A Bed for the Night : Humanitarianism in Crisis

Rating:
Summary: An important book about an important problem
Review: Pulling no punches, Rieff has written a damning insight into the current humanitarian care industry (and it has become an industry) has lost its way in the modern day. While showing great admiration for people who believe they are doing the right thing, Rieff exposes the problems with the current methods and thinking behind humanitarian intervention and aid, especially the loss of neutrality and the growth of advocacy for military intervention.

This is a fascinating book, and one that should be read by those who hold beliefs on either side of the humanitarian intervention debate. While this reader came to this book in the context of studying International Security, including the issue of humanitarian intervention, it would be of interest to anyone who has thought about the continuing humanitarian crises throughout the world and what should be done about them. Occasionally Rieff comes across as hyperbolic, and he almost loses the reader's sympathies, but he has the facts and experiences to back up what he is saying. Covering a breadth of organizations, situations and viewpoints, this is a powerful book that at the very least will make you think next time you hear calls for peacekeepers to intervene or are asked to donate to one of the multitude of relief organizations at work today.

Rating:
Summary: Humanitarianism is *not* human rights-- learn why not.
Review: The cover of this book says, "A withering, thought-provoking study." That sums it up quite well. David Rieff knows a lot about humanitarian efforts because he has spent many years living with humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders, The International Red Cross, and Oxfam as they worked in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. This book gives a rare inside perspective on their evolution since the Biafra crisis a few decades ago.

I came to this topic nearly a complete newcomer. Rieff's book was my introduction to humanitarianism at a deeper level than what Americans get from popular media. I had a lot to learn.

First of all, I didn't realize that there is a large difference between humanitarianism and human rights. It seems subtle and puzzling for much of the book, then comes into sharper and sharper focus. Humanitarianism means helping victims of wars, famines, and natural disasters without regard to larger issues, especially political ones. It is a pure offer of help without judgment or agenda. Human rights is by definition a judgmental term-- it means defending a group's dignity, sovereignty, or health because they are deserving of such rights. It implies that others may not be deserving. It is totally different from humanitarianism.

Humanitarians may find themselves giving aid to murderers, as they did in Rwanda when the same Hutus who had slain so many Tutsis became victims themselves in a reverse genocide. Humanitarians may also act to prop up dictators by giving aid to the people the dictator is repressing, making the situation look less dire (and giving him little reason to throw scraps to his subjects to avoid revolution). Applying the concept of human rights in these situations might change the way aid is distributed. Pure humanitarians would be unconcerned with the political details.

A Bed for the Night chronicles the slow but inexorable creep of the humanitarian movement from the early, "pure" form to a much more politicized form that became mixed with human rights, military peacekeeping, and even government agendas. Rieff makes a fairly convincing case that this shift was nearly inevitable. Humanitarianism could not have remained in its original form given the pressures and realities of our world.

Why not? Because humanitarians want to do good, and hence had no choice but to pursue paths that empowered them to do better than they were doing. Ignoring such paths amounted to a shirking of duty. The problem was that these paths coincided with a corruption of their basic mission. Humanitarians found themselves collaborating with soldiers and trying to exert influence at the level of the UN. In pursuing more funding for their projects, NGOs found themselves deploying slick marketing techniques and then becoming beholden to their largest donors in ways that were not objective. It is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

And then the humanitarians began to be manipulated by others who had no pretenses of purity. When NGOs began consorting on the world stage, governments could use them as excuses for taking action, or for not taking action. They became pawns in issues of power and, yes, human rights. Now the two terms-- humanitarianism and human rights-- are used so interchangeably that even a somewhat intelligent citizen like me did not realize there is a difference.

Rieff shows in excruciating detail how this process was a slippery slope. At each step, with each new crisis, the new entanglements seemed logical and even necessary. No one set about this decades-long transformation as a grand plan. It simply happened-- probably with a lot less effort than if it had been a grand plan. That is not to say it didn't bring resistance, division, bitter words, and disillusionment with it; far from it. But changing NGOs from neutral to politically involved was easier than many would have guessed.

Rieff tries to come to a positive conclusion about how these transformations are just normal signs of changing times. But he even fails to convince himself of this, and consequently ends on a down note, a hanging question mark about the future of humanitarianism. As the cover said, "A withering, thought-provoking study."

My main complaint is that A Bed for the Night could have been much shorter. Rieff is not concise. He says the same thing many times over, which, although it hammers the point home soundly, gets tedious early on. And his writing is floppy in the sense of exploring a point by taking a random walk across it rather than laying out the issues logically. The impression is that Rieff is writing a long tirade in his diary.

If you can plow through the writing, this book contains many useful lessons. If you can't, just read the Introduction. That will give you 75% of the content. Because more people should understand the history Rieff lays out, it rates high on the "need to know" list for intelligent people.

Rating:
Summary: David Rief tells it like it is
Review: Today humanitarian NGOs operate like multi national companies. They ask for our money through media channels and tell us how much good they do and how many people they can save with our help.

Yet these NGOs are barely accountable to their donors and may never reveal the truth about the extent, scope and definitions of their activities. They compromise the "sovereign" status of several nations, are patronising, neo colonial and missionary in scope and don't help a great deal of the time. They are also handmaidens to rich Western countries giving them plenty of excuses not to be decisive or reasons to justify covert operations dressed as humanitarianism.

David Rief exposes all this with passion and gusto speaking as a journalist who has lived through the situations he describes and has had first hand contact with the UN and some of the aid organisations emanating from the USA and Europe he mentions.

Academics and others will disagree but this book is shocking, illuminating and deeply revealing. It is a first step in making NGOs accountable under rigorous standards to donors and receivers. More, much more is needed in this vein and this book is the tip of an iceberg.

This pioneering work has confirmed some of my worst fears, particularly about one or two named organisations. A must for all those who support charities and wish to be informed about how your aid may be used or abused and how to stay skeptical of the claims humanitarian relief organisations make for themselves.