The Trouble With Aid was a formidable achievement on the part of its creators. An analysis of the rise of humanitarianism, it exposed the many incidents in which aid work has complicated rather than solving problems: from Biafra, where offerings of Westerners strengthened secessionist forces and extended the war, to Somalia, where charities called for troops to protect their convoys and were answered by American forces who promptly worsened the conflict.
A veteran of aid work commented that many saw their humanitarian efforts as being comparable to fighting in a war in which you did not have to kill anyone. Children of the 60s strode off into the third world to fight. Suffering was their foe, and food and funds were the materiel with which they hoped to battle it. It is striking, indeed, how their rhetoric could mirror that of warmongers: crises demanded an urgency that sometimes obscured the need for realism; enemies were so dangerous and appalling that attempts to construct nuanced analyses of their causes and forms was almost disreputable; arresting their consequences was a simple matter of trying to directly remove them.
These saviour narratives, however, could result in their blinding themselves to complex political and social realities. In Ethiopia, for example, the oppressive government made charities complicit in a brutal resettlement programme that masqueraded as humanitarian assistance. Estimates suggest that between fifty and a hundred thousand people died as the result of actions Bob Geldof somehow never had the time to say “fuck” over.
To the doubters, brash humanitarians like the almost Hitchensian Geldof had a blunt moralistic response: we’re trying to help starving kids; what are you doing? While many of the blunders of charities were consequences of well-meaning people being understandably ignorant of situations that had never been encountered there was also a streak of egotism running through them. A red-faced Bernard Kouchner yelled at the filmmakers that intervention in Somalia was worthwhile if it saved even one child. Hundreds of people, which doubtless included children, died in the violence that resulted from that intervention.
Things had become even more dangerous as the line between humanitarians and militarists disappeared. Aid workers, faced with rebels and dictators instead of famines and floods, presumed that Western military power was a convenient tool with which to solve crises. They soon realised, however, that it was impossible to control and liable to have an effect more comparable to a backhoe than a surgical instrument. The faith in the power of military intervention – which, I should admit, counted me among its believers for a short period years ago – persists in the celebrities whose eyes grow moist over Darfur and the teens who share indictments of Joseph Kony.
In New York a policeman became famous for buying a pair of shoes for a cold homeless man. The tramp, however, did not actually wear them. He feared that someone might kill him in an effort to steal them. If such apparently simple generosity can have such complicated underpinnings it should not surprise us that crises involving millions of people in societies with significant and often unfamiliar political and cultural peculiarities are hard to understand and dangerous to negotiate. The Trouble With Aid was a necessary reminder that the sentiment that inspires people to do good in our world must be allied to realism that ensures that good intentions do not in fact lead to harm.
A final thought. I wonder if the rise of humanitarian thought has focused our efforts on ameliorating conditions in places where the worst suffering can be found at the expense of the places where the most good might be done. Staggering resources have been expended in attempts to change some of the worst dictatorships and theocracies of the world but these are also places where it’s hardest to do good. In the meantime, stable if struggling nations risk being denied the ideas and support that could aid them in developing their economies, securing their resources, stabilising their demographics and giving future generations the chance for a better standard of life or, at least, a better chance of avoiding the sort of catastrophes that might inspire belated responses. Ultimately, micronutrient interventions and family planning might not sound as romantic as ending wars and toppling tyrants but they seem more liable to effect positive change.
December 11, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Was the programme about all humanitarian agencies or only about Kouchner and Medecins sans Frontières? I ask because the the start of the BBC blurb says
“45 years ago a group of young men and women set out to make the world a better place. They wanted to bring aid to those in dire need. These idealists would help create a new mass movement – humanitarianism.”
This is a description that fits Kouchner and his associates better than humanitarian aid agencies in general; yet neither the BBC blurb nor yourself make clear whether the programme was just about the beliefs of Kouchner and his organisation, MSF, or about humanitarian agencies in general. There have always been strong disagreements among aid organisations about how to operate in conflict, particularly between MSF and the others. The issues that the programme covered have been debated for a long time. Did the programme recognise this or did it assume that all agencies subscribe to Kouchner’s views?
Most humanitarians discovered very quickly that western military power was impossible for them to control and was a blunt instrument. The USA refused to intervene in Angola in late 1992 to control its own proxy, Jonas Savimbi, but then a few months later intervened in Somalia. Decisions were obviously dicatated by a hidden political agenda and by what the military would accept. US military didn’t want to stick around in Somalia while the various factions were brought together, so they thought that taking out one warlord would be a short-cut to ending the conflict (with disasterous results). This confirmed the concerns that many agencies had about humanitarian military interventions.
Meanwhile Kouchner has become a politician rather than a humanitarian, and MSF is less antagonistic to other agencies than it was in the past. The programme was maybe a couple of decades too late.
December 11, 2012 at 8:27 pm
You should watch it! It is rather long, admittedly, but it should be on iPlayer until Sunday.
It was about all humanitarian aid agencies but it acknowledged that they took different positions at different points. MSF, for example, got a nod for withdrawing from Goma when they feared they were restoring the Hutus.
The interventionist passion of Kouchner was also unique among the participants. While he ranted in a very peculiar manner when it was suggested to him that agencies erred in Somalia, other representatives were shown as being regretful.
There could, perhaps, have been acknowledgement of the times when aid agencies have done good but they were not, at least, portrayed as being entirely bad!