Helping and hindering

A few days after Katrina struck, I noted that I hadn’t seen any offers of aid from the international community. Frankly, I was concerned that anti-American sentiment would inhibit foreign donors from offering emergency relief.

I’m pleased to see that hasn’t happened and more than 50 countries have now offered help and support.

Not everyone has been so generous - Nick Cater’s comment piece in today’s Guardian opens with the contention that “Withholding aid from the United States is the only way to remove its domestic and foreign policy blinkers”. And Cater (who incidentally is the international editor of Giving Magazine) maintains a singular lack of compassion throughout. Here are his closing paragraphs:

If America learned anything from being the recipient of others' charity, it would be worth every penny. But on aid, disasters, climate, poverty, race, religion and more, its failure to listen does great damage to its own vulnerable people and those around the world gripped by poverty, hunger or disease.

After 9/11, the world sent millions of dollars to benefit mainly better-off Americans. Our charity was not necessary then; it is not necessary now.

As Cater himself asked in another context, whatever happened to the humanitarian imperative to aid those in need?