Part of every well-intentioned dollar you send to a war-torn, underdeveloped country is funding the sport utility vehicle of a recent college graduate and the rest is perpetuating an ethnic war that is at the source of the famine you want to help fight. Even though this is a blatant exaggeration, it is one that holds an essential truth. Although humanitarian aid brings much needed short-term relief in moments of crisis, it often does more harm than good because of its lack of realistic planning. Unfortunately, the business of aid is rarely criticized for its tragic shortcomings because of the widespread favorable public opinion it enjoys. Under the guise of charity and responsibility, humanitarian aid is often the only type of foreign intervention that public opinion easily endorses. However, the provision of humanitarian aid should not be viewed simply as a success and used to absolve the guilt of the affluent international community that provides it. On the contrary, the necessity for urgent humanitarian assistance indicates the failure to act early and prevent the tragic circumstances that often lead to crises.

Better Late Than Never?

When it became clear in the 1980s that humanitarian assistance and development programs were not achieving their goals, international humanitarian organizations set out to evaluate the programs’ effectiveness. The World Bank’s 1988 Twelfth Annual Review of Project Performance Results revealed that 75 percent of all World Trade Organization (WTO) agricultural projects in sub-Saharan Africa were not achieving their objectives. Since then, much progress has been made in the field of development with initiatives that focus on sustainability and recognize the importance of grass-roots involvement, technical knowledge, and culture. However, the ill-planned financial and food assistance that contributes to the continued reliance of communities on humanitarian aid still appeals to well-meaning donors, who in their ignorance, perpetuate a cycle of dependence. Local farmers in the developing world have supplied their communities with food in different ways, such as the traditional underground foodstores used in Somalia to limit the risk of famine. Drastic factors such as extreme climatic anomalies or political upheavals destroy this balance. For example, in central Somalia in 1978, President Siad Barre’s retreating troops pillaged food reserves causing widespread famine. At first, the free food provided by donor countries did save many lives, but the influx of free foreign goods soon created an economy of theft and corruption. Even when a good harvest occurred, free food continued to pour in; the unusually large supply of food depressed market prices for the farmers’ produce and perpetuated the community’s dependence on food aid by making it impossible for the farmers to buy more seeds and develop their lands. Such mistakes have contributed to the steady decline in per capita food production in sub-Saharan Africa and the continent’s increasing reliance on imports it cannot afford. Thus, timing is crucial for effective humanitarian assistance; when urgent need is not met and food, medical, and financial assistance arrive once a famine has decimated a population, not only has the aid missed its mark, but it can have further nefarious consequences such as ruining local economies. Unfortunately, the lessons drawn from such disasters have not been applied and sufficient, yet ill-timed, humanitarian aid continues to destroy local markets in places such as Guatemala, Mozambique, and, most recently, Afghanistan.

Anything or Nothing?

A Namibian orphan waits at a center for children orphaned because of HIV/AIDS.

Because it is often assumed that any aid is better than no aid, donor countries often waste desperately-needed funds on unnecessary goods and splurge on bureaucracies and staff. Well-intentioned doctors have sent stores of frost-bite medicine to tropical countries as well as laxatives, anti-indigestion remedies, and diet foods to the starving. The United States sent 100-volt operated refrigerators at great cost only to find that they were useless at their destinations, which operated on 200-volt electrical systems. In Afghanistan, packets of food dropped from planes were sold across the border to Pakistan. The United Nations has flown in graduate students with no field experience into East Africa, and the US agency for which they worked was paid US$400,000. Such inefficiencies take on a disturbing moral dimension when the goods from donor countries are considered to be inadequate for consumption in wealthier countries, but considered fit for humanitarian aid. In November 2002, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee of India (GEAC) refused to admit 1,000 tons of corn-soya blend coming from the US non-governmental organizations (NGO) CARE-India and Catholic Relief Services. This shipment was to be the first of a 23,000 ton package of food aid for children in schools as part of the “midday meal program.” The two NGOs could not provide proof that the food did not contain a variety of genetically modified corn that is considered unfit for human consumption in the United States which has relatively weak restrictions against genetically modified food when compared with Europe. The entry of genetically modified foods into the world of humanitarian aid has sparked much controversy as poor countries try to battle the danger of becoming a dumping ground for “experimental” food.

Feeding Famines

An older problem linked to humanitarian aid is the politicization of assistance—when humanitarian aid, whether inadvertently or not, is given to populations according to their allegiance in a political conflict. One devastating example of politicized aid is the Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border at the end of the Cold War. Even though the mechanisms of partisan assistance and their tragic outcomes are clear, donors fall prey to the same mistakes in each new case.

In order to pursue its opposition to the Vietnamese communists, the United States chose to back the factions forced out of Cambodia when the Vietnamese took over Phnom Penh. Among those driven out of the country was the Khmer Rouge, the murderous communist regime that caused the deaths of over a million people between 1979 and 1997. This former government formed a coalition with the other retreating factions, giving a façade of legitimacy to the opposition movement that the West would support. To create a buffer with the new Vietnamese Cambodia, the Thai government granted refuge to Khmer Rouge troops, its allies, and the populations fleeing the chaos, thus providing a sanctuary for the regime to thrive. The humanitarian aid that sustained these camps for almost a decade exacerbated the plight of the refugees by reviving the Khmer Rouge and contributing to the continuation of the conflict. Humanitarian aid quickly became a renewable source of funding the Khmer Rouge used either directly (the World Food Program gave food to the Thai army that was given overtly to Khmer Rouge military camps) or covertly. The troops inflated recipient numbers and subsequently redistributed less to the refugees than what the aid organizations intended and the difference was sold or taken for the soldiers. In February 1980, a monitoring report revealed that 64 percent of the rice meant as food aid never reached the refugees. Stores of food and medical supplies were stolen and taxes were levied on Cambodian staff. The Khmer Rouge also set up secret military camps along the border, taking advantage of their proximity to the refugee camps, which provided their resources. This localization allowed the Khmer Rouge to routinely kidnap refugees, including children, who were forced to do labor in the military camps. As a result, the Vietnamese began to perceive the refugee camps as the source of a resistance movement and made them military targets, trapping the refugees in the conflict they had initially fled.