Bearing Witness to an Uncharitable Empire by Paula Akpan

Paula Akpan (she/her), is a historian and writer. You can now pre-order her book, When We Ruled, here.

We all know the image well.

The flies that settle on solemn faces. The children who shyly hide from the camera behind a parent's legs. The plastic buckets they clutch are often filled with water that ranges from translucent to opaque with dirt. A sombre voiceover always accompanies these videos, one that recounts hardships faced and implores the viewer to pledge their support in cash. This is Africa, we’re told. And it won’t survive without the benevolence of the West.

But, during these campaign videos, the galas and awards ceremonies, and the televised events jam-packed with recognisable celebrity faces, the how and why of NGO presence on the African continent is never examined. Instead, these histories are evacuated: how primarily European colonists settled in lands that were home to African kingdoms and empires, how they brought religious moralism, militarisation and weaponry, and an agenda to co-opt, exploit and enslave the people, their land and their cultures.

We can connect the dots: from the way these colonial empires systematically attempted to expunge Indigenous belief systems, remodel traditional kinship structures, plunder resources and indirectly rule the continent through to the current vulnerability experienced by present-day African states. This never seems to form part of the narrative arc for NGOs like Save the Children, World Vision and British Red Cross. For example, despite mounting evidence of the United Arab Emirates’ involvement in the ongoing ethnic cleansing, displacement and murderous campaigns in Sudan, these charitable voices skirt around the origins, agendas and perpetrators of the conflict.

Interrogating the colonial underpinnings of non-profit organisations in Africa would crack the veneer of altruism. It is better to be vague instead.

Save the Children explains that it has “[worked] for a fairer world for a century.” British Red Cross outlines its seven fundamental principles, which include impartiality and neutrality, meaning that it “may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.” Meanwhile, the Christian organisation World Vision prides itself on going “where no one else goes…because Jesus is alive in the hardest places to be a child.” What’s notable about NGOs like these is the focus on children - the innocent, the unblemished - as though their lives, unlike those of their parents, caretakers and families, are worthy of protection.

Such selectivity has been front and centre across the last year of the Israeli zionist regime’s genocide against Palestinians on their own occupied land.

“Children have been killed, injured and terrified in every major escalation of violence between Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces,” shared Save the Children UK on 8 October 2023,  “All parties must show restraint and cous on keeping children and families safe. #StopTheWarOnChildren” A level playing field is established through their language between a colonising state and the colonised, as though the plights of Palestinian children  - can be untangled from 76 years of forced exile, occupation and apartheid.

World Vision took the same approach. “Pray for the safety of children,” it implored on 11 October. “Our hearts are breaking for the children and families in Gaza and Israel who have and continue to experience the terror of attacks and war all around them. We abhor all actions intended to inflict terror on civilians.”As the indiscriminate massacres mounted in the months that followed, with UK-US-Germany-bankrolled weapons raining down on the besieged Gaza strip, the Christian organisation still only had platitudes in April 2024, six months on from 7 October.

An article on their website opens with the following: “Today, on the 6-month anniversary of the horrific October 7 attacks in Israel…World Vision is calling for a renewed focus on the children who are impacted by the continuing violence in Gaza and across the region.” It appears that, for this charitable organisation, it was critical to centre the Israeli state despite the widely accessible images of the unspeakable genocidal horrors being carried out by Israelis on occupied Palestinian land. The decades that have proceeded 7 October and the almost full year that have succeeded it appear to pale in comparison.

Language matters explained the British Red Cross in the wake of the fascist and Islamophobic riots that erupted across the UK just a month ago. “Used incorrectly, it can stigmatise, reinforce negative stereotypes, and put people in danger - people who’ve already been through some of the worst things in life.” However, when talking about Israel's year-long onslaught of Palestinians, the organisation seems to discard its own teachings.

For example, on May 22, the British Red Cross shared a reminder on Instagram that “hostage-taking is strictly forbidden under International Humanitarian Law.” Even though Israel has repeatedly flouted international law - continued development of settlements on Palestinian land, collective punishment, the blocking and deprivation of water and aid, and bombing of civilian infrastructure, to name a few - it is the language chosen for the adjoining caption that feels most revealing.

“From day one,” writes the British Red Cross, “the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has demanded safe access to both hostages being held in Gaza and Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention.” Captive Israelis are afforded ‘hostage’ status while captive Palestinians - including medical staff, patients, residents and children who are shackled, blindfolded, tortured, abused and held in secret without access to a lawyer, judicial review or even a reason for their detention - are not.

And yet, despite denying or dismissing focal elements of what is being done to Palestinians, they still host appeals on their websites, decrying their conditions. Again, the truth of indigenous experience is expunged. It’s probably little surprise that Palestinians have increasingly set up crowd funders to allow for direct receipt of donations - without an agenda-led middleman. 

These third-sector institutions are in lockstep with the UK Government’s foreign policy and the pumped-out pieces by mainstream media. Together, they manufacture consent and cover for the Israeli state's atrocities.

They form part of the web of complicity in the UK, which requires condemnations of all Palestinian resistance, normalisation of the visceral images of death and destruction we see across social media every day and silences around British involvement through arms sales, financial support and intelligence operations. And, of course, the British role in the creation of ‘Israel’.

NGOs and charities present themselves as bastions of benevolence. They fill the ominous gaps in their missions and agendas with far more comfortable content while eliding how they sustain - and shape - the conditions experienced by local populations. It should be unsurprising, after all, as truly building that utopic “fairer world” would make every NGO or charity obsolete.

However, as we continue to watch multiple genocides unfold around the globe, it should force interrogations of the purpose of such organisations. What - and who - do they exist for?

And when these institutions bill themselves as for “humanity” but toe the line in the wake of genocide and ethnic cleansing, we have to ask ourselves, what do we need to replace them with?