‘Our hands are tied’: Local aid workers exposed in pandemic
JOHANNESBURG — The coronavirus is exposing an uncomfortable inequality in the billion-dollar system that delivers life-saving aid for countries in crisis: Most money that flows from the U.S. and other donors goes to international aid groups instead of local ones. Now local aid workers are exposed on the pandemic’s front lines with painfully few means to help the vulnerable communities they know so well.
Often lacking protective equipment, the groups are carrying a bigger burden than ever as COVID-19 adds to the already vast challenges of conflict, drought and hunger in places like Somalia and Afghanistan.
At times, they tell communities they have nothing to give.
“Our hands are tied,” a South Sudanese aid leader, Gloriah Soma, told an online event last month. She described foreign aid workers being evacuated early in the pandemic or working from home as many feared infection.
“Is this a humanitarian response?” she asked, saying she hopes the crisis will spark more help “at this critical moment.” Her country can hardly bear another disaster: A five-year civil war killed nearly 400,000 people, and hunger stalks half the population.
The world’s most precarious regions are long accustomed to the sight of international aid organizations, often managed by expats. Now some of those foreign workers are questioning their roles amid the reckoning over racial injustice in the U.S. and elsewhere.
At times criticized as “white saviors,” some say local partners should be given more responsibility — and money. A local group can do more with it, Soma said. She asserted that $100,000 could help over 10,000 people, while the same amount to an international group will only pay one or two staff, “and that’s it.”
Recognizing the problem, major global donors including the U.S., Germany and Japan and humanitarian groups had pledged to give at least one-quarter of international aid money to local partners as directly as possible by this year. But just over 2% reached them directly last year, according to a report by the U.K.-based Development Initiatives last month.
“COVID is a horrible tragedy, but it’s going to force us to work differently,” the United Nations humanitarian agency’s director of humanitarian financing, Lisa Carty, has said. U.N. leaders are discussing “how to make sure money moves more quickly” to frontline responders.
One-quarter of the $1 billion allocated by U.N. country-based funds went to local aid organizations last year, Carty said, “but I think we all agree that we want to do better.”
And those funds manage just a small fraction of overall aid money. Most goes to U.N. agencies, while local aid groups are often seen as subcontractors of those agencies and international organizations. Tracking where the money goes remains a challenge.