Taking stock of our charity choices

This time of year always sees a big push on charity donations with international agencies particularly prominent in their quest to have people buy gifts for the Developing World from apple trees to pigs and mosquito nets to chickens.

 

In 2010, the international aid system came under severe scrutiny in the media over its response to the disaster in Haiti. “Where is the money gone?” was a common question with the charge levelled in some quarters that humanitarian agencies are accountable to nobody and can support local war economies.

Only on Wednesday the leaders of Syria’s western-backed opposition were revealing plans to rapidly move hundreds of millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid into the most deprived areas of the country in an attempt to gain legitimacy. It would mean the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) could be considered an alternative to the government of the embattled president, Bashar al-Assad.

So far only a trickle of aid has reached increasingly desperate communities inside Syria, where up to two million people are believed to be internally displaced with the UN claiming the number of registered refugees outside the country had hit half a million.

With this backdrop, it was interesting to see BBC4 dedicate almost three hours on Sunday to the topic of humanitarian aid in war and disaster zones, screening Ricardo Pollack’s documentary The Trouble With Aid, followed by a studio debate with aid professionals and critics.

In what quickly became a tale of humanitarianism gone wrong, the documentary featured archive footage interspersed with interviews with those who were on the ground during seven of the biggest humanitarian crises over the past 45 years. Beginning with famine turned propaganda in Biafra, it ended in present-day Afghanistan with aid workers hidden behind walled compounds stopping off along by way in Ethiopia, Cambodia and Kosovo.

A challenging documentary in the excellent Why Poverty? season (an international documentary season that is using film to get people talking about hunger and poverty with over 60 broadcasters involved) it looked at the unintended consequences of charitable efforts. Created in Biafra in 1967, the concept of humanitarian aid gathered pace during subsequent disasters in Cambodia in 1979, Ethiopia in 1985 and Somalia in 1992 and has since snowballed into a global movement.

As the saying goes, however, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The programme was quite vocal in asking if aid organisations involved in these disasters were realistic or naive in the way they dealt with murderous governments and rebel militias.

Former Oxfam, Médicins sans Frontiers and Red Cross workers interviewed seemed to think so, one going so far as to express his disgust at the self-congratulation of Live Aid when the Ethiopian government forcibly relocated the starving masses.

In 1994, hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the genocide in Rwanda gathered in camps in Goma, on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Médicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) immediately mounted an enormous emergency response — only to realise as the months went on that much of the international aid pouring into the area was being diverted to support the Interhamwe, the militias that had perpetrated the genocide and were, at that time, taking control over the camps.

Dr Fiona Terry was the head of the French section of MSF when it withdrew from the refugee camps and she was full in her belief that their presence there was exasperating the conflict by funding the militias.

She said the question was debated amongst MSF workers – should they stay, knowing that by doing so, they are strengthening the Interhamwe by providing them with shelter, food, water and medical care as they re-grouped and re-armed, using the camps as cover for military activities, or did they withdraw, knowing that many civilians in the camps would then stop receiving assistance? In the end, MSF decided to withdraw to many other agencies’ dismay.

Goma is currently in the middle of another crisis with the city’s capture by M23 rebels on November 20 for 11 days and the collapse of the army there, despite the presence of over 17,000 UN peacekeepers. The ranks of M23 include Tutsi commanders and fighters who participated in the 2004-2009 rebellion led by warlord Laurent Nkunda.

In April this year, a report by international and Congolese NGOs said the failure to reform Congo’s large and ill-disciplined army had kept much of the civilian population in poverty and insecurity despite billions of dollars of foreign aid for the country. More than $14 billion of international aid over five years has ended up having “little impact on the average Congolese citizen”, the report noted.

As this film shows, humanitarian workers have always been ethically conscious and it is clear that, through the years, aid has had a positive impact and saved millions of lives. Delivering aid into highly politicised warzones obviously offers its own challenges and aid workers attempts to help are often compromised or undermined.

The programme was followed by a 45-minute panel show, The Trouble with Aid: The Debate. Further exploring the emergencies highlighted in Pollack’s film, disaster relief experts offered their opinions on if there are occasions when humanitarian aid might do more harm than good and what emergency aid actually means today.

The conclusion that seemed to be drawn is that the whole strategy of aid relief has to be completely re-thought and, while not encouraging people to stop putting money towards international causes, that at least question where their donations may end up.

Whenever there is an international disaster, our natural instinct is to throw money at the problem. When we drop a few euros into a Concern or Red Cross bucket, we’re putting our faith in these agencies to do good on our behalf but The Trouble with Aid challenges this fundamental assumption by asking the question – can aid sometimes do more harm than good?