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The Attack on Oxfam/Charity/International Aid
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostMSF have fired 19 members of staff after corroborating 24 reports of "molestation or sexual abuse"
I fully appreciate these organisations have some well meaning people within them, but its time to go home and look after their own. African have look after its own given the opportunity.
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I don't agree. I also think it's a bit rich that, only three months after a Tory Party 'sex list' was circulated detailing the inappropriate behaviours of 40 MPs, the government feel it's the right time to start a concerted policy of undermining international aid agencies by highlighting the inappropriate behaviours of a small minority of staff working overseas. The debate on whether international aid actually achieves its objectives can be discussed without conflating the two issues, surely. There is a genuine debate to be held. But there are nearly 40,000 people working for MSF internationally. Surely they should be applauded for taking this issue seriously and taking action?
I shared a cab in Dubai in June 2004 with the MSF Afghanistan Chief of Mission, who was heading to a meeting at head office just after five of his staff had been murdered in Badghis Province. They were working in the field on child and infant mortlity, treatment for TB and mental health support. They may have been serial sex pests - I don't know, as I had never met them - but I do know that they were offering support to communities that had experienced unfathomable hardship. To say that all aid agencies should disband and let each sovereign state look after their own problems is, I feel, unwise.
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Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker View PostI don't agree. I also think it's a bit rich that, only three months after a Tory Party 'sex list' was circulated detailing the inappropriate behaviours of 40 MPs, the government feel it's the right time to start a concerted policy of undermining international aid agencies by highlighting the inappropriate behaviours of a small minority of staff working overseas.
The debate on whether international aid actually achieves its objectives can be discussed without conflating the two issues, surely.
There is a genuine debate to be held. But there are nearly 40,000 people working for MSF internationally. Surely they should be applauded for taking this issue seriously and taking action?
[Quote]
I shared a cab in Dubai in June 2004 with the MSF Afghanistan Chief of Mission, who was heading to a meeting at head office just after five of his staff had been murdered in Badghis Province. They were working in the field on child and infant mortlity, treatment for TB and mental health support. They may have been serial sex pests - I don't know, as I had never met them - but I do know that they were offering support to communities that had experienced unfathomable hardship. [quote]
And where were the countries of origin of the weapons that killed his staff.
The West caused that issue in Afghansitan, at least the MSF staff had the option to go or not, what of the poor Afghanis that had not choice when western politicians decided to use their country as a political and military football.
To say that all aid agencies should disband and let each sovereign state look after their own problems is, I feel, unwise.
Maybe if they treated Africans a little better in their own countries where the treatment ranges from barely tolerated (UK) to openly despised (US/ Eastern Europe) i might share your views.
Africans were/are able to look after themselves and we see the Aid agencies as another component used in keeping the continent impoverished.
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Originally posted by Tactical Genius View PostOf course.
Now if you look at it in isolation, you may assume that these aid organisations are doing some good.
I am sure that you are aware that most Aid organisations are western-based, from the same countries that:
Own all our Oil
Own all our gold and precious metals
Prop up and support our corrupt leaders (through intelligence and supply of weapons)
facilitate their money laundering through your financial institutions (the city is the money laundering capital of the world)
Economic polices from the IMF and World Bank to keep Africans impoverished.
Having NGO's turn up with a few sacks of rice is just a con trick. I heard of questionable practices in Haiti years ago with regards to Aid money disappearing (clinton foundation), paedophiles and perverts taking advantage of the chaos to get their fix.
A bunch of NGO's turning up with a few sacks of rice is just a con trick.
As for infant mortality, don't get me started on these immunisation projects that seem to cause more illness than they cure as their use Africans as test subject for you know what or the likes of Monsanto get up to.
I do think there's a strong case to be made that the laws which prevent NGOs from becoming involved in 'political' campaigns are instrumental in preventing them (the NGOs) from making progress towards their stated aims. It's pretty clear that the Dickensian charity paradigm of wealthy folk behaving beneficently is never going to scratch the surface of what's a deep structural problem, (especially if a portion, however small, of those folk are at best suffering from white saviour syndrome and at worst spotting an opportunity for abuse). It seems equally clear that many in the western ruling class are happy for this to continue.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people in NGOs who recognise this and are pushing to make that case. I'm not sure that pulling the plug on western NGOs is going to achieve much. It'll satisfy the racists and mainly result in whatever aid is delivered goes through governmental channels - which is usually an exercise in enriching the ruling classes at both ends of the transaction. (I don't know much about Africa, but I do know a bit about S. Asia and many governmental institutions there are nearly as corrupt as the DfE, which is quite a high bar.) Will it empower or enrich Africans? I'm not clear on the mechanism for this.
I'd be interested to see your data on immunisation projects.
As an aside, as far as Africa is concerned, from what I pick up, China seems to own an increasing proportion of its precious metals, usually acquired in return for infrastructure deals. is this right? (Not a smokescreen or an attempt to derail thread, honest, but it seems like an important perspective on the economic colonialism issue.)
Knackered, a bit pissed and wittering off the cuff about something I don't have any expertise or data on, so apologies in advance...
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Good questions Chris J and i will try and address them all.
The problem is that while 'aid' in the widest definition can, and often is, used as a smokescreen for policies that maintain the (inequitable) status quo, it's a leap to say that the institutions who own the oil, formulate economic policy, etc are same ones as deliver immunisation and deliver emergency food, water, medical aid and shelter.
The NGO's receive a large percentage (if not a majority) of their money from governments who I am sure will have a big say in how and where that money is spent . Oxfam recieved 43% of its donations from Governmental organisations including over £31 million from the UK DFID. Nobody cuts cheques that large without a major say.
Western governments (as you well know) are in the pockets of large multinationals who may alot of money in Africa so are invested in a compliant political structure. So that influence will flow through into the aid money that reaches the NGO's.
I do think there's a strong case to be made that the laws which prevent NGOs from becoming involved in 'political' campaigns are instrumental in preventing them (the NGOs) from making progress towards their stated aims.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people in NGOs who recognise this and are pushing to make that case. [bold]I'm not sure that pulling the plug on western NGOs is going to achieve much [/bold].
As for immunisation projects, no data (as this will be collected by those who do not have any interests in publishing the data.
In the 1980's alot of the spread of AIDS in Africa was down in a large part to the sharing of needles for immunisations.
As for suspicious behaviour of big pharma in Africa, see the recent Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone.
As an aside, as far as Africa is concerned, from what I pick up, China seems to own an increasing proportion of its precious metals, usually acquired in return for infrastructure deals. is this right?
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Arundhati Roy's written very well on NGOisation and its symbiotic role with neo-colonialism (i.e. the NGOisation is used to dissipate and undermine indigenous resistance to neo-colonial exploitation). I think Capitalism, A Ghost Story expands on this short piece.
http://massalijn.nl/new/the-ngo-ization-of-resistance/
In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation. In order make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework, more or less shorn of a political or historical context. At any rate, an inconvenient historical or political context.
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Partly the point of institutions is that they aren't directly accountable to anybody, and have an independent character and agency.
A homeless charity has been set up to tackle homeless in a certain way, probably practical while also looking at broader housing and benefits issues. If a load of rightwing billionaires come along and tell them it's doing it wrong, and should instead be campaigning on "the root causes" which is "the decline of family values", the charity will likely tell them to get lost. But IDS can get elected to government and spout exactly this sort of rubbish, and tell everyone he's "accountable".
So institutions certainly have their place.
I'm sure NGOs would argue that the people they work among have influence. What would it mean to make them accountable to those people though?
I've not thought about these issues at all really.Last edited by Tubby Isaacs; 17-02-2018, 14:02.
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I usually don't like whatabout stuff, but it has its place here.
A comparison in accountability: Oxfam and the NHSThis [NHS underfunding] shows neglect on a scale that make the leadership of Oxfam’s misdeeds look trivial. Yet where is the media scandal? The man who has been in charge of the NHS while this has happened and is happening in front of our noses is still in his job. The government continues to fail to provide the resources the NHS needs, while promising to protect the NHS, and yet it has not been held to account for killing people and leaving them in pain by the same media that has been happy to pursue the leadership of Oxfam. The Minister for International Development told the leaders of Oxfam that “an organisation’s moral leadership comes from individuals taking responsibility for their actions”. Quite.
The government are in denial about what is happening, and the media allow them to get away with it. Of course there have been countless reports about the crisis in the NHS, but we have not seen the kind of sustained and coordinated media focus on who is responsible that we saw with Oxfam.
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Tubby,
Partly the point of institutions is that they aren't directly accountable to anybody, and have an independent character and agency.
A homeless charity has been set up to tackle homeless in a certain way, probably practical while also looking at broader housing and benefits issues. If a load of rightwing billionaires come along and tell them it's doing it wrong, and should instead be campaigning on "the root causes" which is "the decline of family values", the charity will likely tell them to get lost.
I'm sure NGOs would argue that the people they work among have influence. What would it mean to make them accountable to those people though?
I am sure all parties have different opinions and agendas and whose opinion holds sway can prove problematic.
I've not thought about these issues at all really.
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Tubby, the British electorate voted for this Tory government three times in a row. If people are too stupid to see what it is going on, then they can only blame themselves as the governemnt were pretty clear that they were going to underfund public services to pay for austerity.
It's just like how people were OK with the advent and rise of Tuition fees........ until their kids went to university. We live in a country of short-sighted idiots sadly.
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That's what OTF is for.
Well they are accountable to their donors whether they be the average westerner paying £5 per month or an institution or government ploughing millions. if they do not produce results to their paymasters liking, the money will dry up.
This would have been the case in the old days, however modern charities seem to see themselves as corporations that need to amass as much money as possible and grow as large as possible for some strange reason.
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https://amp.theguardian.com/global-d...ion-study-says
Interesting. The EU has talked about aid reducing migration. It might wish to stop doing that, before its arse gets bitten extremely hard.
Foreign aid 'less effective than expected' at curbing migration, study says
Research casts doubt on received wisdom that support for low-income countries stops people leaving to seek a better life
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Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
I'm sure NGOs would argue that the people they work among have influence. What would it mean to make them accountable to those people though?
I've not thought about these issues at all really.
That's because international aid is a con - it's neo-colonial.
The reason Haiti is in need of aid is because of its systematic underdevelopment in 200 years since the revolution. That in turn has its roots in the construction of dependent economic relationships with the US, backed up by military force, and with its historic external debt with France.
In the 1970s, the US slaughtered nearly all the pigs in haiti "to stop Swine Fever" without compensating Haiti's peasant farmers.
In 1984, Haiti produced most of the rice it consumed. The US implemented the Carribean Baisin Initiative, aimed at "developing Haiti's agriculture for export".
US food aid was used during the 1980s to flood Haiti with subsidised rice, destroying Haiti's food security and undercutting Haiti's growers.
In 1986, IMF loans were given to Haiti on condition that it lowered its rice tarrifs from 150% to 50%. By this point, Haiti's rice production was 75% of the country's needs.
In 1991, the US backed a coup against Jean Bertrand Aristide 9 months into his presidency, who advocated decolonial justice, reforms to Haiti's military and investigations of human rights abuses by the previous regime. The illegal government quickly signed a deal with American Rice, Inc. (an arkansas-based agri-business) to flood haiti with subsidised American rice.
In 1994 he was restored, but in 2004, Aristide was overthrown again - possibly with CIA involvement.
In 2009, the US state department interfered on behalf of US industrial concerns, to prevent Haiti from increasing its minimum wage.
In 2010, Hilary Clinton intervened in the Haitian election to get the US' preferred candidate through the first round.
Disaster relief is necessary and humane and falls within the remit of international solidarity - but it doesn't need to be administered from the global north. Part of the problem is that systems of governance in the global south have been systematically crushed by neocolonial interests.
Haiti doesn't need aid, it needs reparations and sovereignty.
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Originally posted by Tactical Genius View PostTubby,
Well they are accountable to their donors whether they be the average westerner paying £5 per month or an institution or government ploughing millions. if they do not produce results to their paymasters liking, the money will dry up.
This would have been the case in the old days, however modern charities seem to see themselves as corporations that need to amass as much money as possible and grow as large as possible for some strange reason. With that being said, they would probably try and find a palatable medium to keep getting the big donations.
Depends who are the people, are they the invading western power, local government, chieftain/clan leader/warlord or the peasant in the field?
I am sure all parties have different opinions and agendas and whose opinion holds sway can prove problematic.
That's what OTF is for.
Secondly, these organisations (including government and charities) are desperate to avoid bad publicity. Any time there is a use of aid money that either is dodgy or can be made to appear dodgy certain papers will leap on it. As a result, they tend to be entirely careful not to do anything that they cannot reasonably justify.
In terms of charities building up "as much money as possible" there is a huge amount of pressure on charities not to keep hold of reserves that would amount to more than 6 months of running costs. As a result, they do not run up "as much money as possible" (unless you mean "as much as possible to that limit" which is really quite low). Anyway, you're right that lots of them to try to grow as much as they can and become as large as possible but that's a bit like criticising football clubs for trying to get promotion. The question is whether that comes at the expense of their ability to run effectively and help people.
This is not to say at all that there are genuine criticisms of individual charities or the sector as a whole. I have certainly heard from reasonable sources about choices made in difficult situations (e.g. giving money to warlords who demand cash to let you work in an area - note, MSF have a really good reputation for refusing to do this seemingly) but just stating that they get money from government and government is bad so charities are bad (caricaturing comments somewhat) is devoid of detail and unconvincing.
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One of the main reasons I left my international-do-good employer of 13 years was that I just came to the opinion they were persistently the problem, not the solution in almost every field they were involved in. They basically bought good-will towards the UK by dishing out some famous paintings or organising a concert by Asian Dub Foundation. They'd then pinch your best graduates by administering language tests which only the rich could be sufficiently trained to pass. Finally, they'd send someone sponsored by BP or Barclay's to some rough part of the third-world city their office is based in to read stories or play 5-a-side football with kids in English. On top of all that, there were some truly seedy bastards working there who still work there and I doubt there are many long term network employees who can't tell a story or 2 regarding matters far worse that sleeping with local prostitutes (hats off to the charity/NGO worker in South East Asia who hasn't).
So, whilst I do believe charities enable positive change that can be quantified, it's typically in exchange for something damaging which can't or isn't.
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BLT, thanks for the Haiti stuff. When you say disaster relief shouldn't be administered from from the Global North, that was the question I was asking about accountability. How should it be administered? I was taking up Roy's point in the bit you quoted.
Obviously, I'm not going to defend most of what you say. But I'm also interested in where you're coming on sovereignty. You sound quite autarchic.
In 1986, IMF loans were given to Haiti on condition that it lowered its rice tarrifs from 150% to 50%. By this point, Haiti's rice production was 75% of the country's needs.
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Thanks BLT and TG - who I wasn't trying to misquote btw, sorry if it sounded like that, but I felt one of your points depended on the other.
I think I'm fairly clear that the case is well made that a lot of international aid is tied into the whole neo-colonialist agenda. Most bilateral aid seems to be fatally compromised in this regard. It's also pretty unarguable that a considerable proportion of NGO's incomes is also linked either with not rocking their donors' boats and/or making western liberals feel they've made a difference without addressing the underlying issues - though I'd suggest there's a difference between the transparent manipulation of rice-production in the Caribbean and, say, an Action Aid campaign against UK firms dodging tax in Zambia. But as I said, a big part pf the issue was that to maintain charitable status (in the UK a least), NGOs have to be 'apolitical' and avoid addressing underlying structural issues. Roy says much the same thing - but better!
I do think there's a degree of nuance tho'. As both she and BLT concede, there's the matter of emergency relief. And then there's the problem of who you share a platform with if you attack Oxfam, et al. While people are giving (often significant sums) to Action Aid or whoever, they are at least backing their beliefs; that too many people are dying from preventable diseases, hunger, etc, just because they have dark skins - and that this isn't either inevitable or acceptable. It feels dangerous, especially in the current political climate, to give aid and comfort to those who would attack Oxfam precisely because they're happy to ignore those deaths.
I suppose I'm saying that while the abuse needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, I do worry about the timing of joining in giving NGOs a kicking. But, yeah, too much 'charity' is for the benefit - economic or psychological - of the donors rather than the recipients.
How would you (anyone) judge capacity-building initiatives? (Assuming, of course that the capacity being developed had been identified locally to meet the needs of local people.) Would VSO would be an example?
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Originally posted by steveeeeeeeee View PostOne of the main reasons I left my international-do-good employer of 13 years was that I just came to the opinion they were persistently the problem, not the solution in almost every field they were involved in. They basically bought good-will towards the UK by dishing out some famous paintings or organising a concert by Asian Dub Foundation. They'd then pinch your best graduates by administering language tests which only the rich could be sufficiently trained to pass. Finally, they'd send someone sponsored by BP or Barclay's to some rough part of the third-world city their office is based in to read stories or play 5-a-side football with kids in English. On top of all that, there were some truly seedy bastards working there who still work there and I doubt there are many long term network employees who can't tell a story or 2 regarding matters far worse that sleeping with local prostitutes (hats off to the charity/NGO worker in South East Asia who hasn't).
So, whilst I do believe charities enable positive change that can be quantified, it's typically in exchange for something damaging which can't or isn't.
If they're recruiting for international development jobs, they need people who can speak English. It would be odd if they didn't do tests in it. It's not really "pinching" these people anyway. India puts huge financial and diplomatic effort into getting opportunities for Indians to work abroad, because they learn stuff, send back money, and stimulate Indian business. It let the EU know that it wasn't getting the trade deal it wanted without a load more work visas for Indians. Reactionaries in Britain helped block that deal.Last edited by Tubby Isaacs; 18-02-2018, 15:12.
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Disaster relief is necessary and humane and falls within the remit of international solidarity
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Disaster relief is about saving lives. Development aid is about theoretically capacity building but often driven by an agenda. The old adage "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish etc etc" would be better stated "... Teach a man to buy a fish from us"
(by going into debt to us)
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostDisaster relief is about saving lives. Development aid is about theoretically capacity building but often driven by an agenda. The old adage "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish etc etc" would be better stated "... Teach a man to buy a fish from us"
(by going into debt to us)
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Taking the example of Haiti, I get the point that its lack of development has a huge amount to do with France and the US, and that without their and other colonizing influences, they wouldn't need aid. But couldn't you also say it wouldn't need relief for disasters if its development hadn't been held back? I don't see the distinction between aid and disaster relief in principle. If "they don't need aid they need sovereignty" is a thing, then why isn't "they don't need disaster relief, they need sovereignty?"
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostDisaster relief is about saving lives. Development aid is about theoretically capacity building but often driven by an agenda. The old adage "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish etc etc" would be better stated "... Teach a man to buy a fish from us"
(by going into debt to us)
Clearly agriculture is particularly susceptible to tying producers into patented varieties or methods relying on agri-chemicals. But then that's a good example of 'aid' being pushed by government-front organisations and called as BS by other NGOs. As I say, I think it's more complicated than lumping all NGOs - let alone all aid-workers - in together.
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