Don’t lose faith in critical aid to our region

People queue to receive items at a USAID distribution point in Port-au-Prince. Picture: AFP

I first met Jill Clark in 1997 in Port Moresby. I was working to establish health clinics and she was helping children affected by gang violence.

A true force of nature. Canadian, tall, hard-charging, gregarious and big hearted. She was what I thought an aid worker should be. We kept in contact as we both responded to emergencies around the world at the time such as East Timor and the war in Afghanistan.

Then the US invaded Iraq.

As the invasion began humanitarian organisations were rushing in. I worked for ChildFund and we needed to send a team to Baghdad to help children affected.

I couldn’t go so I thought of Jill. She would be perfect. Few people were as good as her, both in understanding how kids are impacted by violence and how to lead a team in the midst of it. She went to Iraq with our small team in May 2003.

Three months later on August 19th a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into the headquarters of the UN in Baghdad. Jill was standing in the lobby with a colleague Dave Brown. They had just attended a meeting there to plan what could be done for children in that city.

Dave was thrown out of the building by the blast through a large plate glass window but miraculously survived. Jill struck a wall instead and was killed instantly.

Twenty-two humanitarians lost their lives that day. Now, August 19 is remembered as World Humanitarian Day. We remember all the aid workers who have given their lives. I remember Jill.

Ten years later I got to meet another very special person, Denis Mukwege runs the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Eastern Congo.

Congo has always had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. After seeing as a boy growing up that so many local women had no place to deliver their babies safely he resolved to do something about it. He became a doctor and founded the Panzi Hospital in 1999 specifically to help these mothers.

However, the first patient to arrive at Panzi Hospital was not a delivering mother. Instead it was a young woman, a rape victim who had been shot in the genitals. The number of rape victims arriving at the hospital grew exponentially. Panzi Hospital became what they call the “reluctant experts” in gynaecological trauma known as fistula repair.

The organisation I worked for provided them clean water. Fistula repair requires large amounts of water.

We provided this clean water every day in partnership with USAID.

Recently Panzi Hospital has been overrun by M-23 rebels. The team providing clean water remained bravely through the attacks.

But now they have been stopped.

They have received notice that USAID support has stopped and ordered to put down tools.

As I write this, I am in Vanuatu. Our neighbour.

They experienced an earthquake in December and World Vision is helping them rebuild. I’ve walked through parts of the city that were destroyed and schools damaged beyond repair.

They were told that overnight our USAID funding for reconnecting clean water to the school had been stopped. It was one of thousands of grants cancelled.

Now this isn’t the first time the world has cut aid dramatically.

In 1990 the Cold War was over and the West stripped aid budgets thinking that they weren’t needed. How did that go? The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the 1998 Kenyan US Embassy bombing, the growing influence of Iraq, the collapse of the Asian Economic Tigers, the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, and finally September 11.

Following that fateful day we saw a steady increase in aid spending to maintain a safer world.

I have heard many criticisms of aid the last few weeks. Yes, I have seen the TikToks making fun of some silly, supposedly USAID-funded, projects. But this is not what I have seen and been part of for my working life. The vast majority is simple.

It’s convoys of trucks filled with emergency food supplies driving through the deserts to feed millions. It’s doctors and nurses running health clinics up distant rivers or in overcrowded slums. It’s what keeps the entire health system of Papua New Guinea running. And the people who deliver it have their faults but I have found them mostly to be like Jill or Denis Mukwege. And I am proud to know them. And all of this cost less than one per cent of our county’s GDP.

Stores are loaded at RAAF Base Amberley onto a C-17A Globemaster III bound for Vanuatu following a devastating earthquake in December. Picture: ADF

Our parents used to call this “giving back” or simply being generous. And through that generosity we create a safer world not just for the children of Vanuatu or the Congo but for us too. So when we think of aid let’s not think “we have to put ourselves first”.

It’s important we learn from history. Everything in our world is connected. Australians are connected to our neighbours in Vanuatu, PNG and even the Congo and beyond.

Our generosity can be connected to our safety. As much as we want to “put ourselves first” it turns out we are all in this “together”. But I still think simple human compassion is a good enough reason. Those women in Panzi Hospital could use the help.

Daniel Wordsworth is chief executive of World Vision Australia.