UN vehicles parked on a debris-covered road amid humanitarian efforts.

Civil-Military Coordination Isn’t Broken, It’s Solving the Wrong Problem

ByElla Burden

Civil-military coordination is posited as a communication problem. Post-crisis analyses largely attribute failure to fragmented information flows, weak liaison structures, or ineffective reporting architectures between military and civilian actors. As David Higgins argued in a recent episode of The International Risk Podcast, this interpretation is incomplete. Coordination rarely fails because institutions are unable to communicate….

David Higgins

David Higgins

ByElla Burden

David Higgins is Head of Humanitarian Access and Civil-Military Coordination in Somalia for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), where his work focuses on the practical and political challenges of operating at the intersection of military, humanitarian, and stabilisation actors in complex conflict environments. His experience spans two decades of work…

Episode 374: The Illusion of Separation: Civil-Military Coordination in Modern Conflict with David Higgins

ByElla Burden

This episode hosts David Higgins to explore the complex and often misunderstood boundary between military operations, humanitarian action, and political stabilisation in modern conflict environments. Drawing on two decades of experience across the British Army, the United Nations, and geopolitical advisory work, we look at how different institutions operating in the same space can interpret…