
remain committed both to humanitarian and to
developmental principles. Doing so requires humani-
tarian actors to realise that commitments to
neutrality and independence are compatible with
principled engagement with states to encourage and
support them to fulfil their responsibilities to protect
and assist their citizens. Humanitarian actors also
need to give greater attention to respecting state
sovereignty and ownership over humanitarian as well
as development strategies, and to view substitution
for the state as more of a last resort. Equally,
development actors working in humanitarian crises
should themselves be committed to humanitarian
principles of independence, neutrality and
impartiality.

Building and undermining capacity

International aid has often been criticised for
ignoring, sidelining or actively undermining local
capacities.  The potential for international aid
agencies to undermine or inappropriately substi-
tute for the state has often led to tense relations
between states and international actors. 

The structures and organisational cultures of aid
agencies and the attitudes of aid workers are critical
components of the sometimes dysfunctional
relationship between aid agencies and govern-
ments. An ability to speak local languages is clearly
important, as is better knowledge of national
contexts. Both, however, are often in short supply.

The rapid turnover of humanitarian staff inhibits the
development of local knowledge and the personal
relationships needed to work effectively with
government counterparts.

More fundamental than concerns about duplication
or inappropriate substitution for the state is the idea
that international relief somehow undermines the
social and political contract between a state and its
citizens by allowing governments to evade their
responsibilities for responding to disasters. It is
important not to overstate the importance of
international relief actors in influencing the politics
of developing countries. The idea that abusive,
corrupt or authoritarian regimes responsible for
creating or ignoring humanitarian crises would show
more concern for their citizens in the absence of
international aid agencies is a largely unproveable
counter-factual. It seems unlikely that bad regimes
would display greater regard for their humanitarian
responsibilities were aid agencies to depart. A more
serious concern is perhaps that the action of
international relief in ameliorating the worst
suffering in humanitarian crises might delay or
prevent desirable regime changes by masking the
worst effects of misrule. Again, however, it is difficult
to see how this can be avoided without undue
cruelty and a willingness to stand by in the face of
unacceptable suffering, neither of which the
humanitarian imperative should permit. 

There is often a tendency to assume that govern-
ments will be too corrupt to deliver aid effectively,
without considering alternatives to international
agencies substituting for the state and without
acknowledging that aid agencies are themselves not
immune to corruption. Greater attention should be
given to supporting state actors to provide assis-
tance more accountably and transparently. There has
been a propensity for analysis to portray assistance
as either completely state-led or completely state-
avoiding. There is a halfway-house here: state-led
responses with significant investments in oversight,
monitoring and audit. Humanitarian aid channelled
through governments does not have to be
unaccountably handed over. 

It is important to balance criticism of humanitarian
aid as undermining capacities with recognition of
genuine attempts to build and work with existing
government capacities. The comparative wealth and
strength of the international humanitarian system
can make it an easy target for knee-jerk criticism that
fails to acknowledge both real efforts to build
capacities, and real constraints to working with local
institutions in some contexts. In Mozambique, for
instance, international donors have given strong
support to the government body responsible for
disaster response, the National Institute of Disaster
Management (IGNC), helping to fund the employ-
ment and training of 285 staff and equipping a
national headquarters and several regional offices.

Policy Brief 37

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4

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Policy Brief 37

Conclusion

A long-overdue reappraisal of the roles and
responsibilities of states in relation to humanitarian
action is finally taking place. Substitution for the
state may sometimes be appropriate, particularly in
conflicts, and in both conflicts and natural disasters
there will always be a need for independent and
neutral humanitarian action. However, one of the
goals of international humanitarian actors should
always be to encourage and support states to fulfil
their responsibilities to assist and protect their own
citizens in times of disaster. International aid
agencies need to review what this means for how
they operate, and to more systematically assess
state capacities. The trend will be to move from
delivering aid directly in ways that substitute for the
state to supporting states to deliver on their own
responsibilities and advocating for state actors to
address gaps in responses. The disaster risk
reduction agenda increasingly recognises the
primary role of governments in disaster risk
management, but the issues this agenda raises are
often divorced from the central concerns of
humanitarian actors.

There is a clear need for greater dialogue with
government authorities at national, regional and
international levels. At the international level, those
forums that do exist, such as the OCHA Donor
Support Group (ODSG), the Good Humanitarian
Donorship initiative and the Humanitarian Liaison
Working Group, do not properly represent the
interests and perspectives of countries in Africa, Asia
and Latin America. Aid agencies and their staff need
to examine their own attitudes towards government
authorities, and the way in which those authorities
perceive them. Hostility towards international aid
agencies on the part of government officials is often
ignored or downplayed. In inductions, training and
capacity development, policies and guidelines,
greater emphasis should be placed on respect for
the sovereign authority of governments in assisting
and protecting their own citizens. Government
officials need to feel that sovereignty is being
respected, and that their primary role is being
properly acknowledged. In particular, humanitarian
reforms such as the cluster approach to coordination
and financing initiatives, the GHD agenda and
forthcoming milestones such as the revision of the
Sphere standards should all include a greater focus
on how aid agencies relate to governments. 

In responding to natural disasters in contexts where
states have developed capacities to meet their own
responsibilities, international aid agencies should
play an increasingly minor role. For donor
governments, this means looking again at how they
fund disaster response. Currently, funds are still
channelled overwhelmingly through international
aid agencies and increasingly the UN (through

consolidated and flash appeals and the Central
Emergency Response Fund (CERF)). In some
contexts, it may be more appropriate for donors to
fund governments directly. This does not mean that
international humanitarian aid will not continue to
be needed in responding to natural disasters where
state capacities are stretched or overwhelmed, but
it does imply that the way it is delivered should start
to look different. Where governments are parties to
conflicts, principled, independent and neutral
international humanitarian action will still be
required. However, there is a need for much greater
attention to the practical application of commit-
ments to independence and neutrality, particularly
in contexts where aid actors are simultaneously
committed to principles of state-building, harmonis-
ation and alignment. 

The tendency to portray relief as state-avoiding and
recovery as state-building risks setting up a false
dichotomy. Relief should not avoid the state, but
seek at least in part to induce the state to meet its
responsibilities. In situations where this is difficult in
the short term, it still needs to be a long-term goal.
Relief, recovery and development should all be state-
building, but in ways that are realistic and based on
good, context-specific political analysis, which
recognises both the strengths and weaknesses of
particular governments and regimes and their
willingness and ability to meet their humanitarian
responsibilities. Humanitarian actors should advo-
cate for those affected by crises in ways that critically
challenge states to live up to their responsibilities.

If governments are to meet their responsibilities to
assist and protect their citizens in times of disaster,
and fulfil the commitments made in the Hyogo
Framework and embodied in international
humanitarian and human rights law, many clearly
need to invest more in their capacity to manage
disaster risk. States should invest their own
resources in this key function of government, both
because it is the humane thing to do and because it
can be politically popular and economically effective.
Building up a social and political contract between a
state and its citizens to provide in times of crisis can
strengthen state legitimacy and make the state more
effective in preparing for and responding to
disasters. It also makes economic sense.

Aid agencies and donors currently bypass and
marginalise governments partly because of a lack
of trust in the ability of states to deliver effective
and accountable relief. This trust deficit can only
be tackled by making a stronger case to donors
and aid agencies, demonstrating effectiveness and
building up trust over time. Where relations
between governments and aid agencies are tense,
governments as well as agencies have an interest
in improving them, and should make time and
space for greater dialogue and engagement.

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