In the first three months of the United Nations’s 2003 Iraq appeal, donor governments raised nearly $2-billion — $74 for every person in the country. In comparison, the Democratic Republic of Congo — where an estimated three million people have lost their lives in years of conflict — has received only $17 a person.
It is a dilemma of humanitarian aid that high-profile emergencies tend to receive more aid than those situations where people suffer far from the media spotlight. The “war on terror” has deepened the gap. There are needs in Iraq. But appeals for aid for countries such as Liberia or Sudan often receive scant attention from donor countries.
It is not the only dilemma facing humanitarian agencies in an age where technology has shrunk the world, but failed to rid it of inequality, conflict, hunger, disease and disaster. How should humanitarian agencies operate? Does aid reach those in need? Do we know where those most in need are?
These are not new dilemmas. This year, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), which coordinates fund-raising for 12 leading aid, relief and humanitarian agencies in Britain, is marking 40 years of winning public support to help victims of wars and natural disasters. In those 40 years, almost £500-million has been raised from the public for those distant victims.
One problem we grapple with continually is: How do we raise public awareness of the crisis faced by those living in impoverished countries?
And, crucially, how do we do this before these chronic crises become full-blown emergencies in which people die? The potential for a famine is not often considered newsworthy. But a famine is. Yet, humanitarian agencies know that famines need not happen. They can be averted, if the world is made aware of them and action is taken early.
Early warning systems now exist, but are often ignored or played down by decision-makers, as happened in Malawi in early 2002. The DEC and its member agencies are vulnerable to being damned if we do appeal and damned if we don’t, either seeming to exaggerate the situation or to be ignoring it.
There is a tension between the time it takes to mobilise public compassion and the ability to mount a timely and appropriate emergency response. Little attention and resource is given to prevention and mitigation, yet we know this is the most cost-effective way of dealing with disasters. Prevention is better — and cheaper — than cure.
It is a constant struggle for, sadly, the world has learned to tolerate — in large parts of Africa especially — very high levels of chronic malnutrition and collapsed services, where small climatic shocks or poor policies can have dramatic effects on the lives of the poor.
The DEC sets itself high standards, based on adherence to a set of principles and codes of best practice, collective action, accountability both to beneficiary and donor and investment in lesson learning. And it is the latter that is perhaps the most essential. It is built on independently commissioned evaluations of each disaster response.
The latest evaluation, of the DEC’s Southern Africa Crisis Appeal, was encouraging. The independent evaluators concluded that the appeal was justified, that lives were prolonged and suffering averted.
It also said that the complexity of the underlying problems of the region means there are big opportunities to learn from this new kind of preventative appeal. The link between the devastating HIV/Aids epidemic and food security, for one, adds new complexities to an already difficult situation. No disaster is identical. But with each one we can add to our increasing fount of knowledge so that when a new disaster strikes, we might save — and rebuild — more lives.
Ideally, of course, we would prefer to act before disaster strikes — as we did in Southern Africa. And ultimately, we would like it if our work ensured that, through the alleviation of poverty across the world, people were able to deal with their own problems without our help. Our aim is to make ourselves redundant.
But that is a long way off. Until then, we have to raise money independently of governments, so we can act on the basis of need — irrespective of whether politicians are willing to pitch in.
We need to raise awareness so governments cannot claim they didn’t know there was a crisis. And we need to keep learning. — Â