The Aid System Whack-A-Mole
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International aid distribution systems are in crisis. And not only is it going to get a lot worse as climate change-driven disasters and conflicts accelerate and funds available decline, but at least some experts are saying that the way international aid is distributed now can’t solve the problems, even if funding were greatly expanded:
Yet everyone agrees the system needs to change. In January 2016, a UN panel concluded that the aid sector lacked transparency, was financially inefficient and was bad at measuring the impact of its work. It also identified a lack of joined-up thinking between humanitarian and development agencies as a key issue.
“Almost everyone with whom we spoke said that finding more money will not solve all the problems, and may even entrench some of the current dysfunctions,” the panel said.
Little has been done to fix it, however. In May 2016, a landmark UN conference of 9,000 delegates pledged to increase the proportion of aid given to local humanitarian organisations from 0.4% to 25% by 2020. Today just 3.3% goes to national NGOs, even though they are cheaper, nimbler and more effective than international agencies.
Despite facing multidimensional protracted crises, we still have aid agencies that were designed to provide short-term support during droughts, floods and wars, says Edouard Rodier, from the Norwegian Refugee Council….
In places such as Lebanon, O’Callaghan says, donor countries and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank need to do more development work that strengthens national systems and deals with the root causes, so humanitarian agencies are not forced to treat the symptoms.
She also calls for “super-local actors” to be integrated into the global aid system and an increase in cash-based assistance, which is cheaper and usually more effective than giving food.
“This is where the future lies,” says O’Callaghan. “Having big, expensive international aid agencies running things for year after year until the money dries up won’t work.”
Industrial-era problem solving focuses on solving the problem that’s in front of you, not on digging into the root of the problem. Industrial-era problem solving also assumes that the “experts” (especially white/European experts) know how to solve problems better than local people, and that problems that happen to someone else — externalities to our own actions — can be ignored or given lip service, because they will never really affect ourselves.