Tsunami Relief Fund
When I heard that Médecins Sans Frontières had stopped accepting donations for the Tsunami, I was a little boggled. They claim to be an emergency relief organisation and if this were all they did, it'd be reasonable of them to let the purse-opening public know that the emergency had been sufficiently bankrolled. But what had held MSF in my high esteem for so long was that they went beyond the mandate of ordinary relief groups, such as CARE, by getting political, and pointing out structural constraints to the delivery of emergency medical aid. South Africa's Zapiro can point these out fairly astutely.
Seems a little strange that MSF should lose the plot so spectacularly. So, if you were thinking of donating to them for the Tsunami, and find yourself unable to, do think about sending your cash to Via Campesina. They don't pretend to be as comprehensive or as well funded as the international aid agencies, but they're on the ground now because they were there last year, and they'll be there for years to come. Here's an example of what they're up to in their latest newsletter.
On the one hand, a lot of donated instant noodles, biscuits, medicine, clothes, milk, etc., is arriving at the airports, but they still have not been distributed because of the lack of coordination in the government bureaucracy.. On the other hand, fresh food is coming from the farmers who are members of the Via Campesina-member (Indonesian National Peasant federation (FSPI) in North Sumatra province, and from other local farmer groups. We think this is the best kind of food for refugees and other people who are still alive in Aceh and North Sumatra. Tomorrow we will start sending in food like bananas, cassava, fruits, rice, chilli, potatoes, and fresh vegetables, plus cooking tools, and will continue to send clothes, infant formula, drinking water and burial tools, via our civil society coordination center in Banda Aceh and Langsa.More here. So do send cash. It's even tax-deductible if you're in the U.S., and this matters to you.
2 Comments:
There are excellent reasons for doctors without borders to stop accepting donations for tsunami relief. There is a limit to what they can do, they are maxed out for their own capacity, and emergency relief, means quick, and now. They recommend donating to the other emergency work they are doing, because that's just how they're deployed.
They could, however, have pointed to others sites for further tsunami-related donations. But perhaps their political point is that there are many emergencies all the time, and when it comes in one big bang it garners a lot of public sympathy. But that doesn't change the fact that other emergencies - are emergencies - and just because political scenarios created them, rather than natural disasters, people aren't any less helpless.
I'm speaking for them, but there are clear logical, efficiency, and political reasons for them to have chosen the route they have.
MSF were quoted on the radio here today, saying that the number of people dying because of HIV/AIDS in two weeks equals the number whom we know to have died so far in the tsunami. MSF are right to point out that there are other parts of the world that have it tough right now, and we can agree that the fickle media finds it far more interesting to follow up stories about little white girls saved from the sea by elephants than to think about chronic hunger in Subsaharan Africa, let alone the devastation of man-made(sic) conflict.
But this is to dodge the point - I had MSF down as an organisation that not only did disaster relief, but went beyond that to at least begin to address the structural constraints that lead to, deepen, and prevent recovery from disaster. And that kind of advocacy takes cash, which they seem uninterested in taking at the moment. Compare and contrast with their HIV/AIDS programmes, for instance. Hence my surprise, and disappointment. MSF are undoubtedly the best disaster relief organisation around, but alas, I don't hold them in as high esteem - there was an important and consistent line that they could have held after the tsunami, and they didn't hold it.
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