It becomes the figleaf for political inaction. It is sometimes enrolled as an actual channel for political action. As I said earlier, politicizing humanitarian aid would make it the object of negotiations, of bargains, of diversions. In other words, it can reduce the scope of action within which relief is provided. When it is politicized, humanitarian action may be perceived as interference and loose access and the potential to maintain humanitarian space.
Every situation requires careful analysis.
In the vast majority of our projects it is played out away from the media spotlight, and away from the attention of the politically powerful. It is lived most deeply, most intimately in the daily grind of forgotten wars and forgotten crisis. Numerous peoples of Africa literally agonise in a continent rich in natural resources and culture. Hundreds of thousands of our contemporaries are forced to leave their lands and their family to search for work, food, to educate their children, and to stay alive. Men and women risk their lives to embark on clandestine journeys only to end up in a hellish immigration detention centre, or barely surviving on the periphery of our so called civilised world.