Hope and Struggle: Understanding International Development

OXFAM, an NGO with the slogan “ending poverty begins with women’s rights,” provides a video of their contributions in Haiti:

Medicines Sans Frontieres (or Doctors without Borders) are known for their exceptional service on the ground, but also for vocalizing their perception of the issues. Dr. Greg Elder, MSF’s Medical Deputy Project Manager for Haiti, says “there has been a failure to provide the most urgently needed services.” Listen to their frontline report podcast entitled “A Year after the Earthquake in Haiti” dated January 21, 2011.

The previously mentioned NGO’s are a part of a non-religious aid effort in Haiti. However, organizations that are devoted to faith have a relief effort in Haiti that is equally credible. Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today highlights how “$300 million dollars and thousands of faith powered volunteers have poured into the country to help rebuild and restore its spirit.”

The top faith based organization noted by Grossman was Catholic Relief Services (link: http://crs.org/), who raised $182 million. Other faith based groups were Samaritans Purse raising $51 million, The United Methodist Church with $43 million, and the North American Mission Board with $10 million. Grossman also says, “more than 2000 Baptist volunteers worked in Haiti with the two major Haitian Baptist organizations”. Also noted were the 150,000 “buckets of hope containing one week’s worth of food” by Baptist Churches in the USA.

Flickr via Land Rover Our Planet

Haiti, whose population is 80 percent Catholic, is able to accept relief from religious organizations at far greater ease than a nation with a smaller Christian population. Haiti is just one example of many countries in need of humanitarian assistance. However, despite some successes there were a lot of issues as well.

A lot of people in our society feel that there are right and wrong ways to carry out particular processes. In the case of International Development and the deliverance of foreign aid, it seems that a proper process has not been identified.

In Haiti, one year after the earthquake, the Prime Minister said, “little regard was shown to his government by certain NGO’s on the ground.” Dr. Greg Elder of MSF said, “[there was] a failure to provide urgently needed services”.

I asked Ted Richmond whether or not we should be looking to understand aid and development as a process that CAN be improved, or if we should understand the situation as so dire that any aid or assistance must be considered good?

There [are] a lot of good and important questions behind this question and I am afraid there is no short answer that is overly clear or useful. Let me try instead to sort out some different issues.

In a crisis situation like Haiti after the earthquake there is likely to be more agreement on what is needed (food, medical supplies, shelter). But there will still be disagreements about priorities (resources are always limited). There will also be debates about the most effective means to deliver the aid that is needed so urgently, and that may involve role conflicts for the aid organizations and for the local government and popular organizations. One of the roles of International Non-Governmental Organizations or INGOs is to analyze these situations so that the international community is better prepared for future disasters.

A very different debate is what kind of foreign aid or development activity really helps to reduce and eliminate global poverty. Of course there would still be health and environmental disasters even if global poverty was to be greatly reduced, but the stark reality is that the main victims of short-term disasters are also the main victims of long-term global economic inequality.

This is an area of conflicting philosophies and practical approaches that cannot be summarized easily. I think it is fair to say however that the notion of ‘foreign aid’ coming from the global North to the global South is increasingly discredited as an effective approach to combat global poverty.

Many different groups and forces are experimenting with alternatives including locally-controlled development activities, microcredit (low-interest loans to the most impoverished for basic economic advancement), environmentally appropriate agriculture and development, respect for Aboriginal rights and economic claims, etc.

A third and also fundamental issue is the relation between INGOs and foreign states imposing economic and political solutions through armed intervention. Even where this armed intervention is justified in terms of protecting the human rights of the local population, the reality of armed intervention complicates the work of INGOs which are basically non-government and politically neutral agencies.

The issues become even more complex when the armed forces of the external states take on humanitarian activities usually associated with INGOs to gain the confidence of the local population. This issue is exemplified currently in the continuing military and political conflict in Afghanistan.

In short there is no single answer to the question, because it is really a question about opposing views and different practices in facing some of the main global issues of the 21st century.

The best way to understand this better might be to pick a particular issue (like effective emergency relief, microcredit, or humanitarian assistance) and then explore the websites of the different actors. Medecines sans Frontiers and Project Ploughshares are particularly useful on the tensions between the military and the INGOs in countries where humanitarian relief and humanitarian intervention are occurring simultaneously.

An issue that involves a continuum of perception, international development must be considered on a case by case basis, and always in relation to the fundamental concept of human rights as granted to the human being NOT to the citizen.

ARB Team
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