In a twist that would make even the most jaded saloon bar cynic choke on his lime cordial, the saintly white knights of Médecins Sans Frontières stand accused of demanding sexual favours for a morsel of sustenance in Sudan. Yes, the very doctors who drape themselves in laurels of altruism have apparently been running a ‘lay-for-lentil’ scheme. British charities, those ever-reliable bastions of sanctimony currently convulsing in six degrees of self-righteous fury, demand an inquiry. A paper tiger to mount a ferocious verbal assault on a dung heap, more like.
Let’s get this straight: the soul of humanitarianism is supposed to be a beacon of purity in a world gone to hell. Instead, we find it’s a greasy canteen, where the price of a tin of beans might just be a quick grope behind the medicine tent. The accusation is that certain staff members, empowered by their position and a clipboard, preyed on the most vulnerable souls who are already reduced to eating dust for breakfast. It’s a macabre auction: your dignity for my leftover porridge.
Naturally, the British charity sector has responded with a tsunami of press releases, each more biliously indignant than the last. They have convened an emergency committee, composed of people who have never missed a lunch, to hire a consultant, schedule a webinar, and craft a 142-point action plan that will be disseminated, filed at considerable expense, and utterly ignored. The inquiry will be thorough, they assure us, like a colonoscopy performed by a committee of bureaucrats. It will issue a report, weighty enough to flatten a small child, full of recommendations like ‘staff should not engage in transactional intimacy with beneficiaries’. Brilliant. Stunning. Five hundred pages to state what common decency covers in a sentence.
This scandal smells of more than just spoiled lentils. It reeks of the entire aid industrial complex, where fundraising gala champagne merges with the stench of refugee camps. Charities present themselves as neutral, selfless, Good with a capital G. But they are staffed by flawed, selfish, and occasionally monstrous people, just like any other organisation of humans. The difference is they clothe themselves in a cloak of moral authority so thick it could stop a howitzer. When the cloak slips, we see the same grimy flesh beneath.
Meanwhile, the real victims continue to starve. They will not benefit from the inquiry. They will not see a penny of the consultant’s fee. They will merely have to choose between a different sort of desperation: hunger or humiliation. The charities will host a symposium on ‘Protecting the Vulnerable’ in a hotel meeting room, serve overpriced finger sandwiches, and pat themselves on the back for their deep concern.
The entire thing is a farce, a tragedy performed in a bouffon wig. The only honest response is to laugh, a bitter, hollow laugh, and then pour yourself a double gin. Because in this madhouse, the only currency left is cynicism. And it tastes faintly of juniper.
