The Compassionate Instinct

In 2005, Egeland revisited some of these issues with Greater Good, discussing the morality, and the possible limits, of global altruism.

GREATER GOOD: It seems hard enough to convince people to donate money to the poor in their own countries, or even their own neighborhoods. What responsibility do nations have to strangers halfway around the world, when so many of their own people are in distress?

JAN EGELAND: The notion of meeting need regardless of where it occurs is one of the fundamental principles of humanitarianism.

If the need is within their own borders, nations have a responsibility to respond to that; if beyond national borders, they have a similar obligation. I believe that the rich countries are growing ever richer, and the poor are falling further behind. I also believe that both governments and individuals in rich countries spend billions on essentially discretionary spending, including on luxuries, pure and simple. Given this, we have no excuse for not alleviating the often truly dire suffering of families caught in circumstances beyond their control.

G G: And are the wealthier nations of the world doing enough to meet these responsibilities to people in need?

J E: Definitely not. The range of nonmilitary aid contributions varies tremendously, with the most generous nations giving over 0.8 percent of their national income and some giving as little as 0.15 percent. This means that rich countries are all keeping at least 99 percent for themselves.

G G: But after you implied in December 2004 that the wealthier nations of the world should have been donating more money to the tsunami relief effort, many public officials and private citizens, especially in the United States, pointed to the large donations given by individuals. Many Americans were saying they were happy to donate money, but they wanted to control who received that money and how much they gave. Do you see a problem in shifting foreign aid from being the responsibility of governments to being the charge of private individuals?

J E: I obviously do not see a problem with the outpouring of generosity by individuals in response to the tsunami. In fact, I would welcome increased individual donations to other natural disasters and to complex emergencies, most of which are chronically underfunded, especially those in Africa.

However, individual or corporate funding can never be a substitute for multilateral humanitarian aid on the part of governments. For one thing, donations by individuals are most frequently in response to well-publicized disasters or crises, which inevitably attract the lion’s share of aid in the first place. This, then, begs the question of who will help those in more forgotten, lower-profile crises, who are often the neediest in the world. Moreover, by its very nature, individual donation is ad hoc and cannot be counted on, nor will it redress geographic gaps or gaps in the types of supplies or services provided for the people in need.

Donor governments, however, annually dedicate a proportion of their resources for humanitarian activities. While I would like this proportion to increase in absolute terms, and to be contributed in a more timely fashion, at least we know that we can count on regularly receiving some part of what we need from governments.

G G: And is there a broader statement made by government aid, as opposed to private donations?

J E: Aid by governments represents a collective national response by all members of a country to those most in need in poor countries. So it therefore carries added weight as a transnational symbol of support and concern.

G G: There has been a growing body of research into what inspires people to help others in distress, even at a cost to themselves. One thing that seems clear is that people are far more likely to demonstrate altruism when they recognize a shared identity between themselves and the person in need. How can you marshal international support for people who aren’t bound by a common national or ethnic identity?

J E: I think human beings are virtually “hardwired” to reach out a helping hand when we witness people in need. The first responders are always those closest at hand—neighbors, townspeople, relatives, civic organizations, and local and national officials. In complex emergencies like Sudan, people fleeing violence turn to so-called “host communities,” themselves living in poverty, who take them in. Neighboring countries—again sometimes often desperately poor—also lend a hand, giving asylum to masses of refugees, as did both Iran and Pakistan for Afghan refugees for many years, as Chad is doing now for its Sudanese neighbors.