Customer Reviews

A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis

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I found this book both disappointing and frustrating.
The author will make an important point about the current state of relief work, but a coherent argument or discussion with cited sources never follows. Instead, we get the kind of sweeping, undocumented statements - "in countless academic studies," . . it was crucial to the survival of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Afghans," etc.- found in the brochures of the very relief organizations that Rieff is criticizing. No footnotes, no bibliography, but lots of opinions. In fact, this book would have been much more appropriate and effective as a series of newspaper editorial columns rather than passing itself off as a carefully documented and well-developed critique of foreign aid and relief organizations. For the latter, I would recommend Alex de Waal's Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa as a better alternative.

Also, this book is further marred by the author's self-identification and uncritical admiration of MSF. Even though Rieff trashes the book Touched By Fire as being "hagiographical," I thought it did a better job of examining the various dilemmas and internal inconsistencies and problems faced by MSF.

The cover of this book says, "A withering, thought-provoking study." That sums it up quite well. David Rieff knows a lot about humanitarian efforts because he has spent many years living with humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders, The International Red Cross, and Oxfam as they worked in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. This book gives a rare inside perspective on their evolution since the Biafra crisis a few decades ago.

I came to this topic nearly a complete newcomer. Rieff's book was my introduction to humanitarianism at a deeper level than what Americans get from popular media. I had a lot to learn.

First of all, I didn't realize that there is a large difference between humanitarianism and human rights. It seems subtle and puzzling for much of the book, then comes into sharper and sharper focus. Humanitarianism means helping victims of wars, famines, and natural disasters without regard to larger issues, especially political ones. It is a pure offer of help without judgment or agenda. Human rights is by definition a judgmental term-- it means defending a group's dignity, sovereignty, or health because they are deserving of such rights. It implies that others may not be deserving. It is totally different from humanitarianism.

Humanitarians may find themselves giving aid to murderers, as they did in Rwanda when the same Hutus who had slain so many Tutsis became victims themselves in a reverse genocide. Humanitarians may also act to prop up dictators by giving aid to the people the dictator is repressing, making the situation look less dire (and giving him little reason to throw scraps to his subjects to avoid revolution). Applying the concept of human rights in these situations might change the way aid is distributed. Pure humanitarians would be unconcerned with the political details.

A Bed for the Night chronicles the slow but inexorable creep of the humanitarian movement from the early, "pure" form to a much more politicized form that became mixed with human rights, military peacekeeping, and even government agendas. Rieff makes a fairly convincing case that this shift was nearly inevitable. Humanitarianism could not have remained in its original form given the pressures and realities of our world.

Why not? Because humanitarians want to do good, and hence had no choice but to pursue paths that empowered them to do better than they were doing. Ignoring such paths amounted to a shirking of duty. The problem was that these paths coincided with a corruption of their basic mission. Humanitarians found themselves collaborating with soldiers and trying to exert influence at the level of the UN. In pursuing more funding for their projects, NGOs found themselves deploying slick marketing techniques and then becoming beholden to their largest donors in ways that were not objective. It is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

And then the humanitarians began to be manipulated by others who had no pretenses of purity. When NGOs began consorting on the world stage, governments could use them as excuses for taking action, or for not taking action. They became pawns in issues of power and, yes, human rights. Now the two terms-- humanitarianism and human rights-- are used so interchangeably that even a somewhat intelligent citizen like me did not realize there is a difference.

Rieff shows in excruciating detail how this process was a slippery slope. At each step, with each new crisis, the new entanglements seemed logical and even necessary. No one set about this decades-long transformation as a grand plan. It simply happened-- probably with a lot less effort than if it had been a grand plan. That is not to say it didn't bring resistance, division, bitter words, and disillusionment with it; far from it. But changing NGOs from neutral to politically involved was easier than many would have guessed.

Rieff tries to come to a positive conclusion about how these transformations are just normal signs of changing times. But he even fails to convince himself of this, and consequently ends on a down note, a hanging question mark about the future of humanitarianism. As the cover said, "A withering, thought-provoking study."

My main complaint is that A Bed for the Night could have been much shorter. Rieff is not concise. He says the same thing many times over, which, although it hammers the point home soundly, gets tedious early on. And his writing is floppy in the sense of exploring a point by taking a random walk across it rather than laying out the issues logically. The impression is that Rieff is writing a long tirade in his diary.

If you can plow through the writing, this book contains many useful lessons. If you can't, just read the Introduction. That will give you 75% of the content. Because more people should understand the history Rieff lays out, it rates high on the "need to know" list for intelligent people.

--The reviewer is a peace operations analyst in Washington DC.--

David Rieff admits he wrote this book in the shadows of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Having covered some of the world's greatest humanitarian disasters, featuring ethnic cleansing and genocide, it should be acknowledged that Mr. Rieff is an impressive character. On balance, however, this book can leave a reader thinking it may not be such a good idea to let people like Mr. Rieff write books until they've unwound a bit in some nice little corner of the world.

Nevertheless, this is a good book for people interested in humanitarianism and peace operations in general. Many people in those fields probably will not like the book all that much, but it is a good thing to read books that annoy you--they make you think. This book is successful at both tasks. The concerns with this book should stem from what seem to be passionately held but nonetheless shaky arguments and logic. All too often, Mr. Rieff arrives at conclusions that mystify, often in the midst of otherwise thoughtful discussion.

One of Mr. Rieff's main contentions is that humanitarianism has made a mistake by seeking to support solutions to the crises that afflict humanity. In others words, Mr. Rieff seems to think it is a bad idea to try working within the reality of any given situation. Humanitarian organizations should instead presumably go on working to help the victims, but should not worry about trying to find solutions to the problems that created the victims. A reasonable person might quibble with that. Has it not always been the human endeavor to work to better our conditions?

A reader will no doubt ask what kind of sense does it make to avoid solutions? Humanitarians have done a grievous harm to their cause by abandoning their neutrality, Mr. Rieff says. In truth, though, neutrality is pretty useless in conflict resolution, and I am not sure it has much more use in humanitarian relief. Impartiality is probably a better choice-avoid taking sides, but uphold the rules of the game. And there should be rules. It may be that we as a global community (a concept Mr. Rieff seems quite skeptical of) are moving only fitfully toward rules on a global basis. So what? Does that mean we should not try? And if trying is the right thing to do, than humanitarian organizations are doing the right thing. They may not be doing it well, but far better to look for a permanent solution than to keep putting band-aids on wounds.

Rieff has experienced many of the bad things humans do to one another. That's a powerful thing, but it is also a bias. A better book would have made points without resorting to emotional arguments and logic malformed by perhaps excessive passion.

Rieff casts himself as a reluctant pessimist who doubts that humanitarian relief aid can do anything more than attend to the immediate needs of the tempest-tossed. Given that reality, Rieff feels that a traditional, neutral humanitarianism is the only option. He shows all the pitfalls of humanitarian action that adjusts to the political dynamics of local conflicts or aligns itself with donor governments. Rieff's perspective is a challenging one and a warning against humanitarian hubris. Still, while we must avoid thinking we can solve the world's ills, humanitarianism that deals purely with symptoms is even more prone to unintended consequences than aid efforts tailored to the realities on the ground.

Pulling no punches, Rieff has written a damning insight into the current humanitarian care industry (and it has become an industry) has lost its way in the modern day. While showing great admiration for people who believe they are doing the right thing, Rieff exposes the problems with the current methods and thinking behind humanitarian intervention and aid, especially the loss of neutrality and the growth of advocacy for military intervention.

This is a fascinating book, and one that should be read by those who hold beliefs on either side of the humanitarian intervention debate. While this reader came to this book in the context of studying International Security, including the issue of humanitarian intervention, it would be of interest to anyone who has thought about the continuing humanitarian crises throughout the world and what should be done about them. Occasionally Rieff comes across as hyperbolic, and he almost loses the reader's sympathies, but he has the facts and experiences to back up what he is saying. Covering a breadth of organizations, situations and viewpoints, this is a powerful book that at the very least will make you think next time you hear calls for peacekeepers to intervene or are asked to donate to one of the multitude of relief organizations at work today.

A credible analysis of the fig-leaf for endless state inaction that these abused, heroic organizations have become. Credible because the author obviously reached his conclusions with great anguish at the fact. Credible because, Rieff is the same author who wrote the Nov NYT 2003 piece, "Blueprint for a Mess" excoriating the administration for its Iraq policy. This is not a Wilsonian / Wolfowitz interventionist itching to let the ship of state set sail, and because of that, his pained conclusions about the reasons for state inaction/ineffective action in the face of pressing needs to act are credible.

The West/America/Europe in recent decades, primarily through the mechanism of the UN, has made a great show of doing everything possible right up to but excluding actually doing anything. Compassion on the cheap. 'We're doing everything possible, the UN is on the job, and as long as all parties agree and have invited them, will show up and defend only themselves rudely in front of people desperately needing defense. The NGOs are on site. We're handing out the blankets and the coffee and the bandaids to rapist and victim alike, so nothing more can be done, and we can all go back to reading our papers and tsk-tsk-tsking and sipping our Capuccinos, comfortable in the knowledge that everything that can be done, is being done, short of actually doing soemthing.'

Find out why that's a fig leaf on the UN seal, not an olive branch. We are all the problem; we don't have the good sense our daddies taught us about when to and when not to lift a hand. Read this book.

For me, disenchantment came in the form of Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General for the United Nations. When I was a child, on Halloween, I walked around with my happy little UNICEF box collecting money instead of candy, and through school I learned that the UN was this wonderful organisation that had the intention of creating a perfect utopia of a world in which there was peace and no famine. This, of course, was before Kosovo and Annan's Oil For Food scandal. True, Kosovo was but a blurred memory from middle school, but I was wide awake for the Oil For Food fiasco. The more I read about the United Nations in high school and college, the more I came to abhor the institution.

I'm no stranger to charity and humanitarianism -- I'm spending my summer in Ghana with an aid organisation, will be doing two years in the Peace Corps after getting my Nurse Practitioner license, and after that plan to work for Médecins Sans Frontières as a full-time job. Africa is my passion, one could say, and I'd like nothing more than to be there all the time.

That said, humanitarianism has become bogged down in the mire of politics and utopianism. In A Bed for the Night, author David Rieff not only outlines the beginnings of modern humanitarianism in Biafra in the late 1960s, but also highlights the key flaws in specific cases of humanitarianism in the last decade such as Bosnia and Rwanda. No Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) is left untouched -- he explains the failings of every NGO from the umbrella of the UN to the seemingly infallible Red Cross to Oxfam. Both sides of the issue are covered through interviews with such varied people as Rony Brauman of Médecins Sans Frontières and Jean-François Vidal of Action Contre la Faim. His arguments are absolutely supported in every way; he leaves no stone left unturned, and every reference from his ten years of research in preparation for writing the book are listed in a bibliography for fact checking. Also added after the first publish date is an afterward on Iraq which I found very interesting because it was written before Saddam Hussein was captured -- Rieff even says things like "two weeks after the war was finished" when we all know now, three years later, that Iraq is nowhere near being finished.

Basically though, the book is about how NGOs have made themselves bitches to world governments, something which, you know, basically defeats the point of the 'N' in the front of the acronym. Through this inability to stand up for themselves and be independent organisations, they've lost the neutrality that once made it easy for them to go into war zones and help those who needed to be helped.

This book most definitely is for a limited audience. It reads much like a doctoral thesis, which is something that I love, but most people would probably tire of the vocabulary or perhaps even not know what words mean. I read some passages to my younger sister, a junior in high school with all As, and she had no idea what I was even saying a good chunk of the time. For one to understand this book, one must have experience in reading research papers and theses, I would say. It has a lot of information to delve through and one has to be able to absorb the information from it as if he or she were doing research for his or her own project. Knowledge of history is also very important, though Rieff does generally explain the history behind each humanitarian tragedy. Because I'm familiar with most of the organisations in the book, I'm not completely sure if it would be important to know them beforehand, though I did find it helpful, because Rieff does include a handy little reference in the back of all of the organisations mentioned.

If you have some sort of undying affection for the UN, I'd recommend you stay as far away from this book as possible, honestly. Because of my nearly psychotic hate of the UN, I enjoyed every poke and prod at both the organisation and Kofi Annan. On the other hand, if you're a big fan of Médecins Sans Frontières, dive right on in -- Rieff basically states that it's the only aid organisation that's worth a damn in this day and age. Additionally, if you're one of the people who thinks that humanitarianism is the panacea for all the world's problems, the thing that will bring utopia to earth, get away from this book and get the hell away from me.

There are two quotes from this book that I think basically sum it up, the first from Rory Brauman:

'It can not be an accident that the one thing tyrants and aid workers have in common is their liking for being posed next to children.'

And David Rieff on the topics of 'The Responsibility to Protect' and human rights getting mixed into humanitarianism:

'A few dissenting figures, notably in certain French humanitarian circles, have argued that humanitarianism as a vocation needs to separate itself from this project [The Responsibility to Protect], no matter how worthy the larger goals of human rights, conflict resolutions, and the creation of the conditions for peace and development in the poor world may seem to aid workers, and no matter how fervently, as citizens, they hope for the success of such efforts. Where other NGOs, particularly those issuing from the British and American aid traditions, often assume aid groups could play a useful role if only they could develop further their human rights and peace-building "capacities," many of the most influential figures within MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] and like-minded agencies such as ACF [Action Contre la Faim] continue to insist that such projects take humanitarianism far beyond any role it is suited for.'

Basically, for humanitarianism to survive, aid workers have to realise that they can't change the world on a grand scale, they can't bring peace, they can't make utopia -- they need to accept that their aid is on a local scale and that despite the fact that the world isn't going to know each thing they do, it's going to make a diffence in someone's life. There must be a return to neutrality so that the work that needs to be done can be done one person at a time.

The author does point out many of the problems with humanitarian non-governmental organizations. They do plenty of self-promotion. They make deals with a variety of thugs just to be permitted to operate in some regions. In other cases, they make deals with various nations, adopting their political causes. Worst of all, they can be misused by those with truly genocidal plans: they can be assigned to give food and lodging to intended victims, drawing them into camps. When armies show up to murder the victims, the humanitarians obviously get out of the way. But just what service does all this provide?

While I found myself disagreeing with the author on plenty of occasions, I think he's written a good book. He's clearly raised all the main issues with humanitarian aid. These include questions of whether whether neutrality, impartiality, outright support for victims, or none of the above is the most effective way to help people.

In the case of a genuine human rights organization, there's no doubt what the goal is. The charters of such organizations are clear: they never are to support outright opponents of human rights politically. Those charters are often violated, but at least we all know what they are supposed to do. But in the case of humanitarian organizations, there are no such goals. The idea is to provide day-to-day help to the needy, and being misused by people who intend to murder the needy may not even violate their charters.

In any case, Rieff shows how humanitarian efforts failed in a most disheartening way in Bosnia and Rwanda. And perhaps he's at his best when he explains how useless the United Nations has been in protecting anyone from aggressors. He quotes one person as explaining that had the UN existed in the 1930s, all of Europe would now be speaking German.

Rieff is pessimistic about the effectiveness of humanitarian aid in many areas. And I have to agree with him about this. Perhaps the worst aspect of it is that such failures, by giving humanitarianism a bad name, will encourage many people who truly want to help others to do something else instead.

Today humanitarian NGOs operate like multi national companies. They ask for our money through media channels and tell us how much good they do and how many people they can save with our help.

Yet these NGOs are barely accountable to their donors and may never reveal the truth about the extent, scope and definitions of their activities. They compromise the "sovereign" status of several nations, are patronising, neo colonial and missionary in scope and don't help a great deal of the time. They are also handmaidens to rich Western countries giving them plenty of excuses not to be decisive or reasons to justify covert operations dressed as humanitarianism.

David Rief exposes all this with passion and gusto speaking as a journalist who has lived through the situations he describes and has had first hand contact with the UN and some of the aid organisations emanating from the USA and Europe he mentions.

Academics and others will disagree but this book is shocking, illuminating and deeply revealing. It is a first step in making NGOs accountable under rigorous standards to donors and receivers. More, much more is needed in this vein and this book is the tip of an iceberg.

This pioneering work has confirmed some of my worst fears, particularly about one or two named organisations. A must for all those who support charities and wish to be informed about how your aid may be used or abused and how to stay skeptical of the claims humanitarian relief organisations make for themselves.

I read this book years ago and it opened my eyes about the realities of sending money and food aid and aid workers to countries in crisis. Not to say that we shouldn't but frankly many many times it isn't foreign aid that these countries really need it is government that isn't corrupt or even military action that will stop the immediate killing as in Rawanda. The author knows his stuff and the book is a thoughtful analysis of what works and what doesn't and what CAUSES MORE PROBLEMS even though the donors want to feel good by giving aid. All of these aid programs should be renewed or not renewed on a basis of 'change for the better'. But alas we just keep sending more money & aid and the corrupt people continue to benifit the most. And in the case of Rawanda, by mandating help without prejudice to either side we caused the killers to get aid so they could survive & kill more. A MUST read for proponents of foreign aid. FIRST DO NO HARM.
barb