`Crisis junkies' said to hinder disaster aid

Christian Century, Sept 13, 2000

Small disaster relief agencies are more often harmful than helpful to international aid efforts, according to a World Health Organization representative, who called such agencies "crisis junkies."

"You see hundreds of small agencies turning up at the scenes of disasters," said Claude de Ville de Goyet, director of the organization's emergency preparedness and disaster relief coordination program in the Americas, in remarks to the London Sunday Telegraph. "Some of them pop up because there is money or because there is media coverage, which is emotionally appealing."

Those agencies overestimate their ability to help disaster-stricken areas, said de Ville de Goyet, often donating "unrequested, inappropriate and burdensome" clothing, medicines and packaged food while neglecting to support local relief efforts.

He also criticized governments that have provided relief support that did little to foster long-term growth in a disaster zone, and argued that money used to send helicopters to Mozambique in the wake of massive flooding in March could have had greater benefit if used to help flood victims restart their lives.

Western medical teams used up a large portion of the disaster funds but arrived too late to provide the critical medical care necessary in the first 24 hours after a disaster, and left too soon to tend the population's long-term needs, de Ville de Goyet said.

He applauded the long-term relief efforts of several major humanitarian groups, but said they had not done enough to wipe out the mistaken notion that disaster victims could not thrive without aid from the West. "Some of them did contribute very much," he acknowledged. "But people tend to consider that, just because it is a European or an American from a developed country, they can do better than a national would do in a disaster, and I'm sorry, but that is wrong."

Relief agencies rejected de Ville de Goyet's remarks. The executive secretary of the Disasters Emergency Committee insisted that relief efforts have been carried out jointly with local groups to make sure that "appropriate and effective" aid was given. A spokesperson with the British Department for International Development said Britain's aid efforts were never motivated by thoughts of political gain. "I would hope that it is certainly not the case that we respond with an eye to politics, not practical need," he said.

--RNS