Getting Humanitarian Aid Right

The use of the term victim to describe the people aid agencies seek to assist has rather gone out of vogue. In the 90’s in was viewed as politically incorrect. It had connotations of helplessness and dependency. We started to talk about beneficiaries or even clients, and on occasion partners.

But I would like to make a plea for us to worry less about our own feelings of correctness and more about reality. Researching a little paper on the food aid crisis recently set me off thinking about how and why people end up in crisis, and to be honest the term victim is the right one to use.

In many of the brutal conflicts agencies work in; think Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, N. Uganda, citizens are either victimized or are the innocent victims caught in the middle, particularly women and children.

As climate change tips marginal environments and livelihoods towards destitution, those who sufferer are not those who caused global warming, they are the victims of someone else’s actions.

The food price hikes we have seen across the global south, and the shift to supermarket food-selling which excludes local producers from the market, are driven by forces outside of the immediate control of those slipping into malnutrition.

The global panic around failing banks and insurance companies this week, which will result in smaller aid budgets and less loans available for Southern states and business, will reduce employment opportunities in the South and remittances from the north; more victims.

Victims can still be partners, or clients and beneficiaries. They can also be agitators, reformers and leaders, but that does not detract from the reality that they have been victimized.