outspoken International Development Secretary Clare Short will today intensify her campaign against the gruesome imagery of famine relief appeals with a pointed counter-attack aimed at the Red Cross.
She plans to compare the world's oldest aid agency's pleas for cash to ''999 crews rattling boxes to raise funds when they don't need it to run the ambulances''. Ms Short is determined to shift the aid debate away from what she considers is a pointless fund-raising competition between aid agencies.
Last week, she drew a mix of praise and condemnation for suggesting appeals that relied on graphic pictures of famine victims made people ''flinch and turn away''. The Red Cross reacted by claiming Ms Short's remarks were ''a little bit like blaming 999 crews because we have a lot of accidents''. Elsewhere, she was accused of living in an ''ivory tower'' and of ignoring the reality of international disasters.
Ms Short, who has won praise for making Third World development a Government priority, has refused to be cowed by her critics. She spent Sunday afternoon in her kitchen drafting by hand a 20-page speech in reply. She believes the public wants to hear a more balanced account of the problems affecting some of the world's poorest countries.
In her speech, she throws the 999 analogy straight back at the Red Cross in a way that will reinforce her reputation as a plain speaker unafraid of taking on vested interests. She plans to say the open competition between agencies for public contributions to deal with an emerging crisis such as the Sudan ''is a bit like 999 crews rattling boxes to raise funds when they don't need it to run the ambulances and undermining the funding for the NHS and proper traffic management''.
Her remarks will escalate what is an increasingly heated feud with aid agencies such as the Red Cross and Oxfam. Although she will not compromise her message, she is sufficiently attuned to the sensitivity of the debate that she has asked officials to review the wording of the speech to a conference on international journalism.
Ms Short said aid agencies were engaged in competitive fund-raising based on negative images that promoted a sense of helplessness among the public. She believes the appeals are often unnecessary and mislead the public because the cash usually comes in too slowly to help the emergency.
She said: ''Why is there such a sense of despondency, despair, and compassion fatigue? One of the reasons is that all the adverts are of constant famine, failure, and dreadful pictures. People do not lack compassion but they feel it is hopeless and there is nothing they can do.
''I do not want to fight with the agencies. They do good work but they are driven into competitive fund-raising. It has this destructive consequence that really we have got to deal with. It is undermining the political understanding and it is holding back on what we should achieve in the next 20 years which could be very considerable.''
The famine in Sudan, she pointed out, was caused not by an act of nature but by the war between the government and rebels in the south of the country. She said food was not the issue but access, which both sides have been reluctant to allow.
''In the case of Sudan, there is no need for money. The whole problem has been access. Let's keep all the public pressure on the government of Sudan and the southern factions so we get the access. The minute you get into public opinion, all compassion flows into thinking it is an act of nature and then you muddle what the cause is, which is the fighting,'' she said.
Ms Short said the past 50 years had seen greater achievements against world famine and poverty than in the past five centuries. She wants to build on the unsung successes by pointing out the positive roles played by governments and aid agencies.
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