Leading Big and Small:

Balancing Scale and Detail in Humanitarian Leadership

Dr Hugo Slim
Head of Policy
The International Committee of the Red Cross

Keynote Speech to the 2019 Asia Pacific Humanitarian Leadership Conference

“Humanitarian Leadership and the Future of Humanitarian Action”
Melbourne, 22-24 May 2019
Thank you for inviting the ICRC to address this conference.

It is such a pleasure to be in Australia and to speak at the Centre of

Humanitarian Leadership where Deakin University and Save the Children are
pioneering teaching and research in humanitarian leadership.

A better sense of responsible and effective leadership is much needed across

humanitarian organizations. We must cultivate humanitarian leaders who are
more about others than themselves.

Our conference is looking to the future and focusing on three major challenges
for humanitarian leadership: a shifting global system; climate change and
localisation.

I will try to examine each of these areas by looking at them as three very big
things that demand our attention to some very important little things if
humanitarian action is to rise to meet them.

Big things and little things

We all live our lives between big things and little things.

Every builder will tell you that the beautiful large house you see before you
may look like one big building but it is, of course, made up of many little bricks.

And any one of you who is an academic will hold up your finely bounded thesis
as a singularly big piece of work only too well aware of the hundreds of
footnotes at the end of it and the very particular agony of their compilation.

Our discovery of the universe as human beings is marked by our simultaneous

appreciation of things that are enormous – like galaxies and newly visible black
holes - and our equal amazement at things that are miniature – the nano world
of particles and sub-atomic particles which determine so much about the
world around us.

This all makes for a distinction between great objects and the smaller materials
that construct them.

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So it is in humanitarian action where there are important big things and
important little things - great strategic objectives and the organizational
materials needed to bring them about.

A humanitarian leader must understand and attend to both if she or he is

going to succeed.

This ability to handle scale and detail is a consistent feature of good leaders.

Good leadership is also marked by a person who can give his or her people
four important ingredients which will enable them to succeed: vision,
explanation, equipment and encouragement.

A good leader gives a clear vision that sets out a direction or a challenge which
must ring true as noble, relevant and morally important to their organization.
A vision must motivate and inspire.

A good leader must then reasonably explain why this vision is feasible - why it
is not out of reach but can be achieved by the organization. A leader’s
explanation must also give people a clear sense of how each one of them has a
part to play.

A good leader then also gives their people the equipment – power, knowledge,
skills and resources – to rise to the challenge and achieve the objective.

A good leader then encourages people as they struggle, fail and succeed.

Humanitarian leadership around our three challenges of global system shifts,

climate change and localization must offer these vital forms of leadership.

I now want to look at the three focus areas of the conference and reflect on
how each one requires good leadership that is both big and small.

Leading in a shifting global system

The global political system is changing. We cannot be sure exactly how it is

changing but some things are clear and relevant to humanitarians.

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First, we are in a multipolar world where China, India and many middle powers
have truly broken free of the legacy of colonialism and marginalization to take
their rightful place as peers or near peers to the US, Russia and Europe.

This is exciting. It is more just that power and resources should be equally
spread, and that global culture should be more diverse, more colourful (in
every sense) and less dominated by one group.

But this multipolarity is also alarming because it may take shape as contest not
cooperation and contain the seeds of great power conflict and a long-range
risk of global war.

Secondly, it is clear that great powers and their peoples will challenge the
current global aid regime or ignore it as they make a competing regime of their
own. “Asian tigers” did it without aid and think the OECD aid model has failed
because they did it “on their own” but elsewhere poverty persists.

The western humanitarian system has achieved many great things but many of
its little things – its feeling of invasion, its attitudes of superiority, its risk of
dependency and its western hold on humanitarian power – has caused
resentment in some communities and some key quarters of the political class
of many countries.

Important States and influential people think there is a better way than the
western way. China, India and many countries are pursuing a South-South
model of cooperation with billions of dollars. This is an “economy first” model
that puts only marginal emphasis on humanitarian action.

Thirdly, the world seems to be moving away from liberalism to radical

conservatism and increasing authoritarianism in a pendulum swing away from
the Liberal consensus and liberal hegemony of the 1990s and early 2000s.

This conservative and nationalist swing is happening in the heartlands of

Europe and the USA. Here, many people have had enough of liberal
internationalism and are saying simply: “more about us” and “less about
them”.

Like the new Asian Way, western conservatism is also critical of the western
aid regime. Conservatives are impatient with “fat” aid bureaucracies and
multilateral institutions that are always asking for more money.

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They resent apparent “virtue signalling” of people who make lucrative careers
out of poverty and fly business class while reading reports of human suffering.

They despise the over-reach of a liberal human rights project “obsessed” with
terrorist rights, sexual identity and distant dictators when they feel their own
socio-economic rights are overlooked.

So how should humanitarian leadership respond to these global system shifts?

Leading big on this challenge means setting and explaining a vision for how the
western humanitarian system and its organizations should respond to these
changes.

It means deciding how much of the western system needs to be actively

preserved as essential and how much it can lean into and change with
emerging alternative systems.

For the ICRC, there are three key parts of the existing system which must be
held firm.

These are IHL, principled humanitarian action and the individualized approach
to suffering which engages carefully with individual human beings and not just
large scale economic aid.

Here humanitarian leaders must be ready to make a big (and respectful) stand
and actively influence alternative systems as they emerge so that these
systems appreciate, accommodate and support humanitarian norms and
humanitarian action.

But in other areas humanitarian leaders must be ready to lean into the new aid
systems and be changed by them.

We need to appreciate the critique of western aid models and be ready to

adapt to models of South-South cooperation and explore how best to support
humanitarian action along the Chinese government’s Belt and Road Initiative,
when it is needed.

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We need to connect with conservatism and authoritarianism and make a new
humanitarian contract with their values and convictions that overlap with
humanity and value life, family and community.

We have become too accustomed to our contract with liberal internationalism

and its project of progressive human rights .

This humanitarian contract was becoming second nature but now the political
weather is changing. We must strike a new humanitarian “deal” with the
conservative West and establish a humanitarian “win-win” with China.

Humanitarianism has no party politics. It must engage all political movements

to achieve humanitarian objectives and remind all politics of humanitarian
norms and law.

If this is the big vision – to stand firm on core practice and lean into new
political systems – then what are the little things – the organizational detail -
needed to make this possible?

What “equipment” do we need to deliver the vision?

Relationships are the first little thing. If our humanitarian organizations want
to be relevant globally then we must make new relationships with
policymakers, educators and practitioners across Asia-Pacific in particular.

Knowledge is the second little thing. We must stop being mesmerized by our
western philosophy, our western donors and our western ways and open up
our thinking so we can join new discussions.

Being ready to change is the fourth little thing. People will only have a real
conversation with western humanitarians if we are clearly ready to be
influenced by them and adapt around their power and model.

We must then be ready to change the way work – profoundly.

Conviction and evidence is another small thing. We need to stand firm on IHL,
principles and the importance of the individual and have evidence to show
how it adds value to any new system.

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Each one of these things are, of course, very difficult to do but they need to
take place at the atomic level of our organizations – the DNA level – which is
why they can legitimately be called small.

They are the detail made famous by the Devil…!

All of you here in Asia-Pacific are well aware of these shifts. You are already
leading down this road and I am telling you what you know. But back in Europe
and the US some of us humanitarians can still live for weeks at a time without
realizing the world has changed.

Leading in the Era of Climate Crisis

Climate crisis is another challenge on a massive and existential scale which

requires big visionary leadership and detailed small things – atomic leadership.

People in the Asia-Pacific have also been the first to feel our new era of climate
crisis. So, here too, I am in danger of telling you what you already know.

The process of developing our new Institutional Strategy at the ICRC last year
saw consistent alarms being raised about people who are living with conflict
and climate crisis simultaneously.

We refer to this as a “double vulnerability” which millions of people experience

who are living through conflict shocks and climate shocks simultaneously or
sequentially in places like Mali, Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan or the
Philippines.

Our strategy consultations have been followed by urgent operational research

and regional roundtables this year that is looking at people’s experience of
climate, conflict and resilience.

It is clear to us already that serious and relevant engagement with people

experiencing double vulnerability over extended periods of time

Our strategy already recognizes that we need to find new ways of achieving
what we are calling “sustainable humanitarian impact” when people face
climate crisis and protracted conflict for years.

Our research is already telling us four things:

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 • that simply replacing assets and repairing livelihoods is no longer
sufficient in places where these assets and livelihoods are no longer
feasible – instead we need to help people mitigate and adapt as part of
humanitarian response in conflict

• that millions of people are living at the very limits of adaptation so that
adaptation within their environment is not even possible

• that climate finance could help this kind of adaptive humanitarian action
but conflict affected countries are the least eligible for climate finance as
currently structured

• that we in the ICRC have a lot to learn about DRR, mitigation and
adaptation from our more expert colleagues in the RCRC Movement like
the Federation, the Australian Red Cross and other National Societies in
Asia-Pacific – and we need to learn it fast.

And not everyone is convinced. Many people are understandably wondering if

the ICRC is “becoming a climate agency” or “starting to do sustainable
development”.

We are, of course, becoming neither of these things. We are simply trying to

work out what it means to do humanitarian action in an era of climate crisis.

So, what are the challenges for humanitarian leadership here?

Leading big means setting a vision that is clearly relevant, humanitarian and
well understood.

At the ICRC, this involves saying clearly that our humanitarian work needs to
“adapt to adaptation” if our protection and assistance is to be relevant to
people living with the compounded problems of conflict and climate crisis.

Somehow, we need to help today’s war affected populations become the

Venetians of our age!

Venice is a city founded and developed in the fifth century AD by thousands of

IDPs fleeing continuous military attack and invasion by Germanic tribes into
Northern Italy.

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These IDPs were forced to flee from their stable rural and urban lives in the
rich farming lands of northern Italy into the marshes of the Adriatic where they
took refuge on the many reed-covered islands of the Venetian lagoon – not
unlike thousands of people in South Sudan in recent years.

Here these IDPs were forced to adapt and build a new life that accepted water
as their new environment. Instead of farmhouses, horses and carts, these IDPs
built on stilts, took to boats and accommodated floods. They became one of
the greatest aquatic societies the world has ever known.

This aquatic way of life is also known to millions in the deltas and seashores of
Asia-Pacific and this Asian-Venetian commitment to adaptation offers a role
model for humanitarian organizations today.

This leadership vision of adaptation stands firm on the need for urgent
humanitarian action that saves lives and helps people to stay alive by
supporting their efforts to move onto new pathways of resilience that include
mitigation and adaptation wherever possible.

If this “Venetian” vision of adaptive humanitarian action is leading big then

what is leading small on climate crisis? What is the equipment we need to do
this well?

Once again, the small things at the atomic level of the organization are the
accumulation of new knowledge and new relationships plus the vital trait of
“changeability” needed to develop new forms of practice in new kinds of
environment.

All ICRC operational staff will need to “think climate” and “do climate” in a way
that has not been the case to date.

Our monitoring of conflict must increasingly be coupled with the monitoring of

climate and environmental change. Our protection and assistance work will
have to take up sustainability as an important objective. And improvement to
our own green footprint will require significant changes in organizational
habits.

This operational and organizational detail will require deep leadership across
many small parts of the organization.

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NOT leading in localization

Our third conference theme is localization.

Here our humanitarian leadership must be counter-intuitive: we must NOT

lead.

Localization is ethically right and the power shift it requires is one of justice
and respect.

I agree with so many things that Degan Ali has said in her opening keynote. Her
fundamental call for the decolonization of aid is profoundly important and
deeply humane.

But I don’t agree with everything she says and I would value the chance to
debate the subject in more detail with her one day.

I think we must go beneath the headlines of localization and think through its
risks and opportunities for people in more detail.

In particular, I think the basic good of localization requires the important

qualification of complementarity and that there is sometimes a necessity for
international action and support.

I don’t think this because I am white. I think it because war is an especially

challenging context for humanity and has certain laws and practices that are
agreed by all States.

States have agreed that impartial organizations like the ICRC can offer their
services to all parties in conflict.

Armed conflict creates conditions which make it extremely difficult for warring
parties to trust one another and cooperate on humanitarian problems. This
sometimes creates a need for a neutral third party to cross the lines of conflict
to meet the legally agreed needs of people on all sides and to operate
transparently between all sides.

Sometimes this role can be played by trusted national and local actors but at
other times warring parties are grateful for the services of the ICRC and other
international humanitarian organizations.

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This is the international complementarity of impartiality support in protection
and assistance.

There is also the important complementarity of resources and expertise

which Rahmawati Husein and others recognized in their valuable session on
Indonesia yesterday.

Sometimes local actors do not have enough of what they need. And here a
complementary of resources, expertise and encouragement must be enacted
in the service of humanity.

Justice demands that if resources are available and the method of their
application will not breach the wider good of localization then they should be
shared in a spirit of solidarity not power.

Beyond arguments of necessity for international complementarity, there are

ethical demands on localization itself.

Humanity demands a localization of effective humanitarian response. It

would be wrong to praise an operation if it were perfectly local but profoundly
ineffective.

It is not enough for localizers to say simply that “we are better than neo-
colonial international action because we enable the basic good of self-
determination”. Local and national action must not only be self-determined, it
must be effective as humanitarian action and live up to the standard of
humanity.

Humanity also demands a localization of non-discrimination.

For example, Lan Mercado’s presentation reminded us that we must beware a

simplistic localization that hands over humanitarian action to patriarchal local
structures who overlook women and girls, and whose power and perspective is
as flawed as neo-colonial aid.

Corruption is often the elephant in the room of localization discussions but

seems to me to be a moot point in localization ethics.

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We can legitimately talk of corruption in many conflict and disaster-affected
societies. But I think we can also legitimately speak of corruption in an
international humanitarian system that employs too many people, flies them
business class and pays tax-free salaries close to those of corporate lawyers.

So, again, what are the leadership challenges for humanitarian organizations in
localization – both international and local?

Big leading means setting a clear joint vision of a simultaneous stepping back
and stepping up. International organizations lead by stepping back and
national organizations lead by stepping up.

This is the vision and it can be explained as ethically right and operationally
sustainable.

And what about leading on the little things – the detail of localization.

A power shift requires a difficult mindset change across international and local
organizations. The attitudes of centuries are engrained in people’s minds,
habits and practices. Detox will be troubling and take time.

And then there is deep systems change in international and national

organizations.

International organizations will need to change their structures and their

modus operandi – just as Australian Red Cross are reconfiguring their
humanitarian business model to partnership and brokerage right now.

These structures will prioritize new skills and de-prioritize current skills as
international staff move from being managers and operators to investors and
advisors.

International organizations will have to establish a relationship of cooperation

not control.

National and local organizations will need to become autonomous – liberated

and in power.

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There will still be an important need for working together in partnerships
which will require investments of time and money as new modus operandi are
discovered and honed.

And it is here in shaping new partnerships that the detail of complementarity

must be worked out: where are the gaps in impartiality, resources and
expertise and how best can they be covered?

These atomic relational changes will require courage from government donors,
INGOs and local organizations working respectively as backers, brokers and
builders.

Solidarity and patience will be key in maintaining commitment and

momentum, and in dealing with the shock of change and with failure and
scandal when they inevitably arise alongside success.

A New Era

Our conference themes have focused well on the deep challenges to

humanitarian action in a new era of global power, climate crisis and
localization.

I hope my thoughts have been a little useful. But I suspect that I have learnt far
more from being with you than you have learnt from being with me these last
two days!

Thank you.

END

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