Earthquake in Haiti: Who to give?

(BRUXELLES2) The question arises and has been put to me. For my part, I think that giving today in an emergency is undoubtedly a useful gesture. It must be done in this case, not only to organizations that have a storefront, but which have a large response capacity (aircraft, networks, telecommunications), and the most effective administrative cost/response capacity ratio. possible. My preference would therefore go to organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, Action Against Hunger or Caritas (depending on preference) that meet this criterion. On the German side, 10 of the most important charity organizations have centralized their appeals on a single site:  www.aktion-germany-hilft.de


But I would like to add:save your money for later“It is, in fact, past the emergency phase, during reconstruction, that we will most need private contributions.

(Photo: ECHO/Vicente Raimund)

Note: Why would ECHO not collect private donations? The question may arise... for the future. Indeed, the European Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), is - in my opinion - one of the most efficient and effective instruments (1). But it is currently not equipped to collect private donations. However, this path would be justified both from a political point of view (there is always talk of reducing public budgetary resources and mixing public and private resources) and from a practical point of view. ECHO has the capacity to distribute the funds among the fastest and most consistent organisations. He regularly follows the work of NGOs, and can probably better judge and appreciate their effectiveness than we can. Its administrative-intervention ratio is one of the lowest. And its agents - for those I have been able to approach - have both great modesty, a good knowledge of the field and a "sense of duty" (a sense that is no longer always so shared within the European Commission) . Finally, the money is under control: triple control, internal (Commission audit), "police" (Olaf, Anti-Fraud Office), parliamentary (European Parliament). This offers some serious guarantees as to the possibility of leakage.

(1) Created in 1992, in a somewhat improvised way, Echo gradually took shape. Since 1996, it has been a full directorate-general of the European Commission.