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Plans for a maritime pier to deliver aid and alleviate suffering in Gaza are being blasted by some as a humanitarian Band-aid and an act of diplomatic desperation.
Also in today’s edition: Localization has inspired a seismic shift in power for one international NGO.
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Pier pressure
The idea to construct a floating maritime pier off the shores of Gaza to speed aid deliveries into the starved coastal strip is being met with skepticism by many NGOs pointing out that there’s no shortage of humanitarian aid. The problem is that most of it is just idling away on land, blocked by Israeli inspections and imperiled by constant bombardment.
“When I read about the pier, my reaction was: really?” says Deepmala Mahla of CARE International. “First air drops, and now a floating pier, all when we have hundreds and thousands of food and other required material just miles away from the border, all ready to get in?”
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My colleagues Elissa Miolene, Michael Igoe, and Colum Lynch spoke to aid groups who said the crux of the issue has never been about getting aid to Gaza. It’s about persuading Israel to let it in.
“It’s not due to the lack of supplies, and it’s not due to the lack of partners who want to bring them in,” says Kate Phillips-Barrasso of Mercy Corps. “It’s entirely due to the conditions that have been set with the entry of aid in through those land crossings — some of which, I might add, would not be different than the aid that would enter through a maritime corridor.”
Many also wonder if the pier is a performative last resort.
“If anything, this move should be read as a signal of frustration and desperation [from the U.S. government] to try to break past the barriers that we have not been able to get through for the last five-ish months or so,” Phillips-Barrasso says. “I do think they’re trying, but the U.S. has to do something different than what it’s been doing before, or we can very clearly identify the trajectory of where this is going to end.”
Read: Aid groups doubt Biden's pier will solve Gaza's problems
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Putting their money where their mouth is
It’s one thing to preach the virtues of localization; it’s quite another to voluntarily give up your livelihood in the name of it.
The White Ribbon Alliance is practicing what it preaches by shuttering its U.S. team.
By the end of the year, White Ribbon — an international coalition focused on maternal, reproductive, and women’s health — will transfer power to its partner organizations and national alliances, which will decide for themselves how they’d like to lead, rather than being led by a U.S.-based coordinating body.
“Decisions won't come from the top. They will come from us, as a bottom-up approach,” Dr. Amanullah Khan, who heads White Ribbon’s national chapter in Pakistan, tells Elissa. “It’s just beyond imagination — that’s what the national alliances are feeling.”
Where does that leave the U.S. team? For Kristy Kade, White Ribbon’s CEO, and seven other Washington, D.C.-based staffers, it means they will be out of a job.
“It’s hard, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do next,” Kade says. “But the only change you can really, truly make is the change you make for yourself.”
“We’ve always abided by the philanthropic principle of ask, listen, and act in our programming,” she adds. “And that’s what we’re aiming to do here. We asked, we listened, and we acted accordingly.”
In fact, in their latest report, a dozen of the organization’s U.S. staff members crouched down, axes in hand, at a recent team retreat — the ax-throwing venue a clear nod to the agency’s closure. The photo caption read, “Get ready to axe, listen, and act!”
Read: White Ribbon Alliance sunsets US operation to shift power locally (Pro)
+ For more stories on locally led development, check out our localization page. Also stay tuned for a special announcement on a new content series launching later this week.
British brain drain
Speaking of axes, the U.K. government has acknowledged a “severe” risk that development skills and expertise are being lost, more than three years after it axed its separate aid department.
It’s a mea culpa of sorts, though it’s unclear what practical implications the admission will have for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, which absorbed the now-defunct Department for International Development in a controversial 2020 merger.
Devex U.K. Correspondent Rob Merrick writes that the National Audit Office, a public spending watchdog, warns that internal “trust in the organisation” is still being damaged by a failure to align “pay and allowances” of staff who worked at DFID and at FCDO.
FCDO “monitoring has shown that, throughout the period, staff have experienced change fatigue and are unhappy that key issues such as terms and conditions and career pathways have yet to be resolved,” the watchdog’s report said.
Crucially, the report warns that “the loss of dedicated senior development roles has reduced capacity and undermined FCDO’s credibility and Official Development Assistance (ODA) accountability” — highlighting a 14% fall in the number of expert adviser roles.
“FCDO has been aware of the risk of not sustaining its international development skills and expertise,” the report said — noting the risk was classed as “severe,” and that the organization is “working to mitigate” it.
Read: ‘Severe’ risk to aid work from controversial merger, UK government admits (Pro)
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NextGen, same old
“USAID is doubling down, or tripling down, on its prior errors.”
— Olusoji Adeyi, president, Resilient Health SystemsAdeyi didn’t have too many nice things to say about USAID’s latest contract within its NextGen suite of health programs during a podcast with myself and Devex President and Editor-in-Chief, Raj Kumar.
Rather, he criticized the 10-year, $17 billion endeavor because the contracts will likely go to the usual suspects — behemoth U.S.-based contracting firms — contradicting the agency’s stated goal of shifting more funds to smaller local entities.
“Maybe, USAID has some monopoly of knowledge that the rest of us do not have, and that is why they have chosen to go down this path, this $17 billion path. I really don't believe that. ... I think the second conclusion is far more likely, which is that USAID lacks the institutional wisdom to change what it has been doing, which was clearly inappropriate and suboptimal,” he said, referring to Devex’s investigation that the previous global health supply chain contract, managed solely by Chemonics, was marred by mistakes and delays.
“And I think USAID is committing this error of what I call escalation of commitment. They could do things very differently. How so? They could very simply subsidize those [health] products at the factory gate … get out of the way and let the countries themselves, or groups of countries, do the procurement by themselves. USAID has no rational business serving as a purchaser of commodities and awarding these unfathomably large contracts to U.S. contractors. I think it infantilizes the countries.”
Listen: Is it business as usual as USAID issues its latest $5 billion contract?
In other news
A U.N. agency said refugee camps in Chad are facing a dire humanitarian crisis due to overcrowding and a lack of access to more funding. [AP]
Cholera has killed at least 54 people in Somalia, and aid agencies are calling for action to prevent the outbreak from worsening. [VOA]
A report revealed that nearly 3.5 billion people lack safe sanitation, while half of the world's population faces water scarcity for several months annually. [DW]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
