Aid or No Aid

                 The main issue in Polman's book is that the lack of selectivity between aid workers and other NGOs often lead to  “the direct prolongment of conflict, by keeping the losing side in the game; the indirect prolongment and exacerbation of conflict, their association with other parties which inevitably damage their claims of neutrality, and nasty situations in which the people they are helping aren’t really victims in the traditional sense.” (Aid Thoughts)
            One of the largest problems raised in her book, especially Chapter 5, is that we are either giving aid to the wrong people, or we are doing it for the wrong reasons.
 “Ms Polman's prose is scorching. But when it comes to solutions, the author admits she has none. She does not argue for “doing nothing at all anymore”, only that the “option of doing nothing must be available” and “that we no longer exempt the [emergency aid] system from criticism”. That skirts the moral question of humanitarian assistance in the crowded 21st century, which is how to resolve the tyranny of the present and ensure the kind of help that will safeguard the future.”’

(The Economist)

            Polman states, “Aid organizations are businesses dressed up like mother Teresa.” She explains that since the Ethiopian famine in 1984, there gas been an alarmingly increasing number of aids that have stepped forward in an attempt to save the day. Most of these groups however, (especially true of religious organizations) seem to assist as a validation instead of to help those who need aid. These “businesses” are almost always looking to tie their name to aid programs.

            In my opinion, to make humanitarianism more successful, we all need to educate ourselves on what good these programs can do for us, and focus ore on the good it can do for others. “We think of humanitarian aid, for example, first of all as a form of philanthropy -- a response to an earthquake in Haiti or a tsunami in Asia, which is obviously a good thing, an effort to relieve human suffering and save lives, an act of international benevolence. But there is a puzzle here, for helping people in desperate need is something that we ought to do; it would be wrong not to do it -- in which case it is more like justice than benevolence.”  (Foreign Affairs) We need to remember that we have a duty to help all other humans.
           

http://www.economist.com/node/17249020

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-07-01/humanitarianism
http://aidthoughts.org/?p=2121