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 Since its launch last June 2007 by the Swiss government, the new Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) headed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has drawn considerable scepticism among international aid professionals as to whether such an initiative is really needed.
The role of the new organization is to host an annual forum, which will bring together different players, including governments, private sector and media, to explore key humanitarian issues. The first meeting next June is expected to focus on the impact of climate change on humanitarian situations.
According to aid sources based in Geneva and internationally, however, the GHF appears to be yet another costly top-down project by the Swiss Foreign Ministry to further its own political agenda rather than support a justified need or to avoid institutional duplication. This initiative includes providing a savoury sop to retain Kofi Annan here in Geneva by making him president of the new foundation.
 (Editors’ Note: Earlier this month - January, 2008 - the Swiss government appointed Walter Fust, the down-to-earth head of the Swiss Development Agency (SDC) who is retiring in April, 2008, as the institute’s new Director General. Fust is expected to elaborate his own agenda in the weeks ahead. The board also includes a blue ribbon panel of Swiss and international notables such as former Irish president and human rights advocate, Mary Robinson; Bangladesh banker Mohammed Younis; former UN humanitarian aid coordinator Jan Egeland; former World Bank President James Wolfensohn and Geneva banker, Ivan Pictet. )
Some of the UN and NGO officials interviewed by this writer were reluctant to comment publicly on their official Swiss hosts, but complain that the GHF was established with no broad-based consultation. “They first established the organization and then began thinking what its role should be. How many donors would support an initiative that does not even know what it wants to do?” said one senior UN representative with long-term experience in humanitarian disaster zones. This is denied by the Swiss who maintain that numerous players were indeed approached for comment and ideas.
The Swiss are providing the GHF, which has its headquarters in the re-furbished Villa Rigot (previously the home of the now dismantled Geneva International Academic Network or RUIG/GIAN), with at least 1.5 million Swiss francs in start-up funding. It is also seconding foreign ministry staff and in-kind support to the new operation.
Clearly, the presence of Annan will prove an enormous asset to the international community in Geneva. As former head of the UN, Annan remains highly respected. He also has much to contribute with his contacts and knowledge. Yet some believe he could be deployed far more effectively on the boards of already existent organizations, such as the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), which is constantly struggling for survival and a more effective role.
Another concern is that with such direct Swiss government involvement, the GHF will not emerge as an independent body capable of open criticism, particularly when it comes to accountability among the major donors. While Annan has said that he would like the new institution to adopt a more informal approach for humanitarian debate, it remains unclear whether the former Secretary General can afford to be informal. “He is more of a careful diplomat than someone who is going to stick his neck out,” said a Paris-based Medecins sans Frontieres representative.
“The real purpose of the Forum is to promote Geneva’s and Switzerland’s role with regard to international humanitarian response,” noted a SDC consultant in Bern, who asked not to be identified. “We Swiss have never been much good at shouting aloud about abuses which may embarrass other donors or the UN itself.” When Switzerland hosted the two international conferences in Geneva on Iraq – one prior to the US invasion in early 2002, the other after – it refused to support any initiatives that would critically monitor the American role, including Washington’s abuse of humanitarianism to fulfil its own highly questionable political objectives in the Middle East.
The long-term question, however, is whether the GHF can establish a credible role given that so many other humanitarian forum initiatives already exist around the world. These include projects by organizations such as Oxfam and the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID). Oxfam, together with Mercy International, the Near East Foundation and other NGOs set up their Humanitarian Forum nearly four years ago with a focus on the Middle East, while ACFID is holding its next International Humanitarian Forum in Melbourne March 17-18, 2008 to explore resiliency in Africa.
 As one NGO director in Geneva noted: “There is no absolutely no justification to create a formal institution with its own infrastructure when so many UN agencies and NGOs would be more than willing to support a concept that brings together different players but does not require a new organization. This is what we would have told the Swiss had we been consulted about the nitty gritty.” He added that such an initiative could prove far more cost-efficient if hosted by a balanced group of concerned organizations and practitioners, including media and private sector representatives.
Several other humanitarian forum initiatives seeking to bring together different stakeholders, such as the military, media, academia, civil society and private sector, have been previously established in Geneva, but were dropped or never properly supported by the Swiss government. “The SDC has a habit of toying with projects by providing some, but never enough funding,” added the Swiss SDC consultant. “Another problem is that departments of the SDC often do not know what others are doing. The coordination within the organization is not very good and at times exceedingly wasteful.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for example, convened an International Humanitarian Forum in 2002 to explore accountability of humanitarian and political actors toward victims of war. It also sought to bring together political, humanitarian, military, business and media representatives. In 2003, the Swiss and Geneva government together with other organizations set up the Geneva Humanitarian Forum with its headquarters at Ecogia in Versoix. This was allowed to die a quiet death two years later.
The first such international humanitarian forum, however, was the Weapons of War, Tools of Peace Symposium organized by the International Centre for Humanitarian Reporting (ICHR - later Media Action International/MAI) in the mid-1990s. This successfully brought together over 300 humanitarian, media, military, academic and private sector players from all over the world at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Similar ICHR/MAI symposia were later held in Boston, Cape Town and again in Geneva, all of which produced groundbreaking new initiatives and strengthened MAI’s role as a key facilitator in the humanitarian and development world.
“We tried very hard to get the Swiss interested but all we ever got was lukewarm support and lots of promises,” said former MAI director Edward Girardet, who is currently writing a book about Afghanistan. “It was very disappointing. The bottom line is political agenda and we clearly did not fit into this agenda.”
The sad reality, he added, is that many donors – not just the Swiss – fail to understand the critical role independent and properly informed media can play in putting across the issues to the public-at-large, including the beneficiaries. “The media can also provide an extremely flexible communications bridge among the different players,” Girardet said. Despite MAI’s success in promoting Geneva as a leading international humanitarian centre and serving as a highly effective facilitator of critical and open humanitarian debate, it was forced to shut down its operations in late 2003 for lack of core funding.
What now remains to be seen is whether the GHF will be allowed to develop into a flexible, candid and independent humanitarian forum capable of making a difference. Or whether it will become yet another international talk shop pursuing political protocol rather than responding to the real long-term needs at hand.
Mark Hartford is a US-based writer researching a book on donor accountability in international aid.
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Congratulations on Essential Edge for starting this debate. I come to Geneva often for my work (I live in Paris) and there is nothing that really critically looks at what is going on in Geneva. Everyone is in bed with each other. I know many governments spend lots of money on useless projects but this is typical of the Swiss who do things that are not controversial.
If you want a real humanitarian forum then have real debate and don't be polite. There must be far more critical discussion. I cannot see this happening with Kofi Annan who is a nice man but a diplomat. Nor can I see it happening with the Swiss government.
I like the comment above of getting real people in involved who know what they are talking about and not governments chatting politely over coffee at the Hotel Interncontinental. What kind of message is it to have such a meeting in one of Geneva's most expensive hotels? Is that what humanitarianism is about?