I won't point out the irony of having written a post apologising for the prolonged absence, closely followed by another prolonged absence. Productivity follows the guilt cycle for the modern Northern European. Forget the lapsed Catholic complex, we are dealing with an entire society suffering from lapsed Protestant complex
I wanted to respond to a comment from a friend about the introspectiveness of the previous post. 'Surely', he cried out, 'what is personal frustration in comparison to the good works that must be done', 'the world is an evil place, and if you didn't know this you were naive.' Or something along those lines (he was neither as facile nor as judgemental as I make him sound). Don't read this post as a justification for the previous post. Read it separately as a reflection on frustration here.
In this sector many people have "taken control" of their lives. They have given up many things, relationships, families, stability and often money in exchange for a life that gave them excitement and adventure. But also, and more than this, they asked for a life that gave them meaning, a sense of accomplishment that extends beyond the personal. These people are not in any way adjusted to the amount of governmental control that is exerted over individual lives in contexts like Sudan. When, as in Darfur, aid work is bogged down in a government constructed minefield of delays, procedural obstructionism and moral ambiguity very quickly people begin to think about what they gave up and can become extremely frustrated with their inability to act or change the situation.
This personal frustration is, for many, compounded by wider concerns, precisely because it was these wider concerns that led to people to aid work. A lot of people's frustration in Sudan at the moment, is that they feel the waters rising around this humanitarian Atlantis, and more and more they feel that their jobs and organisations are complicit in its sinking.
The core problem is that yes the world is a bad place, but in situations like Darfur, if you do not go in with a clear idea of what is Right, you will find your operations diverted by what is possible. Organisations have to choose moral barricades that they will fight for or risk having their operations eroded. Abandoning these barricades is a slippery slope on which means become ends. In other words we start counting how many bags of wheat were distributed rather than how many people ate, we start using all of our influence to send peacekeepers rather than asking how the hell they are might to solve the problem.
Some NGOs, like Save the Children or Oxfam, are highly reflective. They look dispassionately at their own operations and critically reassess their work. These organisations are the ones I look up to, not just for their technical expertise, but also for their ethos and leadership. Other organisations, the UN and the World Bank, are pathologically unreflective. Criticism is dodged by referring to the divisions of the Security Council, weak mandates or lack of coordination.
Here in Sudan, the UN has constructed from scratch a vast complex the size of three football fields to house its HQ. The UN has access to the highest ranks of the Sudanese bureaucracy and it has sources of information that NGOs dream of. And yet, with all of this, the UN suffers from a tremendous lack of moral courage. Everything the UN seems to do is a compromise in which it appears to be the losing party - it never fights, even when its staff is beaten, or its operations rendered subservient to government interests. It is a powerful beast that allows itself to be bound, in exchange for the right to posture. As a result, the single most powerful actor in humanitarianism is often the very actor that lets the lions into the coliseum.
Don't get me wrong, I am not calling for a crusader organisation, a multilateral Amnesty International which bears down on a crisis with frothing outrage. To understand the emergency situations of this world you must be a cynic. But you must be a cynic with moral clarity.
I wanted to respond to a comment from a friend about the introspectiveness of the previous post. 'Surely', he cried out, 'what is personal frustration in comparison to the good works that must be done', 'the world is an evil place, and if you didn't know this you were naive.' Or something along those lines (he was neither as facile nor as judgemental as I make him sound). Don't read this post as a justification for the previous post. Read it separately as a reflection on frustration here.
In this sector many people have "taken control" of their lives. They have given up many things, relationships, families, stability and often money in exchange for a life that gave them excitement and adventure. But also, and more than this, they asked for a life that gave them meaning, a sense of accomplishment that extends beyond the personal. These people are not in any way adjusted to the amount of governmental control that is exerted over individual lives in contexts like Sudan. When, as in Darfur, aid work is bogged down in a government constructed minefield of delays, procedural obstructionism and moral ambiguity very quickly people begin to think about what they gave up and can become extremely frustrated with their inability to act or change the situation.
This personal frustration is, for many, compounded by wider concerns, precisely because it was these wider concerns that led to people to aid work. A lot of people's frustration in Sudan at the moment, is that they feel the waters rising around this humanitarian Atlantis, and more and more they feel that their jobs and organisations are complicit in its sinking.
The core problem is that yes the world is a bad place, but in situations like Darfur, if you do not go in with a clear idea of what is Right, you will find your operations diverted by what is possible. Organisations have to choose moral barricades that they will fight for or risk having their operations eroded. Abandoning these barricades is a slippery slope on which means become ends. In other words we start counting how many bags of wheat were distributed rather than how many people ate, we start using all of our influence to send peacekeepers rather than asking how the hell they are might to solve the problem.
Some NGOs, like Save the Children or Oxfam, are highly reflective. They look dispassionately at their own operations and critically reassess their work. These organisations are the ones I look up to, not just for their technical expertise, but also for their ethos and leadership. Other organisations, the UN and the World Bank, are pathologically unreflective. Criticism is dodged by referring to the divisions of the Security Council, weak mandates or lack of coordination.
Here in Sudan, the UN has constructed from scratch a vast complex the size of three football fields to house its HQ. The UN has access to the highest ranks of the Sudanese bureaucracy and it has sources of information that NGOs dream of. And yet, with all of this, the UN suffers from a tremendous lack of moral courage. Everything the UN seems to do is a compromise in which it appears to be the losing party - it never fights, even when its staff is beaten, or its operations rendered subservient to government interests. It is a powerful beast that allows itself to be bound, in exchange for the right to posture. As a result, the single most powerful actor in humanitarianism is often the very actor that lets the lions into the coliseum.
Don't get me wrong, I am not calling for a crusader organisation, a multilateral Amnesty International which bears down on a crisis with frothing outrage. To understand the emergency situations of this world you must be a cynic. But you must be a cynic with moral clarity.
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