The Necessary Mitigated Evil: Humanitarian Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa

1539 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: West africa history up to 19 century

Due in part to its tumultuous past, sub-Saharan Africa is a region of the world that is stricken with war, famine, and poverty. Many people in richer parts of the world, including North America and Europe, view helping the people who inhabit this part of the world as their duty and obligation. Both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) alike send humanitarian aid to sub-Saharan Africa. While this aid helps countless individuals and their families, humanitarian aid in sub-Saharan Africa fuels further conflict and enables violent groups, undermining the goals of the aid itself.
The history of humanitarian aid has been muddied by cases of NGOs and UN groups enabling violent groups by providing too much support and aid. During the Rwandan Genocide, two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, clashed and thousands of Tutsis were killed at the hands of the Hutus. Many people fled the country seeking refuge, and agencies set up refugee camps in some of the neighboring countries, beginning one of the largest humanitarian aid disasters that the world has ever seen (Lassiter 54). Many ex-combatants found their ways into these cams, receiving food and aid supplies. Some of these camps were even used as military bases where the ex-combatants could rally and then leave to kill their enemies. Thinking that they could curb reliance on aid workers and agencies, the aid was put under the control of the Rwandan soldiers. Because of the prejudice of the soldiers, only people of certain races and ethnicities received aid. The availability of aid to the military and militants enabled them to accomplish military objectives without fear of retribution. While the aid problems in the aftermat...

... middle of paper ...

...e and dandy, even though it is killing hundreds of people a month. In the case of Kony, aid has supported a group known to abduct children and rape them. While aid is designed to do a lot of good, its very presence can do harm. Aid is necessary for the survival of many people, so the inherent harm of aid must be mitigated and managed properly and very carefully. The goal of aid agencies can no longer be to do good; aid agencies must now strive to not do more harm than necessary.

Works Cited

Anderson, Mary. Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Print.
Lassiter, Randi. “How Aid Negatively Impacts Conflict: The moral and Political Dilemmas faced by Humanitarian Organizations.” The Monitor 13.1 (2007): 50-60. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Pascal, Zachary. “Humanitarian Dilemmas.” Wilson Quarterly 32.3 (2008): 44-51. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • 'Chasing Chaos' By Jessica Alexander: A Critical Analysis

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her memoir starts off in Darfur in 2005, where in her late 20’s, she hits rock bottom while managing a refugee camp for 24,000 civilians. It backtracks to her internship in Rwanda, while moving forward to her challenges in Darfur, in addition to her experiences in post- tsunami Indonesia, and post-quake in Haiti. By sharing her story, Alexander gives readers an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes into the devastations that are censored on media outlets. She stresses that these are often the problems that individuals claim they are educated on, but rarely make it their priority to solve. However, that is not the case for Jessica Alexander as she has over 12 years of experience working with different NGO’s and UN operations. As a result, Alexander earns the credibility to critique the multi-billion-dollar humanitarian aid industry. From her painful yet rewarding work experience, Alexander gives an honest and empathetic view of humanitarian aid as an establishment and a

    Read More

  • The Role Of Canada In The Suez Canal Crisis

    941 Words  | 2 Pages

    "Peacekeeping and Peacemaking." Reading and Remembrance . N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2014. . (tags: none | edit tags)

    Read More

  • Military Ethics – Humanitarian Aid in Somalia

    2908 Words  | 6 Pages

    In August of 1992, President George Bush Sr. sent US soldiers into Somalia to provide humanitarian relief to those Somalis suffering from starvation. The major problems in Somalia started when President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown by a coalition of opposing clans. Although there were several opposing groups, the prominent one was led by Mohammed Farah Aidid. Following the overthrow of Barre, a massive power struggle ensued. These small scale civil wars led to the destruction of the agriculture in Somalia, which in turn led to the deprivation of food in large parts of the country. When the international community heard of this, large quantities of food were sent to ease Somali suffering. However, clan leaders like Aidid routinely hijacked food and exchanged it for weapons leaving thousands to starve to death. An estimated 300,000 Somalis died between 1991 and 1992 (Clancy 234-236). US soldiers were later sent into Somalia to capture Aidid, but when the operation got bloody, displeasing the American public, Clinton withdrew troops (Battersby 151). In The Morality of War, Brian Orend outlines ethical guidelines that should be followed in all three stages of war: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. Orend states that a nation can be moral going into war, but immoral coming out of one. Did the US act justly in all facets of the Somali conflict? The United States espoused all the guiding principles of jus ad bellum but right intent, upheld the principals of jus in bello, and clearly failed to uphold several aspects of jus post bellum during the armed humanitarian intervention in Somalia.

    Read More

  • Modern Genocide in Africa

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    The state-sponsored massacres of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated Burundian army in 1972 was one of the most significant post-Holocaust genocides and as such received appropriate levels of international attention due to a lack of political distractions within western nations. The genocide broke out as a Hutu-lead rebellion in which Hutu insurgents massacred Tutsis and resisting Hutus in the lakeside towns of Rumonge and Nyanza-Lac. As many as 1200 people killed in this initial incident, the Tutsi-dominated government responded by declaring martial law and systematically proceeded to slaughter Hutus (Totten 325). After hundreds of thousands of Hutus had been massacred by the Burundian government, the neighboring nation of Zaire aided the Hutus in a counteroffensive attack on the Tutsi-controlled army. Having succeeded in their effort, the genocide was quickly brought to international attention within a few days. The United Nations invested $25,000 from the World Disaster Relief Account’s fund...

    Read More

  • Impact of Foreign Aid on African Democracy and Economy

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    Every year, more and more money is donated to Africa to promote democracy in order to get rid of the powerful coups in many countries through out the continent. While the coups are declining and democratic governments are being established, the economic growth and development of Africa is not anywhere it should be considering the abundant natural resources and coastline that the continent possesses. Even though countries, like the United States of America, donate millions of dollars they are a large reason why Africa is underdeveloped economically. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade is the most devastating event in the history of the world. Nearly 14,000,000 men, women, and children were displaced, sold into slavery, and killed by the trade routes.(

    Read More

  • Famine Relief

    1822 Words  | 4 Pages

    In response to the recent failure of the international community to prevent the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa since July 2011, Suzanne Dvorak the chief executive of Save the Children wrote that, “We need to provide help now. But we cannot forget that these children are wasting away in a disaster that we could - and should - have prevented” she added, “The UN estimates that every $1 spent in prevention saves $7 in emergency spending.” (Dvorak, 2011).

    Read More

  • Rwandan Genocide

    1007 Words  | 3 Pages

    Africa has been an interesting location of conflicts. From the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea to the revolutionary conflict in Libya and Egypt, one of the greatest conflicts is the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide included two tribes in Rwanda: Tutsis and Hutus. Upon revenge, the Hutus massacred many Tutsis and other Hutus that supported the Tutsis. This gruesome war lasted for a 100 days. Up to this date, there have been many devastating effects on Rwanda and the global community. In addition, many people have not had many acknowledgements for the genocide but from this genocide many lessons have been learned around the world.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Foreign Aid

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    The United States is one of the leading suppliers of Foreign Aid in the world, and even though the US gives billions, European countries give aid money to the same countries, this causes many areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to be almost fully dependent on foreign aid. This means that without aid from other countries, they would not be able to support themselves at all. Foreign aid is meant to help countries that are struggling with civil unrest, disease, or natural disasters, it is not meant to help keep the country out of debt, but that is where more and more of the US and The EU’s foreign aid budget is going. The question is, does all this money actually go where it is intended? It should be going towards the government and to help the people, but in many cases, the countries government does not have the resources to properly track the flow of money. The countries in most cases have poor infrastructure and corrupt or oppressive leaders, not always at a national level, but in the towns and cities. So this means there is almost no way to oversee the flow of foreign aid through the country, all we can see is that their situations aren't getting any better and the countries are still impoverished. If this is the case, where are the millions of dollars going? Countries like Afghanistan and Iraq receive the most money from American foreign aid and European aid, yet they are still under oppressive governmental rule and there is still an extreme difference between the rich and poor. Garrett Harding’s theory of “Lifeboat Ethics” exemplifies how not giving aid to others will allow the strongest of society to thrive, while teaching the impoverished to help themselves. He believes that giving aid to poor countries will only make ...

    Read More

  • Has humanitarian space collapsed as a consequence of the Global War on Terror?

    1889 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...n space. Approach for humanitarian space has been changed since the attack on 9.11 in the US, which was the trigger that the boundary of military force and NGOs to became obscured. Under such circumstance, NGOs have become to face the risk of terrorism. On the other hand, it is unavoidable NGOs to spread their activities without military forces in dangerous places, thus this dilemma causes vicious circle. Although terrorism prevents spreading humanitarian space, terrorism could be caused by several reasons such as misunderstanding of NGO activities, or bad national mood for particular nations where military/NGO workers comes from. It is still argumentative that whether humanitarian space is collapsed or not, however at very least the notion humanitarian space had changed after global war, and also the risk of terrorism can affect the activity of NGOs in micro level.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of A Liberal Peace

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nowadays, the term “liberal peace” is used to picture the comprehensive set of policies characterizing the peacebuilding and state-building practices “[…] based on a perception of peace in which good governance, the promotion of human rights, the encouragement of civil society and a free market economy, and the advancement of the rule of law, and a viable and functioning state are crucial” (van Leeuwen et al., 2012: 298). The idea underlying the liberal peace is the Kantian formulation of perpetual peace: democratic states do not go to war with one another. This approach has been dominant and applied in conflicts affected states since the end of the cold war, however it was already applied in the 1970s and 1980s by the International Financial

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of A Humanitarian Intervention

    2538 Words  | 6 Pages

    Introduction Today’s world is frequently shattered by terrorist attacks and outbreaks of fatal wars. After the Holocaust the international community established laws “prohibiting genocide, forbidding the mistreatment of civilians and recognizing basic human rights” (Bellamy & Wheeler, 2008, p.1), which in turn led to a dilemma as the Westphalian-principle of state-sovereignty and non-intervention was suddenly at stake. When examining humanitarian intervention, a distinction between purely humanitarian interventions and humanitarian ‘military’ intervention has to be done. Purely humanitarian interventions relate to e.g. food aid delivery and refugees camps (Hoffmann in Chatterjee, 2003). A humanitarian military intervention can be defined

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Humanitarian Intervention

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    Consequences of intervention can include the loss of lives from an otherwise uninvolved country, the spread of violence, and the possibility of inciting conflict over new problems, just to name a few (Lecture, 11/15/16). For example, John Mueller considers the potential negative consequences of intervention prove that they are insignificant to the cause of humanitarian intervention as a whole. Moreover, with intervention into ethnic conflicts, the outcome, no matter how positive, is overshadowed by a gross exaggeration of negative consequences (Mueller). In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda the solution, to Mueller appeared simple, a well ordered and structured militarized presence was all that was required to end the conflict (Mueller). If this is the case, when discussing whether or not intervention is necessary the political elite must not over-exaggerate the difficulty.

    Read More

  • Time To Stop Aid For Africa Summary

    509 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the article “Time to stop aid for Africa? An argument against”, Reuters Staff, the author of the article encourages reader to think about how aid should be used in African in the way that it would not be wasted, the author also mention about the trip to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District and how living in the east Africa gave him/her a thought about several sides of effects of aid. In addition the author has provided a clear view on the problems as Staff(2009) mentioned that aid will

    Read More

  • Humanitarian Intervention

    993 Words  | 2 Pages

    The post-Cold war world is one that has been riddled with conflict, suffering and war. In the face of such times, the issue of humanitarian intervention and about who, when and how it should be employed, has become hotly debated. While some critics declare this kind of intervention to be a violation of national sovereignty, others believe that relief efforts aimed at ending human suffering are perfectly justifiable. (7) The key question here is, if internal wars cause unacceptable human suffering, should the international community develop collective mechanisms for preventing or alleviating it?(5) This essay will attempt to address such a question, by outlining the arguments for and against humanitarian intervention in the context of the Bosnian crisis of 1991. In light of the evidence, it will be proven that although humanitarian intervention does have flaws, it is a vital tool in alleviating the human suffering that so plagues contemporary society.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Humanitarian Intervention

    1494 Words  | 3 Pages

    When considering the concepts of human rights and state sovereignty, the potential for conflict between the two is evident. Any humanitarian intervention by other actors within the international system would effectively constitute a violation of the traditional sovereign rights of states to govern their own domestic affairs. Thus, the answer to this question lies in an examination of the legitimacy and morality of humanitarian intervention. While traditionally, the Westphalian concept of sovereignty and non-intervention has prevailed, in the period since the Cold War, the view of human rights as principles universally entitled to humanity, and the norm of enforcing them, has developed. This has led to the 1990’s being described as a ‘golden

    Read More

More about The Necessary Mitigated Evil: Humanitarian Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa

Open Document