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January 11, 2013 | 1:24 PM | By  | 

Three years later: Was the massive humanitarian response in Haiti a success? | 

Co-authored by Tom Murphy

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Immediately after the 2010 quake, many Haitians were given tents as 'temporary' shelters. Three years later, nearly 400,000 still live in them. UNDP
Immediately after the 2010 quake, many Haitians were given tents as ‘temporary’ shelters. Three years later, nearly 400,000 still live in them. UNDP

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The international community’s response to the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the largest disaster relief responses ever carried out involving many governments, agencies, hundreds of humanitarian organizations and about $9 billion in private donations and foreign government assistance.

So it may be a bit disconcerting that, three years on, the aid and development community still can’t seem to agree on whether the effort should be regarded as largely a success or a failure.

“There are still something like 360,000 people living in tents,” said Nicole Phillips, a human rights attorney with the Institute for Justice and Democracy and Haiti. Philips is speaking today at the University of Washington along with documentary filmmaker Michele Mitchell who is screening her film Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? – a critical analysis of the lack of accountability within the humanitarian community.

Vijaya Ramachandran
Vijaya Ramachandran

Other aid experts, like Vijaya Ramachandran at the prestigious DC-based think tank the Center for Global Development, have asked the same question. As Ramachandran wrote last spring:

The Government of Haiti has received just 1 percent of humanitarian aid and somewhere between 15 and 21 percent of longer-term relief aid. As a result, NGOs and private contractors in Haiti have built an extensive infrastructure for the provision of social services. Yet, these entities appear to have limited accountability….

But many of those who actually do the work there say this alleged lack of adequate financial accountability doesn’t necessarily mean Haitians did not benefit, that lives were not saved and that many millions of people’s lives have been improved.

JeffWright2“There’s a reason it’s called a disaster,” said Jeff Wright, emergency operations manager for World Vision and a disaster relief worker with lots of experience in Haiti. These situations are always chaotic and hardly ideal for precise bookkeeping, Wright said, adding that Haiti was chaotic and difficult before the quake.

“Are things in Haiti good today? No. Are they better than they would have been had we not responded? Absolutely.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Justice, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, cholera, disaster relief, foreign aid, Global Partnerships, Haiti, Mercy Corps, UN, World Vision
October 9, 2012 | 12:48 PM | By  | 

Uganda’s Health Minister on malaria, corruption and collaboration | 

Tom Paulson

Ugandan officials Tim Lwanga and Christine Ondoa on Seattle visit

Uganda’s been in the news a lot lately:

So, you can imagine, I had a lot of questions for Uganda’s Minister of Health Christine Ondoa, a pediatrician and pastor, and one of her traveling companions, Ugandan Parliamentarian Tim Lwanga. Ondoa has been in Seattle for the last few days to meet with a number of local organizations, talking about collaborating on projects aimed at improving health in the poor East African nation.

“The main challenges are the infectious and communicable diseases, especially malaria,” said Ondoa, who while in town met with folks at Gates Foundation, PATH, World Vision and also at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to discuss the Seattle cancer center’s ongoing project  with the Uganda Cancer Institute in Kampala.

(I suspect the Fred Hutch folks might chafe at the claim malaria is Uganda’s biggest health problem. The cancer community is part of a broader campaign out there contending non-communicable diseases like cancer deserve equal attention in Uganda. As my friend and local journalist colleague Joanne Silberner has reported, cancer kills more people than HIV, TB and malaria combined.)

Uganda has all of the typical health problems of a poor African country, but Ondoa says malaria does deserve special attention Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, cancer, Christine Ondoa, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, malaria, PATH, Pilgrim Africa, Tim Lwanga, Uganda, World Vision
July 25, 2012 | 9:01 AM | By  | 

AIDS 2012: Faith-based aid and secular humanitarians still uneasy bedfellows | 

Flickr, Lawrence OP

WASHINGTON, DC — Here at the (ridiculously) big International AIDS Conference, I’ve been wandering around listening to scientists talk about science and policy makers talk about policy but not hearing much about another critical issue in AIDS:

Charity, and the role of faith-based groups.

Being charitable is the central tenet of almost every religion. Charity is the ‘greatest form of love’ in Christianity, the ‘third pillar’ of Islam as well as the ‘third observance’ for Hindus and the obligatory ‘tzedakah’ of Judaism.

It’s a guiding principle for faith-based organizations working around the world to help the poor, assist in disaster relief and provide for those in need.

And, perhaps surprisingly for many, it has been a critical force that led to one of the greatest achievements in modern global health — the expansion of anti-HIV treatment to millions of people who would have otherwise died.

I’m talking about PEPFAR, the $15 billion program President George W. Bush launched in 2003 to distribute anti-HIV drugs to millions of infected people living in poor parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

PEPFAR is mentioned in perhaps every other speech here at the International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2012, as one of those game-changers. Infrequently, some folks also mention, usually just in passing, something like the ‘contributions of the faith-based community.’

What’s probably not appreciated is that U.S. leadership in responding to the global AIDS pandemic came together thanks to an unusual partnership of evangelical Christians and very secular AIDS activists, isolationist conservatives and bleeding-heart liberals. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, aid, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, charity, development, faith-based organizations, Washington Global Health Alliance, World Vision
January 27, 2012 | 11:02 AM | By  | 

Update: Humanitarian rankers don’t like getting ranked on | 

In case you haven’t been following the comment thread on my earlier post regarding the Top 100 NGOs as identified by Global Journal, I wanted to post here a critical look at the rankings by development professional Dave Algoso.

Dave Algoso

Algoso is an expert on aid and development issues. Here is his post Lies, Damned Lies and Ranking Lists: The Top 100 Best NGOs written in response to my earlier post about Global Journal:

Ranking lists are great publicity for both the rankers and the ranked but they usually involve bad analysis and mislead the readers…. Most of these NGOs are, to the best of my knowledge, quite good. My big disagreement is with GJ‘s ranking methodology. And the fact that they created this list at all.

Meanwhile, the equally well-intentioned folks at Geneva-based Global Journal have expressed, to me by email and in various comment threads, their disappointment at being ‘ranked on’ for publishing their list of the top non-governmental organizations working at making the world a better place.

The editor, Jean-Christophe Nothias, takes special umbrage at being criticized by lowly bloggers and even contends this may involve ‘libel.’ Says Nothias of their rankings:

It is a journalistic approach, not an academic, not a mathematical, one approach that understands a simple fact. Profit has a metric, money. How do you measure solidarity? How do you measure healing, suffering? Do you believe such a ranking has anything to do with the S&P, the NYSE and other financials index?

Right, so how did they do it? How did Global Journal arrive at placing Seattle-based PATH as 6th best NGO in the world — along with ranking a few other local organizations like Mercy Corps and Landesa — and inexplicably exclude other top NGOs like World Vision and the Gates Foundation?

The folks at Global Journal don’t want to go into the details. They appear to be arguing that they didn’t depend solely upon a quantitative methodology that can be checked by others for reliability. They also relied on their journalistic methodology, their own expert judgment, as Nothias says:

Do bloggers have a methodology? Do they make a difference between being a reporter and a rapporteur? Or is journalism, in their eyes, at the cemetery? We have an ethic and a strong belief in the fact that journalism is already part of the methodology.

As a journalist who is also apparently a blogger, I can say with great confidence that the ‘methodology’ and reliability of journalism is highly variable. Ranking, by its very nature, implies some kind of quantitative assessment that should be independent of even the best journalistic judgments.

As far as Algoso is concerned, Global Journal’s list is so arbitrary and subjective it is meaningless:

Ultimately, it sounds like the methodology was: we browsed the web, talked to a couple people, then sat around the conference table arguing among ourselves. Here’s the result. Sorry, guys, but that just doesn’t cut it. That’s not a methodology.

Well, so what? The folks at Global Journal are basically arguing that an imperfect listing is better than no listing.

Algoso disagrees. He notes that many organizations are already using the magazine’s ranking for promotional reasons — for fund-raising, that is. So there’s one obvious downside to Global Journal’s rankings. Should donors not give to World Vision because they aren’t on the list? Says Algoso:

As a development professional, I want to see a more efficient market for funding social causes. That’s an economics-y way of saying that I want funds to flow to those NGOs that can best convert them into positive social impact.

There is a great need to improving the evaluation of impact and effectiveness within the humanitarian, or NGO, community. It’s actually quite difficult to find consensus on the best metrics in this field. Many experts are struggling to come up with the most reliable measures of effectiveness.

In the meantime, people like Algoso think subjective short-cuts to rigorous evaluations may do more harm than good — if only by shifting funding away from those who actually are doing a better job toward organizations that happen to have won a media-sponsored lottery.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Global Journal, Landesa, Mercy Corps, PATH, World Vision
November 3, 2011 | 12:12 PM | By  | 

Bill Gates hands in his foreign aid report to G20. Gets a B+ | 

UN

Bill Gates at World Health Assembly

Bill Gates, who according to Forbes is the fifth most powerful person in the world, today made his case for boosting foreign aid and development to the G20 meeting of the world’s richest countries, which is held in France this year

It’s a compelling case. Unfortunately, it may be Greek to the rest of the world’s powerful.

As The Guardian’s live G20 website indicates, the meltdown of Greece’s economy — and its potential adverse impact on the global economy — is going to suck the air out of any attempt to float any other issue at this posh meeting in Cannes.

To paraphrase: When the going gets tough for the rich, it’s tough luck for the poor.

So what did Gates say? A lot actually.

He proposed, and handed in, a specific Plan to Assist the World’s Poor, which included his support for the idea of imposing a small “Robin Hood tax” on the financial industry and other select transaction. He also wants to encourage private investments in what has typically been viewed as the purview of government or humanitarian organizations. Says Gates:

The private sector hasn’t always invested as much in development as it should because the market incentives haven’t always been clear, but there are ways to encourage involvement. In my report to the G-20, I’ll make half a dozen recommendations for mobilizing tens of billions of dollars annually from private sources. The African diaspora is sitting on $50 billion in savings that could fund development in their home countries if it were captured through diaspora bonds.

Here’s a video from the Gates Foundation in which Bill says what he’s trying to do:

As this story from Reuters notes, Gates is the first businessman ever to be invited to address the G20 meeting. Many humanitarian groups lauded Gates’ call for the richest countries to not neglect the poor and to remain true to past aid and development commitments.

In response to Gates’ participation at the G20, Oxfam‘s Luc Lampriere said:

Gates’ timely message is that there will be no lasting global economic recovery without tackling poverty. He brings much needed impetus and ambition to a Summit nearly paralyzed by Europe’s woes.

World Vision issued a release, praising Gates’ advocacy on behalf of the poor as well — but suggesting he tone down the ‘innovation’ pitch a bit and crack some heads on the chronic failure of the G20 to live up to its promises.

What we need most is for the G20 countries to spend the money they promised to spend. There is no doubt that innovation will improve our ability to meet global poverty reduction commitments, but innovative financing would make more sense if the G20 were already doing their part.

 

FILED UNDER: Bill Gates, foreign aid, G20, Oxfam, Robin Hood tax, World Vision
March 29, 2011 | 10:43 AM | By  | 

Mercy Corps, World Vision and the nagging question of how to help in Japan | 

World Vision

World Vision in Japan, unloading relief supplies

The Japanese government and the UN agency coordinating humanitarian relief operations, in response to the March 11 quake and tsunami, have repeatedly asked that many foreign organizations refrain from trying to actively assist in the relief efforts.

Is this falling on deaf, if well-intentioned, ears? Or is it a request made to disguise the government’s inability to adequately respond?

I can’t tell.

The request by Japanese and UN officials may appear counter-intuitive, but it’s not too hard to understand upon further reflection. There is limited access on the roads and fuel shortages. The government and in-country assistance organizations need to have priority access. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: earthquake, Japan, Mercy Corps, relief organizations, tsunami, World Vision
March 18, 2011 | 11:35 AM | By  | 

Why you should donate, but maybe not to Japan | 

Flickr, LiminalMike

People want to help.

Well, okay, not everyone wants to help. Some people are jerks.

Despite my skeptical (which some misinterpret as cynical) view of human nature acquired after working a quarter century as a journalist, I find that most people actually do want to assist when they see someone suffering.

Wanting to help is how many of us are reacting to the news out of Japan following the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami — now made even more terrible by the possible (though often exaggerated) threat of a major nuclear accident.

Still, it’s important to recognize that wanting to help and actually helping are not the same thing. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, disaster, earthquake, humanitarian, Japan, Mercy Corps, World Vision
March 11, 2011 | 3:39 PM | By  | 

Disaster in Japan … and Haiti, Pakistan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali | 

Flickr, doegox

We are all focused on the disaster in Japan right now, as we should be.

But what about the other, bigger disasters?

The massive earthquake, tsunami and current concern about damage to a Japanese nuclear power plant are the top news stories today. The quake was huge, the fifth largest in the last century. President Obama said today the U.S. is “marshaling forces” to help Japan deal with the catastrophe.

Local relief organizations like World Vision and Mercy Corps have put the Japanese quake-tsunami on the “front page” of their websites even though it is unlikely either organization will be doing much in response. I talked to both organizations and they are standing by ready to help, but both said it is possible they will not be needed.

Japan can largely take care of itself. World Vision and Mercy Corps take care of those who can’t. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Congo, disaster, earthquake, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Japan, Mali, Mercy Corps, Niger, Pakistan, tsunami, World Vision