As you know, I try not to write too much about the work I do, in an attempt to segregate my official duties from my blog. I will make an exception for once.

When the earthquake stroke Haiti on January 12th, it not only devastated the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, but it also devastated our operations in Haiti. Our offices were destroyed. Our staff lost family and friends. Most of the country’s infrastructure was affected, making it very difficult for any humanitarian aid to reach those in need.

We set up our office in the Dominican Republic to provide the needed support both for our own organisation and for the other aid agencies. We set up a logistics “pipeline” receiving aid goods, coming in via air and sea, and transported them via air and road into Haiti. We set up an airbridge ferrying in the initial response goods, and humanitarian staff into Port-au-Prince and beyond.

For the past months, I headed our operations, based in Santo Domingo. End of May, we are wrapping up the the initial emergency response phase. As the months went by, all organisations rebuilt their infrastructure, and the port, roads, warehousing capacity inside the country came back on its feet. Since a month, we have been converting our office from its initial response, to a more longer term configuration.

When I landed here on January 19, a few days after the Haiti earthquake, I found a dozen staff who arrived here before me, cramped in a small room. As the days went by, more and more people flew in, both to support our office, as well as all those on route to Haiti. At the peak, we had people working in the central office, at two ports, two airports, and two suboffices in the country. We built up the operation from scratch, growing to almost 100 staff, mobilized from countries all over the world. We had staff working in our offices who were called in from over 30 different countries. Logistics experts, food specialists, finance and administration staff, procurement people, airops officers, security officers and engineers…

We based our operations in two conference rooms of a hotel, here in Santo Domingo. No windows. The “dungeons” we called them, as they had no windows. Sunlight was a rarity in those early days. A month later, the hotel converted their “ping-pong room” near the swimming pool into a working space, with seven more offices normally used by beauty salons and travel agencies.

The first few weeks were hectic. We worked from 7 am until late at night, 7 days per week, moving cargo and people into Haiti, processing finance and procurement transactions like there was no tomorrow. Staff rotated in and out, replacing the “initial responders” with “fresh blood”, again called in from all over the world. We had people working with us, who are normally based in our operations in North Korea, Malawi, Dubai, Rome, all over Central and South America and Asia. Senior experienced professionals worked side by side with staff for whom this was their emergency operation, and local recruits. We dealt with government officials, nutritional experts, security incidents, commercial companies, airport authorities, immigration staff and transporters. It was never a dull day for the -last count- over 170 different staff who worked in our Dominican operation.

Now, four months later, we are “switching off the lights”. As of June 1, we have demobilized most of the international support staff, handing over the operations to the local staff we recruited, with just a few expat staff remaining. The initial response phase is over.

Organising a new office has its challenges. Making sure all operations go smooth, fast and auditable. Ensuring all the pieces of the supply chain match together. Building up a team, even with that many people coming in and out. Dealing with sudden ‘emergencies’: our staff in Haiti running out of food supplies, pockets of displaced people appearing along the border in need of assistance, one of our staff being shot at, to manually stamping 500,000 food distribution coupons.

But building something, a team, an operation, is fun. That is what I like. Downscaling -although an intrinsic part of any good aid operation- is more difficult. Not only ensuring all the last bits and pieces of the operation are properly closed, suppliers are paid, all contracts are well documented, etc… but the personal aspect, is often a challenge… “Switching off the lights”.

It has been an interesting experience within myself. I had to downscale something I built. In the past four weeks, gradually people have gone back to the duty station they were called from. There have been many goodbyes. And I am not good at goodbye’s.

We had many beautiful people working with us. Professional in their job, and really nice individuals. Some of them have worked in this operation since the beginning. And now, it is time to leave. Time to close what we have worked on. “our project”, “our office”, “our team”.

Over the past months, I have gotten to love the people I work with. Working in any emergency creates that bond, the feeling of “us”. And saying goodbye, especially to those who were here since the beginning, is not easy. Sure enough, we are all professional aidworkers. This is our job. But we are also human. We are not only saying goodbye to colleagues, but we are also saying goodbye to people who have become close friends. People who we have shared a unique experience with. People who we have shared these incredible four months with.

As we walk in this road of life, we cross many people and we create many bonds. The bond between emergency responders is unique. We hold together. Together against the challenges of time, the challenge of the enormous needs, the challenges of.. “the outside world”. We live and work together, not thinking of “tomorrow”, but dealing with the issues of “today”.

And now, we will all go our own way. Back to France, Italy, Panama, Ivory Coast… Many of us, in thoughts. A piece of us will remain here, in Santo Domingo. Cradled in memories of those crazy nights stamping those damned coupons. Of the time where we had to get a ton of food for our own staff on the plane in three hours. Of the time where we had to get that much needed aid cargo at the border in 24 hours.

Once upon a time, we will all meet again. In another emergency. When I meet Georges next time in flood operation somewhere in Asia, or Alex in a civil war somewhere in Africa, or Henrik in a drought operation in the Caucasus, we will meet again as old friends. As if we never parted. Sharing the memories of this operation. Sharing the bond.

But for the time being, we have to go. We part. We say goodbye. Knowing there is never enough we can express at the moment when we give that final handshake: “Thank you for your help, it was a pleasure working with you”, while we really wanted to say is “You know, I loved working with you. You are now part of my heart. Thank you for being part of this”.

So for all of you, this is not goodbye. But “I will see you again”. You are in my heart. We did well. We made a difference!

You might think I am a moralizing doomsday prophet, but I can not help but thinking how greed linked most events impacting the world in the past years.

Was the food crisis last year not merely the hiking of food commodity prices by creating an artificial unbalance between supply and demand through a hijacking of the food futures market and diverting more and more crops to biofuel production? (remember this post)

Is the current global economic crisis not triggered by the inflation of a financial bubble, a consciously constructed artificial pyramid scheme, based on unhealthy mortgage loans. Loans based on zero collateral. And loans based on these loans, induced into the investment market like hormones in a pig. (remember this post)

Talking about pigs. And greed. Swine flu. An interesting reading by Jane on the Trackernews Blog:

Confined Animal Feeding Operations, a.k.a CAFOs, a.k.a factory farms have revolutionized agriculture over the past 20 years. This is agriculture on steroids. Sometimes literally. Poultry, cattle and pigs are raised in such ferocious, relentless quantity, the animals require a battery of drugs and chemicals simply to live long enough to be slaughtered. The waste streams and accompanying stench are a nightmare for anyone and anything down wind or down stream. Stats defy comprehension.
According to a 2006 Rolling Stone’s Jeff Tietz’ tour de force expose on hog CAFO king, Smithfield Farms (of which Granjas Caroll, the CAFO in Vera Cruz, is a subsidiary):

“Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan.” (..)

“The immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs’ immune systems. They become susceptible to infection, and in such dense quarters microbes or parasites or fungi, once established in one pig, will rush spritelike through the whole population. Accordingly, factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds — oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin — diseases would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they’re slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat.”

“Industrial pig waste also contains a host of other toxic substances: ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals. In addition, the waste nurses more than 100 microbial pathogens that can cause illness in humans, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and girardia. Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria.” (Full)

Surprised something bad came out of all of that, are we?

Interesting note of interest: in the past three days, my news clip about the Avian Flu virus which was incidentally shipped around the world, got more hits than ever before.

More on The Road about Swineflu

Picture courtesy Parris Whittingham

Bad news all around in the aid world. It is difficult, as an aidworker, to remain positive these days, and to see a light at the end of the tunnel of poverty.

Oxfam, one of the leading UK aid organisations, released “The Right to Survive”, in which they estimate almost 250 million people around the world to be affected by climate-related disasters in a typical year. They project that by 2015 this number could grow by 50% to an average of more than 375 million people.
To cope with this increase, the world needs to increase its humanitarian aid spending from 2006 levels of $14.2 billion to at least $25 billion a year. (Full)

According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) the world is already spending a whopping amount of money on development and aid:
US$136.2 billion (2003)
US$175.4 billion (2004)
US$319.8 billion (2005)
US$323.5 billion (2006)
US$470.4 billion (2007)

These figures (which include “humanitarian aid” to which Oxfam refers) combine government aid (so-called “ODA”), private donations and aid-motivated economic assistance (Source).

I have always compared the “aid world” to the “commercial world”. In the latter you have a supply and demand mechanism that comes to a certain level of economical balance, in the “aid world” you have a similar balance between “a need for help” and “a supply of assistance”. While this balance always ended up with a deficit, it seems the world’s “need for aid” is rapidly overwhelming the world’s “capacity to give” even more.

In the past year, the need for assistance increased to unprecedented levels because of the rocketing food prices which affected the poorest the most, the effects of global warming – as Oxfam stressed in its report, – and now the faulting world economy.

I do not believe, despite the best fundraising efforts, the world’s “capacity to give” can increase to meet the demand. The only thing we can do, and must do, is to ensure the aid funds are spent with better targets, with a higher accountability and short term aid measures MUST be combined with longer term development.

If not, we will continue providing plasters on wooden legs. As clearly we have been doing in the past decennia.

Pictures courtesy Logan Abassi (MINUSTAH)

Over the years, luckily many people has asked me why I do the work I do, far fewer have rolled their eyes.. So what do I answer?

Well, let me tell you a story. Quite a time-appropriate story actually, as it is related to events that happened exactly ten years ago, in the Balkans.

It is a slightly reworked version of the shortstory “Scene of War”, published in my eBook.

June 1999.

Richard, Alf and I are standing on a mountain pass, at the border crossing between Albania and Kosovo. The view is breathtaking. It is part of a movie, projected in 360 degrees around us. Better than a movie.

A long, slow moving stream starts from far behind us. We can hear it, the random noise. It passes right next to where we stand, and follows bends and curves for as far as we can see. A stream, a steady flow.

A stream not of water, but of people. Tens of thousands. Refugees returning home. Whole families on tractors and donkey pulled carts, with all their belongings stacked as high as they can. Mattresses, cupboards, tables, chairs, cardboard boxes… Mothers holding on to babies, brothers and sisters walking hand in hand. Elderly men with deep grooves in their faces, walking with a stick in their hand, or pushing a wheel barrel.
A massive flow of people. Each with their own horror story to tell, moving steadily back to their homes. Homes they fled a couple of months ago after militia and special forces wrecked their lives, burnt their crops, raped their mothers and daughters, killed their brothers, sons and fathers. As the stream of people tops the mountain pass, they see the same scenery as I do. I wonder what goes on inside them.

In between the mountains tops, capped with tree forests, scarred by cluster bombs which Nato blanketed over them, lay the valleys. Valleys with a fresh green colour of spring grass and young leaves on the trees. For as far as the eye reaches, we can see plumes of smoke coming from the valleys, like candles on a cake, which have just been blown out. Plumes of smoke, going up in the air and dissolving into the clear blue spring sky. Smoke of houses, cars and farm sheds burning, for as far as we can see, dotted over the valleys. The militia and break away paramilitary forces looted and burned everything as they retreated. It looks like the whole country is still burning. People’s lives are burning. And yet the expression on the faces from all who pass us, is not one of desperation, but one of hope. They all smile. Sadly, but they smile. They look at the same scenery as I do, but they think of hope. Hope of starting afresh. They wave at us. They wave at the Nato military trucks and tanks maneuvering in between the stream. “The liberators and the liberated?”.

It is yet another scene of war, another scene of misery and hope, another scene of destruction mixed with hope, of a past and a present. Will it ever end? Will we ever learn from our mistakes?

Two F16 fighter jets blast low over our heads. Instinctively, everyone pulls their heads down. The fighting is not over yet. We hear the remote muffled thunder of a bombing raid. Very far away. The misery is not over yet.

As I get into the WFP car, my eyes cross those of a young girl, sitting on her mum’s lap, on the back of a tractor. She looks at me and I look at her. I smile and she smiles back, hesitantly raising her arm to wave to me. Her mum searches who the girl is waving to. She finds me. She whispers something in the girl’s ears. The girl looks up, kisses her mum on the cheek, and looks back at me. She throws a kiss at me. I throw one back and wave. She laughs. Her dad, driving the tractor looks back and waves at me too.

Would they know I am thinking of my daughters? Would they know she has the same eyes, the same hair. Would they know this is why I do this work? Because she could have been one of my daughters, sitting on my wife’s lap?

This could have been my family, my life. But destiny has put them there and me here. Sheer luck determined those who suffer and those who never realize enough how lucky they are. Sheer destiny determined those who need help and those that can help. I can help.

And that is why I am an aid worker.

Pictures courtesy Arben Celi (Reuters), Getty Images and Tom Haskell (WFP)

This post is somehow a follow-up on my early thoughts in The shrinking digital divide and other aid fairy tales.

I have been reading in “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo, a book I have mentioned before.

First a common misunderstanding about this book: Moyo distinguishes three forms of aid:
- humanitarian aid, in the form of assistance in natural or man made disasters;
- charity aid, in the form of mostly smaller, localized and targeted assistance; and
- government aid.

In her book, she is only attacking “government aid”, not the other two. Many misunderstood this.

I support her thoughts on the ineffectiveness of government aid even though it would be truly worth while to write a sequel to this book to also put the effectiveness of humanitarian aid and charity aid under the magnifying glass, but that is for another post.

Now, one of the points she makes is that in the past, aid to African governments (but I would generalize that to “any government”) had political goals. She specifically mentions how aid was targeted to stop the hail of communism by the freshly independent African states in the 60ies and 70ies. And how the West poured aid money over any government as a form of financial assistance in exchange for their loyalty to the one and only true belief: Western Capitalism.

Little did the West care about the human rights abuses, the corruption or (God forgive) the inappropriate use of aid by the African governments. This grew to an institutionalized support of corrupt and often cruel dictators, for as long as they sang the song of the West, and not that of Moscow.
The fact that we also got cheap oil and minerals in exchange was definitively a good bonus. And the fact they were a good market for many of our cheap products (including Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola) and arms made us all sugar-happy. Hey, the other -Red- side did exactly the same too. Little did Moscow care how aid was used.
But this also made many African states aid dependent.

In my view, this is quite correct. And it was not only the anti-communist aid flavour which is worth to be mentioned, but we also clearly saw and still see an “anti-muslim aid flow” trying the stop the advances Islam made southwards through Africa.

Draw a horizontal line just north of the equator and you more or less have drawn the line between Muslim and Christian Africa. Check out those states on the border line. And see which have been able to count on the political, military and financial support from the West. South Sudan, Kenya, DRC, Uganda, CAR… (True the line goes a bit further North in the West). Interesting, no? So were all the secret US arms shipments stacked on Moyo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi and Entebbe airport in Uganda. And the tons of unlabeled cargo planes with registration numbers starting with “N”. (which country has plane registrations starting with “N” again? Hmmmm.. the US, right?)

I always had -idealist as I am – an issue with the “politization” of aid. I have felt this first hand in Afghanistan and Iraq after both countries were invaded by the alliance of the willing (and their puppy dogs). As a humanitarian aid worker, not only did my conscience struggle, but I have seen the first hand consequences where the affiliation of aid agencies with ‘occupying’ powers made the former a target for hostilities. Many of us have died because of this alliance.

And what stopped us? Well.. we were not going to bite the hand that fed us, were we? Why would we, aid agencies and aid workers bite the hand of donors? Who are we to question the intentions of those who give us money? In the end, we are helping the poor, curing the sick, sheltering the homeless and feeding the starving masses, no? Would we question that many of these are caused by the same fraud political systems who donated us the money?

Yes, of course we realize that not everything was kosher, but shhht.. this is a well hidden secret, and not something to be talked about. The hand that feeds us, you know!

Now here is another thought: the same goes for the countries we work in. How much are we willing to compromise our conscience and work with corrupt and sometimes completely abusive or repressive governments because if we upset them, we ‘might just as well be thrown out of the country’?

Asking the wrong questions is often already enough. Protesting loud enough for aid cargoes stuck at airports is enough reason to PNG. Pointing to corruption and syphoning off aid funds and goods is always a winner to get thrown out. That would not help the poor, we reason.

I am not cynical, I am realistic. We *have* to make compromises. We do have to close our eyes, bite our lip, and sit on our hands sometimes. But up to what point? Up to what point is this still ethical? As of what point are we becoming part of a corrupt system ourselves? We, the do-good-ers. We, the world changers. We, who mean well.

Sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Alertnet just published two excellent articles by Jan Kellett on this subject. Further food for thought: “Darfur: A humanitarian compromise too far?” Part 1 and Part 2. Enjoy!

Dambisa Moyo was born and raised in Zambia. She has a PhD in Economics from the Oxford University, a Masters from Harvard and an MBA in Finance from the American University in Washington DC.
She previously worked for the Worldbank, and in debt capital markets at Goldman Sachs. (Full)

Just to illustrate she is not “just anyone” when one considers the insights registered in her book “Dead Aid”, subtitled “Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa”.

From her website:

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth.

In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid.

Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty—without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance.

Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.

There are a series of interesting articles covering her book and her opinions:
- The Anti-Bono (NY Times)
- Aid dependency blights Africa. The cure is in the credit crisis. (Independent)
- The road to ruin (Guardian)
- Everybody knows it does not work (Guardian)
More here.

Of course the aid “industry” has reacted. But barely. As of today, a Google search only shows two articles: A half-assed reply by the co-founder of “One” in the Financial Times, and a more relativating answer by the CEO of SOS Children UK.
Update: Feb 23: Another half assed answer by Oxfam

Dambisa clarifies in one article:

She makes it clear at the outset what kind of aid she means. She does not mean humanitarian or emergency aid, mobilised in response to calamities; she does not mean charity-based aid, given to specific organisations and people on the ground, in order to achieve specific things (she sits on the boards of several charities, one of which distributes antiretrovirals); she is hopeful about a new attitude to food aid, whereby the money is used to buy food from farmers within a country, and then distribute it to those in need, instead of flooding the place with foreign food that undercuts local growers. What she means is “systemic aid”, the vast sums regularly transferred from government to government, or via institutions such as the World Bank. (Full)

My response, as an aid worker, is this:

1. Don’t limit the discussion
If one limits the discussion only to aid given to a government (bilateral or via IMF/Worldbank), we are limiting the discussion too much. We do need to question any form of aid. Even though aid given to government institutions is an obvious (and easy) target of criticism.
But also humanitarian aid, emergency aid, should be looked at. Why, after decennia of foreign aid, is the West still crawling over each other to provide relief in cases of natural disasters? What is done to institutionally ensure these countries (which are always the same, by the way), can (mostly) take care of their own disaster response?

2. Aid has proven to be ineffective.
It is clear that traditional aid does not work. And has never worked. Otherwise aid organisations would have been able to prove at least some progress in countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, DRC, Afghanistan,…
If it took us 40-50 years to come to that conclusion, so bit it. A pity of the money wasted, but at least let’s start changing the mechanics now.

3. But everybody was happy?!
Aid has been a self-fulfilling and self-fueling economic mechanism. I have always said there are three markets in the world economy: the official market, the black market and the aid market.
All three keep the world economy turning. Unfortunately mostly the “first world economy”. Here is how I see it work:
- Too many donor governments are all too happy to channel foreign aid through whatever means. After all, they need to look good on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) performance scale. And it is good for public opinion. Helps get people re-elected.
- Too many aid organisations are all too happy to transform that donor money into projects. After all, they need to sustain themselves. No, or hardly ANY aid agency will turn down money from a donor. No matter how ridiculous or un-needed the targets are (hats off to MSF for refusing more Tsunami aid two weeks after the disaster, stating they had sufficient funding. Which aid agency would have the courage to do that?)
- So one loves to give, the other loves to accept. All happy-happy.
- Foreign “aid” as such is an industry by itself. It employs people, it keeps “the economy” running. But whose economy?
No surprise a lot, if not most, of the goods procured by aid organisations is produced in “the West”. Many services are procured from companies in “the West”. In this aspect, not much difference between “a war in Iraq” and “foreign aid”, is there? Both are wagging the dog of ‘our economy’.
- Foreign “aid” has been targeting mostly countries a donor country had a political, economical or military connection with. “Aid” was just a way of keeping government counterparts happy. No matter if the aid was effective or not. It kept the targeted country as an ally. We got cheap resources from them, or they did not ‘fall’ into the hands of the communists, or more recently in the hands of the islamists.

4. The worst was if aid would actually work
For the ‘west’, it has always been best if a developing country sitting on a lot of natural resources (oil, diamonds, gold, minerals) was unstable.
It was a way to get those resources cheaply. During the Angola civil war, their oil was sold for many years in advance, only to keep the cost of war going.
Look around you: which countries have gone through the most devastating levels of poverty and civil war? Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, DRC, Somalia, Sudan… I bet you if we make a top 10 list of the countries (in the world) with the longest civil wars, and you tick those with abundant natural resources, you would be surprised of the correlation.
OK, I will relativate: natural resources or a country’s strategic (political, religious or geographical) position.. Should cover all on the top 10, top 20 list.
So if aid would have been effective, and would have brought peace, prosperity or stability, in what way would it not have been decremental to the Western Economy? God forgive if a country like that would become an economical power. An independent political entity with its own mind. Gosh, think what that would have done to the political position of the powers-that-be?

5. So what is the way out?
- I agree with Dambisa: government to government aid does not work. As electorate, we should hold our governments accountable to give us real and verifiable figures of effectiveness.
- Worldbank aid does not work. Same thing: Show us verifiable figures of effectiveness.
- Effectiveness of aid in no matter what shape or form, should be measurable along the same criteria. Criteria should include clear and concrete targets from the onset, and measures of achievement. Aid should measured by the effectiveness for the individuals targeted, not by the effectiveness for institutions (which can not be measured).
- Any aid organisation, any humanitarian organisation should work on a voluntary funding basis. No guaranteed annual funding. Funding per project. You don’t perform? Next time you don’t get funding anymore. Worldbank the first to start.
- Aid, any aid, should be audited by external bodies. Objective figures should be provided for overhead.
- Aid, any aid, should be governed by the same measures of governance quality as the commercial market (as long as it is not the US-standards of governance. We all saw where that one brought us).
Why don’t we apply ISO-9002 to aid? Let’s make an ISO standard for aid. After all we spent trillions on aid. And it our money. Us, tax payers, need to know. We cry foul when we see the government wasting money on ineffective road building or useless prestige projects, but don’t cry foul when we pour billions over the ‘poor’? Because we get soft hearted when seeing children crying on TV? Think what you do to that child to ensure it stops crying the next year. And the year after. And the year after.

OkayOkayOkay. I am getting off my soapbox now.

Pictures courtesy deadaid.org, AP, princeton.edu and Logan Abassi (MINUSTAH)

Well today both the optimists and the pessimists hit the news. Or maybe they are both pessimists.

On one hand the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (said to be the largest humanitarian organisation in the world) is considering cutting staff and shelving projects as it braces for recession-hit donors to slash aid contributions.
It warned of greater social unrest in poor countries as high food prices were compounded by slowing economic growth, job losses and falling income.

They added “It is ‘revolting’ that the US could find $700bn to bail out its financial sector while rich countries continued to fall short of their pledges to raise aid spending to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product.”

During the 1990-1993 downturn, global aid spending fell by a quarter and did not recover to 1992 levels until 2003, the UN added. (Full

On the very same day, the UN asked for $7 billion to fund its humanitarian work around the world in 2009. That is almost double of last year’s appeal. (Full)

The need is greater, but the funding outlook for humanitarian aid is worse than before. The poorest will fall between the cracks of this dilemma.

Picture courtesy PSDTUTS

Later on, I worked in the regional office in Kampala, Uganda and was actively involved in the relief operations in East Congo after the -then- rebels headed by Kabila, headed from Uvira northwards, pushing all the refugees out of the camps and dispersing them into the jungle. That was 1996-1997.

The picture above is from that time, in Kisangani. But it could have been taken yesterday. The violence is the same. The human suffering is the same.

That is why I care about Congo.

Update: (10 minutes after I posted the above)
This press article just came in: Aid convoy finds east Congo refugee camps empty. This is exactly what happened in 1996-’97. I am so pissed off. Once again, the international community saw this coming, and stood by. Watching.

What is the plural of “crisis”?

It seems like 2008 is becoming the year of global crisis. First we were faced with the worldwide food crisis, swiftly followed by, what now seems to be, a collapse of major financial institutions.

But it might not stop here. As FAO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, calculated the cost to deal with the current food crisis at US$30 billion per year, donors stepped up their financial support.

But that was before the current financial crisis. At this moment, the governments worldwide concentrate their financial resources in keeping their banks and financial institutions afloat:

• The Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments put in US$9 billion to keep Dexia afloat. (Full)
• Previously Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg put up US$16.1 billion to save the Fortis bank. (Full)
• Britain is working on a US$87.7 billion bank recapitalization concentrating on Barclays, HSBC and the Bank of Scotland (Full)
• Spain announced a US$40.9 billion fund to buy up bank assets and maintain liquidity (Full)
• Sweden is given Iceland’s biggest bank, Kaupthing, an emergency loan worth up US$702 million) to help keep it afloat. (Full)
• Germany has thrown a US$50 billion lifeline to struggling lender Hypo Real Estate. (Full)
• Italy is about to set up a rescue fund close to US$30 billion for the banking industry. (Full)
• Canada gave a US$25 billion “backstop” for there banks. (Full)
• Russia pledged to boost liquidity by more than US$100bn (Full), on top of a US$5.4 billion loan to Iceland (Full)
• And of course we all know about the $700 billion monster US bailout (Full)

Apart from the fact that economists doubt the effectiveness of bailouts, we might be facing the early beginning from a real 1930’s style recession. If the consumers’ confidence in the banks is not restored, governments can bailout all they want, up to the level where they bankrupt themselves. Like in Iceland, where the country declared anything short of a national bankruptcy…

Any money left for international aid?

The end balance? During the food crisis, donor countries already stepped up their extra-budgetary funds to come to the rescue of aid organisations “on the occasion of the raising food prices”, but now are faced with the massive cash drain bailing out their own financial institutions.

At the same time, poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which are already dealing with a surge in food and energy prices, are now finding it harder to sell goods abroad and encourage investment in their own economies. (Full)

The question now is: how much money will be left for international aid?

This week, amidst the financial turmoil, world leaders met to review the progress of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are intended to reduce extreme global poverty and, improve health and education.
It was stressed that development aid needed to increase by $18 billion each year towards fulfilling the goals. At the end of the event, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that an additional US$16 billion had been pledged by governments to meet the targets of the MDGs. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his address to the UN, went on to say that the financial crisis should not be an excuse to cut aid. (Full)

The “Humanitarian Doomsday scenario” – the first signs

Many of us, in the aid organisations, are not that optimistic as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon:

Journalist Andrew Stroehlein, the Director of Media and Information for the International Crisis Group, states it bluntly: “I might as well just pack up and go on holiday for a few months. With the global financial crisis continuing, no one wants to hear about violent conflict and mass atrocities around the world”. (Full)

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, just wrapped up its annual refugee conference and it is concerned its needs may not be met because of the global financial crisis. (Full)

“The financial turmoil rippling across the globe will set back efforts to fight climate change, drying up capital that could help poorer countries upgrade to clean energy technology”, said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. climate secretariat, adding: “You can’t pick an empty pocket”. (Full)

Will the global financial crisis also cause a global humanitarian crisis? Time will tell, but it looks like it. As history showed, the poorest of the world always pick the shortest straw.

Update Oct 15: Aid agencies say world’s poorest will be biggest victims of world’s financial crisis

More posts on The Road about the food crisis, poverty, development, the UN and the economy.

Original picture courtesy Susan Manuel (WFP)

Rice is the staple food of Haiti and up until the 1980s Haiti was self-sufficient in its production. In the mid-1980s Haiti’s domestic rice production decreased rapidly. By the 1990s rice imports outpaced domestic rice production. This displaced many Haitian farmers, traders, and millers whose employment opportunities are extremely limited.

Import tariff reduction is a critical piece of the trade liberalization policies that are strongly advocated and many times mandated by international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the loan packages they negotiate with developing countries. In 1995 Haiti agreed to the pressure of the IMF to cut on rice import tax from 35% to the current level of 3%.

Though it earned Haiti a score of 1 on the IMF’s 1999 Index of Trade Restrictiveness, making Haiti the least trade restrictive country in the Caribbean, Haiti has also remained the least developed country in the Caribbean. It is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Three-fourths of Haitians live on less than $2 a day and 70 percent of the workforce is jobless or underemployed. More than half the country’s children don’t get enough to eat. The connection?

Following the adoption of the import policies local production of rice in Haiti dropped dramatically. Rice import tariff reductions in Haiti has made it more difficult for local rice producers to compete with imports.

Some argue that the resulting flood of relatively cheap rice imports originating mostly from the United States has had a negative impact on Haiti. The decline in the demand for Haitian rice has been devastating to an already desperate rural population. Rice farmers are some of the most vulnerable members of the population; the alternative employment options for farmers in Haiti are extremely limited.

Furthermore, competition between Haitian and American rice growers is not exactly fair. While US rice production is “subsidized through a variety of mechanisms”, the small, struggling domestic rice industry in Haiti receives no support from the government. Several Haitian and international NGOs have claimed that the US is guilty of dumping rice in Haiti. The US now dominates the rice market in Haiti. Most American rice exports are handled “by a single US corporation — American Rice Inc. — which has enjoyed an almost monopolistic position in Haiti.” (Full)

Picture courtesy Newsday/Moises Saman. Graph courtesy american.edu