AID agencies working in the Third World can be racist, the co-author of a new report on the issue said yesterday.
Mr Niall Crowley was speaking at the publication of Shifting the Balance of Power: In Pursuit of Anti-Racist Aid Delivery, a report by Irish Mozambique Solidarity. It was introduced by Ms Liz O'Donnell, Minister of State for Development. "This report teases out the assumptions that can underlie aid, and which can do damage," said Mr Crowley. He highlighted the areas where racism could feature in the work of aid agencies, pointing to the tendency of aid agencies to recruit Irish rather than local personnel; the employment and working conditions of black personnel; the control of decision-making by Irish personnel; the control of budgets by Irish personnel; and the language used for reporting, planning and accountability.
Underlying racist assumptions, he said, caused general dependency, impeded development, wasted money and local energy and damaged relations between the donors and the recipients.
Congratulating Mr Crowley and his co-author, Ms Brigid Quirke, the Minister said the task of donors was to "put developing countries in the driving seat".
"The creation of dependency must always be consciously resisted and replaced by concepts such as empowerment, partnership, local ownership, capacity-building and human development," she said.
Mr Victor Igreja, one of the co-ordinators of a Mozambique agency, Amodega, was involved in the discussions which led to the writing of the report. Irish Mozambique Solidarity is hoping the report will generate further debate about the methodology of aid delivery and that its principles will be adopted by other aid agencies.
