CLARE Short is right to imply that images which portray people in developing countries as passive, helpless recipients of aid handouts are unhelpful. They fuel a stereotype of the poor which is as erroneous as it is degrading.
It is self-evidently true that, for the most part, the poor survive thanks to their own efforts combined with the support of others. But it is an appalling struggle, which is why long-term development is so necessary.
Emergencies are not inevitable and generally happen where development has not. In Sudan, for example, the emergency has been caused by the man-made war, the longest in Africa. The huge numbers of displaced people make development work difficult in the extreme. The failure is not that non-government organisations provide humanitarian aid but the absence of international pressure on the combatants to resolve the conflict.
Certainly the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund has launched an appeal to raise additional funds for the current crisis. What else should we do when 700,000 people are at risk? However, we have been working in Sudan on development projects for many years. Indeed most of SCIAF's expenditure goes towards long-term development projects across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Furthermore we have for many years produced materials which raise the public's awareness of the root causes of poverty.
As for compassion fatigue, Clare Short surprises me. She was present in Birmingham when 70,000 people - many from Scotland - turned out to lobby the G8 leaders on Third World debt; tens of thousands of people in Scotland give to SCIAF every year; even the corporate sector is increasingly aware of its wider responsibilities to society.
By contrast, no Government in Britain has ever achieved the United Nations target of 0.7% of GNP spending on overseas aid. Like those before it, this Government says it is committed to reaching it. We must wait and see whether the spending of Ms Short's department will match the generosity of the public which funds it.
Paul Chitnis,
Executive Director, SCIAF,
5 Oswald Street, Glasgow.
May 29.
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