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Withholding Aid is Unforgivable- NGOs - Global policy Forum Withholding Aid is Unforgivable
By Gerald Martone*
AlertNet
December 20, 2002
Gerald Martone, director of emergency response for AlertNet member the International Rescue Committee, argues that withdrawing lifesaving aid is a heartless and uncreative, and agencies should stay the course to force local authorities to contend with a humanitarian presence. He takes issue with the views that Médecins Sans Frontières researcher Fiona Terry sets out in her book "The Paradox of Humanitarian Action: Condemned to Repeat".
Among the morass of complicated situations in which humanitarian agencies operate, there have been circumstances of injustice, cruelty, and manipulation so unacceptable that relief organisations have been forced to make the difficult decision to discontinue or withhold their critical services.
When a humanitarian agency is outraged at a particular situation, abandonment of these victims is a particularly cruel and uncreative way to register protest. To withdraw lifesaving services from the very people we are supposed to defend is ironic and heartless.
What we need instead is relentless and tenacious engagement by agencies to force negligent governments and ruthless demagogues to reckon with them.
In 1994, Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Rescue Committee made the extremely difficult decision to withdraw from the refugee camps in Goma, Zaire when it became evident that Hutu extremists were manipulating relief assistance to fortify their military advantage. Some argue that "certain compromises of conscience" and the prospects of unwittingly feeding war criminals might be an acceptable price in order to simultaneously save innocent lives.
In the face of atrocious and unforgiving situations, such as what had happened in Zaire, some aid agencies have reacted with highly publicised departures. Beyond the immediate novelty of such a protest, the "shame and blame" gesture is time-limited.
GIVE WAR A CHANCE
There is a popular, yet uncritically accepted, assumption that humanitarian assistance can prolong war. This position presumes that aid should be rationed, withheld, or withdrawn in order to alter the political morphology of a crisis.
This is overly simplistic. In fact, the opposite is true. Humanitarian relief efforts save tens of thousands of lives every year and relieve the suffering of countless more. Aid itself does not fuel war; rather it is the abuse of aid that can become destructive.
The exhaustion hypothesis and the notion "Give War a Chance" are perilously flawed. Wars do not simply burn themselves out. Afghanistan, Angola, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and many others conflicts are evidence against this "forest fire" approach to conflict. The miniscule resources of aid agencies are a relatively inconsequential contribution to a war-economy and thus a poor excuse to withhold assistance.
Contemporary armed conflicts are characterised by pervasive and flagrant violations of human rights. Torture, rape, mutilation, and starvation have become a normal part of the arsenal of undisciplined and ruthless armies and rebel groups. The detached and dispassionate decision to withhold critical services from affected populations is a thoughtless and unforgivable act of feigned moral purity.
DO NO HARM
Withholding aid on the presumption that if refugees are fed then their perpetrators will thrive is outdated. Relief distributions are just not that imprecise. Modern relief interventions are oriented toward the participation of refugees in public health programs, self-reliance projects, and educational opportunities. These efforts in no way fortify the position of belligerent parties. Giving milk to motherless infants and measles vaccinations to children does not arm insurgent militias.
What is needed is innovation, not abandonment. Smart-Aid approaches strive for a reduction of divertible assets, tighter monitoring of distributions, and precise targeting of recipients. Simple commodity exchanges have demonstrably reduced theft and diversion. The substitution of maize with sorghum, bulgur for rice, or even better, the substitution of pesticide-coated seeds rather than bulk foods are less prone to extortion or manipulation.
Field workers are notorious for their ability to defy theft through simple innovations. Poking occasional holes in plastic sheeting, painting radios pink, monetising commodities, repacking bulk foods to family ration sizes and labelling protein rations as "women's biscuits" have denied the appeal and resale of stolen commodities from relief inventories. Negative impacts of humanitarian assistance are not inevitable.
WOLVES AMONG THE SHEEP
During the rebellion in eastern Zaire in 1997, there had been a peculiar debate about the rationing of aid for the Hutu refugees. An occasional perspective arising from the relief community sounded more like the judgement of a truth commission than the impartial voice of humanitarians. Ironically, the International Tribunals Statute stipulates that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, that no one can be tried in absentia, and that no one should be sentenced to death.
By withholding or even withdrawing life-sustaining assistance to refugees of Hutu ethnicity on the basis of an untested generalisation of culpability in the Rwandan genocide, were humanitarian agencies abandoning the principle of impartiality? Without a trial, a verdict had been rendered on the basis of ethnicity. Is this not precisely the sort of prejudice and ethnic generalisation that had caused the conflict in the first place?
Humanitarian agencies must not allow themselves to become judge, jury, and executioner. Yes, there are often wolves among the sheep in displaced populations. Impartial agencies cannot, however, put themselves in a position where they must distinguish refugees from fugitives, victims from villains, deserving from undeserving.
RATIONING AID
In order to be persuasive and effect change, humanitarian action must be decisive and stubborn. The presence of humanitarian agencies must embody a tenacious staying power that sinister governments and egregious profiteers will be forced to reckon with.
In the end, the moral weight of decision-making should lean heavily in favour of continuing to deliver aid, albeit smartly, even in the most confusing of situations. Humanitarian agencies must be resolute and unflinching in the performance of their duties. It is the right thing to do. It is the only right thing to do.
* Gerald Martone is also an associate professor at Columbia University, New York. An extended version of this article was originally published in Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, Volume 8, Number 2, May, 2002, copyright 2002 by Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc.
Click here to read MSF staffer warns of ethical pitfalls about Fiona Terry's book "The Paradox of Humanitarian Action: Condemned to Repeat"
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