BLACK SANDS: SECURITY AND HUMANITARIAN AID IN CONTEMPORARY LIBYA

.How do Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) interact with global and local (non)state actors in fragile contexts? Which types of governance outcomes does this interaction produce? These aspects remain substantially under researched. None of the strands identified in the literature is substantially able to answer such questions. Moreover, how NGOs make sense of the changes, conflicts, cooperative relationships taking place within governance structures, what roles do NGOs play in the processes through which structures regulate the provision of services, is more assumed than researched. To fill this gap, this dissertation intends to contribute to the research on decision-making within NGOs. I provide a theoretical model taken from the economics of organizations that helps understanding the decision-making process, and highlights the presence of a set of factors that are common, relevant and interconnected for NGOs, creating a typology of organizations that allows me to formulate clear propositions regarding the potential programming trajectories, depending on the combination of two major intra-organizational conditions. Lastly, both the theoretical framework and the typology allow me to explore which types of (intended) consequences different routines have for governance structures. I will start creating an overarching political economic framework that highlights the existence of multiple institutional sets and their co-existence/competition in civil wars. These institutional settings are plugged into strategic complexes – networks that connect multiple actors that provide the institutional constraints and opportunities of action for humanitarian aid. Lastly, these networks constitute the arena – the social space – in which humanitarian aid is negotiated, and in which its language can be used for legitimation purposes, while simultaneously advancing individual interests and objectives Against such structural constraints, NGO programming has to take into account both internal normative commitments and financial security concerns. Principles so determine the identity of NGOs, their long term objectives, goals and commitments. But the external environment determine their financial constraints. The unfolding of this decision-making, and the role of different normative and/or material factors at each stage can be captured through the framework of organizational learning. Basing on interviews conducted in Tunis between November 2016 and March 2017 and on the analysis of secondary sources, this dissertation configures as a Small N Case Study in which I reconstruct the decision-making of three International Humanitarian NGOs – the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), International Medical Corps and Mediciens Sans Frontiers Holland (MSFH). Through this process, I outline how such actors have organized their programming in the period between 2011 and 2016 in the post-Revolutionary Libya.