Do conferences make a difference? Reflecting on two decades of DIHAD.
23 April 2024 – Mukesh Kapila
As the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference and Exhibition (DIHAD) commemorates its 20th anniversary, looking through the lens of its history is to see our own story and relationships playing out. In there are humanity’s dreams and disappointments, as well as our sufferings and successes. DIHAD has borne faithful witness to them all, even as the world around us has stumbled or steadied, slumped or strengthened.
A unique convening
DIHAD’s unique staying power over two tumultuous decades is undoubtedly enabled by the benign patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai.
DIHAD is also skilfully nurtured by its principal investor, Index Holding , a respected corporate events and healthcare enterprise led by Ambassador Dr Abdul Salam Al Madani. An instinctive universalist whose simple goal is “to help the poor not to be poor”, his blending of private enterprise and philanthropy has proved to be far-sighted. It has set the tone to bring corporates such as the Emirates Airlines and over 800 brands into association, while also drawing approval from governments and humanitarians.
A forum for our times
Ever since its inception, DIHAD has been deftly steered by its chief executive, Ambassador Gerhard Putman-Cramer, a distinguished former humanitarian-diplomat in the United Nations. He sets DIHAD’s varied agendas with uncanny prescience. They reflect both contemporary concerns and neglected issues, as well as emerging trends and future directions. At the same time, the event’s format has remained reassuringly consistent despite an ever-changing list of topics reflecting a never-ending succession of crises and disasters.
Support by an International Scientific Advisory Board (DISAB) drawn from a range of United Nations, Red Cross Red Crescent, diplomatic, academic, NGO , and private sector backgrounds allows DIHAD to call on a huge body of skills and networks.
Winning hearts, shaping minds
It is a testimony to DIHAD’s founding vision that, at a time of much global contention, it provides a safe arena to discuss and debate, without fear or favour, all that ails our world. And even when it’s impossible to bridge our differences, DIHAD helps to find pragmatic fixes to advance our humanity by tackling one problem at a time.
Provided, of course, we listen with respect and open-mindedness to competing perspectives. DIHAD provides the atmosphere to do just that. Its mission seeks to enable the making of common cause against shared global challenges. It does this through steadfast practice in its annual gatherings since 2004, with just one year missed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
How has DIHAD earned a special place in the hearts and minds of its stakeholders? Of course, Dubai’s crossroads setting as a hospitable fusion of cultures helps but there is much more than that. For example, in our era of specialised conferencing where, it is often only the technically initiated elites who understand what is going on, DIHAD remains stubbornly generalist. Everyone, regardless of their own expertise, can always learn something of value at DIHAD. Perhaps that may be a new angle or a cross-disciplinary insight that unlocks a puzzling problem in their own sector?
To take the long view rather than getting derailed by the latest tragedy is at the core of DIHAD’s philosophy which is to think with your heart while acting with your head. DIHAD’s further attraction is that no one is pressured to agree any conference resolutions. All attendees are free to contribute what they wish, learn what they can, and use it to do what good they will.
Reaching out worldwide
This spirit of tolerance has transformed DIHAD from a regional meeting into a global event. And they come in increasing numbers with some 150,000 passing its portals. In 2023, there were more than 12,000 participants from 110 countries. Including a cast of some 50 expert speakers annually. They are constantly refreshed, in Ambassador Putman-Cramer’s words, to “ensure complementarity of inputs” and to allow new, multilingual voices to come to the fore. Conscious effort goes into achieving gender and geographic diversity.
As DIHAD has gained influence, it has shifted from being a stopping point on the itinerary of public figures to becoming their destination by choice. Thus, heads of international agencies, politicians, intellectuals, influencers, and pop stars like Sir Bob Geldof (co-founder of Band Aid), have eagerly come to address the gathering.
And yet DIHAD remains unpretentious, equally welcoming students from nearby colleges and field workers from distant countries. They rub shoulders not just in the conference room but in the Exhibition that is the throbbing heart of the event. The buzz from 100 or more exhibitors displaying their relief wares and demonstrating their emergency services is as energising as it is educational.
Practical offerings for a changing world
From pots and pans to tents and beds, from difficult-terrain vehicles to sturdy ambulances, from toughened computers to robust remote-area communications, from nutrition packages to essential medicines, the DIHAD Exhibition is a vivid reminder of the essential nuts and bolts for relieving human suffering. It also keeps the more academic Conference grounded in practical realities.
Momentous regional and global changes provide the background music to DIHAD’s deliberations, both in terms of humanitarian and development challenges as well as the role of the country and region that hosts DIHAD. So, how does DIHAD reflect and shape our era, and perhaps make a difference?
Most obviously, the humanitarian sphere has been evolving fast. In 2004, perhaps around 100 million people were in humanitarian need in a world of 6.4 billion inhabitants. That has expanded disproportionately to at least 400 million in 80-plus countries in an 8 billion world today. That is not all because of the greater impact of more and more disasters and wars but because we have got better at the science of measuring needs and vulnerabilities. Bringing this greater inclusivity – so that no one is forgotten – is helped by DIHAD shining a light on overlooked crises in far corners of the world.
Along with that has come greater generosity in a progressively richer world. According to the World Bank, aggregate global GDP (in constant dollars) was about $54 trillion in 2004 and has nearly doubled to around $100 trillion now. The UN’s Humanitarian Financial Tracking Service records provision of $4.6 billion in 2004 with no Gulf countries appearing in the list of top donors. Some twenty years later, humanitarian aid has jumped to $24.6 billion with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait in the top 25 donors.
Diplomacy for change
Attending DIHAD has undoubtedly influenced the region’s official donor policies with a remarkable shift from bilateral to multilateral approaches. This has been paralleled by increased transparency in reporting. Humanitarian diplomacy (theme of DIHAD 2024) by high-level attendees has provided stimulus to improve the quality and quantity of humanitarian assistance from within the region.
Associated with that is DIHAD’s increasing value as a discreet setting for people and countries who find it difficult to convene, to talk confidentially with each other. That means for example, delegates from Israel, or from India and Pakistan attending. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean is a close DIHAD collaborator and concerned with political dialogue and co-operation in the Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf regions. Such interactions build bridges of humanity across otherwise deep divides.
Partnering for good
Over DIHAD’s lifetime, the global humanitarian sector has mushroomed to millions of workers and volunteers in thousands of organisations. That makes for complexity and highlights the importance of coordination among such diverse actors. Coordination is a cross-cutting theme in all DIHAD gatherings and received dedicated attention in the 2006 event.
Strengthening coordination has brought greater consciousness that partnerships are essential to tackling tough problems. But good partnering is better said than done. What does it take to design, construct, and sustain effective partnerships? That has received continuous attention at DIHAD with its meetings in 2005, 2013, and 2022 delving into the modes and methods of good partnering and highlighting many successful examples.
Putting flesh on the bones of partnership is done through stimulating productive dialogue and exchange. For example, at the “DIHAD Glasshouse” and “Match and Meet Scheme” that have resulted in forging countless collaborations. Nearly a thousand networking meetings took place in 2023.
Shining light into neglected corners
DIHAD often brings critical but bypassed dimensions of humanitarian action to the forefront. In 2014 that was about women as essential providers of relief even as they suffered most in crises. That gave a much-needed fillip to the neglected gender aspects of assistance. In 2017, the DIHAD focus was on children and, in 2012, on the role and importance of youth. That also raised challenging questions about inter-generational solidarity.
Increasing concern with the humanitarian dimensions of forced migration including refugees and displaced got serious scrutiny in 2015 and 2019, along with the difficult search for solutions that continue to challenge us today.
Such DIHAD discussions did not just reflect the debates of their times but sought to move them forward by ‘de-victimising’ key groups and emphasising their own agency in finding solutions.
In that spirit of respect for the dignity of those suffering misfortune and distress from conflicts and disasters, DIHAD focused its 2009 theme on empowering communities from disasters to development. That was an early agenda-setting contribution towards localising humanitarian aid that achieved prominence at the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in 2016.
Recent years have been marked by an increasing appreciation of the environmental drivers of vulnerability that generate new types of disasters. We have for example, seen several disease outbreaks such as SARS, and Ebola in West Africa. The global health theme of DIHAD 2010 was timely in pointing out that beyond the inevitable health consequences of disasters and conflicts, crises within the health sphere have even more lethal potential. We saw that with Covid-19, the focus for DIHAD in 2021.
From relief to development
Perhaps the most significant conceptual contribution of DIHAD concerns contentious relief-recovery-development-security interfaces. These have split aid workers, policymakers, and donors for decades who have argued variously that they represent a continuum, or distinct and separate phases of the aid endeavour. Only too often, these positions have been asserted for reasons of vested agency interests and budget-lines.
Right from its beginning and, as explicit in its name, DIHAD has put humanitarianism and development side by side. It has argued that mitigating and preventing human suffering requires comprehensive needs-driven approaches rather than divisive categorisation, for reasons of administrative convenience.
The obvious logic of that position has become progressively clearer in DIHAD meetings when recurrent and prolonged crises became the norm in the context of chronic poverty and vulnerability. In 2015, that recognition contributed to the inclusion of humanitarian objectives as an integral part of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Learning and innovating for change
Fresh questions arise as the humanitarian sector gets busier than ever with over 100 million refugees and displaced from around 130 active conflicts raging around the world. Also some 400 major so-called natural disasters that affect 200 million people while generating direct economic losses of around $250 billion. Under these circumstances, how are relief and development activities to be conducted in a systematic manner?
This got attention in the 2018 edition of DIHAD on the sustainability of humanitarian aid. It triggered the development of DIHAD College, and partnership with Spain’s Universidad Catolica de Murcia to offer the world’s first master’s degree in ‘Sustainable Humanitarian Action’. Taking a blended learning approach, novices and established practitioners can both benefit from the course to develop new mindsets and skills towards greater effectiveness in a radically changing world. Practical internships with a range of global partners allow the students to put their learning into practice.
DIHAD’s pre-occupation with learning finds expression in related ventures. Such as the Waterfalls Initiative for Continuous Education, supported by the UAE Government’s Ministry of Possibilities. So far, that has delivered nearly 600 expert webinars by some 400 experts across specialised healthcare, education and humanitarian fields, to reach around 1.7 million participants from 197 countries.
Other considerable educational effort is conducted at DIHAD’s margins. For example, training workshops by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Several NGOs such as the International Medical Corps also find it convenient to hold their strategic staff discussions at the same time.
This reflects the trend towards DIHAD providing a convenient date in the calendar as well as a hub for juxta-positioning other events such as advocacy and knowledge sharing forums, not to mention morale-boosting ceremonies to award those giving selfless service to communities. It also makes for greater efficiency in our carbon-conscious age.
Learning is inextricably linked with the generation of new knowledge, another of DIHAD’s forward-looking aims. It was barely born when it convened its first discussion on new humanitarian challenges in 2005, and again in 2008, with an intervening debate on new perspectives in 2007. The impact of new technologies was the focus for DIHAD 2011 and the importance of innovation was the centre-piece for DIHAD 2016.
Also noteworthy over these decades is how humanitarian tools and technologies have evolved – not least through discussions at DIHAD. Especially at its Exhibitions, humanitarians have asked for help to tackle specific practical problems, and private enterprises have responded with innovative and cost-effective solutions.
In the DIHAD Hackathon of 2020, 46 teams from 12 countries competed to propose ground-breaking ideas and develop new solutions for some of the world’s toughest afflictions.
It was fitting, therefore, that DIHAD 2022 coincided with the pandemic-delayed EXPO2020 that was also hosted in Dubai. Joint interactions provided a vivid demonstration of the potential to imagine and construct a better world.
From talking to doing
A hallmark of our restless humanity is that we are not content with studying and questioning the imperfections around us but strive for continuous improvement. And so, DIHAD conferencing has provided the platform to go beyond, with the new DIHAD Sustainable Humanitarian Foundation. As a mechanism to realise the “power of giving” across borders, collaborations have developed with the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector. Income generation projects in Tajikistan and education supplies for Syrian refugee children in Jordan are some examples of its initiatives.
The future starts today
As DIHAD looks forward to the next two decades, there can be no resting on its laurels. And no complacency either in the noble pursuit of a better, more sustainable world. But the challenges ahead will certainly be as demanding as anything that DIHAD has considered in the past twenty years.
For example, the relentless pace of the climate crisis is already manifesting itself daily. So, foresight remains vital as highlighted by the 2023 discussions on energy and aid. But also arising are new opportunities to vanquish old problems. They must be identified and utilised with greater urgency while building new types of partnerships around them. Such as on the beneficial use of artificial intelligence, bio-engineering, quantum computing and big data analytics. They have huge potential to transform the humanitarian and development scene by the time the successor to this article is written in the 2040s.
However, progress also brings grave new risks. Managing them is not just a technical matter. It requires holding tight to humanity’s traditional values and principles that have always guided us during our most difficult times. They come out of our most basic instinct: the urge to reach out to help another in distress. That is the ultimate spirit of DIHAD.
Perhaps, therefore, DIHAD’s greatest service – past, present, and well into the future – is to provide that mirror through which we can see if we remain decently steadfast even as everything continues to change around us.
The author is a member of DIHAD’s Scientific Advisory Board.