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DR FIONA TERRY – RESEARCHER/ MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES The Medecins Sans Frontieres researcher has some tough things to say to Maxine McKew about the doubtful politics of aid.
Just as well Fiona Terry isn't afraid of a fight. One of Médecins Sans Frontière's foremost researchers, she made herself deeply unpopular in the United States last year when she challenged other aid organisations over their rush to bid for $10m being made available from the US State Department for programs in Iraq. "The war hadn't even started, no independent assessments had been made, yet here were all these organisations prepared to accept money to be an auxiliary to the US military. As I see it, that's not the role of a humanitarian organisation." The bottom line for Terry: "How can you preserve your so-called neutrality if you take money from the belligerent party in a war?" This is a non-negotiable matter for the French-founded organisation which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. In just over 30 years, MSF has been pivotal in transforming the way medical aid is delivered. From a huge logistics base in Bordeaux it is geared to provide emergency aid anywhere in the world within 24 hours. Unlike the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which cannot intervene in a country without the approval of the state authority, MSF takes as its central credo its independence and responsibility to provide aid strictly according to need. If that means ignoring national borders, so be it. But as Terry sees it, that's only the beginning of a long, complex and ethically murky story. Terry is a fast and spirited talker. An aid worker with organisations such as Care and MSF for more than a decade, she's just published a book which is 245 pages of dynamite. Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action slices through the feel-good ooze of the selfless doctor or aid worker toiling for the benefit of third world victims, to ask some exceptionally tough questions. What to do when refugee camps become breeding grounds for tomorrow's terrorists? How many precious aid dollars should be handed over in taxes to warlords? Can continued aid be justified when it's clear that instead of alleviating suffering, it's helping to sustain oppressive action? Are there times when the moral choice is to actually abandon a population in need? These are questions the Canberra-born, Australian National University-educated Terry never imagined she'd be focusing on when she first started the fieldwork that has taken her to many of the flashpoints and international crises thrown up by the end of the Cold War. Terry's mother, Judith, reminded her recently that as a 10-year-old she wrote a school composition about "what the world needed to do to help the little Kampuchean children" but the reality of what she's seen is a world away from this worthy childhood ambition. Now Geneva-based, she's briefly back in Australia to talk about the themes raised in her book, and to show off baby Jeremy to the family. We're in the News Bar in the Grace Bros store in central Sydney. Terry hardly touches her caesar salad. So consumed is she by what she's witnessed, she practically explodes with information about some of the more grotesque and cynical acts of the last part of the 20th century. She distributed emergency food relief to the Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War and concluded that "it was a major abuse of humanitarian action. Having been encouraged to rise up and oppose Saddam, the massive food aid was used as a tool with which to pacify and send the Kurds back to their villages". Now with the second act in Iraq being played out, she's just as blunt: "The poor Kurds will get screwed again. It's in no one's interests to give them the state they want." But the political game that Terry really targets is the one she knows best. A global billion-dollar humanitarian "business" which she says can no longer lay claim to offering help based on the time-honoured principles of neutrality and need. When she considers recent history, whether it's Palestinians, refugees fleeing genocide in Rwanda, or anti-Soviet Afghans in Pakistan, Terry sees the same result: the creation of "refugee warrior" communities made possible by the protections guaranteed under international law and humanitarian assistance. Terry's chapter on the UNHCR camps inside Pakistan, set up to deal with the millions of Afghans fleeing the Soviet invasion, is a must-read for anyone wanting to appreciate the many layers of irony involved in the 2001 US ousting of the Taliban. Terry doesn't spare her own organisation. Noting that in the 1980s the Afghan resistance was idealised in the western press and the notion of a "just war" was uppermost in the minds of aid workers, she says: "MSF never sought to take a neutral stance. We picked our side." Numerous NGOs did the same thing. This meant that the refugee camps provided a cover for military activities, acted as recruitment agencies, and helped rehabilitate combatants. In 1984 the cost was estimated at $1m a day. Some of this money was supplied by Pakistan but the rest was from donor countries in the West. And it all played its part in helping create the Taliban. This is not to ignore the fact that there was genuine need. Ordinary people were helped. So is it possible to separate the humanitarian from the political? To act in a way that will prevent a horrific blowback? To that Terry says a resounding "yes". That in a situation where the lines are blurred, the challenge for aid agencies is to find what she calls "the humanitarian space" and set tough rules for engagement. If that can't be negotiated successfully, then get ready to make some tough decisions. Terry fast-forwards to the present. "Look at North Korea. It is the example of the worst abuse of aid at the moment. Which is why in 1998 MSF pulled out. We just won't work there." That's quite a call to make when it comes to a country that has lost an estimated two to three million people to famine; where a third of mothers continue to be assessed as malnourished and anaemic; and where 40% of children are considered to be chronically malnourished. Kim Jong-il is criminally indifferent to the suffering of his own people and spends 43% of the state budget on the military but little on fuel. So in the -25°C winters, few houses or buildings are heated. As a result, the most common causes of death among children are diarrhoea and pneumonia. Before the border crackdown, Terry interviewed hundreds of North Korean refugees as they risked all to cross into China. "When we talked to them, not one of them, not one, had ever been the recipient of food aid. The only time they've seen it is when it's being traded on the black market." For the past eight years, tens of millions of tonnes of food have been channelled through the UN's World Food Program, but Terry is blistering about its effect. "Imagine this! If in a couple of years North Korea finally opens up, and we all find out the real population is not 22 million. It's not even 19 million. That we find it's more like 15 million! How are the donor countries going to explain that? That with all the pretence at assistance, millions more have died from hunger? It's quite possible because the refugees talk of the population being vastly less than what the regime claims. I would love to be wrong but the fact is that food aid to North Korea is the big lie." The "pretence" at assistance occurs because of the tight totalitarian control over everything, but most especially food distribution. In many ways, it has become the instrument of control. What happens to western-donated food aid? According to Terry, the minute it arrives in North Korea, it goes into military warehouses. It's distributed to those North Koreans considered by the regime to be compliant. Foreign aid workers are not allowed to conduct independent monitoring. That means no spot visits to nutritional clinics, only staged events where westerners see happy chubby-cheeked children. That contrasts with what MSF was reporting before 1998. As Terry says: "On the way back from these visits our people would see children on the side of the road, dressed in rags, with terrible skin and all the signs of severe malnourishment. When they pleaded with their North Korean minders to stop so they could help them, the reply was 'what children?' They don't exist." Terry concedes that more recently the UN's World Food Program has periodically withheld food shipments in an attempt to negotiate better monitoring of food distribution to those in desperate need. But she dismisses this as half-hearted at best. Her condemnation is total. "Food aid is being used in North Korea today to prop up a regime that perpetuates the famine and which decides on a daily basis who has the right to live and who can die. I ask, how is it acceptable for a humanitarian organisation to be part of that?" But surely if everyone pulled out, the situation would go from extreme to catastrophic? "That's true," says Terry. But she quickly suggests a very different modus operandi. She points to a fascinating piece of history involving Herbert Hoover and Vladimir Lenin. "In 1921, when he headed the American Relief Association, Hoover, against tremendous opposition in the US Congress, negotiated with Lenin to provide famine relief in the Ukraine. He set very tough conditions. He insisted on total control of distribution and access to areas that were not Bolshevik-controlled. Not only that, he achieved something we don't even imagine today. He got Lenin to pay for half of it! The result was that they established 16,000 feeding stations which helped feed 10 million Russians over 11 months." Terry pauses before she states the obvious. "Can you imagine statistics like that today?" Terry insists this story is proof that gutsy negotiation with totalitarian tyrants is possible. I watched as Terry repeated this story in front of a packed gathering at Sydney's Gleebook's store this week. The audience found it inspiring, something to cling to in the face of much of the current disillusionment over the abuse of humanitarian action. And Terry? She's getting ready for the next act in her crowded life. Back to Geneva briefly to pack up for the next posting. She's set to join her ICRC-employed husband in Burma. The Rangoon generals don't know what's about to hit them! Source: The Bulletin. Lunch with Maxine McKew
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