A trend for 2007
The general trend for the coming year, and particularly hopes of peace and the restoration of a minimum of security in the most volatile areas, highly depends of events and strategies that should be announced in the first weeks of the year.
Amongst these schemes, we can highlight the United States Strategy for Iraq; the Iraqi Government policy, which would highly depend on (1) its credibility amongst communities nationwide, (2) its capacity and will to keep a spectre of all parts of the Iraqi society amongst its members and (3) its capacity to have an impact on the security situation in the country; the political process evolution and the revision of the constitution; the Iraqi leaders plans; and the International community strategy, through the United Nations.
Nevertheless, whatever are the above-mentioned strategies; the situation is not expected to improve in the forthcoming months. Indeed, the change of leaderships at all level of the Iraqi society and the evident and declared-will of the new leaders to reinforce and perpetuate their power should lead to more divisions and fight between them and (1) the former leaders, and (2) other potential leaders of the areas, tribes, neighbourhoods, etc.
Accordingly, two main trends are highly expected during the first months of 2007, which might undermine the path to Peace for a while:
1- There is a high risk of community withdrawal, which has already started in 2006. This withdrawal would increase the gap and misunderstanding between communities, fuel tensions and increase the risk of massive attacks against homogeneous areas, while some leaders might use this gap to perpetuate their leadership;
2- In the most volatile areas, civilians who cannot flee are expected to seek for security by all means, which might be community withdrawal as above-mentioned, but as well through an allegiance and support to any group that might be shown as protecting them, whether is the affiliation of the armed group.
According to this general trend, the humanitarian situation in the central and south area of the country is expected to worsen.
Consequently, the humanitarian intervention and support should increase, related to the needs of the affected populations. However, current obstacles for the access to vulnerable that have already been identified - as the high level of violence, the lack of knowledge of the communities about humanitarian principles, etc - are not expected to evaporate.
Therefore, all humanitarian actors should join the common efforts to find and propose coordinated solutions for a neutral, independent, accountable and impartial approach.
Then, main objectives and challenges of the humanitarian community in the following months are expected to remain the same that have already been faced during the past months:
- Access. According to the emergence of new leaders, the identification of those leaders and armed groups that are controlling access to areas where the affected populations are, should be a priority. Since 2003, fighters and leaders have always been difficult to identify. It is expected that during the following months this identification might become easier, which might enable talks and deals to increase the access and the humanitarian operational space. In addition, access might be increased through the highly encouraged development and sustainability of local networks. Increasing access is the main challenge that should improve the quality of aid (and vice-versa).
- Funding. During the following months, it is expected that donors will increase their emergency capacities, due to the increase of needs. However, some donors might remain reluctant to work through remote strategies. Therefore, humanitarian organisations might try to increase their transparency to donors in order to give them a more exact picture of the reality, and work together on monitoring mechanisms.
- Monitoring. According to the above-mentioned issues, monitoring is expected to be a great challenge for humanitarian organisations in the following months. Therefore, if perfect solutions cannot be founded, it is expected that UN agencies, donors and all actors define new ways to monitor the implementation of the aid delivery, developing new mechanisms that have already been tested, as the peer monitoring.
- Preparedness. The on-going contingency plans updates are expected to increase the preparedness of humanitarian organisations. Nevertheless, according to the United Nations strategy that would be defined in New York, NGOs might have to work on their own preparedness plans, particularly regarding access and pre-position.
- Human Resources. In the most volatile areas, the human resources issue is expected to become one of the main challenges for organisations: departure of key staffs, need to have community-based staffs, tensions inside the staffs, etc. However, if the situation continues to worsen and the communities become withdrawn, it might be expected that, according the identification and talks with leaders of the communities, the access for International Staffs might improve. Obviously, that would mean to have experienced staffs with a profile to deal with armed group and to operate in volatile areas.
Finally, if the humanitarian community stand on the on-going crisis in Iraq, the main expected trends for 2007 should be a high level of commitment, understanding and compliance with the context, and creativity, which, in the current volatile context, appear to be the only ways to save lives.
Salam NCCI Team