First there was Communism, then there was Talibanism, and now there is NGOism

Disclaimer: I am making large generalizations in the following blog-post, so take it with a grain of salt.  

I just finished reading several thought provoking and critical books on the rise of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) called The Crisis Caravan by Linda Polman and Chasing Chaos by Jessica Alexander.  I am also in the middle of reading Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo, A Zambian economist.  While I must admit I have been feeling extremely cynical about humanitarian aid after reading these books, in many ways they reinforced my experiences observing humanitarian aid from the outside and inside in Sierra Leone.  We often only hear part of the story so let me tell you a different story that we often don’t hear.  

The number of International NGOs has now exceeded 37,000 and a capitalist industry has grown up around humanitarian aid as they compete for the flow of billions of dollars within humanitarian territory.  If aid was a country, the aid industry’s economy would be the 5th largest in the world and it is the largest unregulated industry in the world with little accountability. 

The question at the center of humanitarian aid is a century old question of whether to leave or continue providing aid at any price.  Florence Nightingale, one of my childhood heroes, believed that the "higher the costs of war, the sooner it would end."  Voluntary efforts, which reduced the expense faced by war ministries, merely made it easier for governments to engage in wars more often and for longer.  She believed that aid failed its purpose if any party used it to their own advantage.  Let me give you a few statistics of how parties have used aid to their own advantage. 

Between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, the poverty rate in Africa actually rose from 11% to a staggering 66%. 

In Monrovia, Liberia, according to the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), orphanages are big business, where almost 80% of the so-called orphans are not parentless but have been used to procure external funding for their own gains.  I personally experienced this both in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. 

War Lords, such as Charles Taylor, the Liberian president, who fueled the civil war in Sierra Leone, taxed all International NGO's 15% of the value of aid, paid to him in cash, fueling and funding the Rebel United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. The rebel forces in Sierra Leone stated their motivation for cutting off people’s limbs: without violence and devastation, no aid.  A rebel soldier said "war means waste all resources. Destroy everything. Then you people (the West) will come and fix it.”  The Red Cross recently reported that over $5 million went unaccounted for during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. 

According to the UN mission in Southern Afghanistan, 1/3 of food aid and agriculture support was handed over to the Taliban in 2006.  Between 2001 and 2008, during the War on Terror, more than $15 billion was allocated for aid to Afghanistan, but it is unclear where that money ended up.  The former director of the World Bank in Kabul stated that 35 to 40% of aid was wrongly spent in Afghanistan.  During the aid operation for the Kurds in Northern Iraq, UN humanitarian departments were required to conduct all transactions in local currency which helped Saddam Hussein’s regime to earn $250 million in 1992 alone.

During the Ethiopian regime, 20 to 30% of aid supplies valued at $70 million was seized alongside the heavy taxes that INGO's paid to bring the aid in.  In Somalia, the entrance fee charged by warlords reached up to 80% of the amount the aid supplies were worth. 

In October 2013, there was a shipwreck off Libya’s coast where 300 migrants died, which gained international attention, leading the Italian Navy to launch a rescue operation to help combat migrant smuggling.  Their rescue efforts contributed to the profits of the smugglers, reducing the distance that they had to bring the migrants, from 160 miles to 12 miles.  The cost of the journey went down, allowing more people to make the journey, and the profits of the smugglers increased. 

For every 10,000 that cross, 37 die.  In the West, we see the images that highlight suffering and hardship, but the pictures migrants see on social media are of people joyously posing together having successfully reached Europe.  According to the Libyan Brigadier Qassem “We are capable of conducting rescue work…We are fed up with these organizations (NGOs).  They increased the number of immigrants and empowered smugglers.” 

Not only is it questionable whether or not humanitarian aid has actually helped, there are also other negative consequences of bringing the aid industry into foreign countries.  Polman stated that wherever aid workers go, prostitution instantly soars and the cost of living sky-rockets.  In Kabul, a foreigner could rent a tiny abandoned flat for $5,000 a month.  In Kabala, Sierra Leone, rumors spread that Doctors Without Borders recently rented a whole compound for $50,000 a year, which seems excessive compared to the annual income of $340 for the average Sierra Leonean. 

Lavish lifestyles of aid workers don’t go unnoticed by nationals, perpetuating unhealthy stereotypes of the West.  The salaries, per diems, and danger-and-discomfort bonuses make working in the established aid sector highly attractive.  I worked for the World Bank this summer for a six-week project in Sierra Leone which paid $500/day (unfortunately it all went towards my student loans).  On top of that, I had a per diem of $40/day and housing, transportation and flights were covered.  This is extremely attractive, especially for millennials as most of us are swimming in debt. 

Polman said “The humanitarian aid community that travels around to war torn, crisis ridden countries feels no embarrassment about looking like an international jet set on holiday.  I’ve known aid workers who cared for child soldiers and war orphans by day and relaxed by night in the arms of child prostitutes.”  Seeing the behavior of my fellow Westerners in Sierra Leone and Nigeria was appalling and degrading. 

I have watched as the best teachers in Sierra Leone have left the teaching profession to contract hop from NGO to NGO because they get paid better, draining the education system of qualified teachers.  Doctors leave government hospitals because it is more lucrative to manage a donor project for an NGO.  The best and brightest are pulled out of the very civil society that we were trying to support.  The presence of NGOs prolongs the government from having to rebuild the country and repair its dilapidated infrastructure.  When NGOs give handouts, it competes with local vendors and undermines small businesses, causing the local economy to tank.  

These very criticisms of the aid industry are the very reasons which compelled me back into missions.  In light of this, how do we do missions differently?  Check out the blog post below: