Can you be a Humanitarian and still have a family?

Professional life is commonly opposed to personal life. The fight between job and family appears even more disloyal when your profession requires you to be posted in far and dangerous locations.

Are humanitarians condemned to be family-less?

In the after-Covid time, when most prospective workers are carefully analyzing the proportion of remote working time they are offered to optimize family time, what about the thousands of field workers of all nationalities often struggling in difficult areas and largely far from their family?

It is not really an option to comfortably lead from home an emergency water supply network construction or a life-saving food distribution in a conflict-affected region. Can the families of the relief worker be accommodated with her or him? Refugee camps or conflict-affected areas are rarely appealing, grocery options are quite restricted if any and the whole story is regularly surrounded by frequent gunshots.

It is their choice after all. Really?

In job’s descriptions jargon, a distinction is made between “family duty station” and “non-family duty station”. The later are obviously predominant in humanitarian operations. Does the choice to be an aid worker implicitly involves the choice of being alone? While it probably suits some, particularly at an early career stage, it is not the case of often more experimented aid workers upon whom relief organizations desperately depend. This is why many agencies are offering rest & recuperation (R&R) schemes, on the top of classic leaves. Frequency of rests are usually adjusted to the “hardship degree” of the duty stations. It is usually a break of 1 week every 8 weeks. I personally experienced a rate of R&R every 6 weeks in the volatile North Kivu of DR Congo, but it can even be as short as every 4 weeks for the real badass duty stations. Fun fact is that R&R are rather compulsory, and you often have to leave the country or region you are working in. I guess many relief agencies experienced the unpleasant situation to cope with over-stressed and sleep-deprived project managers with tons of responsibilities.

How unsustainable is an unbalanced work and family time?

What a challenge for the aid workers to make sure she or he is can adjust leaves for crucial family moments: first day to school for kids, sport competitions, birthdays, and so on. WhatsApp and likes turn a meagre consolation for those unable to attend special family moments. One thing sure, Humanitarians are never getting those years back. Family pressure just adds up to the burdens of isolated relief workers.?

In my case, I am truly persuaded that a correct balance of professional and personal time is needed, not only for me and my family, but also for my job. A family at home has this overwhelming power to pacify your mind, even after stressful and tense day at work (very common in the humanitarian & international cooperation side of life). It literally offers a disconnection time that allows to reset your system and recharge your batteries. My family also reminds me to go back home rather than staying long evening hours at office that would just keep attacking my temper and progressively transforming me in such an irritable person for colleagues, partners and beneficiary people.

Ultra short term people for long term interventions.

I am not a HR specialist, but I know that beyond skills and expertise, when you send someone to remote and tense locations, you better have a person that know how to recharge his or her own battery. That is probably why more than for any other classic jobs, the first experience is so difficult to gain with a humanitarian or development agency. The employer just ignores how you would react to a complex environment. Internship are often an easier way for an organization to gauge how young professional behave and react to adverse situations. If employers are looking for bullet-proof staff, this mean they want to keep them long term, right?

On the other hand, it is not exceptional to see prospective aid workers requesting a commitment of one or two months maximum for an assignment. With such a short term assignment it is very complicated to understand a country, a region, a culture, a conflict, or just to build sustainable partnerships with local and permanent stakeholders. It is very frustrating to see an international short term logistician preparing convoy expeditions but ignoring that the rainy season will soon floods the roads when he will be back home, or a cash distribution expert ignoring he is adding fuel on ethnic conflicts in assisting a portion of the population without consideration of the links between people. There is no emergency situation that last one or two months, there are mostly protracted crisis lasting for several months or years. Experts that have been long enough in the field are lacking. ?

There is just no solution, but…

Very few employers understand that they could have longer commitments from experimented and reliable Humanitarians if they would consider the aid worker and his-her family connections. As long as the context is safe (no active conflict), what would prevent an organization to have a family joining the aid worker? Or to accommodate the family in a nearby or safer city? What is the cost of a remote education plan and a family house rent compared to a high rate of project managers turnover or worst: repetitive position gaps? I have seen that when it is the case, the partner is quick to find amazing occupations or a job him/herself. Additionally, they are often many couples that found themselves in field operations and are therefore both skilled and experts in their respective domain.

I am not writing this article to blame the short term or the flying aid workers but in a bit to identify paths to retain skilled experts in the field, to let them a chance to work more efficiently and sustainably. In my own experience, I had the chance to be accompanied by my partner in so-called non-family duty stations. More recently, I was glad to have my family of 4 by my side for the 3.5 years of assignment in the city of Mbuji Mayi, DR Congo, a city of 3.5 M in which we were literally the only expat family. Let us face it, would have I been alone, I could not have reached 4 months on this difficult assignment, jeopardizing the hope placed by people waiting for water supply. I am confident it was also a very rich experience for my two little daughters who had lots of friends and my partner who was also working there.