An Interview with Stephen O’Malley

“You need extremely good writers whose writing touches you emotionally, without it being overly sentimental, says Stephen O’Malley, the Head of Office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in South Sudan. 

What does a typical day look like for you?

I am normally picked up at around eight o’clock in the morning every day to go to the office. A lot of my time as the Head of Office is spent on coordinating the humanitarian response in Juba, making sure that the big pieces are fitting together. I do get to go to the field from time to time but not as often as I’d like. OCHA has a really important role to play, but I kind of like to go and see a bore hole being drilled or a new water system being installed. I guess it’s because of my background which is output focused. I miss that. During the day, I’ll have a variety of meetings with government officials, UN agencies, NGOs, diplomatic missions, the Humanitarian Coordinator, and from time to time with the peacekeeping mission. These discussions are all about trying to make sure that we deliver humanitarian assistance effectively and efficiently. We’ve been spending a lot of time these past months on the response to the heavy flooding which has affected more than 900,000 people. That means making sure that we have teams going out to quickly assess the needs, and provide the right supplies to the people in need, and that we have the extra money we need for this.

Could you tell me more about your background?

My introduction to the humanitarian world came through working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 1993 to 2000 in a variety of settings. Those experiences were much more about being in the operational end, much closer to the people we were assisting than I sometimes feel now. When you’re doing coordination, particularly in the capital, there’s a little bit of distance, and that’s why it’s good to go and see what’s going on so that you feel connected to the people you’re working with.

 How did you end up in humanitarian aid?

I think I always knew that I wanted to do something in the international field. When I finished University in Canada, I had this opportunity to join a private consultancy firm in Canada which I did, and I really enjoyed it. At the same time, some friends of mine had started MSF in Canada in the late 1980s. It was a very small office. They asked me if I’d join in 1993, and I did, and that’s how I started. In 2001, I came to OCHA and I had a period working in development as the UN Resident Coordinator in the Caribbean from 2013 to 2018. 

What wakes you up every day and keeps you going?

You know, I really do think it’s the sense that somehow you can make a difference. It may not be a huge difference but that every day you can make a difference. You can make things go a little smoothly, a little bit better for somebody, on the protection of civilians’ issue, or in one of these flooded communities that we’re responding to at the moment in South Sudan. This year, South Sudan has had the worst floods in 20, 30 years. So, this is really the driver for me. Just trying to make things a little bit better. 

 What is your greatest professional achievement?

I’d say my greatest professional achievement was in February of 1998 when I was still working for MSF in Freetown in Sierra Leone. Despite things going completely crazy, street to street fighting between the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group largely led by Nigerian forces and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and the Revolutionary United Front rebels, we managed to keep the surgical unit in the main hospital in Freetown running for those three or four days of intense fighting. The team running the unit operated on more than one hundred people during that time. 

 What is your greatest professional fear?

I am very fortunate that I’ve never been a cynical person, and I don’t think I could become cynical, but it’s really that kind of cynicism, that kind of loss of a sense of what the possibilities are because there are always possibilities of one kind or another in every situation, even in very dire situations.

 What do you enjoy most about your job?

I definitely like the people I work with and not just in OCHA but in the broader humanitarian community here in South Sudan – UN agencies, NGOs, diplomatic community, government. I like going out to the communities to talk to the people. South Sudan is a very fascinating country. Whenever I am going to go out of town, there’s always something to look forward to.

 What is it you find most fascinating about South Sudan?

The history is very interesting and the sense that South Sudan successfully fought this incredible long war of national liberation and succeeded in really difficult circumstances. You know, you can see the challenges that come from building a state from very little. Whatever the British colonial system would have left in 1955 would have been steadily eroded over the years of the liberation struggle. So, the question is how can you constructively, involving the people of South Sudan, provide some kind of better assistance? People here have been recipients of one form or another of humanitarian assistance since the eighties; you had Operation Lifeline Sudan for example, but also several famines that have taken place at different times. How do you work within that history and environment, with a Government that still has a lot to do in terms of service delivery? How do you work with the government to better meet peoples’ needs?

 How would you define a humanitarian crisis?

It’s where peoples’ needs are so far from being met that it requires some form of intervention, but also that the people whose needs aren’t being met are in some way being discriminated against. They’re being disadvantaged, they’re being marginalised. For me, it’s that combination of how people are treated in the situation they’re in.

 How about when these needs are caused by poverty? Should there be a humanitarian response?

For awhile I worked with MSF in Angola. This was in 1996 when the war was still on. We had hospitals out there and I’d fly around to see these hospitals. There were also these colleagues I knew from a small Canadian NGO called Development Workshop. Their thing was, “We’re providing water and sanitation in the slums of Luanda, that’s what we’re going to do to help people.” They took a very development-oriented approach to it, and it showed me that development-oriented approaches could coexist with humanitarian work. 

Notwithstanding, this fashionable talk on the humanitarian/development nexus and things like that, I do think that sometimes there are distinctions. Certainly, there’s a distinction in the timeframes, and in the way programmes are designed. In some ways, humanitarian organisations could learn a lot from those organisations that do better consultations. In fact, it’s something we were talking about with the Humanitarian Coordinator recently when organizing the response to these floods. What do people want? We’ve got this multi-sectoral response to provide food and non-food items like jerry-cans and fishing kits, depending on the situation, but what do the people actually want both now and to support their recovery? 

 Is development programming possible in South Sudan?

You know, there’s been some very interesting research that’s been done. After the Comprehensive Agreement in 2005, there was an effort by some of the major donors to take a combined approach. They created a joint office and focused on extending basic services throughout South Sudan. But later, all of the big evaluations highlighted that nation building was in fact missed. The sense that this is a nation rather than a disparate collection of ethnicities and so on. Now we’re in a different context, emerging from five years of brutal civil war, and there are interesting programmes on resilience building.

 What are the main causes of humanitarian crises?

From my perspective, it tends to be the actions of States and the actions of Non-State Actors.  Marginalisation. When you see a population, a people with some kind of distinguishing characteristics being targeted by the State.

 What are the main humanitarian challenges today?

The huge number of people displaced or refugees with very limited prospects of being resettled or returning home within any kind of reasonable timeframe. I also think about the behaviour of states, and here I am speaking generally, towards the people to whom they have the primary responsibility to care for, is the major issue.

 How could this be resolved?

You try to uphold International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. I don’t see any other fundamental options. If you look at the history of the so-called humanitarian interventions, they succeeded under extremely limited narrow circumstances, and often had unintended consequences, for example, Somalia 1992-1993. There are a number of other things I could think of, but they have hardly had any effects. Unfortunately, it’s long, hard normative work with States and Non-State Actors. 

It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?

I think states and others have realized that the sanctions related to not upholding International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law are, at this point in time, relatively meaningless. They just don’t feel compelled.

 What does advocacy mean to you?

I have a relatively simple definition. First of all, I go back to the MSF approach of temoinage, which is this whole idea of being a witness, that you’re there with people witnessing what they’re experiencing. There’s a risk there that you can end up speaking for the people because you have privileged access to the western media and so on, but I think there’s something very powerful about the idea of being a witness and the solidarity that can come from that. Advocacy, for me is also about changing peoples’ behaviors. Trying to find ways to convince them through argument, effectively and emotionally, that they need to change their approach.

 What do you see as the big challenge we should advocate for that would have the strongest impact?

I wish that we could find a better way, and maybe your project touches on this, to address the fact that sometimes the numbers are so overwhelming that we can turn off. You know, for better or worse you can see how individual stories change the narrative, change the course of history in one way or another. I am not talking about changing the decision of a particular member state. For example, I am firmly convinced that horrible tragedy of the young boy whose body was washed up on the shore in Greece, that those pictures were so difficult for people to ignore, to pretend that wasn’t the reality. So, to me those kinds of human stories, the focus on the one person or the one family, are the things that make the individual impact. The Security Council might be concerned about the threat to international security and peace when large numbers of people are moving, the effects on the neighboring states. That becomes about scale, the numbers, 50,000, 100,000, 150,000. I think that can be overwhelming for many people, because you lose touch with what it means for an individual or a family.

 We all talk about human stories, even with pictures some of our audiences find them difficult to take. I struggle with numbers. Is 100,000 too many? Is one million sufficient? How many should we care about? Regardless of the numbers, whether it is one individual we should care.

That’s the point. Have you read the book Strangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar? It’s a set of linked non-fiction stories where she goes and meets with eight or ten different people who are extreme altruists, and will do anything for others. You can see in there as well that for some people therein lies madness, but it’s really interesting to read, and reflect on what that kind of commitment can mean. If you read Mountains Beyond Mountains about Paul Farmer and his commitment to people in Haiti, you can see the positive effects of this kind of extreme commitment. 

 What is the top one issue to advocate for that’d have the strongest impact?

I don’t know what’s the best or the single most important focus. Somehow, for me it’s about the set of protection issues, although protection, as you know is broadly defined that it can include everything. Somehow for me those protection issues need to be the ones we don’t lose. If people can exercise their rights effectively, then we’re on the right track. I am not saying humanitarian organisations should now become human rights organisations, but you know, it’s very difficult to make things better in a meaningful long-term way if people can’t exercise their rights.

 What fiction books or stories have you read set in a country with a humanitarian crisis?

I was thinking of a book that I didn’t finish because I didn’t like it. It’s called Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo, and it’s set in South Sudan during the aid effort of the late 90s. I felt he had hung out in Nairobi for awhile and got it in terms of the texture, but in my mind, it didn’t really help me to think differently about something I had experienced. You see I worked in South Sudan from 1998 to 1999. A book I really liked is The Constant Gardner by John le Carré, which you wouldn’t necessarily think of, but I think Le Carré has some fascinating descriptions of South Sudan, flying around South Sudan as part of the aid effort, and overall, his devastating way of describing how businesses and organizations can grind up everything and everyone in their path. 

 What facilitators or barriers are there for fiction to address the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises?

My big worry now is this whole fake news craziness. How’d you use fiction to change peoples’ approaches, but make it clear that it’s fiction? It’s one thing if it’s a story in the New Yorker for example, and it’s another thing if a story is launched out there without a context. But then I think about this story, CAT Person, by Kristen Roupenian published in the New Yorker, the one about a bad date with Me Too elements and that sparked this huge conversation on an uncomfortable romantic date because it resonated with a large group of people. This is an example of a story that changed the discourse on a topic.

 It’s a valid and important point on fake news. Suppose it’s a good work of literary fiction, what elements of fiction would facilitate or become a barrier to addressing the causes and consequences of a humanitarian crisis?

You would need extremely good writers whose writing touches you emotionally, without it being overly sentimental and so on.

 What elements of the Constant Gardener resonated with you?

There are a number of them. The determination of the wife to have her child in Nairobi Hospital with catastrophic consequences. When he’s investigating the suspicious tuberculosis drug. The descriptions of flying over South Sudan, that attack by the men on horses, the slums in Nairobi. I’ve always liked Le Carré, not all his books, but he has a certain insight in some of his earlier novels on how bureaucracies work. The Constant Gardner came out in early 2000 when the war in South Sudan was still ongoing. Have you read books by M G Vassanji – The Gunny Sack and The Book of Secrets? The former is set in Zanzibar during the time of independence and the latter in East Africa at the time of the first world war. His books are less about humanitarian issues, and more about the experience of Indians in Eastern. Africa. They have a strong sense of place, and I really appreciate writers who can give you a sense of place

 Tell me about a situation or a person where you have worked who has had a profound effect on you.

Sierra Leone. For various political reasons, the UN had pulled out and there was MSF and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). That was it. No donors, no NGOs. They came later. No UN agencies. On a certain day, I think it was a Sunday afternoon, for whatever reason, the rebels who controlled the city dropped a couple of mortars on a very crowded settlement in Freetown. We went to the hospital to see how we could provide assistance, and one of the doctors insisted on taking me into the morgue and there was a woman with her child there on the steel tray. That was just a very moving experience. I mean, people had been going about their daily lives and some idiot just decided to fire off a couple of mortars for God knows what reason, and without thinking of the consequences. 

 How do you cope with something like that? Does it drive you to continue?

I guess. I don’t know. You meet lots of other people. When I was Sierra Leone. Because it was so intense all the time, because several agencies had pulled out, the NGOs had relocated all their international staff, I got to know a number of our national staff much better than I’d have without intermediaries, and there was a strong sense that we were in this together doing what we could under very difficult circumstances. Then I remember the happiness of the people when that part of the conflict - it reoccurred a year later - was over, and we had all lived. That too stays with you.

 What’s your greatest hope for the people affected by humanitarian crises?

That we give them what they want. There are certain things that I can’t fix. The only thing we can fix is listening to people better, and giving them what they want. What they themselves say they need.

 How have you been able to balance work and family life?

I guess that goes in phases. I was single when I started with MSF. I met my wife and she came to Sierra Leone and Uganda with me. I joined OCHA in New York. Frankly, that was at a time, 2001, 2002, 2003, when people in NY didn’t really travel, and didn’t really go to the field on 3 to 4-month deployments as they do now. It was a very different time. I might go to DRC for 2 weeks or Uganda for 2 weeks, but that didn’t have a real effect on my family life. In the Caribbean, I travelled a lot to the ten different countries I served, but Barbados was a very calm and safe place to live, and after a two to three-day trip, I’d come home. So now being out here in a non-family duty station for more than one year, it’s super hard, it’s super hard, you know this too, you’ve deployed somewhere for a period of time away from your daughter.  Different people cope differently, have different ways of dealing with it, but for me it’s very hard to be apart from my family.

 Any advice?

No, I don’t have any advice. Everybody has a different situation and different considerations, and I’d not want to judge someone else’s decisions. My main thought is that if the job gets too hard for the family you gotta do something else. I mean I have no interest in being divorced. I’ve no interest in having a fractured relationship with my daughters. That’s what I have to manage.

 What can someone out there, someone reading this conversation, what can they do to make a difference?

I think they should find an organization which aligns with their values and interests.  There are lots of ways to identify such an organization, and lots of websites to help you to ensure that the organization has a solid track record etc. They should provide unrestricted financial support in whatever amount they want to that organization.  And they should raise their voices – however and wherever they can.