Injurious Charity

“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”  - J. Rockefeller

We felt the psychological aftershocks reverberating throughout the world as people heard and saw the news of the devastation in Haiti. The horror and sorrow lead to massive desire to do something. We saw the inevitable fund-raising events to help the victims. We see celebrities and statesman go about working on getting the help out. In my cynical moments I would say the involvement of people is pure hypocrisy and an attempt to salve their own consciences and feels good about their "charitable deeds".

Now lest anyone gets me wrong I fully support the effort - in spite of my personal doubts that anything such as pure charity or true altruism even exists. I agree they need some immediate help. I will even agree that every little bit helps, but just want to make sure that everyone understands one thing. It is definitely a "little bit". It is not even a drop in the ocean for what would be really required to rehabilitate Haiti.

The predicament is that Charity - no matter how well intentioned - cannot solve the poverty crisis. Poverty is caused by the unjust socioeconomic policies of successive governments which place profits before people. It cannot be vanquished by any quantity of charity but only through serious and systematic political change. Charity and fund raising is but a short term solution, which serves only to deflect attention from the fact that basic essential services (food, housing and clothing) should not have to depend on aid.

What I'm trying to say is that it requires a much more lasting commitment. It requires us to follow through and work on helping for years to come. That is where I reiterate we will fail, we will forget in a very very short time.

Instead on me rambling on, let's look at these two pictures to drive home what I'm arriving at.

Both are iconic images capturing the misery of a country. The first one needs no explanation and I am sure people tear up whenever they see it. The photographer Kevin Carter himself was haunted with the scene and committed suicide in 1994. I read somewhere that the chance of this girl surviving was less than 3 percent.

I'm sure we had lofty articles and fund-raising at that time for the people of Sudan, 17 years later people in Sudan are still dying. Darfur is creating thousand of such images without even any photographers to capture it now.

The second picture is of an Afghani girl which came out in National Geographic 84/85, although not as horrifying as the first one, her eyes really shows the desolation and hopelessness the Afghan people have suffered. 25 years later, the refugee problem continues, the women are still treated worse than animals. So what has all the talk and charity changed – Nada, Nothing.

And the same will happen to Haiti as soon as we feel we have done our "bit".