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What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?
Macmillan
September 2010
On Sale: September 14, 2010
240 pages
ISBN: 0805092900
EAN: 9780805092905
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A no-holds-barred, controversial exposvΓ© of the financial profiteering and ambiguous ethics that pervade the world of humanitarian aid A vast industry has grown up around humanitarian aid: a cavalcade of organizationsβsome 37,000βcompete for a share of the $160 billion annual prize, with "fact-inflation" sometimes ramping up disaster coverage to draw in more funds. Insurgents and warring governments, meanwhile, have made aid a permanent feature of military strategy: refugee camps serve as base camps for genocidaires, and aid supplies are diverted to feed the troops. Even as humanitarian groups continue to assert the holy principle of impartiality, they have increasingly become participants in aid's abuses. In a narrative that is impassioned, gripping, and even darkly absurd, journalist Linda Polman takes us to war zones around the globeβfrom the NGO-dense operations in "Afghaniscam" to the floating clinics of Texas Mercy Ships proselytizing off the shores of West Africaβto show the often compromised results of aid workers' best intentions. It is time, Polman argues, to impose ethical boundaries, to question whether doing something is always better than doing nothing, and to hold humanitarians responsible for the consequences of their deeds.
 Media BuzzDaily Show with Jon Stewart - September 29, 2010
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