Is Humanitarian Aid Bad for Africa?

[Barry]

This is a subject I've mentioned in the past when discussing the extent to which many people tend to place too much emphasis on purity of intention and not enough on hard results; the point being that actions based on the best of intentions can lead to the most horrifying of results:

Margaret Wente
Is humanitarian aid bad for Africa?
Globe and Mail
Nov. 12, 2010
If you’re over 35, you probably remember the terrible Ethiopian famine of 1984. Those images of starving babies shocked the conscience of the world. They also launched the age of celebrity aid, when rock stars put the arm on governments to make poverty history. No one was more energetic than Bob (now Sir Bob) Geldof, whose Band Aid and Live Aid concerts raised more than $100-million for relief organizations.

“The face of hunger was transformed, and the face of aid was Ethiopian,” writes Peter Gill, in his important new book, Famine and Foreigners. Today, Bob Geldof and his partner, Bono, are major players in the aid establishment. (They guest-edited a recent edition of The Globe and Mail.) Largely thanks to them, Western governments and non-governmental organizations have poured billions of dollars of aid into Africa.

Last March, an investigative program on the British Broadcasting Corp. made an explosive claim. It alleged that most of the money that Mr. Geldof raised back in 1985 had been diverted to buy arms for the rebel army fighting against the government. The enraged Mr. Geldof demanded an apology. “There is not a single shred of evidence that Band Aid or Live Aid money could have been diverted in any way,” he declared.

Last week, Mr. Geldof received a full apology. This week on the CBC, he insisted to Jian Ghomeshi, the host of Q, that he has yet to see an NGO “where the money went astray” or any situation in which aid didn’t reach the people for whom it was intended. “The Canadian government are saying we can’t determine whether this aid is accountable or not, therefore we are going to suspend money to the poorest people in the world – this is disgraceful!”

Yet a growing number of humanitarian and development experts – including former true believers – argue that aid money frequently prolongs wars, props up dictators, impedes democracy, aids oppression and stifles human rights. Nowhere, they say, is this chain of unintended consequences more apparent than in Ethiopia itself.

The starving children of Ethiopia were not the victims of drought, as most people believed at the time. They were the victims of politics. The government of the time was using famine as an instrument of war, and the rebels were more interested in defeating the government than in feeding famine victims. As William Easterly, a leading aid skeptic, puts it, “It’s not the rains, it’s the rulers.” Political famines attract the food aid industry, with the consequence that governments or rebel groups are able to feed their own armies and divert resources to buy more weapons. Humanitarian aid in conflict zones is always problematic. It helps the bad guys as well as the innocent.

Mr. Gill, a top British television journalist, reported from the famine zone in 1984. Twenty-five years later, he went back to find out what happened next. He says most independent experts now agree that the famine and the relief operation did indeed prolong the war, and with it, human suffering. As for hopes that the nation would be transformed – it wasn’t. But critics say you’ll never get the truth from aid agencies, which are accountable to no one and have every incentive to trumpet their success.

In 1991, the rebel army won the war and its leader, a polished tyrant named Meles Zenawi, took power. He soon became chummy with Mr. Geldof and many Western leaders. Bill Clinton hailed him as one of the “new breed” of African leaders. With Tony Blair, he co-authored a high-profile report in 2005, released at the time of the famous G8 meeting at Gleneagles, where Mr. Geldof and Bono cranked the heat up with their Make Poverty History campaign. Most people politely glossed over the recent election in Ethiopia, which featured massive fraud, violence, intimidation and imprisonment of political opponents. More recently, in 2008, the Meles regime brutally put down a Somali rebellion. Human Rights Watch accused government forces of torture, torching villages and other war crimes.

Mr. Meles has an explanation for all this. As he told Mr. Gill, Ethiopia will have to stay undemocratic until the important work of development is done.

The Meles regime is “rapidly becoming one of the most repressive and dictatorial on the continent,” wrote Helen Epstein in The New York Review of Books last May. An expert on both AIDS and Africa, she too went to see for herself. She found that the government controls all the land, as well as telecommunications and the banking system. There is no population strategy, and the population has exploded. People don’t have enough land to feed themselves. Although aid agencies have tried to decentralize their efforts, the government can (and does) deny fertilizer and food to anyone who doesn’t support it. And hunger once again stalks the land. Just as in 1984, children aren’t starving because of natural disasters. They’re starving because of politics.

Most of us believe that humanitarian aid is a morally pure way to respond to suffering in the world. But what if our good intentions are just a newer version of colonialism? That’s what Mr. Gill thinks. “The colonial mindset of ‘we-know-best’ has surely persisted,” he writes. The trouble is that we haven’t learned the difference between doing good and feeling good. Until we do, many of our aid efforts will be worse than useless.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le1797413/

[jbuck919]

Most of us believe that humanitarian aid is a morally pure way to respond to suffering in the world. But what if our good intentions are just a newer version of colonialism? That’s what Mr. Gill thinks.

There is nothing neo-colonialist about thinking you are making a humanitarian contribution which is really diverted for a brutal political purpose. Or for sponsoring a fund-raising event designed to address a famine that has been artificially created by those who have an interest in preventing the alleviation of mass starvation. The correct adjectives for such efforts are stupid, or ignorant, or deceived, or some combination of those things. There is plenty of room for effective humanitarian aid in Africa, as Buffet and Gates are showing (we hope). And plenty of room to argue, when there is agreement between the story and the debating point, whether such aid has neo-colonialist implications.

[Barry]

Most of us believe that humanitarian aid is a morally pure way to respond to suffering in the world. But what if our good intentions are just a newer version of colonialism? That’s what Mr. Gill thinks.

There is nothing neo-colonialist about thinking you are making a humanitarian contribution which is really diverted for a brutal political purpose. Or for sponsoring a fund-raising event designed to address a famine that has been artificially created by those who have an interest in preventing the alleviation of mass starvation. The correct adjectives for such efforts are stupid, or ignorant, or deceived, or some combination of those things. There is plenty of room for effective humanitarian aid in Africa, as Buffet and Gates are showing (we hope). And plenty of room to argue, when there is agreement between the story and the debating point, whether such aid has neo-colonialist implications.

I thought that line on neocolonialism was unnecessary and I can see how it would detract from the piece if you let it. But I think you can remove that line and word and the point still remains.

[jbuck919]

Most of us believe that humanitarian aid is a morally pure way to respond to suffering in the world. But what if our good intentions are just a newer version of colonialism? That’s what Mr. Gill thinks.

There is nothing neo-colonialist about thinking you are making a humanitarian contribution which is really diverted for a brutal political purpose. Or for sponsoring a fund-raising event designed to address a famine that has been artificially created by those who have an interest in preventing the alleviation of mass starvation. The correct adjectives for such efforts are stupid, or ignorant, or deceived, or some combination of those things. There is plenty of room for effective humanitarian aid in Africa, as Buffet and Gates are showing (we hope). And plenty of room to argue, when there is agreement between the story and the debating point, whether such aid has neo-colonialist implications.

I thought that line on neocolonialism was unnecessary and I can see how it would detract from the piece if you let it. But I think you can remove that line and word and the point still remains.

Yes, and becomes rather obvious, even trite. I think you won that one before you posted, Barry.

[piston]

I'm not sure what to think about this question given that it will get worse in the near future (unless you do not believe Bloomberg when they speak of global warming as a matter of fact). Sure, the political scene will get messier and messier as the most basic functions of human production and reproduction increasingly become dysfunctional for all those societies who have stood at the margin of the great Liberal Order since the 19th century. There are plenty of such societies around the world who do not place the "individual" and all individual "freedoms" as their primary aspiration. Now that the climate is expanding drought areas and destroying ways of subsistence on the fringe of this Liberal Order, plenty of people are going to die unless we try to prevent their deaths.

The political manipulation of the assistance is to be expected, just like it was to be expected that a number of "charitable organizations" in recent decades returned little to those who were the intended recipients. Opportunists are not just in Africa; they're here, in this very country, exploiting misery for their own "well being."

Isn't it part of the Liberal Order that the "individual" should find self-realization as an "individual" by any means, including by accumulating donations for dying people as long as it is legally permissible?

The problem with the Liberal Order is that it affords all opportunists so much latitude, here and in Africa....

[piston]

Of course, I'm speaking of the Liberal Order in the classical sense of Adam Smith and company, of all those who historically have placed individual aspirations above and beyond any other societal values such as family reproduction from one generation to another.

[piston]

Indeed, this classical Liberal Order today is very much the realm of the most conservative elements of society.

"My wallet. How's my wallet?!"

[david johnson]

assassinate the corrupt leaders until an honest one is found and then aid the needy.

[Barry]

I'm not sure what to think about this question given that it will get worse in the near future (unless you do not believe Bloomberg when they speak of global warming as a matter of fact). Sure, the political scene will get messier and messier as the most basic functions of human production and reproduction increasingly become dysfunctional for all those societies who have stood at the margin of the great Liberal Order since the 19th century. There are plenty of such societies around the world who do not place the "individual" and all individual "freedoms" as their primary aspiration. Now that the climate is expanding drought areas and destroying ways of subsistence on the fringe of this Liberal Order, plenty of people are going to die unless we try to prevent their deaths.

The political manipulation of the assistance is to be expected, just like it was to be expected that a number of "charitable organizations" in recent decades returned little to those who were the intended recipients. Opportunists are not just in Africa; they're here, in this very country, exploiting misery for their own "well being."

Isn't it part of the Liberal Order that the "individual" should find self-realization as an "individual" by any means, including by accumulating donations for dying people as long as it is legally permissible?

The problem with the Liberal Order is that it affords all opportunists so much latitude, here and in Africa....

I agree that the question in the topic-title is too general. I just used the article's headline, which I sometimes get into the habit of doing. Nonetheless, the answer is that aid should only be provided when there are mechanisms in place to ensure that it will be used for the intended purpose. The consequences here are much more severe than charitable organizations misuse of funds. The consequences in the case of African aid include the death of many thousands of people and the fortification of some of the more brutal regimes on the planet.

[piston]

Actually, the principle which you have articulated, and with which I am in agreement, also requires much closer regulation of charitable organizations. Misuse works and has worked both ways -- donors and representatives of recipients. When people starve, literally, goods and resources should reach them directly, without interference from either entities.

One part of the equation requires domestic regulation -- give it all, minus predictable administrative costs. Nobody should be making six digit salaries in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, not by any religious standards, unless your religion is nothing but a veil for exploitation.

The other part of the equation requires total international support, and the corresponding military institutions, for direct intervention, with the authority and power to blast into oblivion all those who aggressively intervene in the process.

"You had better move out of the way if you don't want to be exterminated!!!"

End of story.

[Daisy]

They say that the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and this is been the legacy of aid to impoverished third-world countries, whichever continent we are on. I could give a chilling list of the unintended consequences of this kind of welfare. Yes, it is right to send humanitarian aid in the wake of natural disasters because sometimes we all need help. But to keep people ON foreign aid is no better than creating a dependent class here at home, relying on government welfare to the point that they are incapable of taking care of themselves any other way. And a lot of them learn how to cheat the system, not only here, but in those same third-world countries.