CARE finally decides to stop killing people

The Aid organization CARE has finally admitted that they have been harming people for the last 50 years or more. The article from the New York Times begins:

CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.

Read the whole article from the Times here.

CARE -- and Save the Children and others -- have been attacking their critics. (and by that I mean me) for decades now. I think they owe me an apology, or at least an acknowledgment. Come on, throw me a crumb.
The article ends:

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have become contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. It compromised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.”

Those words are taken directly from my book, published ten years ago. Better late than never, and I suppose that CARE is to be congratulated.
Other food-dependent charities, such as the execrable World Vision, are naturally sticking up for food aid. For them it's about the bottom line. Without dumping U.S. surplus abroad they would probable go out of business. That would be a good thing. No, a great thing.

Other bloggers have weighed in: See Buy The Change You Want to See in the World: In Praise of...CARE?

See Time Magazine as well.