The Resilience Lie
The appeal of normalizing dysfunction in aid programming.
The Resilience Lie
or
The appeal of normalizing dysfunction in aid programming.
Whenever our office would host visitors from the global North, their itinerary would include a visit to the slums, from where they would inevitably return with souvenirs - miniature elephants and jewelry made from recycled materials. Over obligatory cocktails on some rooftop bar, they would then regale us with their experiences of the day, and the insights it would infallibly afford them into life in this part of the world. Over time, you got used to it. It was part of the travelling roadshow designed to showcase the country program.
In the verbal avalanche of subsequent aid and development jargon, however, there always was one phrase - usually peppered into conversations with suitable excitement - which never failed to leave me exasperated:
"These people are soooo resilient!"
"Communities must become more resilient."
Few phrases have been so pervasive in international aid and development in the last decade. It has appeared in strategic plans, funding proposals, donor reports, conference presentations, and humanitarian response plans. It has been used in the context of climate change adaptation, conflict resolution, pandemic preparedness, and economic shocks. It has been attached to everything from climate finance to gender-based violence programming.
But what, exactly, does it mean?
It appears that the term has lost much of its meaning in the process of being attached to just about everything under the sun.
Today, resilience is in danger of becoming one of those development catchwords that have little substance behind them.
From Engineering to Humanitarianism
The original definition of resilience is actually quite simple. It is the ability of a material to withstand stress and return to its original shape after being bent or stretched. Ecologists use the term to describe the ability of an ecosystem to recover from a disturbance. When it comes to people, the definition is similar: the ability to withstand pressures, return to normal functioning, and recover from a disaster.
There is nothing wrong with this definition per se. It becomes problematic when resilience transforms from a characteristic of an outcome to an expectation.
The Burden Shifts to the Victim
The modern discourse around resilience is all about communities that have the ability to "cope" with disaster, adapt to shocks, and bounce back to their previous state. On the surface, it is a positive message. Communities have strengths, and they do not always need outsiders to take over when crises hit.
But at the same time, it takes away the responsibility from those in power to prevent these crises from happening in the first place. The resilience narrative ignores the fact that some populations are much more vulnerable to disasters than others.
A farmer who has suffered multiple crop failures due to extreme weather is being congratulated for his resilience instead of being supported when his livelihood is at stake.
A family of refugees who have been living in a camp for several years is considered "resilient" even though their humanitarian needs are not addressed.
Healthcare workers in an overwhelmed hospital are commended for their resilience instead of getting the resources they need.
The phrase takes away from the urgency of the situation by reframing it as an inherent characteristic of the population. Instead of asking how to establish conditions to reduce or prevent disasters/shocks, the focus is on how to help the affected communities deal with the aftermath.
Resilience Can Become an Excuse
There is another issue with the growing emphasis on building community resilience: it can become an excuse to do nothing.
When it comes to actual policy, promoting resilience often serves as a smokescreen for governments that do not want to improve on the status quo, invest in infrastructure for disadvantaged populations, or establish proper disaster preparedness and crisis management capabilities.
Communities are expected to be able to handle almost anything, even if it would cripple more developed societies. What is worse, communities already living in permanent crisis due to abysmal poverty and a virtual absence of infrastructure are labeled resilient for the fact that they continue to survive!
It is one thing to say that people in fragile states should build their resilience capacities, but let's not confuse permanent survival mode as an inescapable way of life with the ability to bounce back from time-limited shocks.
Have you ever heard politicians in G7 countries telling their constituents to get used to living without electricity, clean water, or healthcare for years at a time?
It is ridiculous, isn't it?
That is the problem with the phrase "build community resilience": it often serves as a justification for doing nothing. It is a way for governments and donors to say that they are doing their part by supporting resilience-building initiatives, while in reality, they are doing very little to create the conditions that help prevent shocks from turning into full-blown disasters.
Resilience is a euphemism for "get used to living with dysfunction."
The Donor Appeal
There is also the issue of donors. The sector and host governments love the idea of building community resilience because it sounds good.
It is a forward-thinking, long-term approach to development and disaster management. No one wants to give money to a project that simply deals with the symptoms of a problem. Everyone wants to invest in a sustainable solution that builds resilience in the long term. After all, in theory, the objective of aid programming has always been for agencies to work themselves out of a job.
The problem is, resilience is very hard to measure.
How much resilience is enough resilience? How do we know when a community has become "resilient enough"?
The truth is, we do not know.
That is why the phrase has become so ubiquitous: it can be used to describe almost any initiative.
Building a school, constructing a water well, training community health workers, providing cash assistance to shock-affected families – all of these can be labeled as "building community resilience."
It is a buzzword that sounds good, but in practice, it can mean almost anything.
The Romanticisation of Suffering
Another issue with the concept of community resilience is that it romanticizes suffering.
Visitors are quick to praise the amazing resilience of the communities their organisations work with. I think it is important to recognise that people in extremely difficult circumstances often display incredible strength of character. But when it comes to humanitarian action, we should not glorify suffering and hardship.
Normalising the idea of living through disaster after disaster is not healthy.
Children should not need resilience to be able to go to school.
Healthcare workers should not need resilience to be able to do their jobs.
Aid workers should not need resilience because their lives are in danger at all times.
Resilience should not be a virtue, it should be the minimum standard, built on the suitably equipped capacity to overcome a problem.
Human Beings Have Limits
One of the most frustrating aspects of the whole discussion around resilience is that it ignores the fact that human beings have limits.
People can only cope for so long.
Communities can only absorb shocks so many times before they break.
Aid workers can only do their jobs for so long before they need a break.
Children can only be exposed to violence so many times before it affects their mental health and ability to function as adults.
We do not talk about these limits often enough. Calling exhausted, traumatized people "resilient" does not help them in the long run. It normalizes the conditions they have been surviving in.
Acknowledging the red line between depleted resilience and acute need for emergency support, therefore, is critical. You cannot rebuild the former in an environment that consistently lacks the capacity to provide for even the most basic needs.
If we do not distinguish clearly between the two, we run the risk of normalizing these conditions as an acceptable baseline.
A Better Question
Instead of asking how to build community resilience, perhaps we should be asking why so many communities are in a constant state of needing to build resilience in the first place.
Living with the constant spectre of shocks, while fending off daily threats arising from food shortages, health hazards, defunct government institutions and general context volatility, hardly establishes a sustainable starting line to build any form of meaningful resilience.
Instead of focusing on making people more resilient to disasters, perhaps the humanitarian and development sectors should be focusing on making, if not disasters, then the conditions that exacerbate their impact, a thing of the past. Kind of like abandoning resilience as a perceived cure for all, and returning to the roots of the sector.
That, to me, is the real point.
I am not arguing against the importance of building community resilience.
I think it is a worthy goal.
But I think it is a potential distraction from the real issue.
Given the means, most communities will know what to do to fight off and bounce back from whatever shocks may come. I put it to you that it is the means that are lacking, not the knowledge or the awareness.
And that is exactly where aid & development - let alone governments, donors, and the so-called international community, all responsible for steering it - continues to follow the proverbial red herring of achievability without massive effort at the starting line.
Preventing crises from happening, in today's world, is beyond a tall order. It is an impossible dream. Instead, providing the means positioning populations at a level where what used to constitute a crisis no longer registers as such, and not every shock adds to the litany of drivers of persistent poverty, is the only realistic way to alleviate and prevent suffering.
We can rely on communities to cope with whatever is thrown their way, as long as they start that journey from pole position and not back of the field. Resilience is an inherent human trait - one that requires little but concrete, tangible means.
Reclaiming the Word
The unfortunate truth is, resilience is not going anywhere.
It is too useful a buzzword to be abandoned.
But I think it is important to reclaim the word and use it in a way that makes sense.
People should be able to say "this community is resilient" and mean that the people there were able to overcome a crisis, rebuild their lives, and move on, on the basis of the conditions that existed when the crisis hit. It should not be a 'tool' that communities are expected to default to, regardless of the circumstances.
It should not be an excuse for inaction or a cover for shortfalls when it comes to addressing unmet primary needs or standards.
Resilience should be about people getting their lives back on what used to be a sustainable track before disaster struck, not about people getting used to living with the consequences of disaster as part of their permanently disadvantaged existence.
I am tempted to mention the global North-South divide at this point, but that shall be the subject of another post.
Meanwhile, a return to traditional aid initiatives, focused on alleviating poverty and increasing institutional accountability and integrity, at least to me, is a far more worthy goal.