Dual-Mandate Design: Humanitarian Interventions that Reinforce State Systems

Published on: Tue Sep 21 2021 by Ivar Strand

The primary imperative of any humanitarian response is unambiguous: to save lives and alleviate suffering with speed and efficiency. In the acute phase of a crisis, this often necessitates direct action by international organizations, using the fastest and most reliable systems available to deliver aid.

In the context of protracted crises, however, this model presents a significant dilemma. The very systems established for rapid relief—parallel logistics, procurement, and payment mechanisms run by international actors—can become entrenched. Over time, they risk bypassing and even weakening the nascent institutions of the host state, inadvertently prolonging the conditions of dependency they were created to address.

The choice, however, is not a binary one between providing immediate relief and pursuing long-term institutional strengthening. It is a question of program design. The fundamental challenge is to structure humanitarian interventions so that every dollar spent on immediate relief also serves as a concurrent, if modest, investment in a country’s own long-term capacity.

The Unintended Consequences of the Bypass Model

The conventional justification for creating parallel systems is straightforward: national systems in a fragile state are often too slow, weak, or corrupt to be trusted with a large-scale, rapid response. An international agency, therefore, establishes its own end-to-end delivery chain to ensure fiduciary control and speed.

While this logic is understandable in the short term, its long-term costs can be severe.

• It can drain the most capable talent from the public sector into the higher-paying international aid economy.
• It undermines the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its own citizens, as essential services are seen to be provided by outsiders.
• It creates a fiscally unsustainable model of service delivery that is entirely dependent on the continuation of external aid.

The bypass model, while often effective at managing the immediate fiduciary risks of a single project, can contribute to the far greater strategic risk of a perpetually fragile state.

A Framework for “Systems-Aware” Humanitarian Response

An alternative and more responsible approach is to design humanitarian interventions with a “systems-building DNA.” This does not mean channeling all funds through weak or non-functional state institutions. It means adopting a pragmatic, risk-based methodology that seeks to use and strengthen local systems wherever feasible, and to bypass them only as a documented, last resort.

In our work in post-conflict and fragile environments, we advocate for a set of core principles to guide this approach:

1. Use Local Systems by Default; Bypass by Exception. The default operational assumption should be to use the country’s own systems. A decision to use a parallel mechanism for a specific function (e.g., payments) must be justified by a formal, documented risk assessment that proves the local system is not viable, even with targeted support.

2. Integrate and Augment, Do Not Isolate. Where possible, aid should be designed to plug into and strengthen existing national frameworks. Instead of creating a new, separate database of beneficiaries, an intervention can support the improvement and expansion of the government’s own nascent social registry. Instead of relying exclusively on an international payment provider, a program can work with the central bank and local financial institutions to build their capacity for secure, large-scale electronic cash transfers.

3. Embed Technical Capacity Alongside Financial Aid. Humanitarian financing should be seen as an opportunity for on-the-job capacity building. Funding for a program should include dedicated resources for embedding experienced technical advisors directly within their counterpart ministries. The objective is not just to monitor the aid flow, but to work alongside public servants to strengthen their own management and oversight capabilities.

4. Design Verification as a Diagnostic and a Tool for Strengthening. The independent verification of aid should be structured as a constructive, diagnostic exercise. As we monitor transactions moving through a government system, our findings on bottlenecks, control weaknesses, and vulnerabilities are provided back to the host institution as a real-time, evidence-based roadmap for their own internal reforms.

Conclusion: Every Dollar, Two Returns

A more mature understanding of fiduciary responsibility requires us to consider the long-term institutional impact of our delivery choices. The risk of not building local capacity can, in the long run, be far greater than the managed risk of engaging with and mitigating the weaknesses of a nascent local system.

A systems-aware approach to humanitarian aid seeks to generate two distinct returns on every dollar invested: an immediate humanitarian return in the form of life-saving relief, and a long-term institutional return in the form of stronger and more capable local systems. This is the practical application of the nexus, and it is the only viable path to a sustainable and dignified exit from aid dependency.