Opening the Black Box:An outline of a framework to understand, promote andevaluate humanitarian coordination.

The coordination of international intervention in conflicts is an old sore. Although nobody
is in principle against coordination, in practice efforts to achieve coordinated action lead
to irritation and frustration. Coordination efforts can quickly provoke institutional 'turf'
wars. The discussion about coordination then degenerates into one of power and
authority. Nothing quite reveals the 'international humanitarian system' as the opposite
of a 'system', as a study of the coordination between humanitarian actors intervening
in conflict. ' Humanitarian action' tends to appear as a rather bewildering array of
institutional actors running around in an 'arena' with shifting alliances and competing
interests that sometimes closely resemble the 'clanic factionalism' that aid workers so
deplore in some societies they operate in.