Why is it that so many who set out to tackle poverty and injustice through international aid end up feeling trapped?
Since writing about my troublesome experiences working in international development, an astonishing number of people have told me their own stories of doubt, disillusion, and cognitive dissonance working in an industry that’s supposed to be “doing good.” So many of us have a genuine desire to tackle poverty and injustice, but feel stuck in a system that, for the most part, doesn’t. And with that, a frequent theme of isolation: I thought it was just me.
So, what’s going on here? How come so many who set out to do good through aid end up feeling isolated and cynical? And is there a way to undo the shackles?
IIf you ask Olivia Rutazibwa, the primary culprit is colonialism. In a talk the Belgo-Rwandan researcher gave last month, she said the aid industry perpetuates “a mindset of superiority [of the West] and inferiority [of the rest], whereby the betterment of peoples elsewhere cannot be thought of outside of a Western presence.”
The colonial world order has never actually had the rupture it is believed to have had in the 1960s. Rather, it acts a bit like a zombie that continues to haunt the living world, including — and perhaps especially — the world of international aid.
Rutazibwa believes colonialism shows up in the aid world in many insidious ways. For instance, in the “punishment and reward” dynamic between donor and recipient countries. Or in the ever-changing and sometimes arbitrary places “development experts” locate the origins of problems — as well as the solutions and expertise (regarding the experts, see this recent debate about the “sausagefest” of global poverty thinkers). Or in the racism present in details like travel insurance forms and the phrase capacity building. Who is building whose capacity, and to what end?
In Rutazibwa’s “most generous reading,” those working in aid and development intend to mop up the consequences of the global rampage wreaked by colonialism — the genocide of 80–90 million people, the infectious diseases soldiers brought with them to new lands, and much more. But they’re still working in an industry that assumes “Western” superiority.
No wonder so many people experience a frustrating tension: in part, they’re complicit in continuing colonialism. If you’re having similar doubts, here are five questions you may want to ask yourself to help “de-colonize” your mind and your place in the international aid industry.
1. What “point of origin” underpins my work?
Put your work in its appropriate historical context; that’s the only way we can locate appropriate responsibilities and solutions. Rutazibwa describes this as follows:
“If you start the story about the need for development at the moment that the Western world woke up and said, ‘Let’s be nice to other people!’, it’s completely different than if you start the story from transatlantic enslavement and colonization…. It becomes much more difficult to present Westerners only as firefighters and not the pyromaniacs or arsonists.”
What would international development look like if there were more focus on tackling the arsonists? Who would be running the show? And what would your work look like if you shifted its point of origin?
2. Whose interest is my work serving?
Most aid workers have a well-rehearsed answer to this question, which will likely involve beneficiaries, recipients, participants, or local partners.
But almost invariably, there is another answer — one that tells us where the power lies, where the resources are going and not going, and whose interests really are front and center. For instance, ask yourself why Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai captured the world’s attention after being shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education, while the child victims of U.S. drone attacks remain invisible.
3. How does my experience stack up against my level of responsibility, leverage and pay?
In your career, how has your level of experience correlated with your level of seniority, leverage, and salary? And how has this compared to colleagues of different ethnicities, socioeconomic, regional, or gender backgrounds?
Are you being paid 900% more than your colleagues on account of your nationality? If so, how has this been justified?
4. How am I personally and professionally invested in the status quo?
What would you stand to lose if you woke up tomorrow and found the world free from poverty, hunger, humanitarian disaster, and war? In my case, there was a lot to lose. My livelihood. My identity. My professional network. My admittedly jet-set lifestyle.
Of course, no one would tell a doctor or nurse their career is all wrong because their livelihood depends on people getting sick. But looking at the bloated healthcare sector in the U.S., for example, you can observe what happens when human suffering and economic interest are intertwined.
5. What can I do to act on my conclusions?
For many of us, the thought of speaking about — let alone acting on — our observations feels like setting fire to our home. It triggers a sense of panic about school fees, bills, burning professional bridges, and losing the respect of our peers and superiors.
And that feeling of powerlessness is what greases the machine. So ask yourself: what is one thing, however small, I can do today to throw a bit of sand in the eyes of the colonial zombie?
Then, get louder. Break the silence, name what no one else around you is naming and give others the space and encouragement to do so, too.
RRutazibwa advocates that the international aid industry needs more than a bit of tweaking; that, in its current format, it needs to go. That it needs to make way for reparations and solidarity, which require a fundamentally different institutional setup from the one so many of us are deeply invested in.
I would love to know what I would have made of her talk a decade ago, fresh from an internship in Namibia and well into my master’s program in, yes, Development Studies. I suppose I might not have been very receptive, having just invested a formidable sum of money and time into becoming a member of a professional community Rutazibwa proposes to dissolve.
In any case, it wouldn’t be long before I’d experience for myself how the colonial mindset shapes this community. How, for instance, it kept paving the way for my career. I was one of an army of inexperienced youngsters who, by virtue of being white and “Western”-educated, were given responsibility and power that we would never have had back home.
So, how do we move forward? I’m remembering Margaret Wheatley at the 2017 Meaning Conference, speaking about how to find courage when the mess we’re up against feels overwhelming. She quoted Thomas Merton:
“You start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. Gradually, you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”
A version of this essay originally appeared in The Good Jungle.
