A Carriage on the Runaway Train: Aid, Complicity and Resistance.
In February 2024 Barcelona hosted their annual Mobile World Congress, an enormous tech sector event that brings over 100,000 attendees to the city. The same event also welcomed a pavilion of 30 Israeli tech companies, representing a sector known for its intimate ties with the Israeli Military, and awarded the keynote speech to Aviv and Matteo Shapira — the CEO and CXO of the Israeli “defence tech” company Xtend. Xtend´s Gaza deployed and tested AI assisted military drones went on to raise 40 million USD in investment funding after their platforming at MWC.
Shortly after the congress, I learnt that UNICEF had not only attended, but have a longstanding official partnership with the organising company, GSMA.
Having attended the demonstration that took place outside of the congress, I wondered whether or not UNICEF staff, indistinguishable to us from the flocks of corporate attendees, had passed us as they made their way in. Had they attended the keynote speech? Were they at least challenging GSMA on the obvious conflict of interest? That, “As leaders at the intersection of child rights and digital technology” UNICEFs partnership with a company that elevates tech companies actively engaged in, what their own staff have been calling since December 2023, Israel´s “war on children” — is more than a little problematic?
Meanwhile a foot on the periphery of the aid sector, has offered further comparative reflections, particularly where conversations on “reform” and “localisation” are taking place. At the heart of these differences between the aid sector and the solidarity movement is the disinterest of the sector in even whispering critiques concerning capitalism, imperialism and the US dominated military industrial complex. The solidarity space rather, projects these issues loudly, without apology, upfront and centre from their megaphones. And by providing a serious interconnecting analysis of the multiple human and environmental crises we are confronted with today, they start to achieve the holy grail for which the aid sector is always searching — the ability to hold space and attention for more than one crisis at any one time.
The aid sectors aversion to a coherent, meaningful narrative, that speaks to the root, exposes some pretty serious contradictions within localisation discussions, primarily on whether or not it is it even possible to “localise” if “local” want to address root causes, and if local are not neutral on the same. In October, in response to the intensification of ethnic cleansing in the North of Gaza, the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) called for:
“the people and free individuals of the world to take to the streets, organize demonstrations, and besiege American and Israeli embassies in condemnation of these genocidal crimes.”
This call, and it´s directly political rather than humanitarian framing, was heard and taken up by solidarity movements pretty ubiquitously, while most aid agencies remained comparatively silent. Localisation, taken literally, would oblige them not to be.
It further cements the demarcation of the sector, not as some independent entity within a global ecosystem of random interactions and relationships, but as a clear component of well critiqued economic and political hegemonic order, hence muting their own propensity towards evaluating it. A carriage on the runaway train of late stage capitalism, whose core function is to clean up the carnage the train is responsible for, without actually ever stopping, let alone questioning it.
Questions on the alignment and positioning of the aid sector are not new, but they do take on a sharper more unforgiving dimension in the midst of the relentless US (et. al) — Israeli genocide on Gaza. A year in which the moral bankruptcy of Western governments, who are the aid sectors largest financial contributors, have been exposed irrevocably.
The confirmation that Western governments are not concerned with the protection of all life, insofar as it presents a barrier to their imperialist objectives, enables one to put to rest any remaining sentimentalities about the nature of Western aid — that it could be given charitably is a fundamental inconsistency. So instead of viewing it detached of its source we instead now have an opportunity to see it as the tool that it is intended to be.
Of course there are different profiles in the aid carriage of this train. The carriage conductors who are in close communication with drivers and know exactly what vehicle they are on. They often travel business class and can be found in conferences and speaking on panels. At the PACE hearing on Julian Assange´s detention and conviction, Assange remarked on the role of judges in upholding the interests of the elite class to which they belong — that’s the conductors. There are also the bureaucrats, responsible for the structural integrity of the carriage. Then there are the many truly too busy with their hands in the mounting work to notice what their carriage is part of. And the frustrated, the infuriated, and then some, who are starting to take note of what´s going on outside of the window.
There are occasions where the collusion between the aid sector and the source interests are clear. Reports that USAID officials have been meeting Israeli counterparts on the site of an Israeli military base “where torture reportedly runs rampant” is one example. But so is WFP´s partnership with Palantir — A US based surveillance and security tech company that boasts of its “strategic partnership with the Israel Ministry of Defense to “supply Palantir technology to help the country’s war effort.”” It is strongly suspected that Palantir technology is behind Israel´s “lavender” system, revealed by +972 Magazine to be responsible for the IDFs unprecedented rate of target generation. There is no “tech for good” argument that can reconcile this relationship.
Beyond humanitarian pacts with the devil and in keeping to the walls of its carriage, there exists a reem of normalised incongruities and constructed limitations within the aid sector. The same donors funding both the humanitarian crisis and the humanitarian response is an obvious one. Localisation, as already mentioned, contains another. Humoured to the extent that it pertains to implementation, not interpretation. Root causes, likewise entertained, as long as we do not mention THAT kind of root. Decolonisation? Fine, but to be kept rhetorical, academic.
It is a sector led by politicians insistent on its neutrality. Everything within promoted as perpetually and unexplainably disconnected and in competition, always limited to, overwhelmed and distracted by the immediate short term picture. All have become nonsensical contradictions that the aid sector, in preserving its relevance within the train, has no answers for.
In sum, it upholds a disingenuously a-political, dissociative politic no longer able to assuage a horrified global citizenry, who, thanks to US made bombs and US developed tech, now know what the insides of a child´s skull looks like.
So what exactly is the point here?
Whilst the Western dominated aid system chuggs along, struggling to keep up with the fallout of the train it belongs to, entering into yet more grand bargain iterations on how to improve the structure and efficiency of the carriage, there are diverse efforts outside of the train seeking to derail it. Amongst the most humanitarian principled of them are those in boiler suits, taking sledgehammers to machineries of oppression. Not a lanyard in sight.
The question specifically for critics within the aid sector, particularly those with an eye looking out of the window, becomes how to make bridges with the people on the outside. Whilst the carriage has an immediate job to do, and lives need to be saved now — ultimately the humanitarian imperative is to stop the train.
What might this look like?
Firstly, rejecting and resisting the complicity of the carriage, in all of its forms. Just like the student protests that seek to sever ties between their academic institutions and complicit companies, acknowledge and reject the outright collusion of the aid sector with the wider political context it is situated. Groups like Global Dev 4 Palestine and INGO Staff Alliance for Palestine are doing this. Supporting their work and not partnering with companies whose AI makes the train and its carnage more efficient is a start.
Secondly, seeking collaborations with those outside who are resisting the train, those that are trying to block its path. Heby Aly, recently made a case for moving away from supply driven response towards humanitarian advocacy. In extension of this important suggestion, recognising that this advocacy is happening, but it is happening outside of the aid sector in the movements where an uncensored narrative is clearer, more coherent and inclusive than the aid sector has experience offering — and not only in relation to Palestine. This is where new partnerships on advocacy, solidarity and resistance need to be built.
Further, being mindful that the train will not stop itself.
USAID will not be funding this endeavour. Rather, protect the sites of critique, questioning whether global domination is indeed consistent with “localisation” and whether capitalist philanthropists could ever champion local humanitarian endeavours that might also seek to challenge the system to whom they owe their wealth. This is not it. But this could be where “non traditional” actors play a significant role, filling not just funding shortfalls in the carriage in an appropriative kind of way — but filling the gap of imagination, challenging Western monopolisation and supporting that which offers an alternative to the entire train.
Here in Barcelona the Smart City Expo World Congress has more recently come to a close. Another congress again welcoming a pavilion of Israeli companies, the services and products of at least half can be traced to Israel´s illegal occupation and expansion in the West Bank. This time UNHABITAT was listed as an ecosystem partner, a partnership that perhaps puts their mandate to “promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements” at odds with the normalisation of apartheid and occupation.
Instead of joining the groups calling out the congress, including comrades on the inside using their platform to speak uncensored truth to power, the absence of a UNHABITAT position on the same instead points to indifference, and by extension, complicity. Maybe, representatives donning the suited uniform of the train passed us by on their way in, quite comfortable to be sharing space with companies whose activities ensure their workload and the workload of the aid sector never diminishes.
