From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM HUMANITARIAN RELIEFon religious institutions, others governmental and non-governmental.Founded in 1863, the Red Cross movement became a global force atthe turn of the twentieth century, when it was joined by the Catholiccharity Caritas. After the First World War, the International Federationof the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was formed, aswas the Save the Children Fund. Oxfam grew out of the OxfordCommittee for Famine Relief, set up in 1942 in response to famine inNazi-occupied Greece, and CARE was founded in response to therefugee crisis that followed the Second World War. Médecins SansFrontières (MSF) emerged during the Biafra crisis in Nigeria twodecades later. Over the past decade, many of these large humanitarianagencies, including Oxfam, have formed international networks oflike-minded organisations to expand and improve their global reach.The UN system, with its numerous specialised agencies, plays acrucial lead role in preparing for and responding to natural disasters,food emergencies, and conflict. 172 Following the end of the Cold War,the UN and NGOs embarked on a major expansion of their capacities,as did the governments of wealthy nations. Today’s humanitariansystem is a labyrinth of national governments, UN agencies, NGOs,and the Red Cross movement, whose total spending averaged $5.7bnannually between 1999 and 2002. The unprecedented response to theAsian tsunami of December 2004 pushed this up to an estimated$18bn in 2005. 173Taken together, these actors form a rudimentary global welfaresystem that attends almost every war or natural disaster. Despite itssuccess at saving lives, however, the humanitarian system is dogged bya series of organisational and other barriers, which result in delayedresponses to crises, underfunding, poor co-ordination, and inefficientand at times downright misguided actions. Most serious for the longerterm is the tendency of international humanitarian aid groups tobypass local and national organisations, both civil society and government:this not only fails to build the capacity of local organisations toundertake emergency response, but actually undermines it by luringaway qualified staff and monopolising logistical resources. Therehave, however, been significant improvements in recent years,discussed in greater detail below.385