Culture Guides

Mini-guide by Suzie Capelli

Surely there can be nothing wrong or compromising about that most altruistic of Third World activities, humanitarian aid? Well its only now that some critical studies are being done to assess the impact of large humanitarian aid programmes on the local economy.

As many will know, Rwanda was the recipient of masses of humanitarian aid for refugees in the wake of the 1994 genocide, where one million were thought to have died and at least another one million were displaced.

I met an Indian business man who had come to Rwanda specifically to do business with the humanitarian agencies. He made a fortune by importing and selling blankets. He told me back in the bad old days just after the war there was a lot of money to be made:

“These days not very much money at all, but I stay because I am used.” (to the place). Finding people who witnessed that period and are still in Rwanda is quite rare, so I asked him to confirm something I had heard. It was so unbelievable to me when I first heard it that, I had to check: the rent for reasonable houses in Kigali in period 94/95 was US $4,000 a MONTH!

This is an example of how humanitarian aid industry and the enormous amounts of money that it brings, can distort the local economy and cause hyper-inflation. The effects of this distortion remain for many years after the aid workers have all gone home.

There is distortion too, in the attitude of local people towards the (mostly white) humanitarian aid workers. With a lot of money floating around, this very quickly turns from the gratitude of the emergency period to an opportunity to scam and otherwise take advantage of people.

In areas where there has been very little exposure to Europeans this can lead to an almost involuntary compulsion to beg from any people with a different face. At that point to cease to become a person and instead become a free lunch and relations between locals and foreigners can become tainted for years to come. (see Fostering a Handout Mentality).

In crisis situations (wars, famines, natural disasters) the major humanitarian agencies will each send in their own experts to produce a needs assessment report which will become the basis of that agency’s aid plan for the affected areas. Of course, as highlighted in section 8, there is not a whole lot of coordination.

Ten years ago on the border of Eastern Congo and Rwanda, the effect of such non-cooperation was seen when the area was flooded with cooking pots, which had been in short supply at the start of the refugee crisis. Much of the donated pots turned up for sale on the markets of the surrounding areas and as a side effect killed demand for locally made pots which were more expensive than the donated ones.

However there are improvements in the pipeline for humanitarian aid, in the light of experiences like those in Congo and from aiding regions affected by the earthquakes of Central Asia in recent years. One of the more novel approaches is to give hard cash to refugees or survivors instead of goods-in-kind.

There is the obvious risk or corruption when using cash but when carefully administrated, cash not only avoids the “10,000 cooking pots when all you need is a knife” syndrome but allows those in need to chose what they need to rebuild their lives. As an added bonus, it also stimulates local commercial activity. After all there’s no profit to be made in area where the international community are giving everything away free.

Let’s hope that the areas affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami will benefit from more progressive aid policies and in doing so that they will recover quickly from the disruptive effects of the billions pledged in humanitarian aid, which they so desperately need.

And if they don’t? Well, that’s just another way to keep the developing world developing.

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