Booming Aid Hoax

It's not a movie, but who knows, maybe one day someone uses it as a good script.

Up to 30% of aid funds in conflict areas are wrongly spent. Jean Mazurelle, former director of the World Bank branch in Kabul, estimated that 35%–40% of all international aid being sent to Afghanistan is “wrongly spent”. “In Afghanistan, the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on. In the 30 years of my career, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Similar looting took place in Somali, which cause direct American intervention back in 1992. Black market traded aid goods for real dollars there where people were dying of hunger.

As an author of War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times Linda Pulman says, foreign aid became a reason of some unrest and rebellions in many corners of the world. The logic behind it is simple: without violence and devastation, there is no aid. So, the more devastation, conflict, violence and terror, the more place seems to be in need of humanitarian approach, and together with it, real money comes.

In post-conflict Mozambique, mafia organizations founded NGO's which made a lot of attempts to swingle money from overseas aid funds.Foreign diplomats and UNDP workers were forced to carry guns if they really wanted to supervise how money is being spent. Some of them got themselves seriously injured.  

Not only insurgents consider foreign aid as a good way to get richer. There is a growing number of websites which represent problems with some area by heartcatching words and no real concrete details of implemented projects, dare to ask good-willing people for donation. How many of them trust such websites? It is difficult to say. It is not easy to prove a hoax being done this way. What if these money are really helping someone?

How to recognize which initiative is trustworthy and which isn't? My long term practice in watching NGO actions tells me that each organization which wants to build social credibility, gathers some big names in their scientific or advisory boards, or the members themselves have long enough scientific or diplomatic careers that their call for money gives some hope, that it goes for real needs. Next thing is project evaluation report, which credible organization should do and publish at least once a year. What has been done? What did we accomplish? It is easier to monitor such things if it is a hard-aid NGO, much less easy if it is just a watchdog. But even a watchdog gains credibility by making it's actions really known.

I have known a lot of NGO activists and workers starting from Amnesty International, ending on local environmental initiatives. Some of them, after 10 years of hard work for bigger and better known NGO, started new initiative, new foundation which fulfilled certain niche, a space in society which still needs some action. The basis of trust however, are former careers of these people, their long years of experience, and the very simple fact that, they are not John Doe's.

If you see that the owner of some website which calls for donations and gives literally no solid information, is a John Doe, a "noname" with no achievements, no history, no background, skip it. If such a person wants to help others, there are thousands of better ways than starting his or her own "organization" in the age of 23 with a "donate" button using Joomla template.

If you really want to help, donate your work, donate your time for something local, something you really know. Give cloths away to Caritas, volunteer to clean space after the flood. If you need to give cash, think twice before you do.