UKH

Are the government of the opinion that we will consider that they are donating a large sum to help in the flooding problems in Libya?

£1 million pounds is a paltry and pathetic sum of money!

Surely we can do better than that, and not be so bloody mean.

In reply to veteye:

It’s an initial first response I thought with more to follow?

In reply to veteye:

The UK is the largest contributor to the CERF fund which is giving $10 million (about 10% is UK).  But we should still give more. 

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Which equates to ~£1 Million (In fact less since you say dollars)!

I'm just embarrassed that we cannot be more helpful straight away with a sizeable government donation. We don't have to compare what other countries are giving.

I do understand that we have to be careful how we channel the money to avoid pilfering of funds in to dubious corners, never to be seen again.

In reply to veteye:

I know all that, I was pointing out that in reality the UK govt has given £1mill, the UN has given $10mill (but the UK is the biggest contributor to this pot, about 10%), so we’ve given way more than £1 mill. Agree we should give more. 

Check out what others are doing if you want:

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/foreign-offers-aid-response-libyas-flo...

In reply to veteye:

If you're that bothered, why don't you get on the first flight over there and help?

You're a vet, not short of a Bob or two.

In reply to Maggot:

You may be surprised, but I personally do not earn as much as many junior doctors, and I work probably more hours (generally working a six day week), and I work at home on non-clinical things. I spend a hell of a lot of my time trying to employ staff, since there has been a vast shortage of vets and vet nurses since well before any mention of a shortage of medical staff. Thus I also do not readily have much wealth in terms of free time. Hence I had decided to go to the last night of the proms, and organised my time off for last Saturday. In the end I decided to go north. So I drove to Braemar. Slept at Linn of Dee. Got up early. Spent a long day in the Cairngorms. Got back to the van ~7pm. Then because of the lousy weather, flooding, and closure of the A66, and M60 took longer than expected to travel home. I got home at 4.06am, and I was at work for 9am on Monday. 

I do not live a sybaritic lifestyle:-come and see my house.

A lot of my money has gone on equipment. 

I do not have a problem with giving my own money to the poor people of Libya, but I cannot spend the time, as I don't get time off in any degree. 

What is your lofty, high, and mighty position, which you think has given you the gavel to be cynical judge?

In reply to Maggot:

Asinine comment

In reply to Andy Hardy:

You’re a lot more polite than me!

In reply to Andy Hardy:

Absolutely, maggot by name...

In reply to veteye:

I assume this an initial amount that will.be spent to get things going, not the final total. 

.

In reply to Maggot:

Aside from being an ignorant and nasty comment, it’s actually quite surprising how many people thing they can have a go at humanitarian work. At a slight remove may people seem to love giving to very small charities so essentially funding someone else to have a crack without much backing. Humanitarian work is complex! It’s often super hard to work out what’s going on, who should be given aid, what the aid should be, and how long it should be given for. There are all sorts of unintended consequences, whether that’s accidentally pushing up prices elsewhere, causing increased ethnic tension, or exacerbating existing inequalities. 
 

Obviously no one would suggest doing a bit of DIY policing or that an untrained person has the skills to extinguish fires, but aid work somehow seems fair game. It really isn’t.

In reply to Maggot:

Brilliant insight.

Please check your browser favourites. I think you might have clicked on the wrong tab.
Please head back to the Daily Mail comments section where I expect your views are well liked and respected.

In reply to veteye:

Real pity this thread has got derailed, it has potential to go in lots of interesting directions….

I don’t know all the details about how giving emergency aid works. Libyan govt/s are totally useless. A few years back, a leading Libyan Hydrologist wrote a detailed paper, predicting exactly what has happened, and was totally ignored. Libya has loads of wealth, clearly very badly spent. 

A close friends is from Libya. She sent me videos of the weather leading up to the destruction - I’ve never witnessed anything like it. A group of women from North Africa were due to have an event in my centre tonight, but cancelled because one of their group has lost most of her family due to the disaster. 

In reply to Maggot:

 Is this some kind of joke? I can scarcely believe anyone thinks this a meaningful response. There’s a simple choice, it seems. Unless you’re prepared to go and lend a hand personally you can’t have a view on the government’s response. I’m normally reluctant to slag people off on here, but if this is a considered contribution you are just an imbecile.

People who support (by actually giving money) are generally reluctant to talk about it because it is nobody else’s business and they don’t wish to boast. You know nothing about my or veteye’s or anyone else’s financial position or what percentage of our income we give to charity. I’d just creep back into your cave if I were you.

In reply to veteye:

Better to send medical aid, physical items, not cash. Libya has no shortage of cash from oil, it's a question of how it's spent and internal politics, that's why these dams were never maintained in the first place. Perhaps disaster kits, which are tents, water filters etc.. the likes of which are sent to Central America after hurricanes. But not cash. 

In reply to ExiledScot:

I assume, admittedly from a position of relative ignorance (it is a long time since I studied the subject), that most of not all aid will be delivered through NGOs or through the deployment of assets in our control.

In reply to The New NickB:

We can hope.

In reply to ExiledScot:

This can cause its own problems, the ideal is to support local government and local groups as much as possible in dealing with the issues in a way that minimises graft and corruption and unbalancing the local  job market. A nearly impossible task especially in  politically hot potato regions. 
just highlights the specialist skills required to deliver aid effectively where sometimes less is more in the long term.

In reply to The New NickB:

I think you are right.  Best thing we can do is donate to recognised emergency fund (Eg Red Cross) and get the gift aid shoved on. 

In reply to veteye:

Is cash the bottle neck in the first few days?

Long term for rebuild etc absolutely, but short term you can only spend so much cash when the bottle neck is presumably the logistics of getting people and equipment to where it needs to be.

I think a more important question is what supplies and support have been sent, not cash.

Italy, Egypt, Greece etc would have been best place for the first day or two to provide immediate support, but for the UK, what is it? Six days now, should have support arriving by now.

In reply to veteye:

Hopefully we'll have a couple of Royal Navy Ships parked offshore doing disaster relief I think we're really good at it and probably one of the best types of help.

Cheers

Toby

In reply to montyjohn:

Cash is more important than anything, but needs to go to the hands of people in humanitarian need, not the government. It’s standard humanitarian practice in pretty much any humanitarian situation (both acute and long term). So govs like UK need to make available to agencies that can provide that. 

In reply to Maggot:

I take you are fully aware of the Billions of Pounds the UK has taken in oil revenues from Libya over the years ?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/may/30/libya.oilandpetrol

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/libya-floods-appeal?

Done

In reply to broken spectre:

Nice one, same as me. 

In reply to d508934:

Been thinking about this. Normally, I say ‘cash is what’s needed’ but usually this is about the discussion about people having charity whip rounds for donations of blankets and tins of beans, whose transport costs end up costing more than the value of the goods. When I looked at the article I linked, I cringed at France donating a field hospital. But on reflection, if they need hospitals then donating one is way better (quicker) than giving them the cash to buy one. Not clear cut. 

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

It’s one thing to give a hospital, another to provide it with staff, supplies and power over what might be quite a long time. That does require money. The usual deal in humanitarian work would be to provide physical infrastructure, eg water and sanitation systems, hospitals, etc, as well as either some staff to run those things or to train locals to do that (obviously a city will have some skilled people there already). But except in the very worst circumstances, most agencies prefer to give direct cash transfers to individual households as it grants them a much larger degree of autonomy and control. 

In reply to Toby_W:

People often say “the army can help!” but generally no sovereign government wants the military of another nation on their soil, for all the obvious reasons. The military aren’t particularly good at aid work and using them creates all sorts of problems around neutrality in potentially fraught situations. There is a reason most governments channel aid money through the various UN agencies (WFP, UNOCHA, etc) and through the large NGOs, as they are far more impartial organisations and often employ staff from that country or at least that region. 

In reply to seankenny:

Yes I see your point more generally but it was something I trained for and we did as a ship can provide clean water, medical treatment, food and a lot of other support very quickly which is often what is most needed.

Cheers

Toby

In reply to Toby_W:

Sure, but can the Navy do that better than people who do it for a job full time? Working out who is in genuine need and who is just trying it on for some free stuff requires some local workers which the forces are unlikely to have in the right numbers. The Navy is unlikely to have contacts with the local authorities whose agreement is vital for work to be done. Did they train you in handing out stuff efficiently from the stores or did they train you in the actual complexities of humanitarian work? 

Again, this line of thinking falls into the “it’s so obvious anyone could do it” mentality. When it is really pretty complicated.
 

In reply to seankenny:

It's many peoples full time job in a navy, or military in general. Medics, doctors, mechanics, electricians etc... ships carry equipment for their own deployment, say putting marines ashore etc but also deliberately for humanitarian aid. Navy ships have followed hurricanes ready to go ashore on Caribbean islands immediately after, or rescued /helped people following volcano eruptions and earthquakes. For many onboard this isn't likely their first incident. The bonus of a military team giving aid in the uk or overseas is they'll be as self sufficient as they are told they need to be, they'll self support and use no local resources. 

Ships will have tents, blankets, first aid, generators, lighting, water pumps, filters, ration packs etc..they won't generally need supplying with anything first. 

There are times in the uk when military aid to the civil community(macc) is used, but it could be used more if some local authorities or emergency services weren't obsessed at looking like they can cope when they often can't or are struggling. 

In reply to ExiledScot:

I think you’re missing my point - which is that aid work goes beyond those occupations.

Yes, the Caribbean - where there are several British Overseas Territories, negating the political issues of a foreign military on sovereign turf. The British state is in part responsible for them. 

You mean not employing local drivers, translators, day labourers, cooks, cleaners, guards, etc? That’s… not a win. The thing is, in most crises there is still a functioning economy, some stuff still works, lots of people aren’t directly affected. So it’s not as if self-sufficiency is a prerequisite for working there, in fact it’s less beneficial for locals.

Aid agencies also have warehouses with exactly those things. Which can be put on airplanes or in trucks which are faster than ships and… less dependent on the disaster being close to the sea. 

“If only these pesky foreigners thought like me and did the sensible British thing it would be a jolly damn sight better all round!” Why on earth would a local leader be worried about, say, questions of legitimacy and even competence? Would that have anything to do with the often violent and brutal politics and ways of doing business in many very poor countries? Not wanting to lose one’s job at gunpoint seems fairly reasonable to me. Obviously some (many?) are crap and corrupt but that means working even harder to appear neutral and unaligned with foreign governments. 
 

The only way humanitarian work gets done at all is at the invite of the government there, so agencies’ presence is already an admission of not being able to cope. Remind me how well our politicians do with admissions of failure…

In reply to seankenny:

I completely agree with your thinking about do-gooders not being effective on the ground and maybe even doing more harm than good, but in the case of a medically well equipped ship and crew being made available to treat patients in urgent need when the local hospitals are overwhelmed, I would have thought that would come into the category of genuinely useful assistance.

In reply to john arran:

So, who decides what they are going to do? The Navy are going to take orders from the Libyan government? Riiiight. The Libyans are just going to let a foreign power in to act independently? Might happen, might not, and I can see why it wouldn’t. How are the Navy going to work with everyone else? After all, they aren’t part of the humanitarian framework that’s developed to deal with exactly these kinds of events, which occur very regularly. 
 

These sorts of questions may strike you as nonsense politics that get in the way when people’s lives are in danger… but where resources are being distributed and power deployed, there’s always politics, because those are essentially political questions. The idea that we can do aid work without those constraints ignores decades of experience.

In reply to seankenny:

I completely sympathise with your position, really. But the example is one that potentially could be about as clear-cut as could be possible. A Libyan government accepting medical aid to patients assessed as in need by mainstream charities, onboard a ship docked in a harbour with Libyan permission, is very far from being a clear problem. There's a point at which any government would and should legitimately refuse the offer of aid in a crisis, especially if that offer might come with strings attached or might interfere with plans already in place, but it's hard to see the offer of off-shore emergency medical treatment fallling into that category. Yes, there could be geopolitics at play that might give good reason to decline such an offer, but such an offer in itself would need a very good reason to decline.

In reply to john arran:

But there are two Libyan governments! Which drastically reduces the chances that anything will be clear cut. 

As a BBC report puts it:

“Having two feuding governments makes it difficult to respond to disasters in a swift, co-ordinated manner… countries that would like to send support to Libya following the flooding have had issues negotiating with the two administrations.”

 

Even relatively reasonable governments put all sorts of limitations and restrictions upon legitimate aid work. As I said above, governments just do not like the admission of failure or inability to cope, even when this is incredibly obvious (British politics right now should give you a clear sense of the sorts of dynamics in play).

Governments usually like to keep an eye on what aid workers are doing. Sometimes their reasons for doing so are illegitimate, but the very fact that this involves taking their citizens off shore and working in a way they can’t monitor and control is enough to put governments off the idea. This is presumably why the FCDO don’t suggest doing this in their statement on the crisis. 

This may not make much sense to you, but you’re not a Libyan politician - and the days when Brits could steam a warship into town and tell the local chaps what to do are long gone.
 

 

In reply to Maggot:

I don't like you.  You're not funny.

In reply to seankenny:

I get all that, but nobody's suggesting anybody "tell the local chaps what to do". Just to offer a well staffed medical facility for people in need. If that's really all the offer is, then to decline it would raise big political qustions as to why.

In reply to john arran:

Given that organising people means telling them what to do, then someone is going to be telling someone else what to do. The Libyans telling the British Navy? I find this highly unlikely.

But governments refuse things that would improve the well being of their populations all the time. Or they are really really resistant to potentially useful offers of help. I’ve seen this happen in real life and also studied development economics, which is basically looking at dozens of ways people organise things rather less effectively than they could even though we know better ways of doing things. The main takeaway I got from all that was that people in poor countries face lots of incentives and also constraints that are not necessarily immediately obvious to us western people. It’s less of a scandal and more just something frustrating and totally typical. I think you’re just wishing those incentives and constraints away because it would be “better”. 

The FCDO - who deal with stuff like this all the time - have gone via the UN/multilateral route because it will be quicker and more effective.  

In reply to seankenny:

We're clearly not on the same wavelength so perhaps better to let this one lie.

Fundamentally, I agree with you in all but the most specific of cases.

In reply to john arran:

Yeah I just don’t see how you believe that anything to do with allocating resources can ever be a purely technocratic decision! You must believe in exceptions to this, I guess I don’t. 

Thanks. My annoyance at the general tenor of discussions about aid work is that everyone thinks it’s just a matter of putting Useful Object A in Place B for Distressed Person C. Which is like saying climbing is just a matter of getting to the top of something.

In reply to Maggot:

If you're that quick to make a snarky remark, I assume you're already over there doing everything you can to help fellow human beings in their hours of greatest need.  Yes?

If not, then you're neither use nor ornament.  

T.

In reply to seankenny:

Military aid overseas is never about anyone giving orders, it's about bridging a gap, when local administrations have neither the means or the leadership to do so. That window has likely gone, and Libya's political situation is what is causing the problems now, as even traditional charities aren't getting access. 

Having done MACC and knowing we could do better than the existing civil response you still never just take over, "how can we help best", "what's most critical", "should we start by helping with.." etc all help you identify the task at hand, without shaming the local effort, or them losing face. There is never a distinct chain of command, where one agency falls under another, but a more team like effort.

In reply to ExiledScot:

 

It was Libya’s political problems causing the issue in the first place - too busy fighting to be able to repair vital infrastructure, or to best capitalise on their oil wealth. The window to help absolutely hasn’t gone, there is a lot of need and will be for some time. If the military aid process only works for a couple of days, it’s simply not very useful. 

What does “bridging a gap, when local administrations have neither the means or the leadership to do so” mean anyhow? You’re saying local authorities should lead, but don’t, then our military steps in and suddenly there’s a situation where… no leadership is necessary. 

Where did you work?

So most aid agencies go to great lengths never to be seen working with the military - they protect their neutrality very keenly. They have to work in lots of other countries, often in areas run by people like al Shabab who are deeply anti-western and whose leadership watch TV. Why risk the deaths of your employees because you looked to be too close to the British military? 

I get that for a lot of people seeing our military jump in and help is very appealing, but there are good arguments as to why our own government doesn’t use them as its primary method of delivering aid.

In reply to seankenny:

You're trying to precisely define something that's almost random, a dam, volcano, hurricane in any random urban area in any country, no two are the same. All disasters differ, you can't pre plan that much who will run things, etc..you just get the job done as best you can working within guidelines.

I'm ex military sar, I've been overseas but also done MACC in the uk, floods, fires and large SAR jobs with plane and train crashes, everything and anything. The one certainty is that it's almost guaranteed that it will be the first real large incident that the senior police person, fire, ambulance or local council authority will have been on and the chances of them experiencing another are very very low. Which means they've got zero real disaster management experience to fall back on. But the for us it wouldn't likely have been our first MACC job that year, first plane crash and so on. The trick while police have primacy was steering them in the right direction without politely telling them in front of juniors they were making poor decisions, sometimes you just had to be less tactful if lives matter. Typically the jobs with arrogant senior police and ambulance who wouldn't take advice also never had hot debriefs a week or so after, to improve disaster planning policy. Generally senior fire officers were as good as their troops, probably to do with their promotion system.

In reply to ExiledScot:

Yes but the UN have an actual agency dedicated to coordinating humanitarian work and most aid agencies absolutely do plan how to deal with disasters. There’s also academic work done on which type of responses work well over the long term, hence the move towards cash transfers as they have been found effective in many circumstances.

I do think however that the type of disasters we are talking about are very different.

I’m interested to know where overseas.

Which of course is totally different to doing it abroad for the reasons I’ve outlined above. 

It’s also worth noting that disaster response is much wider than SAR or indeed the first few days. I wrote a report on the post-tsunami response in Aceh, Indonesia, which looked at how a confused system of property rights was holding up the recovery process. Legal issues played a role in preventing people getting back on their feet but it’s probably not the most obvious problem facing disaster survivors. Goes to show it’s a complex business.

In reply to seankenny:

I think we are just on different wavelengths, I'm talking about the basics that save lives initially and keep people alive in the aftermath, that 2-14 days post event period. Food, clean water and shelter.You're  talking academically or theoretically about rebuilding months down the line. Those people in libya who have bodies contaminating water supplies, no shelters etc.. aren't really concerning themselves with property ownership and building rights. 

In reply to ExiledScot:

Yeah I get that you’re an initial responder. But in international humanitarian incidents the first few months counts as the initial phase, for the obvious reason that people still need to drink and use the bathroom on day 15…

I’m talking about both! Food, water and shelter os a short term and a long term need. I’ve seen huge water systems in refugee camps that take months to build, and are necessary because people can end up living in camps for an awful long time.

You may scoff at ownership rights etc but I can assure you that things like certificates, deeds and so on are amongst the first things people take if they’ve any time to leave at all. And this is absolutely not academic stuff - it’s a real life problem for plenty of people who lose their home.