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The armed groups that humanitarian agencies now negotiate with are not the movements the sector learned to deal with. They are organised differently, financed differently and governed differently, and the differences change what a negotiation with them can achieve.

What has changed

The older model was a political movement with a command structure, a stated cause, a territory and a representative who could be found and spoken to. Negotiating access meant reaching that representative and reaching an agreement that the movement could enforce, because the movement had the means to enforce it.

Many of the groups that matter now do not fit that description. Four differences recur.

• Decentralised command. Authority is distributed across local commanders who raise their own revenue and set their own rules. An agreement reached with the leadership may not bind the checkpoint twenty kilometres away, and the leadership may not be able to make it.
• Mixed motives. Political objectives coexist with protection rackets, taxation of movement, resource extraction and criminal enterprise. A group that funds itself from checkpoints has a financial interest in the continuation of the conditions that created it.
• Fluid membership. Fighters move between groups, and between armed activity and civilian life. The person who stops a vehicle on Monday may be a farmer on Tuesday, which makes verification and accountability difficult.
• External patronage and proxy relationships. Some groups are sustained by states or by other armed actors, which means the decisions that matter may be taken somewhere the agency has no access at all.

What it means for access negotiations

The practical consequences are specific. Negotiation has to happen at the level at which the decision is actually taken, which is frequently local, and an agreement reached only with a leadership that cannot enforce it provides no security. Acceptance has to be maintained continuously rather than settled once, because the relevant interlocutor changes. A group's financial interest in the movement of goods and people has to be understood before a route is planned, since an agreement that removes that income will not hold. And the agency has to be prepared for the possibility that no agreement is available, which means planning for access that does not depend on one.

What it means for risk management

• Context analysis has to be local. A national picture is not enough. The groups that determine whether a specific road is passable may be known only at district level.
• Agreements have a shelf life measured in weeks. The name of the commander who agreed, the date, and the area covered all have to be recorded and re-checked.
• Staff profile matters more. Where authority is fragmented and personal, how a member of staff is read by a local commander becomes decisive, which connects this work directly to the research on diverse profiles.
• Programme design has to absorb the answer. If the only viable access is through a partner or through remote management, that is a programme decision and not only a security one.
• Withdrawal has to be planned. An agency that has accepted the terms of a fragmented armed group may find that the terms change without notice, and needs a position on what it will not accept.

Related

• Humanitarian access in a changing world
• Ethno-religious conflicts in Nigeria
• The resurgence of Al-Shabaab in Somalia