Disaster Tourism
Posted on June 29, 2009 at 2:44 pm
As director of D-TRAC I was often asked to orient heads of aid agencies and donors on the tsunami recovery efforts. As part of this there was usually a request to visit temporary camps and villages to see things in person. I was always torn as to the right thing to do. Was it more important for that person to see the situation on the ground, or was it more important for people who have just lost their homes and loved ones to be able to care for their children and rebuild their lives without having strangers walking through their village looking at them.
What is interesting and educational to you may be intrusive and demoralizing to them
Recently, a reader argued that the donor’s needs for understanding and education are just as important as the needs of the aid recipients. I would disagree with that. I strongly believe that the needs of the aid recipients should be paramount, with the needs of the donor accommodated only when it is appropriate. What is interesting and educational to the donor may be intrusive and demoralizing to the people they are trying to help.
Feeling like an animal at a zoo
Perhaps I am hyper-aware of this issue because of my own experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand in the late 90′s. I was one of the few westerners in my province and many people had never seen a westerner close up. As a result of this I was regularly stared at in the market place with parents pointing me out to their children saying “farang, farang” (westerner). When I sat on my front porch at night cars would slow down as they drove by. Old women on buses would rub my arms telling their friends my hair was like gold. All of this made me feel like an animal in a zoo rather than a real person. How then, must aid recipients feel with foreigners walking through their neighborhoods or temporary camps, staring at them, and talking about them.
In addition to being stared at and touched, many Thais used me as an educational tool for their families or students. Although my job was to train teachers on environmental education techniques, most principals just wanted me to visit their school so the children could see and hear real westerner. There were far too many times when I had to stand in front of a classroom, or an entire school, while the principal pointed out my straight nose, blue eyes, and “gold” hair to the students. This was usually followed by having me speak in English, to the amusement and astonishment of the students.
None of this had anything to do with my skills, my experience, or my job responsibilities, but it had to be endured to get the support I needed to get the job done. How often do aid recipients feel as though they are not respected for their knowledge and abilities, but instead have to endure being viewed as an educational experience or cultural exchange by the myriad of people attracted to a disaster. I choose to become a Peace Corps volunteer and knew that this was a price I paid for that experience. For them it must be worse because they did not choose to become disaster victims, instead it was thrust upon them.
How would you want people to act in your own neighborhood?
Imagine having just lost all of your possessions, your job, and members of your family. How would you feel about the stream of people walking through your neighborhood? There would likely be foreign and national aid agency staff, researchers, photographers from corporations and aid agencies wanting pictures of you or your children, dignitaries garnering a little PR, donors wanting to understand the situation or check up on aid agencies, volunteers looking to be helpful and to have a cultural experience, and plain old tourists wanting to see the impact of the disaster. Which of these people would you feel were appropriate and which would you feel were intrusive. How would you want them to behave?
Before becoming a disaster tourist, ask yourself these questions:
- Is visiting this site crucial to your decision making, or will it just satisfy personal curiosity?
- Is visiting temporary camps and newly built villages necessary, or would visiting destroyed areas provide you with the information or photo ops you are seeking?
- If you must go into the village, how would you want a person of equal standing to act when walking through your own neighborhood, near your children, or watching you in the unemployment or food pantry line?
- If you want to speak with disaster victims, then under what circumstances would you feel it was appropriate for someone of equal standing to take up your time with questions?
I would argue that these same guidelines should be used by anyone thinking of becoming a poverty tourist as well. But I’ll leave the debate on poverty tourism to others (see Aid Watch).
Good aid puts the needs of the aid recipients before the needs of the donor
As in all cases, it is crucial to evaluate an aid activity not from the standpoint of what is good for you as a donor, but from the standpoint of what would be good for you as an aid recipient. How would you want others to act if you were an unwitting part of disaster tourism?
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Do you agree or disagree? Do you have any research or guidelines on this? I look forward to your comments.
Related Posts:
How to determine if an aid project is a good idea
Beggars can’t be choosers, but are they really beggars?
Related Blogs:
A protest against orphanage tourism – Lessons I Learned blog
Should starving people be tourist attractions? - AidWatch
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I agree with your first statement regarding recipient needs being greater than those of the donor. But don’t you think the donor should have an understanding of what’s going on? I wouldn’t consider education as a “need” of the donor, but more of a requirement. I’ve read the Aid Watch post about poverty tourism, and this post about missionaries: http://bit.ly/2GZjtH
I agree, people should never be treated as attractions; however, I think visitors should be educated before making good decisions regarding development and their donations. If visitors aren’t educated properly, aren’t their presence and donations basically useless? Your checklist addresses those points, and I believe these points benefit the recipients of any aid. That’s why I think a donor’s education is almost as important as the recipient’s needs.
Ideally people shouldn’t donate blindly, but they also shouldn’t be invasive or ignorant when trying to “become educated” or “be cultured” or what have you.
I agree with your points, and I think this is a great post. I have a question for all: does this type of tourism help the local economy at all? I mean, all these people have to stay and eat somewhere. Or do they all come in from major cities?
As a publicity person, eternally running after donors to get their attention and money, I nonetheless fully agree! Transparency is very important; so is accountability to donors. But properly educating them so they can make good decisions is our job, which we should be able to do without treating beneficiaries like animals at a zoo or allowing other to treat them in this way.
How does one get donors on board with this type of mentality? In order to benefit from tax dollars and government aid, they are more focused on results than needs among beneficiaries. How do we shift away from short-term aid projects to long-term, integrated and inclusive ‘development’?
I’d actually see visits by donors as something other than development tourism or disaster tourism. But that’s perhaps just a semantic nuance.
At any rate, donor visits to relief zones are development project sites can be a tough one. I think there are situations when it is not inappropriate and can actually have positive benefits – yes, for the beneficiaries! That said, such situations are not necessarily the norm. You have almost ruthlessly keep donors/VIPs out of the zone in those inappropriate situations… something often much harder for a small NGO with tentative funding to do.
J.
Thanks for your comments. If you had to give clear guidelines as to when a donor visit to a development or disaster site would be helpful to the villagers, what would those guidelines look like? What could a donor look for to know if the situation was appropriate or inappropriate?
One thing I’ve heard from villagers is that they want donors to really hear their needs. The other thing I’ve heard from villagers is their tired of people asking about their needs and then not acting on anything.
Perhaps the guidelines I provided should be modified to include something to the effect that if donors are going to visit the area, adequate time needs to taken to have meaningful conversations with the aid recipients. The donors should seriously consider what the villagers say and be open to changing their funding decisions based these conversations. Donors should determine how they will let the villagers know what, if any, action they’ve taken based on their conversation.
I’m open to thoughts and suggestions.
Cheers