Catholic New World: The Interview

Politics, war complicates disaster relief efforts

Raymond Offenheiser has been president of Oxfam America, a non-profit organization that works to end global poverty, since 1995 and worked his entire career in the not-for-profit field. He visited the Chicago area at the end of August to give the convocation lecture at Dominican University in River Forest and receive the Bradford-O’Neill Medallion for Social Justice. He also spoke to staff writer Michelle Martin about the challenges the changing world situation has created for non-governmental aid groups.

The Catholic New World: How has the atmosphere changed for providing humanitarian aid?

Raymond Offenheiser: I think what we are seeing now is a shift from a period in the 1990s, when we felt that with the end of the Cold War, we would be seeing less conflict. There’s a lot of low-level conflict going around the world—I think there are 35 of them going on in various unseen and forgotten places now.

This was all exacerbated by the events around 9/11, with the recruitment of terrorists in failing or weak states and the increasing conflict between Islamic militants—who don’t necessarily represent the mainstream of Islamic faith—attacking the pillars of Western civilization. These make a big difference in the way people are viewing issues of security, foreign relationships and terrorism.

TCNW: How has that affected your work?

RO: Particularly for humanitarian NGOs, who work in emergency relief situations, it’s made our work a lot more difficult. In prior decades, there was a good deal of respect for the Geneva Conventions. Now humanitarian workers are often seen as soft targets by combatants or terrorists, where they used to be given a sort of free pass by both sides. Now our staffs find themselves being killed or threatened or taken hostage.

TCNW: How do you deal with that? Do you just avoid those situations, or try to work around it?

RO: When we can, we try to appeal to international law and work with a responsible authority. If we make an assessment that we cannot function safely, we do leave. Afghanistan is an example of a place where it’s a very insecure situation, but we felt we had enough guarantees where we decided to work there, We have to be very careful with what we say and how we operate, but we can work there.

In Iraq, the rules of engagement of the U.S. occupation are such that we have to operate under the aegis of the U.S. military. As humanitarian workers, we’re supposed to be independent of the combatants on both sides, so now in Iraq, all humanitarian aid is being provided by private contractors.

TCNW: Whose job should it be to provide humanitarian aid? NGOs? The governments’?

RO: One of the difficulties in conflict situations is you need a neutral party to come in and offer aid. The whole idea behind the history of the Red Cross is to have a neutral party who could enter a conflict zone and have hostilities stop while they tended to the wounded and the civilians. Then very often the hostilities would resume.

But for the last 30 or 40 years, civilian populations have not been exempt from the fighting. Rather, they’ve tried out civilians in the front line of conflict situations. Hezbollah concealed itself in the civilian population while firing missiles at Israel—that’s a perfect example.

You need some kind of international authority, such as the International Red Cross, or sometimes the United Nations to take responsibility. Very often, NGOS come and operate under the supervision of a UN agency, and our neutrality comes from the UN mandate.

You can’t be working with one side in a conflict, because you could be a Trojan horse for advancing one side of the conflict or the other.

TCNW: How closely do the various NGOs and relief agencies work together?

RO: We have an international trade association, Interaction, with 180 members. Most of the major ones belong to that. On the ground, in the major humanitarian theaters, there’s a great deal of practical cooperation.

Agencies have different expertise, so they might divide up the jobs. If you have a refugee camp, Doctors Without Borders could do the clinical medical care, Oxfam could provide water and sanitation facilities—Oxfam does that because we know more people die from drinking non-potable water than from other causes in these situations, CARE could provide the food, while Catholic Relief Services administers the refugee camp, and we all share responsibility. On the ground, our staffs are working together quite a bit.

TCNW: What message are you trying to get across to the American public?

RO: In the first 48 hours of a crisis, we are rushing to get out as soon as possible. We need support from the public most often in the form of cash. The first 48 hours are crucial, and if we have cash, we can buy food locally, we can buy supplies locally, and it’s much more efficient that way.

There’s also a marathon phase, of getting people back to a sustainable livelihood. We want to get people back from a refugee camp to a modest house on a plot of land, with seeds to plant and animals to tend and some semblance of a normal life. We know that the shorter the marathon phase is, the less devastating the psychological effect is. What we’re seeing now is that we’re in the marathon phase of the response to Katrina/Rita, and it’s taking a very long time.

But there are many forgotten emergencies in the world that need support, that are not in the news. You only see them on the television occasionally. In Congo, 4 million people have lost their lives, but they fall away from the public consciousness.