Western aid agencies, especially those here in the UK, have spent the last two weeks fanning the media flames of a fundraising campaign for the Horn of Africa. Merlin even went so far as to call it a “global food crisis” but seems to have recoiled to the idea of an East Africa Food Crisis. Let’s start by stating the obvious. The situation in parts of Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia seems desperate, and humanitarian aid is needed to save lives right now. To question whether or not this is the Drought of the Century is not to deny the gravity of the situation and the need for emergency aid.
But I don’t really want to debate whether or not aid agencies are hyping drought in order to stuff their pockets. Of course there is hyping. Of course agencies use weasel words, at the same time painting a picture of saving stick-legged children from starving right now while being clever enough to avoid claiming that it is already a famine or mass starvation. Nope, those things could happen. Writing in The Times, John Clayton makes his opinion clear: “By hyping up a localised “drought” and playing down the real causes of the turmoil in Eastern Africa, the aid agencies are crying wolf. What happens when there’s a real emergency? Will we believe them?”
On one point, it is easy to agree with John. It’s a sad reflection of public attitudes towards aid, but people like the idea of giving to the innocent victims of El Nino rather than to the not-as-innocent victims of clan violence, war, and greed-fueled bad governance. It’s amazing how even somebody purporting to set forth a list of factors somehow miss out: “High food prices, fluctuating rainfall, a rising population and ever dwindling natural resources have created the perfect storm,” said Leigh Daynes, director of communications for Plan, in the UK. Oops. Forgot to mention conflict in Somalia. Oops. Forgot to mention corruption in Kenya. About like forgetting to mention Ghaddafy in an analysis of the situation in Libya.
But let’s not be too hard on these agencies for omitting the ways in which locals themselves could be blamed for their own suffering. By definition, humanitarian aid is based on need, not worthiness, because being a human being possesses inalienable worth enough. Besides, the entire point of the media campaign is to raise money to pay for the relief effort and save lives. So let’s not moralize about painting a picture that is skewed towards being effective rather than depressing to the average punter.
That said, let’s moralize anyway. Let’s moralize not about the fact that the perfect storm of factors missed conflict, missed corruption (kudos to UK AID for suspending bi-lateral aid to Kenya on account of the lack of integrity), or missed the way in which drought has some very local and human causes (on this point, check out Paul Theroux during his Africa overland odyssey ten years ago, quoting a diplomat on the situation in northern Kenya: “Right, it hasn’t rained in the north for three years. Whose fault is that? They cut down the trees for fuel, they sold them to loggers, they destroyed the watershed. And they’re still doing it.”). No, let’s moralize about the fact that the aid agencies’ perfect storm of factors forgot one key factor: aid agencies.
Inside Somalia is a different story, because aid agencies have little access there. But the rest of the Horn? Kenya? Ethiopia? Uganda? For decades, aid agencies (and the Kenyan government!) have been all over these places, practicing what they call development. They collect a lot of money for this work and they have been pumping out glossy reports describing their glorious success in helping communities become sustainable, in helping to protect the environment, in building the capacity of people to cope. Etc etc. So where is it? Where is this development we keep hearing about? Surely people have been helped. But as the current disaster in the area would seem to suggest, at the big picture level all this development work didn’t amount to squat.
What we have, then, is a perfect storm of irony. Aid agencies are asking us to fund humanitarian relief work (and I admit this is also an assumption, because we don’t really know what sort of program will receive their money). We should do that. People need it. Lift the veil, though, and what they are also asking the public to do is to fund their own failed development policies.
Dear Marc,
What a provocative piece of writing, especially your question “where is this development we keep hearing about?” I feel that aid agencies still work in isolation or in bubbles. I am wondering if it might be possible for yourself or someone at MSF to share some field-lessons with the Brilliant Failures Initiative? Maybe things would be different if development organizations worked together and shared information more often (not just best practices, but failures too) You can see the site at: http://www.brilliantfailures.com/awardDC. Thank you!
– Andrew
I should have guessed, reading your article, that you were a MSF. I used to be one 30 years ago, and once one, always one.
I feel that MSF has lost a very important public battle in the debate around development and humanitarianism. Nobody ever questions these days the need to address the ‘root causes’ , or to change ‘bottom-up’ the society, and I strongly believes that these development goals have distracted from what used to be at the core of humanitarian aid, the imperative to help because people need this help, and because we can do it. MSF is in my opinion too discrete on these issues. They are discussed internally, on their websites, but rarely in the public arena, and they should be, because people need to know what the money they give for humanitarian purposes is used for: humanitarian advocacy, humanitarian policies, humanitarian whatever.. so little aid trickled down to the people who really need it.
I am totally ashamed by the situation in Haiti, and it is not something which is discussed openly in our newspapers. The best information come from American or Haitian blogs or newspapers, and to read them is heartbreaking. How things could have gone so wrong ? Is it not time to redefine what humanitarian aid is all about, so that people, any people, in need can get it, and namely the Haitian people, who still live under leaking tents or drink polluted water?