Clare Short believes shock tactics to appeal for cash in crises are wrong,

but Kirsty Scott finds charities disagree

HE LOOKS less than a year old but he's actually 18 months because in its harshest form life can crumple age and features. Nature may have played a part in bringing him to this state, but the blame lies more solidly on the shoulders of some of those around him who value borders and titles and wealth over life.

Would it comfort the relative holding him to know that the British Government has pledged to halve the number of people like him living in poverty by the year 2015? Could he hang on that long? How would they feel if they knew that Clare Short, the woman who made that pledge, thinks it is offensive to Western eyes for an image like his to be used to raise money? That emergency appeals are pointless and the only real way to help is to focus on committed and comprehensive support for long-term development projects.

How would they feel now if they knew that Ms Short's department does not have immediate plans to increase the amount of money it spends on overseas aid, either for emergencies or long-term work, but chooses to stick with the budget set by the previous administration, one that is far short of standards set by the United Nations.

This week's fresh assault on emergency relief by the International Development Secretary came as no surprise to the aid sector. Long before Labour took power she was attacking what she called the Live Aid approach, the sticking plaster on a broken limb approach. She would not play Lady Bountiful, she said. Aid ''was not just dollops of charity as the world crumbles into chaos, but about real development and eliminating abject poverty''.

Few argued with the underlying and important message even if they took exception to her approach and choice of words. Blunt and feisty, said some. Offensive and clumsy, said others.

Last week she was back at the centre of the debate after attacking the ''unbearable'' images of starvation and suffering which she believed had led to compassion fatigue among the British public. This week she was due to accuse aid agencies responding to the Sudan crisis of being 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''. In a speech yesterday she appeared to have withdrawn those remarks but followed a similar line of attack.

When she took over at the Department for International Development, Ms Short pledged to reverse the decline in the aid budget. The DFID has a budget of #2.2bn, although half of it is controlled through Brussels. The overall figure amounts to 0.27% of gross national product, significantly less than the 0.52% when Labour was last in power and well short of the 0.7% standard set by the UN for the West's wealthier nations. According to a spokeswoman, there are no plans to increase expenditure in the next few years. Around 5% of the total budget, the spokeswoman said, goes on emergency aid, and since February of this year the department has channelled some #10m into the Sudanese crisis, #5m of that to the aid agencies.

In the aid community they are well aware of the need for

long-term development work and the problems of alerting the public to this very necessary but less emotive kind of work. ''Clare Short talks about the importance of moving the focus on to

long-term development and from that point of view what she says does make sense,'' says David Welch, of the charity Concern Worldwide. ''But these emergencies like Sudan happen and when they do it is our job to respond to them and we have to respond to them in the best way we know how.''

According to Welch, most charities do not lurch into an emergency appeal as soon as a stricken region shows signs of distress. There are contingency funds to dip into, then approaches to government, then regular donors, and, finally, if there is still a funding gap, a full-blown appeal.

''It is usual there is going to be a shortfall,'' says Welch. ''It might be we get 80% of what we need from co-funding. Our first port of call would be regular donors and only after that would we get into

the all-singing, all-dancing emergency appeal.''

Welch believes there has not been the same level of appeals this time round because of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of aid agencies which has pooled resources and requests for help. He also believes agencies are trying to stress the need for long-term development alongside the more pressing needs of the current crisis. They are bound by codes of practice not to use exploitative or disturbing images.

''At Concern we do try to give the bigger picture,'' he says. '' And as long as you are talking about that sort of thing you are not looking at it negatively. The emergency relief without the development is not any use. It does not solve anything. It keeps people alive for a short period of time but the problems are going to come back.''

At the DFID yesterday, a spokeswoman said Ms Short was not looking to criticise the charities but to flag up the complex political and

military issues behind such crises and the need for broader,

longer-term work.

David Welch says aid agencies are aware of the causes of such crises, but adds: ''Aid agencies can't solve the political situation. We can't solve military conflicts. What we can do is try to help people who are in a very serious condition. The situation in Sudan has deteriorated to such a level that people are starving. No-one could argue that there is not a need for immediate intervention. It is not humane to let people suffer like that if you can do something about it . . . When something like Sudan happens it is reported by the media who have an obligation to report what's happening. If children are starving, that is what's happening. That is not the aid agencies. It is what's happening. They are photographs of what you see.''