With its emphasis on non-discrimination and the equitable distribution of humanitarian resources, the principle of impartiality presents a clear opportunity to promote gender equality in humanitarian action. The pursuit of gender equality begins with the recognition that people do not experience equality by default, particularly in conflict contexts. In such circumstances, there often exist high levels of social exclusion and marginalization, where gender interacts with other social characteristics, including ethnicity, religion and political affiliation, to deepen inequality. The implementation of impartiality in humanitarian work is defined by a focus on ‘gender discrepancies’ in people’s access to essential resources and services. Impartiality is underpinned by the ‘difference principle’, which recognizes that people are not affected by conflict equally, often due to pre-existing inequities, and that conflict-affected communities will have different needs and degrees of vulnerability.
The principle of impartiality is aligned with an approach that considers the various needs of women, girls, men, boys and gender-diverse people. The application of impartiality can include the use of sex, age and disability disaggregated data (SADD) in programme design and analysis, and the principle is also reflected in tools like the IASC Gender and Age Marker (GAM), which includes coding options for people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Needs assessments tend to result in high numbers of women and children in humanitarian programmes. This is partly due to the vulnerability of these groups to violence, as well as a recognition of women’s specific roles in communities. Impartiality corresponds with a gender-responsive approach that considers gender ‘in both project design and analysis’ (Table 2).
The experience of humanitarian agencies in Afghanistan demonstrates how the principle of impartiality can be applied to advocate for equal access for women, men, girls and boys in conflict-affected environments. This example also points towards some of the tensions and limitations connected to the needs-based approach. Afghanistan under Taliban rule presents a context of highly patriarchal governance with direct impacts on the capacity of humanitarian agencies, including the banning of women from humanitarian work. The country has received considerable attention for the gender-related challenges and dilemmas it poses for humanitarian agencies. The debate has been characterized by two primary positions. On the one hand, humanitarian actors have argued that an advocacy-based approach should be taken, which insists not only on equal access for women and men, but also on advocating for change in Taliban policy. Within this discussion, there are even stronger calls for the complete withdrawal of humanitarian aid to avoid being complicit in the persecution of women and girls. On the other hand, agencies have argued that this approach inhibits access for populations in need of vital humanitarian assistance. In the case of the latter, a trade-off could be deemed acceptable, where access for some populations is achieved, but where women and girls may not be equally represented.
The experience of humanitarian organizations that promote a rights-based approach like Oxfam is illuminating in this context, particularly following the Taliban takeover in 1996 when Oxfam’s female staff were prevented from working. At this time, Oxfam felt that it could not provide humanitarian assistance ‘with impartiality and proportionality, and without further undermining the position of women’. As a result, Oxfam had to balance the continued delivery of humanitarian aid with a stance on the abuse of women’s rights under the Taliban regime.An interesting feature of Oxfam’s perspective in this context is the argument that humanitarian action cannot be impartial in contexts of extreme inequality due to the systemic barriers in place. This indicates that impartiality can be used as a basis on which to advocate for the removal of those barriers.
However, in addressing systemic inequality, it is important to examine the limits of impartiality and its intrinsic needs-based approach. Two primary limitations stand out. Firstly, as scholars have observed, the approach to tracking and responding to gender discrepancies ‘is a necessary first step towards addressing gender inequalities’. Impartiality is, however, limited in its capacity to support gender equality because it does not seek to analyse and address the political, social and economic drivers of inequality. The needs-based approach focuses on the symptoms or outcomes of inequality, rather than trying to shift its underlying causes. Taking a stronger position in relation to such underlying dynamics could conflict with an organization’s attempts to remain neutral, particularly when doing so would require, as in the case of Afghanistan, agencies to advocate for change in government policy. In ethical terms, this situation can be described as a ‘conflict of incomparable values’, with the principle of neutrality apparently clashing with the pursuit of gender equality. And it is worth noting from this perspective that Oxfam as an organization does not subscribe to the principle of neutrality:
Indeed, there is evidence that in displaced communities, the principle of neutrality has been used to deprioritize and delegitimize certain gender issues. For example, research among displaced communities in Uganda has identified reluctance on the part of international humanitarian agencies to engage in LGBTQ+ issues, due to the potential impacts on their perceived neutrality. A similar concern was raised in the research workshops for this paper, where participants noted that in some conflict-affected contexts, ‘support for gender equality, the rights of women and the LGBTQI+ community are considered political positions and thus pose a challenge to perceived neutrality’. In Uganda, such positions have impacted the ability of conflict-affected displaced people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) from accessing ‘badly needed services’. In contexts of systemic marginalization and exclusion, achieving impartiality may require efforts to address drivers of inequality and defend people’s rights, which can only partially be accomplished by the needs-based approach underpinning impartiality.
In the research workshops for this paper, participants noted that in some conflict-affected contexts, ‘support for gender equality, the rights of women and the LGBTQI+ community are considered political positions and thus pose a challenge to perceived neutrality’.
The second limitation of the needs-based approach is that, as an avenue for addressing gender inequality, it focuses on vulnerability and ‘beneficiary’ status, which risks undermining the agency of conflict-affected communities and their role in humanitarian action. The approach to establishing beneficiary status risks reproducing power imbalances between conflict-affected communities and external actors. For instance, research among refugee populations indicates that the process of identifying and defining need involves the construction of ‘subject positions’ that ‘cast refugees as either passive or problematic subjects who need to be rescued, protected, assisted, activated, controlled and reformed through humanitarian interventions, while humanitarian workers are positioned as rational administrators and progressive agents of social transformation’. As the following section examines, the ability to support gender equality, and particularly more ambitious transformative objectives, is dependent on the capacity to promote the agency of marginalized communities in humanitarian action.
There is evidence that humanitarian responses have not always met the needs of conflict-affected women and girls, people living with disabilities, gender-diverse people and the elderly due to a lack of adequate understanding of their needs, as a result of a humanitarian system in which these groups rarely take part in decision-making. For instance, evaluations have found that needs assessments deprioritize gender equality in the early stages of a crisis in order to focus on more immediate ‘life-saving’ concerns. As a result, gender responsive practice is often limited to dealing with sexual exploitation and abuse or gender-based violence under the protection mandate. Although the collection of disaggregated data improves as interventions progress, consultation with affected women and other marginalized groups rarely translates into them having a decision-making role in the design or implementation of a response. Interventions are also rarely adapted and revised in response to new analysis. Such findings indicate that although impartiality is fundamentally aligned with gender-responsive humanitarian action, problems with its implementation in humanitarian work mean that it is not fulfilling its potential in this regard.
Involving women’s groups in humanitarian coordination and management structures is one way to promote the role of women in decision-making. But the absence of conflict-affected communities in humanitarian leadership raises a particular problem in relation to how needs are defined and identified. Indeed, it has been shown that understanding the needs of a diverse group of people is best achieved by organizations that are themselves diverse. The ALNAP State of the Humanitarian System (SOHS) report highlights that, despite more women reaching leadership positions within the sector, the proportion of actors from aid-receiving contexts in such positions remains very low. While 93 per cent of the humanitarian workforce are citizens of the countries in which they work, the SOHS report states that less than one-fifth of country directors are. According to the SOHS report, people from countries receiving aid comprised less than 20 per cent of international NGO boards and only 2 per cent had any experience living as a refugee or in a humanitarian crisis environment. Such dynamics indicate the application of the principles by humanitarian agencies is conditioned by their position as external entities to conflict contexts.
