Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
I think you're rather making my point for me, Tom--which, as you'll remember, had to do with Marc's understandable concerns about the cost-effectiveness of front-line humanitarian agencies and NGOs. Specifically, after crunching the numbers for one agency's international staff costs (UNRWA), you're suggesting that the might be an extra 2% in staff costs that don't show up in the General Fund budget.
First, I would argue that this hardly changes the big picture. Second, we can hardly assume that international staff are irrelevant to programme delivery (the focus of my initial comment), any more that we can assume that everyone above 03 is irrelevant to the combat operations of the US Army. Third, as I noted before, in giving a quick picture of programme/administrative costs in one UN agency, I lumped a whole series of costs into the administrative side that are actually mission-critical to programme delivery: the transportation pool, comms, security, negotiating supplies of food/medicine/school supplies past the Israelis into Gaza, and so forth.
I would also add that the funding of international staff positions through the Secretariat isn't really creative accounting, since donors are fully aware of it, and it is taken into account in assessment of cost-effectiveness. Moreover, the tendency among donors has been to argue that UNRWA doesn't spend enough on management, and to push for more--not fewer--staff resources in that area.
Now the irony of this discussion (for those who have just joined us!) is that it has nothing to do with Haiti, since UNRWA is the only UN humanitarian agency not active there :wry:
Having worked with the military, other national security agencies, and international organizations, I would be hard-pressed to argue that the latter is the most spendthrift of the three. Certainly there are serious problems, which I've argued before in other contexts, and certainly I've encountered wasteful spending and poor programme designs. However, some level of background clutter is inevitable in large institutions, and ought be systematically addressed rather than throwing the humanitarian baby out with the anecdotal bathwater.
Moreover, in the case of humanitarian crisis, I think it is undeniably the case that the lead UN and humanitarian agencies are more cost-effective in delivering assistance than is the military, if one properly costs out the price-per-client or price-per-ton (a point that more than one NGO has made, as they watch $200-800 million C-17s land at PAP). Indeed, there was an OECD study a few years back that looked at the issue in some detail, and came to similar conclusions.. I'll see if I can dig it up.
This, incidentally, is absolutely NOT a criticism of US and Canadian military relief operations in Haiti--as you know, the reason why the military is so costly is precisely because it has the standby ability to do rapid airlift, to move transport in country, has embedded comms, security, logistics, and ISR, etc. There was simply no alternative after the earthquake, and the military has shown speed, dedication, flexibility, and even appropriate amounts of political sensitivity and humility in conducting the mission (as one member of the 82nd comment in the WaPo the other day, "we're like a football team being put in front of a Ping-Pong table. It's a learning curve")
It is inevitably the case that the post-earthquake development of Haiti will be undertaken by the Haitians, in collaboration with international organizations, NGOs, and donors. If there are legitimate concerns about the ineffective use of reconstruction funds--and there certainly are, both in terms of agency inefficiencies and local corruption--let us think about how those can be practically minimized in the timeframes available to us. Those timeframes are pressing: we currently still have hundreds of thousands with inadequate water, sanitation, and shelter (on top of the many Haitians who already lacked these things before the earthquake). We also have the hurricane/flooding season fast approaching. To paraphrase that great sage, Dick Cheney: you go to reconstruction with the aid community you've got.