Drishtipat Blog

Zia Choudhury

These are my views, which are primarily influenced by speaking to hundreds of disaster survivors and humanitarian workers. I am happy to be challenged, and happy to answer any questions.

1. Dignity- a key principle. The right to life with dignity is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The dignity part of this indivisible equation is often neglected by aid providers. Media images and our own prejudices don’t help. Disaster survivors are not helpless victims, who rely on the benevolence and charity of others to survive. Throughout all our humanitarian work, we must remember that disaster survivors are always the first to help themselves and each other. External assistance is only ever a small percentage of a coping strategy. In Bangladesh, survivors will already be fixing houses, clearing debris, burying dead, looking for food and supporting one another. Most will survive without receiving any aid at all. Survivors of a disaster are entitled to humanitarian assistance. That assistance should be provided on the basis of need, and not arbitrarily, on the basis of profit or on the basis of race, religion or affiliation. Sadly, much aid is provided in a manner and attitude that undermines a person’s dignity. Consistently, recipients of aid report that they have been treated in an undignified manner. Practically, we need to ensure that our assistance does not contribute to further suffering or indignity. Make sure that your money is channelled through agencies which believe in upholding the principle of life with dignity and can demonstrate it.

2. Cash of Goods? From the perspective of the donor outside Bangladesh, CASH is the answer. Collecting and sending goods overseas is almost always time consuming, costly and inefficient. For the cost of collecting old blankets in USA and sending them over to Bangladesh, you could buy many more new blankets locally. Bangladeshi disaster survivors will need items which are all available locally. In the short term, local markets will be disrupted, and availability of items may be a problem. Costs will also go up. The real issue is survivors’ ability to purchase those goods. As prices are inflated, and most rural Bangladeshis will have little disposable reserves, the NGOs will buy essential items locally and distribute them. Luckily, in Bangladesh, the micro economies in each village will quickly reorganise. Overall, the country suffers no shortages of essential goods- food, water purification, medicine, clothing, shelter. Very few respectable agencies collect and send old goods, or even buy them overseas, unless the item is not available locally. Send cash, or buy items locally.

3. Who should get the assistance? Every disaster survivor has the right to assistance to enable them to survive and live with dignity. Given aid resources will be short and vulnerable people may not be able to make their voices heard easily, most NGOs will use selection criteria to make sure the most vulnerable are served first- e.g. women headed households, pregnant women, elderly, children, disabled, minority groups. Proper selection of intended beneficiaries is fraught with difficulties for those who do not have a strong local presence or for those who are inexperienced. Try to search for respected local agencies, which have experience in the coastal belt, have high levels of transparency and are committed to impartial aid delivery.

4. Faith based or secular agencies? Most of the well-known faith based agencies in Bangladesh (Christian Aid, CAFOD, CARITAS, Islamic relief, Muslim Aid, World Vision) operate on strict principles of impartiality. Aid is provided on basis of need. However, some agencies (national and international) will publicly or secretly discriminate on the basis of faith, and this is widely considered as completely unacceptable. There is a growth industry amongst groups, claiming to be faith based relief providers. Some are outright frauds, others are simply inexperienced and operating on dubious principles, whilst some may be very good. Ask challenging questions of religious groups (like the local mosque/ temple), which suddenly morph into aid agencies, when considering who should distribute your cash.

5. How quick does the cash need to reach people? Don’t worry if it is a few weeks or months after the disaster. People will need resource assistance for months after the disaster to regain their livelihoods, pay off debts, continue treatments and so on. The effects of a disaster last months and years, and so it is often better to wait until the other donors start losing interest, and the media retreats, before providing people with assistance. The bulk of international and local relief assistance for every emergency is committed and spent in the first few months. Much humanitarian assistance is delivered in an inefficient way, simply in the rush to “act quickly and save lives”. Most deaths in a natural disaster occur in the first minutes and hours of the hazard striking. Our main job now is to alleviate suffering and rebuild livelihoods. Late but high quality assistance is better that quick and poor quality assistance.

6. Which agency to trust? There are currently no effective regulatory mechanisms for humanitarian NGOs. Only basic registration and financial audit requirements exist. Lack of accountability is an absolutely key issue in NGOs. Bigger agencies can afford better publicity and media personnel, but they are often guilty of negligence and inefficiency. Big and famous does not automatically mean better. Sadly, it is very difficult at the moment to know where to give your money. Local agencies with reputations for transparency, good relations with communities and a respectful attitude towards survivors are the ones who will get aid to where it needs to go. Whoever you give aid to, it should a registered agency, committed to impartiality, experienced in coastal belt and committed to being accountable to disaster survivors. Demand evidence of these things before giving aid, and after it is spent.

7. What overheads are normal? Distributing large amounts of aid effectively costs money. It is not abnormal to allow 40% overheads to allow for transport, administration, staffing, etc. However, this would be more acceptable under conditions of poor security, logistical complexity etc. An overhead of 15% is quite average, despite those NGOs promising to spend 95 cents of every $ directly on the people. Many will baulk at this, but please be realistic. You are asking someone to look after large sums of money, and make sure it gets converted into assistance for vulnerable people in complex operating environments. Distributing large amounts of quality aid requires quality staff. If you had a broker investing 1 million of your dollars, would you trust someone who did it on a voluntary basis? That is not to say that giving aid is the prerogative of established aid agencies. Individuals and small voluntary groups have as much moral authority to provide aid as Oxfam or BRAC. The practicalities and responsibilities change when it is large scale relief assistance.

8. Advocacy: There are many hot issues. One is to demand accountability and transparency from aid providers. Both the state and NGOs must be held to account. Currently, donors are in the best position to do this, but ideally disaster survivors should be enabled to do it. Always ask questions, and don’t be fobbed off by “Trust me, I am an NGO”, or “I am too busy saving lives to be accountable” and so on. There is always time to be accountable. Second, is to ensure people understand their potential role in preventing a disastrous situation from continuing. Recurring crises can lead to apathy and relief fatigue, amongst those asked to contribute assistance. People who did not get affected by the disaster can easily absolve themselves of any ‘duty of care’ by stating “ Its god’s will ”. This fatalistic view is quite common, and we need to challenge it. Hazards such as cyclones, earthquakes and volcanoes may be outside of human control, but a disaster only occurs when normal coping mechanisms are stretched or exhausted. Preventing or reducing the length of a disaster is entirely within the control of people. We should continuously remind people that disasters are not fate.

9. Compensation funds: First semantics. Lets talk about survivors, rather than victims. How you label people is important in how they will be visualised and treated.

Compensation is an incredibly difficult form of support. Especially when there is no easy formulae for determining who is entitled to ‘compensation’ and also who takes responsibility for providing the compensation. Compensation is usually provided when some entity takes responsibility for a loss, and tries to make up for that (adjust, offset, counterbalance). Regardless of how one person defines compensation, and the intention behind it, another person will view it very differently.

Aid should primarily be for survivors of the disaster who are most in need of assistance. That may not necessarily be someone who has had a relative die. Compensation funds targeted at people who have lost a family member are very fraught with practical and moral dilemmas. How much will ‘compensate’ for loss? Selecting people on the basis of whether (and eventually how many) relatives have died is a sensitive process with the potential of becoming a macabre exercise. Do we verify deaths? Do I get more for a child or for a husband? I would advise not calling it compensation. Just call it an “assistance fund” or “ support fund”. Rather than try to compensate, one could more simply follow the principle of assisting people who were already poor, but have become extremely vulnerable after the cyclone (perhaps through losing a breadwinner). For example, provide assistance to women who have become widowed, or children who have become orphaned.

“Comments, Compliments and Complaints always welcome”