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MSF Staffer Warns of Ethical Pitfalls- NGOs - Global policy Forum MSF Staffer Warns of Ethical Pitfalls
By Ruth Gidley
AlertNet
December 9, 2002
Aid agencies can put at risk the people they are trying to assist and protect if they ignore the political and ethical context of their actions, according to a new book by an experienced aid worker and researcher. In "Condemned to Repeat?: The paradox of humanitarian action", Fiona Terry says that aid organisations can sometimes do more good by withdrawing from an untenable situation, instead of assuming that their presence saves lives.
Terry, a researcher for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), was compelled to reflect on the subject by her experience as head of MSF France in Rwanda in 1994 when the organisation pulled out of refugee camps in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The camps were controlled by militia members who had participated in the genocide that cost up to one million lives in 1994 and was orchestrated by Hutu hardliners in the Rwandan government intent on preventing power-sharing with the Tutsi minority ethnic group.
The militia members prevented the refugees from going home and used the camps as a base for incursions into Rwanda. The camps were eventually attacked and hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. "That posed an enormous dilemma about what responsibility as aid organisations we have for the consequences of our action, particularly when we are unable to really influence the context in which we are working," Terry told AlertNet.
"It's not our fault -- it's the role of states to come in and demilitarise the refugee camp -- but nevertheless I don't think that absolves us of all responsibility."
Terry argues that aid agencies should take more seriously the option to pull out. "When it's humanitarian action itself that is the cause of the problem for the people you're trying to assist, at that point you draw your bottom line and say we are leaving," she said. "But there are many steps before we get to that question."
The author is director of research of the MSF Foundation in Paris. She has extensive field experience, having worked in northern Iraq in 1991, in Somalia in 1992 and 1993, and later in Liberia.
The book selects four examples of aid provision in refugee camps. "I think a lot of the issues are more visible in a refugee camp than elsewhere."
CAMPS IN PAKISTAN
Terry focuses on Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, camps in Honduras of Salvadoran refugees allied with left-wing guerrillas fighting to overthrow the right-wing government and Nicaraguan refugees supported by U.S.-based opponents of the left-wing Sandinista government, Cambodian camps in Thailand, and the Rwandan camps in Zaire.
She said that belligerents often gained protection and legitimacy -- internationally and locally -- from sheltering among refugees.
Terry said that, although the potential for aid to contribute to war economies was the most visible side effect of humanitarian action, it was not the most important one. "By controlling the food distribution mechanisms, or by controlling the committees in the refugee camp by being the spokespeople of the refugees and pretending to represent them, they have mechanisms by which to control this population. And often by very harsh means, as we saw in the Khmer Rouge camps in Thai-Cambodia border or the refugee camps in Zaire," Terry said.
Witnessing events in Rwanda clearly had a strong effect on Terry and was a turning point in her thinking.
"The genocidaires (those who carried out the killings) had no outside support. It was entirely humanitarian aid that was sustaining them and the refugees were completely trapped under the power of these leaders, (and) unable to go back to Rwanda at that point. It was a terrible situation, but it was the aid itself that was contributing to the problem, and therefore I think aid organisations should have said that we shouldn't participate in this."
Terry contrasted this with the Angolan context: "The government is very rich. It's not providing food or medical support for its citizens, so it's the NGOs that are doing so, with donor money which is from countries mainly that are profiting from the oil coming out of Angola. The alternative is to leave, but if we leave, people will die, because the government is not going to pick up tomorrow and help. For me, it doesn't justify leaving."
She said that MSF had called for military intervention in Rwanda during the genocide. "I'm not anti-military. I'm against military doing humanitarian work when they should be doing protection work."
She said, for example, that she and her colleagues welcomed French intervention in Rwanda in 1994, when more than 2,000 French troops, backed by contingents from African countries, launched "Operation Turquoise" and established a safe area in western Rwanda for those displaced by the conflict.
"It had negative consequences because it allowed many of the people who were responsible for the genocide to flee into Zaire. Nevertheless it saved tens of thousands of Tutsi lives and had some positive effect and at least one stage intervened in the genocide."
Terry said she wanted more NGOs to debate and think through the ethics of their presence in a conflict, and to be open about their conclusions. "What I'd like to hear from some of the other (agencies) is a more articulated argument for why they are staying in Rwandan refugee camps, or why they are in North Korea today."
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
In the book, she concludes that organisational culture was a significant factor in preventing aid agencies from implementing lessons from past experiences.
She told AlertNet: "Generally the aid community has to give a very simple message, which is: 'There are people dying, and we need your aid to save their lives'."
She also said that the logic of institutional preservation prevented some NGOs from concluding that the negative effects of their work might outweigh the positive.
Terry said that some organisations assessed the ethics of their involvement, but still judged that it was important to maintain their presence in the Rwandan camps in Zaire. She had particularly harsh words for Oxfam and MSF Holland and Belgium, which remained after MSF France and the International Rescue Committee decided to withdraw.
"I would like them to think a lot about the consequences of two-and-a-half years in the refugee camps and the fact that 200,000 people today are still unaccounted for, and to really think about what was their responsibility. They participated in the system, and by participating in the system you are condoning the system."
Terry said that the aid industry had a tendency to exaggerate its own role. "Sometimes in our argument for staying, we overemphasise the importance of our aid to a refugee community."
She said: "I don't believe refugees would have died en masse (if more NGOs had withdrawn from the Rwandan camps). When they were eventually pushed back once the camps were attacked, the Rwandan government did not allow NGOs to come in and help them other than provide small waystations for water and food along the way and there was a very low mortality rate."
Even with the benefit of hindsight, she said, many NGOs did not act on the lessons they learned. "Evaluations must be read and acted upon."
She lamented attempts to consolidate and regulate the aid industry, saying that the constant reiteration of the need for better coordination had been embraced as a panacea. Terry argued that advocacy was an essential complement of operational activities.
She said: "All the organisations that were (in the Rwandan refugee camps) did fantastic work on a technical level but they were unable to protect the refugees from violence. Once we feel that a population risks dying from violence, what are we doing being in a health clinic giving out Panadol? It just doesn't make sense any more. We have to speak out about what their predicament is and call for somebody that has the capacity to protect these people to do so."
ANALYSIS OF EVENTS
Terry identifies different trends within NGOs in the United States, Britain and France, which influence not only organisational practices but also each agency's analysis of events and history.
"I think France is closer to the Swiss Red Cross way of looking at things, but you can't say there's an Anglo-Saxon view.
"In America it's wantonly naive. U.S. NGOs have been a conduit for U.S. foreign policy since they were formed." Terry said that U.S. NGOs had accepted government money to work in both Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the United States was a belligerent party. "In the U.S. a lot of people don't even understand that as a problem. If you are perceived to be on one side, accepting U.S. government money and the U.S. is an aggressor and this is part of a propaganda war machine, then you become a legitimate target yourself, and the people being assisted by you will also potentially become targets."
Terry said she believed British NGOs were more interested in the continuum of relief and development and conflict and peace building, and she was critical of extending the humanitarian remit into these areas.
"Humanitarian action is in an intensely political environment, but it needs to remain impartial above all else. Peace building is not impartial. There are always winners and losers in the peace process. Of course it's an intensely political activity, but I think you need to try and focus it on what is best for the most vulnerable people. In a peace process you're focusing on what is best for peace. Sometimes they're compatible, sometimes they're not, and often they're not."
She criticised the "Do No Harm" philosophy pioneered by Mary Anderson. "It's just so Utopian it's ridiculous. We need to minimise the harm we're doing rather than do no harm. I don't think this notion is very helpful because it puts us on the wrong footing. I think that what's needed is a hardheaded analysis that doesn't pretend that we can do no harm.
As far as Terry is concerned, the two essential principles of humanitarian action are impartiality and independence, and neutrality is a fiction. "No matter how hard you try, you will never be exactly even on both sides of a conflict, because there's never exactly the same needs. So if you follow the principle of impartiality -- which means you base your assistance on a need -- you'll always be perceived by one party as aiding the other side more."
Click here to read how Gerald Martone of the International Rescue Committee responds to this article.
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