Back to Good Thinking

---

Pakistan, and why giving is cultural

According to its latest update, the DEC has raised £15m so far in response to the Pakistan floods, a crisis that has hit 20 million people. (More people, as Jemima Khan pointed out at the weekend, than were affected by Haiti, the Tsunami and Pakistan’s own 2005 earthquake combined.)

Today the number of children needing help is equivalent to the total number of school age children in the UK. An area one and a half times the size of the UK has been affected. More farmland is underwater than we have in the whole of the UK. A billion dollars’ worth of crops have been destroyed, in a country where the average annual wage is $369.

This is big. But £15m is tiny. The DEC raised £101m for Haiti. And that’s just individual giving. Government giving is also significantly lagging behind Haiti and other recent emergencies.

Why?

Perhaps Pakistan, and floods, just don’t have the same cultural meaning as Haiti, and an earthquake. What do I mean by cultural? Let me explain.

Certain things ‘mean’ giving to us. It’s why animals and children evoke compassion and giving, and the environment (arguably a far more important cause), struggles. It’s based on deep-seated emotional triggers and hundreds of years of giving behaviour. It’s cultural.

Immediate events ‘mean’ giving. So the enormous response to the Haiti ‘quake was in marked contrast to our mass indifference to decades of debt-ridden poverty and corruption there.

I’d argue that Pakistan has fallen out of our cultural category that includes Countries Worthy of Support. It’s considered too wealthy (it can afford a nuclear weapons programme) and sophisticated.

But today, rich countries are poor countries too. India, China, Brazil and Pakistan all contain extreme wealth and extreme poverty. I read two years ago that the difference between living in urban China and rural China was the difference between living in Portugal and Namibia. I wonder what it is now?

That’s a challenge for our cultural definition of ‘poor countries’.

Then there’s the kind of event. Slower-acting floods are lower down in the ranking of emergencies – again, completely irrationally – than sudden earthquakes, tsunamis or storms. The initial number of dead seems low compared to the staggering toll of the Haiti quake or the Asian tsunami.

But giving exists to help the living, not bury the dead. Doesn’t it?

Finally, there’s a worry that Pakistan’s corrupt political culture and rising Islamic extremism will divert funds from the relief effort. Which seems to me all the more reason to give to reputable international aid organisations, rather than let local groups with a political or religious agenda fill the void.

After reading posted comments on a Canadian news article I was amazed that people can be so cynical in the face of human suffering. But they are. Pakistan’s relative wealth, political corruption and terrorist connections are all used as reasons not to help the little boy at the top of the page who’s fighting for his life.

So what can we do about this? As communicators, everything. We need to make the case, because right now the case isn’t making itself.

As individuals, we can give. You can do so, right now, Text ‘GIVE’ to 70707 to donate £5 to the DEC. Or visit http://www.thebiggive.org.uk/ The Big Give to make a donation, and the Lloyds foundation will double it.

Charity | Fundraising | Poverty