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A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
by David Rieff
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2002-10-01)
ISBN: 068480977X
EAN: 9780684809779
Dewey Decimal #: 361.26
Hardcover: 384 pages
Release Date: 2002-10-01
SKU: 00-FOAH-0FHW
Condition: Very Good
Comments: No marks or highlights on text. Cover has minor edge wear
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose. Humanitarian relief workers, writes David Rieff, are the last of the just. And in the Bosnias, the Rwandas, and the Afghanistans of this world, humanitarianism remains the vocation of helping people when they most desperately need help, when they have lost or stand at risk of losing everything they have, including their lives. Although humanitarianism's accomplishments have been tremendous, including saving countless lives, the lesson of the past ten years of civil wars and ethnic cleansing is that it can do only so much to alleviate suffering. Aid workers have discovered that while trying to do good, their efforts may also cause harm. Drawing on firsthand reporting from hot war zones around the world -- Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, and most recently Afghanistan -- Rieff describes how the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Oxfam, and other humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of political neutrality, which gave them access to victims of wars, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing. This advocacy has come at a high price. By calling for intervention -- whether by the United Nations or by "coalitions of the willing" -- humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers, at times becoming a fig leaf for actions those powers wish to take for their own interests, or for the major powers' inaction. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do what they do best -- alleviate suffering -- they must reclaim their independence. Except for relief workers themselves, no one has looked at humanitarian action as seriously or as unflinchingly, or has had such unparalleled access to its inner workings, as Rieff, who has traveled and lived with aid workers over many years and four continents. A cogent, hard-hitting report from the front lines, A Bed for the Night shows what international aid organizations must do if they are to continue to care for the victims of humanitarian disasters.
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Customer Reviews
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A must read for proponents of foreign aid/UN or otherwise
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-03-31
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
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... my thoughts exactly.
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-01-13
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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Required reading
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-04-12
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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Asks the right questions
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-12-05
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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An important book about an important problem
Rating  (4)
Date: 2004-06-18
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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