From ignorance to becoming a humanitarian aider

Humanitarian aid is one of those subjects that can divide opinion in the student community. Some wealthy philanthropists will dedicate their lives to it; others will look the other way when a fundraising box is shaken in front of them. The common perception is that it is a rich person’s concern and a field dominated by sanctimonious types.

Yet aid is becoming an ever more important issue in this globalized, economically interdependent world that we all live in. From the latest food crisis in the Horn of Africa to the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand we are constantly reminded of such a fact and international aid is becoming ever more significant in resolving such issues.

Prior to this investigation my concept of aid work comprised of little more than pictures of dying African infants on appeal adverts. So, armed with these stereotypes, I went to speak to some humanitarian aid experts and enthusiasts to discover what this “industry” really consists of in the 21st century, where the money goes and who the people behind the scenes and on the frontline distributing our money really are. Thankfully, I would be pleasantly surprised.

My first step was to understand what the term “aid” means. Usually when we hear the word we automatically reach for our wallets but talking to Vikram Bangara, Secretary of Warwick UNICEF on Campus, sometimes automatically throwing money at a problem can actually make it worse.

“There’s two levels that you can take aid down”, he said, “structural aid, which is often taken by developed nations like Greece in the forms of bailouts, and there is the aid that gets straight to where its needed, which I know about, in the form of NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] and specific projects, getting resources and supplies out to people in need rather than from government to government.”

With this in mind, I was curious as to which form was more effective. Mr Bangara gave a fairly balanced appraisal. “[The NGO] route has more clarity, is probably less prone to corruption but, in an ideal world, government to government [aid] could solve the far greater problems of international development faster”, he said.

The taxonomy of aid distribution channels is a field with substantial literature written on it. I went to Jonathan Glennie, Research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute [ODI] in the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure [CAPE], who has recently written a book, The Trouble with Aid: Why Less Could Mean More for Africa, which deals with this exact issue.

I asked Mr Glennie whether the current methods of aid distribution were working well and how they could be improved. “Western governments do not act in a homogenous way; they’re all very different actually.” He said, to my surprise. “America is very different to France, very different to the UK, very different to Norway, although there are similarities because they’ve tended to follow the indigenous-led model of the past, very much working with the World Bank.”

He cited problems with every example, “China is meant to give a lot of money without a lot of conditionality. What China needs to do is learn from the West about the importance of human rights and accountability, and what the West needs to do is learn from China about the importance of being humble and not thinking they know all the answers to all development problems.”

Speaking to Mr Glennie made me realize the complexity of the topic. He has long argued that having fixed “aid budgets” (Britain’s is 0.7 percent of GDP) is not effective if the money is given direct to corrupt governments. Suddenly giving aid required assessment of a recipient countries political structures and culture. In the interview he did give a ringing endorsement of NGOs as alternatives but I needed further clarification.

I returned to Warwick UNICEF and this time spoke to their president, Martin Christ. I asked him why there was any need to donate to charity if part of our taxes were paying for humanitarian aid. “NGOs, in these issues, tend to be far more successful and effective at making sure [aid] gets to the people.” He said. He also stated that, to his knowledge, UNICEF did not receive any donations from states, just private individuals.

He added, “…Inter-governmental aid can do a lot of harm, if it’s used in the wrong way; that’s both in the way that the recipient countries can be harmed, just by them being corrupt… also it’s the case that donor countries attach certain limitations and we’ve seen, in Haiti for instance, how the American government made very specific demands that were tied to aid. UNICEF doesn’t have the vested interests that certain governments have.”

So it appears that NGOs are the way forward, but it raised another problem. Since the Live Aid events of the 1980s and the televising of humanitarian crises there has been exponential growth in the NGO sector. UNICEF has been around for far longer (established in 1946), but it has faced increased competition as a result for funding. How do they manage with the competition? After all, they are far from being the only worldwide children’s charity.

Mr Christ assured me that, on Warwick campus at least; charities such as UNICEF do not suffer from overcrowding of the market. “If you look at Warwick, it’s quite remarkable what’s going on here.” He said, “We’ve got UNICEF on campus, this year so far we’ve raised about £3000 [as of December 2011], we’ve had a World AIDS Day conference, we’ve done other smaller things mainly about the East Africa food crisis, and that’s just UNICEF. Amnesty [International] have been very active, Oxfam are doing stuff at the moment on land grabbing, REACH do fantastic things…”

Safe in the knowledge that sector is booming I decided to discover more about what it meant to be an “aid worker” as a profession. I had worked with charity volunteers before but never met a paid fulltime NGO representative. Who better to meet, then, than a Warwick Politics and International Studies (PAIS) graduate, now Climate Change Policy Advisor at Oxfam, Tim Gore.

I asked him why he had chosen the international aid sector as a career path. “The NGO sector is a brilliant place to work, it’s full of passionate people that don’t just want to pick up their pay cheque, they want to feel that they’re making a difference in some way to the world”, he said. He added that it was a natural progression with his degree and skill set. “Here [at Warwick] the emphasis is on developing your own critical faculties and thinking of taking your own stance on issues, and that means that students coming out of Warwick can be genuine thought leaders in the development field going forward.”

Yet, in the subject of climate change in particular, had he found it difficult preaching the message to people from less economically developed countries, given the fact that they were just copying a western development model of the past? “As I have tried to present, we don’t have a choice”, he said.

“When we look at the figures globally, and the numbers come to a ‘resource crunch’, we simply have to find a model of development that allows us to continue to improve the social conditions of the poorest people, narrowing the gap between rich and poor in developing countries, whilst at the same time remaining within the planetary boundaries which are set by the science.”

Mr Gore’s role is just one face of an international aid organization – the lobbying arm that pressure’s governments to make structural changes to improve lives. It is a much safer, but equally rewarding, way of being involved in humanitarian aid.

Still, one was eager to meet someone from the other end of the spectrum; a bona fide grass roots aid worker in the field. I met up with UNICEF’s Deputy Special Representative from their Jerusalem office, Douglas Higgins. In England on business, Mr Higgins is as experienced as they come: a veteran of the Somalian Civil War, Rwanda genocide, Gaza Intifada and war in Afghanistan, he has seen many things few of us would ever wish to see.

He said that his proudest achievement was the successful immunization of the entire child population in South Sudan against measles, something that took the best part of a decade to achieve and could not have been done without local support.

However it was his comments about how the atmosphere had changed for aid workers in the field that was most revealing. “The type of person who comes to these places is also different; and the social life that goes with working in these places”, he said. “When I was in Gaza twenty years ago the camaraderie that I had with my colleagues was really intense; I’m still really close friends with many of those people. But now I see the people who are posted to Gaza and, because of the security constraints and what they can and cannot do, they don’t have an opportunity to develop a collegial spirit; it’s much more constrained”.

Concurring with the suggestion of “lockdown situations” being the norm nowadays in conflict zones, Mr Higgins was all too knowing of the increased threat attached to working in the field post-9/11. He reminisced about the times when he and his colleagues used to “drink a lot`” with the locals during the First Intifada in 1991 in Gaza. Nothing like that would go on these days.

The facet that I found most illuminating in the research is that gone are the days when an ambitious student could just sign up and head out to a war zone. Apart from the fact that all measures would be taken to prevent that happening, the opportunities are not there.

As Martin Christ explained, “Regarding conflict zones, UNICEF (and many other NGOs) have teams of experts, rather than people still training, so UNICEF doesn’t have many opportunities for student volunteer to go to Africa, say.”

He continued, “There are exceptions to this, and Warwick in Africa is an example of how students can really make an impact, yet there are a lot of things in England to improve and a lot of volunteering opportunities as well… a lot less glamorous but I would encourage people to do that to get a feel for things.”

So, if humanitarian aid is a viable career and not something done on a whim, how can students commit to it during their time at university? “Figure out what you like doing most and what you’re best at – and sometimes they’re not the same things – and within that try and find a way of making a positive difference”, said Alexander Woollcombe, EU Director of the international poverty campaign group ONE.

“Working for an NGO, working for a government agency or working for a business; there’s many different things that you can do, but whatever you do the ability and focus on trying to make a positive impact is the most important thing, and if you’re driven by that then you’ll find a way to make that happen.”

Having explored the world of humanitarian aid, therefore, I experienced none of the negative preconceptions I had. Yes, the people who work for NGOs and in the aid sector are extremely passionate about the causes they work for – there is no cynicism attached to working in the sector for years – but they had none of the pomposity which the celebrity affiliation, for all its benefits at raising the profile of certain issues, has tarred aid work with.

Britain came eighth in last year’s World Giving Index, third for money donations, so aid is evidently more important here than elsewhere in the world. But it is evident that we can do better. I might well reconsider journalism and join an NGO myself…