17 | First Aid — Last Resort

Anyone who has ever been involved in a big car accident, or any other emergency situation knows: ABC (Airway, Breathing, and Circulation), immediately call for help, and treat first what kills first. Disasters happen — at any given moment and at all scales. And whenever an emergency or disaster occurs, the only thing we need is help: first aid.

Many humanitarians are stationed at the frontlines of immediate relief. This kind of work can be unimaginably difficult and dangerous. It takes courage, discipline, dedication, and endurance to be part of this work. Realistically, and unfortunately, there will always be a need for immediate action. 

Humanitarian organisations operate in a variety of contexts. But are all of those situations emergencies? As always — it depends. What can be said, is that there are many “chronic crisis countries” (CCCs*). And for the people who live in a chronically difficult environment, first aid should not be their last resort. 

Remember the man who thought his job was to receive items from NGOs? His understanding of the situation is a perfect example of harm from long-term aid. It’s not uncommon that humanitarians close their eyes and plug their ears when “long-term” is being discussed — waving it off as “development business”. This comes at the expense of a chronic blindness to the harm that continuous humanitarian aid can cause. First aid is good at one thing: “first aid”. In healthcare, repeating a first aid procedure will not lead to the desired results, if a healthy diet or quitting smoking is what’s really needed to improve the health condition. So, regardless of many humanitarians' (assumed) denial of engaging with long-term solutions, the negative effects are evident. Continuous humanitarian action in CCCs is not not long-term. It’s just not long-term helpful, and therefore failing the big humanitarian mandate of “saving lives”. 

Anything chronic hardly ever has a quick fix. “Chronos” is Greek and means time. Chronic is not the opposite of temporary. But anything short-term, repeated again and again, will inevitably turn into long-term. This is how “emergency” becomes a matter of perception.

Maybe it’s time to reflect on chronic humanitarian action. A re-evaluation and reconsideration of humanitarian presence in CCCs is overdue. How can humanitarian action better fulfil its call to uplifting the dignity of people? There are many places around the globe, where humanitarian presence is measured in decades. What approaches can be taken, that’s within the humanitarian mandate, but goes “beyond band-aids”?

Markus