Lots has been written about aid over the past few weeks, and the public commentary can be vitriolic in response.  Some people seem to be absolute nutters, believing that letting Somalis die is a solution to their underlying problems.  Hmmm, I’m not quite sure about the logic there.  But more common are people who seem furious that more money should be sent to a place like the Horn of Africa when aid has been such a failure.  As you may have noted, I’m skeptical about the capacity of development aid to meet its objectives; to transform societies.  But isn’t the public  wrong to judge the potential success of humanitarian relief by the failures of development?  Assuming that people can get to a proper medical center or feeding program, it’s relatively easy to save that child’s life.  Of course that doesn’t solve issues of corruption, desertification, and decades of brutal conflict.  But that’s not the goal.  In other words, not all aid is created equal.

In my professional alter ego, I’ve tried to take this up on in response to an editorial in today’s Guardian (see here).  But this negative discourse links into wider issues of public perception of aid, and in particular a failure to grasp the unavoidable complexity and need for a certain level of capacity to mount a successful response to poverty or crisis.  J at the Tales from the Hood takes on this issue. I’ve put an opinion there, again differentiating between humanitarian and development. 

I’m curious to hear other opinions.  I don’t believe for a minute that you can look at a given context and say X is a development situation, while XX is an emergency situation.  The world isn’t so tidy.  And what of all that other stuff, like post conflict and transition and pre conflict and early recovery etc etc?  But aren’t there clear or even irreconcilable distinctions in theory, in the ideas behind development and humanitarian action?