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Book description

Book description
Michael Marens book is simply brilliant in its exhaustive research and compassion and perspective. When the book was written in 1997, the author had already spent nineteen years in Africa – in Kenya, Somalia, Burkina faso, Rwanda and Ethiopia – reporting on the famine, civil war and military conflicts in the region. So, he is eminently qualified to take a critical look at international charity organizations and overseas aid projects in Africa and also the United Nations organizations like UNHRC. What emerges is a scathing revelation of foreign aid and international charity as an end in itself and a self-serving system where these organizations care less about the victims of famine and civil war and more about their own organizational interests and the perpetuation of their organizations interests.Maren investigates extensively the major organizations like CARE, Save the Children and UNHCR in the long civil strife of Somalia and shows how they all treat every famine, civil war and displacement of people as a business opportunity and descend in large numbers to do famine relief. Actually, there is vast money in famine relief and managing small scale conflicts in places like Africa after the end of the Cold war. These NGOs as well as the UN bureaucracy chase these billions of dollars and set up shop in places of strife where the aid workers lead comfortable lives in their protected enclaves, ride around in Landrovers and end up basically destroying the self-sufficient fabric of the societies into which they descend. The other key players in this sorry saga are of course, the local warlords and dictators who have a vested interest in the continuation of the famine and dependency on foreign aid to advance their own clan or sectarian interests. Maren shows how even the military establishments like the Pentagon and NATO get involved in these places like Somalia, Bosnia, Ethiopia etc to test out their capabilities in the post-Cols War scenarios. The author shows how the western media also plays a role in aiding and abetting this nexus of NGO-UN-military and local warlords by exaggerating the crisis in target countries like Somalia by beaming the faces of emaciated children and dead cattle and disease and poverty.Maren makes two important observations. One is about the deception of the charity organizations using pie charts to convey an impression that something like 85% of the donors money being used for program services. Often this term program services tends to be just a play on semantics. Investigations show that only 10% actually goes in the service of ultimate beneficiaries. The other point is about charities destroying the traditional inter-dependence of nomads and settled people in Somalia and Ethiopia. Aid organizations forced nomads to settle down to farming without providing a way for them to survive when drought conditions make farming impossible.Maren shows in 1997 how the crisis in Rwanda had all the facets of new business opportunities for the NGOs just as Somalia was receding from the front pages of the western media. To me, the book was a revelation of how sordid this whole gamut of aid organizations and NGOs which have proliferated in the past decades. In Michael Marens own words, the point is made as follows:“The NGOs are seeking ever newer tasks to tackle. Where they once spoke of basic human needs, women in development and sustainable development, they now address issues of land mines, conflict avoidance, and now the latest and trendiest of issues - civil society. The same aid workers who once tried (and largely failed) to teach farmers to grow things are now fanning out and sowing the seeds of civil society across the world. Generally speaking, a civil society is one that is held together by rule of law, not one of loyalties to clan. It is the essence of the cultural struggles taking place in Somalia, Bosnia and even New York city. In many ways, it is a constant struggle , and one that seems bizarrely juxtaposed with the traditional notion and capacities of an NGO. Yet it is a growth opportunity. Along with land-mine clearance and conflict avoidance/resolution, it is where the money is. Few NGOs have seen a contract they didnt like or a problem they didnt believe they could solve. The first priority of any NGO, like any bureaucracy, is its own survival.”It is one of the best books I have read in recent years and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in international charity and foreign aid institutions as well as what happened really in the Somali crisis of the 1980s and 90s.
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