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10 J. Int'l Humanitarian Action 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/jinthuma10 and id is 1 raw text is: Akal etal. Journal ofInternational Humanitarian Action (2025) 10:1 https'//doi.org/10.1186/s41018-024-00161-w Journal of International Humanitarian Action Open Access Tacit engagement in humanitarian action: making sense of silence and secrecy in humanitarian negotiations Ayse Bala Akal * , Kristina Roepstorff2 and Kristoffer Lid n' Abstract Secrecy and silence regarding the compromises and trade-offs made by frontline humanitarians in order to achieve access, protection, efficiency and legitimacy are a widely observable but underconceptualized phenomenon in humanitarian action. As a form oftacit engagement, it allows humanitarian practitioners to operate in difficult settings but also implies lacking accountability, coordination and learning.There is thus a need for disentangling the productive and restraining effects of secrecy in this field. In this paper, we do so by conceptualizing these prac- tices as forms oftacit engagementand relating them to political theory on secrecy and silence. Drawing on insights from expert consultations and qualitative interviews on humanitarian negotiations, we relate it to existing literatures on remote management, risk management and a culture of silence in humanitarian organizations more gener- ally and humanitarian negotiations more specifically. In the conclusion, we work out the potentially productive and destructive effects of tacit engagement as an invitation to ethical assessment. Keywords Humanitarian action, Humanitarian negotiations, Culture of silence Introduction According to official estimates, 260,000 people, approxi- mately 4.6% of the total population, died during the 2011 Somalia famine (Martin & Nyakariu 2013, 1). The famine was said to be triggered by two primary events leading up to the crisis: The year prior to the famine proved to be the driest year in the eastern Horn of Africa. Addition- ally, the humanitarian assistance delivered in 2010-2011 to southern Somalia was significantly lower in compari- son to previous years (Martin & Nyakariu 2013, 2). The scale of this humanitarian catastrophe was deemed to be unprecedented (Abdi 2011). Oxfam's Somalia Country Director said the following about the crisis, Famines *Correspondence: Ayse Bala Akal aysaka@prio.org Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IF HV), Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), Bochum, Germany SpringerOpen are not natural phenomena, they are catastrophic politi- cal failures. The world was too slow to respond to stark warnings of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Soma- lia and people paid with their lives (FEWSNET Report 2014). The failure to respond to the famine in a timely and efficient manner was also in large part brought upon by access barriers imposed not only by Al-Shabaab but also donors to prevent aid from falling into the hands of Al- Shabaab (Donini & Maxwell 2013). The risks and dilem- mas associated with taxation were one of the most significant impediments to access. According to Donini and Maxwell's (2013, 403), report on remote manage- ment practices, during the famine, taxation or the risk of having to pay money to a local authority for access was an open secret among the humanitarian agencies operating in Somalia. These taxation demands had very dire implications for humanitarian actors who were constrained not only by donor restrictions on fraud and diversion of aid but also counterterrorism and sanctions ©The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This artide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate ifchanges were made.The images or other third party material in this article are included in the articles Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the artide's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.To view a copy of this licence, visit http:creativecommons.org/licenses/by/40/. RESEARCH ARTICLE

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