Format

The symposium is structured around a series of moderated sessions, each opening with short introductory remarks. The bulk of the symposium will be open debate. Participants are expected to speak individually and not as officially representing agencies for which they may work, using Chatham House rules. The results of the ensuing discussions will be reported without attribution, and circulated in summaries to symposium participants and the larger humanitarian community.

Registration for the symposium is now open, RSVP information is here. Acceptance for attendance will be on a first come, first served basis, with a maximum of 60 places available.

Background

The world is in a global recession. Despite massive economic stimulus efforts, the human, social and economic impact of this crisis will be worse than crises in places such as Mexico, Russia and Southeast Asia and may be as bad as the crisis in the 1930s. This crisis comes on the back of global prices increases, particularly for food and energy, an event which has had an already significant impact on the poor.

The World Bank Group, IMF and other IFIs are calling for massive and broad efforts to address the crisis, including pro-poor interventions. However, the immediate effectiveness of national level trickle-down injections of capital is unclear and trickle-up capital injections notoriously slow to implement.

The specific humanitarian impacts of the global economic crisis are not yet clear. Previous crises, and media reports, suggest dramatic increases in unemployment. The prospect of increased social disruption and violence has also been raised, but conditions under which this violence may take place are not clear. What is clear is that the number of people living in poverty will increase dramatically, leading to additional demands on already overburdened public and family-based support networks, particularly in countries already facing severe governance and financial challenges.

The economic crisis will place significant additional demands on the humanitarian community. These demands will come at a time of reduced overall funding. And, the economic crisis will not hold floods, hurricanes and wars at bay, and will likely increase the negative impact and complexity of these events.

Responding to the human impacts of the crisis will require approaches, methods and skills different from, but also additional to, how the humanitarian community has historically responded to crisis. For instance, large scale trickle-up asset distributions will be needed in urban areas, with food aid (a core traditional humanitarian response) of only limited appropriateness in most cases. Employment generation will need to go beyond “make work” to generate salable commodities. And reestablish the markets for these sales to take place. Limited funding will need to produce two or three positive outcomes: Labor intensive public works which targets single mothers, provides day care so the mother can work, and feeding and education for children in day care.

Donor policies will need to change, for instance permitting fast approval of quick-impact projects involving the disbursement of millions of dollars over six months, with a focus on broad outcomes and not specific outputs. The traditional distance between humanitarian organizations and the commercial sector needs to be closed, if only because poverty won't be reduced by just welfare, but also jobs.

Recognizing the extraordinary demands which the global economic crises places on the humanitarian community, the American University is sponsored a Symposium on Humanitarian Responses to the Global Economic Crisis. The goal of the symposium is bring together representatives of the humanitarian community to define new ways to respond to the impact of the current crisis. The symposium will challenge participants to “not tell us what you're doing today, but what we should do in the future”.