Or, ce faisant, les pays riches se tirent une balle dans le pied. Il faut faire du tri. Les gens passeront, par une porte ou une autre. Michel Godet. Quand il y a trop de sable, le ciment ne prend pas. Le tour de la Chine viendra en On ne fabrique pas de berceaux avec des cercueils. Does aid do more harm than good? The Oxfam abuse scandal has revealed a sinister side to international charities.
What a scandal for our times. Oxfam, that upholder of modern-day virtue, unassailable in its righteousness, buried for seven years that its aid workers exploited young girls.
The men abused their power to have sex with desperate victims of the Haiti earthquake β the very people they were supposed to protect. Michelle Russell of the Charity Commission is clear about the deception. We are very angry and cross about this. Nor was this a one-off. Nothing was done. This is the same Oxfam that recently blamed capitalism for world poverty and set up deck chairs in Trafalgar square to protest against corruption and tax havens.
Now the virtue signallers are hoisted on the shard of their own fallibility. Compared with the emerging sins of our aid agencies, tax havens look almost benign. Sadly Oxfam is not alone. It is endemic across the aid industry and across the world. These revelations threaten to extinguish the virtuous glow that has protected the aid industry from scrutiny. We should seize the opportunity.
What is its impact on the countries it is supposed to transform at the local and on the national level? Until now the aid industry has escaped such examination. It is astonishing to learn that aid effectiveness was not even seen as a priority until One man recalls being told about a splendid school in a village in Pakistan.
