Humanitarianism in the Network Age

In rich and poor countries, people are connecting through technology at an accelerating pace. In 2012, global mobile phone subscriptions topped 6 billion— including more than 1 billion smart phones, each with more computing power than NASA used to send a man to the moon. The planet has gone online, producing and sharing vast quantities of information.
Organizations and institutions across sectors, governments and humanitarian aid agencies are racing to understand how this will change the way they do business. Some see great opportunities; many face uncertainty. But everyone agrees that technology has changed how people interact and how power is distributed.
This report explores how new ways of interacting are bringing people in need closer to people who can help. It responds to the changing needs and practices of communities, volunteers and frontline responders. It tells the story of agencies listening to their demands for change and responding creatively.
This report imagines how a world of increasingly informed, connected and self- reliant communities will affect the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Its conclusions suggest a fundamental shift in power from capitals and headquarters to the people aid agencies aim to assist.
For some, this is an unsettling prospect. It calls for more diverse and bottom-up forms of
decision-making—a model that is not natural for most Governments and humanitarian organizations. Systems constructed to move information up and down hierarchies are facing a new reality where information can be generated by anyone, shared with anyone and acted on by anyone.
This report focuses on organizations that are embracing these changes and reorienting their approaches around the essential objective of helping people to help themselves. It highlights their experiments and efforts to adapt, and the sometimes remarkable results. But it also recognizes the pitfalls and the fact that progress has not always been smooth.
The first section is divided into four chapters. The first chapter charts how new communications technologies are already affecting people’s behaviour in emergencies. The second chapter lays out some of the most pertinent features of these new technologies, and identifies the opportunities and difficulties in applying them. The third chapter describes how aid agencies are adapting to a more open, participatory way of interacting with people in crisis, and how that is affecting their activities. The fourth chapter proposes a plan for humanitarian organizations to adapt to the network age.
The second section of this report presents country-level data and trend analysis of humanitarian assistance, bringing this information together to present it in an accessible way. While researching this report,
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it became clear that there is no single, unified data repository that supports a better understanding of how humanitarian action continues to evolve. This section is a first step towards addressing this issue.
One report cannot provide all the answers. The report acknowledges that there are serious concerns, in particular a relative lack of empirical evaluation of the new techniques presented. Many anecdotes suggest that these innovations have saved lives, but there is little quantitative assessment, almost no baseline data and insufficient systematic learning. This is recognized and taken into account.
The report concludes that the opportunities clearly outweigh the challenges. More information is more widely available than ever before; making better use of this information will reap rewards. On offer is a better way of designing humanitarian response, whereby people determine their own priorities and communicate them to those who would assist.
These opportunities could not have come soon enough. Natural and man-made disasters are affecting more people more often and at a higher cost than ever before. By rethinking how aid agencies work and communicate with people in crisis, there is a chance that many more lives can be saved. Achieving this goal is not a technical challenge—it is a matter of political will.
The report proposes four primary adaptations:
1. To recognize information as a basic need in humanitarian response.
2. To ensure information relevant to humanitarian action is shared freely.
3. To build capacity within aid organizations and Governments to understand and use new information sources.
4. To develop guidelines to ensure information is used in an ethical and secure manner.
The network age, with its increased reach of communications networks and the growing groups of people willing and able to help those in need, is here today. The ways in which people interact will change, with or without the sanction of international humanitarian organizations. Either those organizations adapt to the network age, or they grow increasingly out of touch with the people they were established to serve.
If they choose to adapt, an old dream— enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—has a chance of coming true: that all people gain the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of any frontiers. That is a goal worth pursuing.