Boy, this is a big slam on aid organizations. Bravo to the Lancet for having the courage to point this out, and especially during this time with the Haiti earthquake. I am sure they will get all sorts of hate mail. The truth hurts though, and these aid groups do the same things in places like Africa or war zones.
So why is this on Feral Jundi? Part of the reason is that there is no regulatory apparatus in place to keep these aid organizations in check. Where is the scrutiny, and why do we give them a free pass? My industry is constantly getting the label as disaster capitalists, yet you never hear that kind of language used to describe aid organizations.
And when it comes to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, security is pretty damn important. You can’t be happy or live in peace, when rebels or criminals are actively trying to kill you and your family for whatever reason. You can’t eat, if rebels and criminals are stealing your food or destroying your farm lands. It takes security forces to step up and be that sheep dog, in order for others to be able to eat and live in peace. Yet my industry continues to get this treatment as if we are less than, or not needed. Pffffft. We put our life on the line to protect others, and that is our value in the world of disasters and wars. And to me, we are worth every penny spent.
Finally, what really kills me about these aid organizations, is that they will scream until they are blue in the face on how immoral or unethical security contractors are, and yet they will contract the services of our industry so they can do their thing in countries like Africa, or in wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. Pure hypocrisy, and when you couple that, with this article written below, you start to realize that this is an industry that needs some attention. –Matt
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Haiti aid agency accused of rivalry tactics
By Andrew Jack in New York and David Blair and Benedict Mander in Port-au-Prince
The Financial Times
January 22 2010
A prominent British medical journal, The Lancet, has accused aid agencies operating in earthquake-ravaged Haiti of using “unsavoury” corporate tactics as they compete with each other to attract funding during a chaotic relief effort.
More than 500 relief agencies are operating in Haiti and the skies are filled with aircraft ferrying supplies to Port-au-Prince.
With 150 arrivals at the airport every day, immense quantities of material are piling up in hangars or on the taxi-ways.
But while flying supplies in to the stricken city has become relatively easy, getting them out to people is more challenging, a week and a half after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that killed an estimated 75,000 people.
In an editorial published on its website on Friday, The Lancet said the situation in Haiti remained “chaotic, devastating and anything but co-ordinated”. It accused agencies of “jostling for position” and needless competition for funds.
“Polluted by the internal power politics and the unsavoury characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts,” The Lancet wrote.
One logistics specialist handling airport arrivals for Haiti said: “You should see the circus that has come to town.”
Aid workers in Haiti deny any suggestion of rivalry. “To say that there is something of a bad feeling among us is totally false – period,” said Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam. “This is a massive disaster and it takes time.”
Meanwhile, an 84-year-old woman was pulled alive by rescuers from under a wrecked building in Port-au-Prince yesterday, 10 days after the earthquake struck.
Story here.
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Growth of aid and the decline of humanitarianism
The Lancet
Picture the situation in Haiti: families living on top of sewage-contaminated rubbish dumps, with no reliable sources of food and water and virtually no access to health care. This scenario depicts the situation in Haiti before the earthquake that catapulted this impoverished and conflict-ridden country into the international headlines. Now the latest target of humanitarian relief, international organisations, national governments, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are rightly mobilising, but also jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the most for earthquake survivors. Some agencies even claim that they are “spearheading” the relief effort. In fact, as we only too clearly see, the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating, and anything but coordinated.