Humanitarian groups have failed, Fiona Terry believes, to face up to the core paradox of their activity: humanitarian action aims to alleviate suffering, but by inadvertently sustaining conflict it potentially prolongs suffering. In Condemned to Repeat?, Terry examines the side-effects of intervention by aid organizations and points out the need to acknowledge the political consequences of the choice to give aid. The author makes the controversial claim that aid agencies act as though the initial decision to supply aid satisfies any need for ethical discussion and are often blind to the moral quandaries of aid. Terry focuses on four historically relevant cases: Rwandan camps in Zaire, Afghan camps in Pakistan, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan camps in Honduras, and Cambodian camps in Thailand.
Terry was the head of the French section of Medecins sans frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) when it withdrew from the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire because aid intended for refugees actually strengthened those responsible for perpetrating genocide. This book contains documents from the former Rwandan army and government that were found in the refugee camps after they were attacked in late 1996. This material illustrates how combatants manipulate humanitarian action to their benefit.
Condemned to Repeat? makes clear that the paradox of aid demands immediate attention by organizations and governments around the world. The author stresses that, if international agencies are to meet the needs of populations in crisis, their organizational behavior must adjust to the wider political and socioeconomic contexts in which aid occurs.
Fiona Terry is Director of Research, Medecins sans frontieres, Paris.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. Humanitarian Action and Responsibility2. The Afghan Refugee Camps in Pakistan3. The Nicaraguan and Salvadoran Refugee Camps in Honduras4. The Cambodian Refugee Camps in Thailand5. The Rwandan Refugee Camps in Zaire6. Humanitarian Action in a Second-Best WorldAppendix: Documents from the Rwandan Refugee CampsIndex
What People are Saying About This
Henry Shue
Unlike others who have seen the underbelly of the aid business, Fiona Terry responds, not with cynicism or fatalism, but with morally sensitive, politically relevant, and intellectually lucid proposals about how to bring actual consequences closer to good intentions. Condemned to Repeat? is a passionate and independent challenge to humanitarian practice-as-usual that can enrich ethics classes and guide refugee camps. It is a book of extraordinary reach that contributes richly to both theory and practice.
Michael Ignatieff
Fiona Terry's Condemned to Repeat? is a tough-minded and searching critique of the global aid industry. Aid agencies and humanitarian activists who do not think hard about Terry's critique may find themselves condemned to repeat the mistakes she identifies.
David Rieff
There have been many books criticizing humanitarian action from the outside and many others praising it from the inside. Almost always, both the moral and operational dilemmas of relief work were terribly oversimplified. Fiona Terry has changed all that. Hers is the first book by an aid worker from the English-speaking world to anatomize the real paradoxes of humanitarian action. It is at once a superb and original work of historical research into the actual practice of contemporary humanitarianism, an arresting polemic about what the consequences of those practices are, and a fine piece of moral reasoning.