CSOs perceive disparities in foreign aid, creating uncertainty and undermining effectiveness

Civil society organizations perceive disparities in which crises receive attention and funding, which can undermine fairness as well as effectiveness when aid is unpredictable.

A recent Devex article shares the experience of Muslim NGOs who rely on UK funding and face discrimination from banks. When banking institutions enact checks on clients they believe to be high risk, they can disrupt funding to disasters–most recently, the climate-related flooding in Pakistan, which has killed more than 1,100 people. The floods have impacted more than 33 million and they are not expected to recede for another three to six months, thus incurring a second disaster of attendant water-born diseases such as gastroenteritis, dengue and malaria. Children are left standing in water polluted by pesticides and feces, and many families have no other access to drinking water. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that as many as 7.6 million people have been displaced, including 575,000 in relief camps. Their recent situation report raises concerns that children and marginalized groups are vulnerable to abuse, violence, trafficking and exploitation at areas such as distribution points and bathing facilities.

The Muslim Charities Forum said that the disparity between the response to Pakistan compared to the war in Ukraine lead to a feeling of being targeted, where NGOs in one country have complete discretion to respond to crisis because it fits the political agenda, while in others there are many more hurdles to clear in order to deliver aid. In their view, “it showed the ‘system has two rules, one for some crises and another for other crises.’”

While that article focused on disparities in banking oversight, research more generally into disparities in disaster relief suggests that significant portions of aid are driven by things like media attention or proximity. Research suggests that governmental funding is more likely to go to disasters that receive more media coverage, though media attention may not be solely tied to the severity of the disaster. News coverage can vary depending on what other issues are capturing attention at the same time. However, in a study on USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance funding, the chances OFDA would provide disaster relief increased 16% if it was covered by the nightly news. As a Vox article notes, “disasters occurring in a period with a busy news cycle would need to have six times more casualties than one that occurred on a slow news day to have the same chance of securing relief funding.” Physical proximity, or cultural or colonial ties also play a significant role. As a Journal of Economic Perspectives article explains, “to have the same chance of receiving relief from a particular donor, a country at the other side of the earth must have 160 times as many fatalities as a country at zero distance from that donor.”

When the factors that influence funding are multiple and continually shifting, it creates uncertainty for NGOs and potentially undermines larger goals. CSOs in Asia share their experience in how funding variability impacts them. For example, Fortify Rights shares that, in their experience, there is more funding available for their projects in Myanmar than for other countries in which they operate or wish to expand operations. They speculate that it might have to do with the scale and gravity of the situation there, which naturally has garnered more media attention.

Meanwhile, despite the media attention the issue of cyber slavery in Cambodia and Myanmar has garnered, Humanity Research Consultancy (HRC) has struggled to find donor support for their research. Since July 2022, they’ve collected an incredible amount of data from working (pro bono) directly with more than 50 survivors and law enforcement to support protection, prosecution, and the prevention of cyber slavery. However, without donor funding, their ability to support survivors and utilize the data they’ve collected is restricted. As they’ve explained, donor support is crucial to enable HRC’s frontline work and participatory research to counter the cyber slavery in the scamming compounds.

Even if media attention and coverage were a reliable predictor of funding, it raises a question about what happens to the funding when a fickle media’s attention shifts. While disasters might be discrete events, in many cases, there are precursors that led or contributed to the disaster. In the case of the current flooding in Pakistan, scientists directly link it to climate change, which they say has exacerbated the record monsoon rains and glacial melt that triggered the flooding. From the Pakistani perspective, the nation has contributed minimally to climate change, yet they are on the frontlines of the worst of its impact. Even after the disaster abates, the root causes of climate change, the question of responsibility, and the dire need to shore up protection against future disasters remain.

OECD research supports the notion that unpredictability in aid relief can negatively impact larger goals. Their research shows devastating effects on recipient countries’ ability to implement development strategies which focus on poverty reduction and other key social protections that help prevent trafficking and exploitation. To be clear, predictability is distinct from volatility–aid can fluctuate, but is said to be predictable if the fluctuations follow known rules. The unpredictability of aid thus has the overall effect of lowering domestic investment. Furthermore, “an immense amount of the energy, not just of planners but of service delivery implementers, is devoted to the marshalling of funding to keep services going from year to year, rather than addressing the substantive issues in service delivery that are critical for development results.”

Have You Considered…?

A recent gathering at the 25th International Metropolis Conference in Berlin highlighted innovative ways to facilitate more efficient and fairer migration. Key themes included creating partnerships to match needs. For example, if a country such as Germany needs more workers in elderly care as their population ages, and other countries, such as the Philippines or Indonesia, have a surplus of workers in the field, they can create partnerships to smooth out expertise requirements and reduce barriers to migration. However, there are many logistical constraints and considerations in implementing these goals, not least of which is how to manage it fairly so as not to create problems such as a brain drain in the countries of origin. These constraints make it more challenging than it might appear, opening up a lot more potential for cross-regional collaboration and an express need for partnerships. To facilitate these partnerships, voices from Asia should be present at the table in these discussions and CSOs in Asia should be aware there may be growing interest and attention for Asian perspectives in other regional forums.