The case for grace, compassion, and foreign aid in an angry world

It is a troubling, disorienting time for all international aid organizations—including those built on a foundation of faith.

Faith-based charities founded on Christian principles provide huge amounts of aid to people in crises around the world. At the same time, North American political parties with significant bases of support in Christian communities have endorsed or, in the case of the United States, overseen massive cuts to foreign aid.

Chilliwack resident Andy Harrington, the executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, says political rhetoric around foreign aid cuts is “disturbing” on a practical and moral level. But he said the idea that some people are deserving of help and that others are not runs contrary to fundamental Christian beliefs about who deserves help and compassion. Which, for Harrington, is everyone who needs it.

“Every human being is a human being, and we are called on to be compassionate and care for them,” Harrington said.

Although Harrington’s organization doesn’t directly rely on foreign aid, many of the people it helps also depend on programs funded from western governments. And Harrington said cuts in aid will lead to the deaths of many those men, women and children.

Harrington is set to fly to South Sudan today to visit one of the aid projects run by Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Before he left, Tyler talked to him about calls for foreign aid cuts in the United States and Canada.

‘It’s very disturbing’

Some background: Since taking power in January, the United States has moved to freeze assistance distributed by USAID, its foreign aid agency. The move has impacted aid organizations across the globe. Canadian Foodgrains Bank does not get money from USAID but works with partners who do. Inside Canada, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party held a commanding lead in the polls until recently, has promised to “dramatically” cut Canada’s foreign aid budget. Poilievre said in February that he would use the money saved to build a military base in Nunavut.

“We’ve got our own problems at home. We have our own backyard to protect,” Poilievre said.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

FVC: How do you feel about calls to reduce foreign aid spending by, most prominently the US government, but also governments and parties in Canada and other Western countries?

Harrington: It's very disturbing to see. So starting with what's happened with USAID out of America, we've seen about roughly 50% of the global aid funding available to the world just be completely stopped and shut off. And that's happened in a really brick-wall kind of way.

That work would include life-saving work with malnourished children, it would include education in places where kids can't get an education, including emergency food assistance all around the world. I'll give you some examples in a minute.

We know of numerous organizations that have spent money, because USA tends to reimburse after the money's been spent. Not only is their work being cut off and shut down—actually straight shut down, people are turning up and there's nothing there—some of those organizations are in arrears for millions of dollars of money they've spent on contracts they've signed with USAID that is now under threat of not being reimbursed. That is horrendous.

So we're facing situations where millions of people around the world have been cut off from essential aid and development programs that are just allowing them to survive. We're already starting to see the deaths. That is an incredibly awful thing to have happen.

It's like if you imagine the global aid ecosystem as a body, it's like a leg, an arm, a kidney, and an eye have just been ripped off, and we're expecting people to carry on.

This is life. It's more than life-threatening. People are going to die. Many, many people are going to die in terms of calls to cut aid around the world. And we are seeing that followed. We just saw the UK government cut aid by a further 0.2% after cutting it by 0.2% a couple of years ago.

Editor: Harrington is referring to the UK’s plan to cut foreign aid spending from 0.5% of its gross national income to 0.3% of all income. When combined with previous cuts, the UK aid budget will have declined by more than 50% from pre-COVID times. The cuts will amount to $6 billion and be used to pay for military spending.

The UK has been a world leader in aid and development, and so there's been a real concern that's happened. We see calls for aid to be cut over here. I really want to say, in terms of that, that Canada has been a leader in humane and compassionate aid for decades. We've done great work around the world. And as we look at calls to cut aid, we currently give a very small proportion of our gross domestic product. It was 0.26% before COVID, it's slightly leapt up. It's coming back down again.

And so when I hear things like ‘Cut aid and bring it home, and we could spend it on all these other things.’ It's not very much. We don't spend a lot on aid. But secondly, aid is really important for three reasons. First of all, there are numerous crises around the world. We have 757 million people in acute hunger around the world. So to take away that humane and compassionate leadership that Canada has, number one, that would be incredibly awful for people who rely on our support.

Secondly, aid is not just charity. It's an investment. Aid really is the kind of glue that holds many things together in terms of the way we do trade, the way we do diplomacy, even the way we do defence. COVID showed us that when something happens abroad, it comes back to our own borders very quickly. So we think it's really important that people understand that you don't see aid in isolation. It's part of a global system.

And thirdly, and I think this is really important, Canada has an opportunity to lead now. There is a world vacuum. So as we're seeing US aid cut, as we're seeing UK aid cut, there are some countries that are stepping up. We are aware that Norwegians have increased their support for countries. At the moment, there's a chance for Canada's to step up, and that will really be a sign to the rest of world of who Canadians are, what our values are, and that we are here to stay for the world. And I'm sure that the world will respond. We've seen that around numerous trade and development issues as well, that when we're there on aid, people want to talk and work with us.

FVC: How do you process this moment? Just personally, what does it make you feel as somebody who has put so much energy and obviously really cares about this?

Harrington: It has been devastating, I'll be honest with you. Many of us have given our lives to trying to do life-saving work around the world with people, and it's devastating to see that work stop. Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to South Sudan. I'll be visiting projects that we have in South Sudan. South Sudan has been a major recipient of USAID because of the conflict that's gone on in Sudan.

Millions of people stream across the borders. I'll be visiting refugee camps that we work in. People have been cut off from food. People are holding children that may die, that are getting acute malnourishment treatment. Three weeks ago, the doors closed. I cannot tell you the impact that has on me and my colleagues around the world as we watch this happening, as we watch a world retreating into the borders and boundaries that we have and saying that ‘Those people over there don't count as much. They don't count anymore.’

We're very aware that there are domestic issues. We're very aware of the cost of living crisis here. We're very sensitive to that and concerned about that, but there are millions of people who have lost any form of support whatsoever and have nowhere to turn, in refugee camps, in places of absolute poverty, in the midst of drought. It's 43 degrees in South Sudan at the moment. Their water programs have been cut off. Their food's been cut off. For many places, this is desperately sad and horrific, and it's had a profound impact on those of us watching this.

Can I add one other thing to that as well? One of the things we're hearing leaders say is that all the aid is corrupt and it goes to dictators and corrupt governments. Now, no system is perfect. There are examples of where things have gone wrong. But the vast, vast, vast majority of aid and development funding is well spent doing amazing work.

We have an average of around 120 projects a year working with about a million people, normally in around 33 to 35 countries. We have very strong monitoring, evaluation, reporting standards. We send trips out, we do audits, we meet with participants. We know that aid works, so it's also devastating when we hear leaders telling us that aid is corrupt and going to dictators when we don't even work through governments, we go direct to local people, and the vast majority of the the Canadian civil service organizations that do aid do exactly the same thing. So it feels like the mud being thrown over us when we're doing everything we can to save lives and we know it's working. It's very sad.

FVC: Is there also a world in which foreign aid is maybe right now being a victim of its own success, and the fact that obviously major troubles in many countries, but if you compare it to 40 years ago, 50 years ago, you have many fewer people dying. You would have the numbers, but you don't have the famines that you did then. So do you see maybe people have forgotten, maybe some of what can happen when things get real bad?

Harrington: That's an excellent question. I would say two points to that. First of all, I'll use hunger as an example. So we did see some real progress. And so there were many compacts. There was the Sustainable Development Goals, there was what's called the Grand Bargain, various other things that would aim at reducing food insecurity around the world. And it was working. So we saw the numbers reducing acute hunger fall from around 800 million to around just under 600 million in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. But then we plateaued, and then it shot up.

So there are now 112 million more people now in acute to severe hunger than there was before the pandemic around the world. So whilst there was some improvements for a while, it plateaued out about 10 years ago and then started to rise again. And this year, it's going off the chart. So when you start to see aid being cut the way it is, we know those numbers that were already trending in the wrong direction are going to go ballistic. That is a deep concern for us.

I think to your second point, there are more crises happening around the world than ever before, and so we've become a little bit inured to them, because ‘here's another crisis, here’s another crisis.’

With the impacts of climate change, with more conflict than we've seen in decades actually, with more economic impacts that we're seeing, such as what happened with COVID and the closure of systems around the world, with the impacts of the Ukraine war and what happened with grain prices and the inflationary impacts that came out of that—there is story after story after story of things going wrong. Look at what's happening in Gaza. Look at what happened in Lebanon. Look at what happened in Afghanistan. Droughts across Africa.

I think people have become very aware that there are many things going on, and sometimes you just close your eyes to it. And I understand that, but the reality is that things are getting worse. They're actually not getting better, and so to turn away at this time is literally to to turn our back on human beings that are just the same as you and me, have children just like you and I do, grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles.

They're human beings in absolute extremity. And there's a phrase I use that is really important to me when we talk about those people or those others who are different from us, those migrants, those refugees. There is no other. There's just us: 7 billion plus of us on this planet, trying to survive, and we owe it to each other to care for each other. So you make a valid point, and it certainly was true up to about a decade ago, but it's no longer true.

FVC: Finally, your organization is a Christian-based organization, and politically, there is support for policies and cutting aid among constituencies that see themselves as very faith-oriented. How do you wrestle with that dynamic and your own faith and your own perspective on faith?

Harrington: I would say that there has been a rise in Christian nationalism that has equated a lot of political agendas with faith—agendas which I do not see as a Christian.

I find it very, very hard to reconcile the attitudes of people that are supporting political figures and making political statements with anything I see as a person of faith. So I do not stand with that. And I actually would go further than that and say it's been very, very difficult for many of us, because there's a lot of loud voices in that area, but there there is a vast majority of people who are silently saying, ‘No, that's not right. That's not right. That's not right.’

You know, we believe in a world where, if we're going to talk about our faith, every human being is made in the image of God. It does not matter however you phrase yourself in your political dynamic or your gender dynamic, or whether you come from Ethiopia or Canada or the United Kingdom or America or Afghanistan. Everyone is a human being. There's nobody who's more of a human being than anybody else, and my faith tells us that we stand and we care for our neighbors. These are our neighbors.

So I find it difficult when I hear people drawing political contexts and trying to put them into a faith arena. Those two things do not go together. We are called to be servants and people of grace and compassion. My organization stands very much in that line. The interesting thing for us is we have 15 aid agencies, all respected aid agencies, all with a faith background, representing about 30 denominations around the country and whenever we have any conversations where there might be a little bit of disagreement, we bring it back to one central factor: Does God want anyone to go hungry? No? Well then let's unite around that.

I think that's the same for any area of aid or poverty. Every human being is a human being, and we are called on to be compassionate and care for them. So I want to be honest with you: it disturbs me when I hear that language. That is not where I stand. It's not where my organization stand, and I don't believe it's where the majority of Christians stand.