I’m getting tired of ‘corporatization’ claims regarding the development industry
Did you read the news recently? It is full of the same old stories: How MSF struck at huge tax evasion deal with British authorities, how PLAN is essentially a foundation based in Liechtenstein, how Save The Children is stashing away hundreds of millions of dollars of their donations in Caribbean bank accounts and how the WFP is basically a one-person entity with headquarters in Guernsey. And then there were those stories of how Action Aid started to sell submarines to dodgy governments and how the ICRC bought up all the local charities, sacked everybody and made them re-apply for their old jobs on minimum wages and without benefits. Obviously none of these are true stories. They cannot be true, because no humanitarian or development charity, foundation or NGO works like a corporate entity (although the recent story that the American Red Cross responded with corporate lawyers to information requests about their post-Sandy spending is not exactly encouraging...). But it is easy