Is humanitarian aid a complete failure?
Blogged by: Ruth Gidley
A tsunami survivor watches children play on a beach in the devastated fishing village of Akkarapettai, about 325km (202 miles) from the southern city of Chennai. Aid agencies' evaluation of the the tsunami response has led to soul-searching.
Aid workers are often pretty harsh on themselves, but it's rare they step back and question the whole humanitarian system. If they do, the conclusion can be a little depressing.
After decades of progress, the international aid system is still skewed by political bias rather than people's needs, it is still a post-colonial Western club with a couple of dozen members, and it hasn't done anything about the lessons learnt 25 years ago.
Those are just some of the conclusions of a soul-searching report on relief work over the past five years commissioned by a network that's dedicated to improving humanitarian action.
Aid has moved away from patronising charity towards thinking about people's rights, according to co-author Tony Vaux - who worked for international aid agency Oxfam for years - but if you look closely, people in the system don't really know what humanitarian action is or should be about.
"We say it's about 'addressing needs' but none of us can agree what needs are. What I think someone needs isn't the same as what you think," he explains.
There's a vague notion from some quarters that the world should be headed towards setting up a global welfare system, but what we think of as humanitarianism at the moment is dominated by 20 or so governments, another of the report's co-authors, Hugo Slim, says.
Slim, a dashing and charismatic researcher at the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, acknowledges there are other forms of aid - including massive funding from Islamic countries, burgeoning aid from economic powerhouse China. And there's the often-neglected flow of remittances from migrants around the world, although Slim points out that influence from diasporas isn't always benign. They often interfere in politics and fund wars, as well as sending huge sums of money home to relatives.
AID BIAS
But even the Western donors who sign up to pledges of impartiality end up giving aid that's biased in their own political and economic interests, Vaux and Slim say.
These guys argue have observed that when aid funding is limited, it actually seems to be spent best. But when emergencies are overfunded - like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - the influx of foreigners can end up undermining local organisations.
"Wonderful response from the public," Vaux says. "But completely the wrong thing."
Paradoxically, the Indian government got so fed up with the international system that it got serious about disaster preparedness, he says.
Slim thinks ex-President Bill Clinton should have used his clout to get across the message that the tsunami had enough donations. As U.N. special envoy for tsunami relief, he could have thanked the world for sending their money and then explained that the best thing would be to hold on to half of it and spend it in somewhere more needy like Democratic Republic of Congo instead.
The worst accusation that Vaux and Slim level at humanitarians is that they're not accountable to the people they say they want to help. They've got much, much better at reporting back to donors and the public, but they still only seem to gather feedback from the so-called "beneficiaries" of aid as a polite formality, Vaux says.
It's rare for projects to be evaluated, and when they are, the conclusions are often used either to settle an internal argument in an aid agency, co-author Peta Sandison says, used to justify closing up shop, or are really just an exercise to make it look as if the organisation's consulting people.
In any other business, the customers would have gone elsewhere, Vaux says. "Everybody else in the world uses market surveys and adjusts their product according to the ratings."
CASH IN HAND
What would happen if people were genuinely consulted about what they want and need? Vaux thinks the answer's pretty obvious - cash. He says the aid world's been going round in circles for 25 years inventing a million reasons not to put money into the hands of people in need.
But it's actually pretty pleasant to be able to go off to somewhere like Bolivia and have a career making decisions on other people's behalf, Vaux points out.
"We're not innocent bystanders. We spend our time carting food around the world when we could be doing something else (more useful)," he says.
People like Vaux, who wrote a classic and very frank book about aid called "The Selfish Altruist" several years ago, have been saying this kind of thing for years.
But how could you really evaluate what people want? Researchers from Bath University in southwestern England are working on an index to measure "wellbeing" that might help, and they'll be publishing a book about it soon. The idea is to factor in people's happiness as well as their economic conditions, which might help gauge whether aid projects were making people's lives better, which is what it's all about.
Despite criticising a system he slams for being so slow to change, Vaux predicts that big shifts are ahead.
He hopes that humanitarianism will be more representative of the people it's supposed to help. He's inspired by Indian steps, for example, towards getting disaster insurance for poor people. "Asia and Latin America will create new paradigms which will eventually filter through to Africa," he predicts.
Maybe there'll be some kind of ombudsman for humanitarian affairs. That's what Slim would like to see.
Thinkers at the Overseas Development Institute are already discussing the idea and blogging about how it might work in practice.
It sounds like a tough job since there's not even general agreement in the aid world about a common set of standards for emergency aid.
Vaux, looking to the future, says: "We're not going to be in control." On the whole, if this report by the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) is anything to go by, that sounds like it would be a good thing.
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7 responses to “Is humanitarian aid a complete failure?”
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Ruth Gidley has been on the AlertNet team since late 1999. Before that, she lived in Guatemala, working first with a small local NGO and then as a journalist for a Central American news service. Ruth, who has a Masters in Latin American Studies, has edited a book on human rights in Guatemala, and written chapters for books on truth monuments and on Native American traditions.
02 Apr 2007 18:34:42 GMT
Humanitarianism is not a failure but the problems lie the way it is handled the needies are not helped accordingly sometimes due to the bureacratic policies set there by the donors ,the monitors and receivers.In this context mostly those intitled to receive these aid are always vulnerables to a certain points if some conditions between the donnors ,monitors and receivers are not met.When more failures are seen this what i can donor fatigue!So does cut back aid a solution?Not at all but if it could be monitored well and see if it reached those intitled to receive it,it could be trusted kind
03 Apr 2007 08:03:04 GMT
One thing to think about is the sad but true reality that feeding people in areas of famine is only prolonging the suffering. A harsh reality is that the land where famine exists cannot support the population there. A cycle of suffering is set up. Education is the only aid that is of long term help in this context.It is my view that humanitarianism should be sustainable.
03 Apr 2007 17:58:42 GMT
I wonder if the lack of evaluation is the biggest problem, even granted that aid is a messy, multi-partied and often confused affair. People are *dying of hunger and disease* - could their needs be entirely vague?
On the contrary, I think spending time carting food around the world isn't that bad an idea, as long as initiatives to help people grow their own food aren't ignored. Realistically, it's dubious if there'll be *no one* who needs to take from the cart. So ppl like Vaux would always be welcomed, IMO.05 Apr 2007 07:44:41 GMT
Humanitarianism is a failure. This is because it creates a culture of dependency on those who are assisted, as they begin to perceive themselves as helpless. In my experience working with NGOs, i am convinced that in Africa, development will only be realized when these organizations begin to take into account the coping mechanisms of the communities they work in. It is the height of folly for the donors to assume that the locals cannot survive without external assistance. Humans, even the most poorest materially have a way of coping with all and surviving the worst kinds of natuaral and man-made disasters and it is only when these coping mechanisms will be taken into account in the design of programmes that meaningfull change will be realized. One thing that i have observed to negatively impact on a community is the culture of dishing out handouts, i have developed a theory i refer to as the cycle of dependency in relation to the provision of relief food and how this impedes food production even long after the initial disaster occured.l
05 Apr 2007 11:01:50 GMT
I hope that the above comments are not representative of people within the aid community. Speaking as a lowly student I find it pretty shocking that all three 'responses' above have not bothered to address the issues raised in the article, and don't seem to have read the piece it is based on. I just feel the need to address some of the points they have raised, although I'll carry on in the same vein and not address the article properly (suffice to say I think Vaux is totally right, especially about cash - there's a good paper by Harvey on it at http://www.odi.org.uk/hpg/cash_vouchers.html )
The first comment says failures are due to "donor fatigue." This is based on the false assumption that effective aid is all about pumping in enough money - assuming that all aid is good aid. This totally ignores the catalogue of failures that has beset the aid industry for as long as it has existed (e.g. "Do no harm" etc.) It works on the assumption that good intentions are enough and that we can afford to ignore questions of effectiveness and ignore questioning our own actions and realising that we just might be part of the problem as well. The second comment shouldn't need answering due to its obvious stupidity but it seems that social darwinists still exist and I can't help but rise to the bait. Perhaps sustainable should take time to check his "harsh reality" that "the land where famine exists cannot support a population there" Where? Which land? Such sweeping generalisations prove nothing except the writer's own arrogance. Perhaps they should take time to read some of Amartya Sen's stuff - essential reading for anyone who claims to have even a basic grasp of "famine". Perhaps they should also take into account political/historical/economic factors as well. Rodney's "How Europe underdeveloped Africa" is a good place to start. It might also point to the fact that education alone will not solve poverty unless we address the underlying power relations that cause and perpetuate it. Or perhaps that'd bee too difficult and embarassing andd we should carry on preaching to people from afar about how they could break! free of poverty if only they could be more like us?? The last comment paradoxically welcomes Vaux's opinion while directly contradicting him by questioning whether their needs are "entirely vague" given that they are "dying of hunger and disease." Who is "they" and why have "they" being identified as part of the problem (and "we" are not considered)? If Alwyn had taken time to read the paper and many others like it that are freely available through ODI etc. he might realise that needs are not quite so simple. Why is so much food aid monetarised if that is the case? Why, if we were so concened about people starving to death, do we systematically undermine local production of food by dumping our surpluses on poor countries? The same applies to other commodities - the net result being we put local producers out of business and contribute to long term structural dependency (great for agribusiness in the US and Europe though!) Also, why does USPL480 food aid directly correlate to surplus production? (p.20 of this: http://www.oxfam.org/en/files08 Apr 2007 11:59:16 GMT
Having just returned from a self-funded trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, I can tell you that we are not only wasting colossal amounts of money in DRC, but we are also contributing mightily to the image of post-colonial abuse of the indigenous population there.
Conservation programs, staffed largely by British nationals, are taking American generosity for a joyride in the heart of darkness. Our veterans are paying the price; our local forestry programs are paying the price; and our national parks are disintegrating while we gleefully support âenvironmentalâ programs in Africa that are benefiting no one except the fat cat NGO employees who are living high off the hog on our tax dollars. And we thought keeping track of Katrina funding was a nightmare.10 Apr 2007 09:26:12 GMT
Having just returned from a self-funded trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, I can tell you that we are not only wasting colossal amounts of money in DRC, but we are also contributing mightily to the image of post-colonial abuse of the indigenous population there.
Conservation programs, staffed largely by British nationals, are taking American generosity for a joyride in the heart of darkness. Our veterans are paying the price; our local forestry programs are paying the price; and our national parks are disintegrating while we gleefully support âenvironmentalâ programs in Africa that are benefiting no one except the fat cat NGO employees who are living high off the hog on our tax dollars. And we thought keeping track of Katrina funding was a nightmare.