Aid and Development - Concern for the Poor or Big Business?

In 1980, I spent three months as a volunteer in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. I was one of five Australians who volunteered with a church to assist Cambodians fleeing Pol Pot and the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. We were based at Kamput Refugee Camp, about 6 kms from the Cambodian border and lived in the local village of Pong Nam Ron about 10kms from the border and a short drive to the camp. Apart from a group of Australians from another church we were the only westerners living in the local village.

Kamput was a refugee camp of about 17,000 divided into two camps - a camp of 14,000 mainly middle class and better educated Cambodians who lived in military style barracks and the "old camp" of about 3-5,000 Khmer Rouge sympathisers who lived in fairly squalid conditions. In reality there were two camps, divided socio-economically and politically.

The camp was an eye opener. Apart from the church groups from Australia, USA, Ireland (CONCERN) and TEAR Fund Australia, there was a range of secular agencies such as Red Cross, and others plus the UNHCR. The faith based agencies were generally volunteers who were there from personal conviction.

The secular agencies were generally employees of the agencies they worked for. They lived 60kms from the camp in the provincial capital of Chantaburi. From what I learned they lived in a compound, separate from the local Thais and kept office hours, arriving en-masse by bus at 8.30am and departing promptly at 4.30pm.

I remember speaking to the camp director from the UNHCR and being shocked that for him this was just a job. He received a salary and generous allowances which had me amazed that much of the "aid" was spent on westerners who could and would grow wealthy from their chosen career. What shocked me even more was the answer to my question about what would he do after this camp to be told he would move on to the next humanitarian crisis!



(These women are home based carers who volunteer their time in South Africa to care for HIV affected people in their communities. Occasionally they receive gifts as a recognition of their valuable contribution.)


Fast forward to 2009 and I am on a plane from Johannesburg to Nairobi. I am talking to an indigenous employee of a large international aid agency travelling to a conference in Nairobi. She is an employee in the national office of her agency in South Africa. I remember thinking what sort of a conference justifies sending someone to a conference thousands of kms away and expending all that money which possibly equalled 20% of her salary for a week away?

The return trip a week later found me sitting next to a Dutch doctor working for a well know international medical agency. Paid local wages, she was virtually a volunteer, working on something she believed in similar to faith based volunteers. I was impressed at the sacrifice she and her family made to serve in a poor country. They could also be described as career aid employees, but unlike the UNHCR employee of 1980, they were doing this from conviction.

So what is the current state of international aid and development. Like much in the social science area, international development has become a specialised industry with peak bodies and interests in lobbying and advocating governments and international agencies to grow the aid and development sector.

Australia should increase its aid and development to those in need. The questions that need to be asked however is who is benefitting from aid and development and how much of the donor dollar or indeed the taxpayer dollar actually reaches the intended beneficiary?