Two UN field officers have been killed in a rebellious region of the DR Congo. International aid workers come in different forms. There are the field officers at the sharp end such as the Swede and the American murdered this week and then there are large numbers of bureaucrats behind them. These latter are necessary but in the view of many field officers for the UN and some Non-Government Organizations, not as necessary as they like to believe.
The average field worker is dedicated and prepared to run considerable risks to bring help to those who are starving and destitute, often because of civil conflict. And foreign personnel on the ground could not function without the help of locals as interpreters, fixers, drivers and warehousemen. Time and again as in last September’s wicked airstrike on a Syrian Red Crescent convoy, people who were only trying to help have come under attack. In the ten years to 2015, more than a thousand aid workers were killed and over a thousand more injured. In addition 882 aid people were kidnapped and the fate of many is still unknown. Last year’s figures are likely to show the trend increasing.
It is not hard to understand why aid convoys are attacked by armed gangs. The food and equipment they carry is going to help sustain others, very possibly their enemies. They do not want them to receive it. No less important, the goods being carried are of use to the attackers. In the amoral world of modern irregular conflict where the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare are unknown, an unguarded aid convoy is a sitting duck. It matters not to the gunmen that the vehicles are painted white and clearly marked UN or in the colors of an NGO.
In these circumstances, the local and international workers who are trying to distribute this aid are very brave men and women indeed. Yet their courage is all too little recognized. Billions of dollars of foreign aid go nowhere near a frontline. They are spent on endless training courses and meetings far away from the conflict zones.
These courses and conferences have the honorable intention of teaching better governance and administration, promoting human rights and training journalists. Nationals from the countries concerned are flown out to nice hotels in the region where they can enjoy a few days of respite from the hell of their daily lives. Yet remarkably little of this aid money actually finds its way back to the countries the programs have targeted.
Thus, for instance, for Somalia, South Sudan and Libya, all states being torn apart by conflict, there are endless courses for journalists. Yet hardly any foreign funding is directed to help sustain the press and media back in the countries from which these journalists have been brought. This despite the program providers’ earnest protests that they wish to promote a free and effective press.
At this level, aid has become a self-sustaining industry where the reality is that most of the money is spent on the personnel and administration behind large organizations that measure their success, which they call “output”, by the amount of money they spend. It is small wonder that field workers risking their lives on the frontlines have little good to say about the vast bureaucratic machines sitting at a safe distance behind them.
