Saving the World

I can remember a guy I worked with early on in my humanitarian career who made a rather bold statement, "He was going to save the world".

The reality is you can't. All you can do is make life a bit more palatable for those within your particular bailiwick. With something like 25 million people living at or near starvation levels, millions living in abject poverty and millions more dying each year from preventable diseases in different parts of the world, with your efforts you might be able to provide food to 1000 a day or save 100 a day from whatever ails them.

My first boss in the field had been in this environment for 25 years before I arrived and as such I had to give him credit for knowing a lot more about how to approach humanitarian work than I did gave me some sage advice. "Keep yourself separated from the beneficiaries and your local co-workers". Over the years I grew to become more cynical about some aspects of our work, learning much more about human nature and being disappointed by it than I had ever been in all my years on this planet.

On other occasions, while I was based in Kabul, a rather earnest young American field worker with a small American NGO set herself up to have Afghan women who came into her program to dispense with their burkha that had been a traditional shackle to their daily lives. The resultant outcome was that they then placed themself at considerable risk and suffered violence as a consequence from their community and the traditionalists within it. The Taliban may have been dispensed with however the draconian traditions of a nation had merely been set aside but still prevalent in day to day life.

Her mistake was to go to somewhere like Afghanistan, full of western idealism and propose to force a change on their society. Unfortunately that is not what you are invited in to their countries to do. I highlight this for emphasis

You go there for their purpose, not your own.

If they want to change then it is up to them to bring that about. Your usefulness to them is to provide food or shelter or medical attention or basic education, all issues that are not forcing your culture on them but providing them the tools to make those decisions themself.

I learned that lesson in a particularly difficult negotiation in Kosovo. My female supervisor who had been regulating the benefits that a particular recipient might receive was being pressured one of guards to make a decision that she knew was wrong. He fell outside base line for beneficiary selection, What was not so obvious was that he was also a senior member of the local KLA and as such maintained an social influence that largely intimidated all that knew him and as I learned later on more details of his background, rightly so. Enough people had died as a consequence of that conflict. She sought my council and I was adamant that he should receive nothing at that point in time not being aware of the intimidation. Her comeback unsettled me. "You are here for three months, we all have to live here after you go and we have already been threatened."

Within the context of Kosovo post 1999, the KLA had not been neutralised even though there were demobilizing programs for that purpose. The process of them re-asserting their authority beneath line of vision of the NATO forces and the UN was ever prevalent. Old scores were being settled, new hierarchies were being established and indeed they would go on beyond my tenure as they do.

My local staff's long term security was of greater importance than it was for me exercising my authority or the donor auditors arguing that it was an inappropriate bequest. Sometimes you just have to fall with the punches and not leave a legacy that you are unable to contend with or a consequence that you cannot deal with.