<p>I’ve been planning this humanitarian project this year (tutoring to raise money) but not entirely sure if handing out money to countries like Sudan and Nigeria will actually help. I really want to do this, but only if I am confident it will accomplish anything. Here’s a excerpt from a book I’m reading:</p>
<p>Humanitarian action was never the appropriate response to the boundless suffering of the poor world That much, at least, should be clear by now. But whether or not that bitter lesson has really sunk in, and, more to the point, what the implications of this Promethean knowledge are for humanitarianism , is another matter.</p>
<p>The humanitarian world emerged saddened and chastened from the 1990s. H. Roy Williams, the former overseas operations direction of the IRC, summed it up well when he declared flatly: Humanitarian organizations are not capable of dealing with the crises we see around us . They were painfully aware that time and time again they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of many of the particular crises, as when two million people crosses from Rwanda into Zaire in 1994, or when eight hundred thousand Kosovar Albanians were forcibly deported from the province by Serb forces in the spring of 1999.</p>
<p> by the beginning of the twenty-first century every experienced relief worker needs no reminder of the new conventional wisdom that there are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems. .</p>
<p> Here, another inescapable fact about humanitarianism has to be faced- that , even at its best, , humanitarian action is always an emblem of failure. Since there has been only failure to study , it should become as no surprise that the dilemmas of aid have seemed irresolvable </p>
<p>Can one do more? Always. Can one do all the things one would like to do? No, not with the best will in the world? The tragedy of humanitarianism may be that for all its failings and all the limitations of its viewpoint, it represents what is decent in an indecent world. Its core assumptions-- solidarity, a fundamental sympathy for victims, and an antipathy for oppressors and exploiters- are what we are in those rare moments of grace when we are at our best. But there are limits. If one has a terrible disease, one may wish for a cure. But if there is no cure, then no doctor should say, :I know what to do for you </p>
<p>I know how fatalistic this sounds. Once, in a debate on humanitarian aid when I had expressed these gloomy thoughts, Caroline Macaskie, then acting head of the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), replied I prefer to be optimistic. Well, I would prefer to be optimistic too. The question is whether there is any reason to be optimistic .</p>
<p>I suppose I could in effect go against everything I have written in this book and end on an optimistic note. … But when weighted against all the ways in which the world, grows more barbarous , such optimism is grotesque. It is a lie.</p>
<p>And if we are talking about humanitarianism, then it doesnt move, or else it is moving in the wrong direction. Instead, with the possible exception of MSF- and even MSF shares the reigning enthusiasm for international law as a way out of humanitarian dilemma- most humanitarian NGOs seem more than willing to abandon their independence for seats at the big table with the officials of the great powers and the United Nations.</p>
<p>But the change goes deeper than that. An ACF official once referred contemptuously to the charity of despair. The notion that the world could not be transformed was, he wrote, the myth of Sisyphus in all its horror. Instead, he proposed a utopian humanitarianism that seeks to break the vicious circle of misery and rescue, [and wants to move] from a simple social solidarity to human fraternity.</p>
<p>Hes not alone. So many people, including so many relief workers, talk these days about mere charity, mere humanitarianism. As if coping with a dishonorable world honorably, and a cruel world with kindness, were not honor enough. Instead, a serious, wonderful, and limited idea has become a catchall for the thwarted aspirations of our age. And few seem even to notice, and fewer still to care about what is being lost.</p>
<p>from the book A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis</p>
<p>By David Rieff (author of Slaughterhouse )</p>
<p>so basically, I have no idea how much of this I should take to heart. I don’t even know how to conduct research and what facts are relevant to the question at hand: Does international aid really accomplish anything? I’m seriously considering investing a lot of time and money into raising some money for countries like the author spoke of, but I dont want to waste my time on something that will accomplish nothing.</p>
<p>Someone please respond.</p>