On being a Western harlot in other countries

There was worldwide shock and outrage earlier this month at the news that a Norwegian woman who was allegedly raped in Dubai had been sentenced to prison for extramarital sex, consuming alcohol without a licence and perjury. Marte Dalev was charged with extramarital sex because under UAE law, she was not raped. Rape is not easy to prove in any legal jurisdiction. Under Sharia law however, a rape only occurs if it is witnessed by four adult Muslim men or if the rapist confesses. This makes it almost impossible to prove a rape occurred.

Dalev's story is unfortunately not an isolated case. Australian Alicia Gali spent eight months in prison in 2008, after reporting being raped at the hotel where she worked. Her case was not widely publicised by her family, apparently due to advice from the Australian government. Dalev's case was barely reported in Gulf media outlets and when it was, it was mostly to express outrage at the evil Western media who were besmirching Dubai's good name. It was pointed out that Dalev was drinking and so was partly to blame if she was raped. The idea that a rape victim is to blame if she has been drinking is still prevalent here in Europe too, lest we forget.

Dubai, UAE

I'm moving to Oman next month, which has a similar, sharia-influence code of law to the UAE. I've seen calls to boycott Dubai as a holiday destination on Twitter and have been reading countless articles on this terrible case (Dalev's case was since suspended, thankfully). It's made me think a lot about travelling to countries which have laws I not only disagree with but actually abhor; laws which offer me little protection as a woman- especially a Western woman who likes a drink.

Some of my friends and family have questioned why I would want to live in a country such as Oman, especially as I am such a proponent of women's equality. I obviously don't see living there as condoning women's second class status but I am extremely interested in living in a completely different culture for a year and learning Arabic. In Uganda, I was lucky enough to meet some amazing Sudanese women. I hope to travel to Sudan sometime in the next two years. This is not because of their government's fantastic human rights policies or their heavily corrupted Public Order Laws but because I find Sudanese culture interesting and beautiful and Sudanese people friendly and warm. No one travels to a country because of governmental policy, you travel to see and experience new and different things. The things you see are not always good.

At the Gadaffi Mosque, Kampala in 2011. 

Dalev committed no crime. Her only mistake was to go to the Dubai police. As a resident of Abu Dhabi, it's surprising she was not aware of the UAE's draconian laws regarding rape. However, it is completely understandable that probably shocked and traumatised she automatically did what we European women are always taught to do if we are attacked; report it to the police.

Many young European women I've met who have travelled in Africa or the Middle East are unaware of the current political and legal situation of the countries they're visiting. In Uganda in late 2011, as Somali militants upped their terrorist activities in neighbouring Kenya, many people in Kampala became nervous they would soon strike Uganda. Discussing the situation in a typical expat bar,  I remember being shocked at a Dutch girl who scoffed at such an idea. She was completely unaware, having failed to adequately Google the country she was moving to, that just the previous summer, two suicide bombers had killed over 70 people in downtown Kampala.

Being aware of the laws in UAE would obviously not have protected Dalev against rape. However, knowing how rape is treated by the legal system there would have saved her some of the extra trauma she was forced to go through. As we all know, it doesn't matter where in the world you are as a woman or how careful you are- whether you're in jeans and a headscarf or a miniskirt, drunk or sober- rape happens. Stories like Dalev's does not stop me travelling to the countries I wish to visit but it certainly does remind me to know as much as possible about the country I am travelling to.

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Kids Club Kampala in Kentishtowner

My latest piece for The Kentishtowner, North London's only daily online magazine (and now once a month in print!), is an article on Kids Club Kampala.

Kids Club Kampala is a great charity I first came across on Twitter, which works with slum communities in Uganda. It was established by Olivia and Corey when they were just 18, fresh out of some gap year volunteering in Kampala. The organisation impressed me with their community led projects, the fact that all their staff are local (apart from the girls running the fundraising/operational side of things in London) and that it's a very young, ambitious NGO.

Read the piece here to find out more.

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Are European countries becoming a collective aid tease?

Ah the joys of debating international aid and its merits, or lack thereof. Is it right or wrong to give aid to corrupt governments? What's the best way of giving aid?  Should European countries be giving aid when they are in such dire financial straits themselves?

These are issues which have been debated exhaustively in development circles but in the last few months, they seem to be more prominent than usual in the mainstream media of many European countries. There's a number of contributing factors for this- the UN report leaked this summer detailing Rwanda's alleged involvement in rebel activity in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo which led to a number of countries suspending aid (and then reinstating it. and then suspending it again) reignited the whole thing. Then we had revelations of large scale fraud in Uganda, with approximately 16 million Euro of aid being misappropriated by the Office of the Prime Minister. The issue of giving aid to middle income countries was also prominent in the media with Britain's announcement early this month that it will stop aid to India after 2015.

Much media debate and public outrage and where has it gotten us? Well, things are how they used to be - foreign aid is dependent on politics. Britain initially suspended aid to Rwanda only to again reinstate it. Just today, it suspended it again. A rather excellent Channel 4 news report earlier this week detailed the uncomfortably close relationship between the British Conservative party and Rwandan President, Paul Kagame.

Last week, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs released its interim report into the Uganda/Irish Aid scandal. It found major collusion between Ugandan officials to commit fraud and also pointed out the failings of Irish Aid officials to pick up on the fraud. The report also suggested that the Irish Government would wait on the findings of the investigation by the Ugandan auditor general. The report is expected to be released next April.

There is little or no expectation however that the report and its recommendations will be implemented by Uganda's notoriously corrupt public officials. Should this fact alone not be a lesson to European governments giving aid to corrupt governments?

 There's a lot of problems with the way European governments currently give aid to the developing world but surely withdrawing it then reinstating it on a whim is not an improvement of any sort.

The point of this post is basically, the UK et al are being a bit of a prick tease with their aid budgets at the minute. For a more sophisticated, and much more knowledgeable, look at some of these issues have a look at this piece from the always excellent A View From the Cave.

The Ugandan Affair: What it means for Irish Aid

Last week, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore (the Irish Deputy Prime Minister) suspended all Irish aid channelled through  the Ugandan government and announced an immediate investigation into allegations of fraud. The unprecedented move was prompted by a draft report of a special investigation by the Auditor General of Uganda into the handling of aid funds by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

The Auditor General found that significant amounts of donor funding from Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, earmarked for the Peace and Recovery and Development Programme in Northern Uganda had been transferred to an unauthorised account of the OPM. Up to 4 Million Euro of Irish Aid funding was misappropriated.

The reaction from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) appeared to be swift and decisive. The Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore released a statement in which he described being "deeply concerned by what I have learned today of the findings of the investigation by the Auditor General of Uganda into the management of aid funds by the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda." The statement concluded "The Government will not provide financial support under our development cooperation programme unless it is clear that Irish money is being spent for the purpose for which it was allocated. Pending the satisfactory resolution of this matter, I have instructed that no further aid funding should be provided through Ugandan government systems.”

The amount of Irish Aid due to be allocated through official channels this year totalled 17 million euro.

Three DFA officials were swiftly dispatched to Kampala to investigate the affair and the Irish media had a field day with the story. Responses were varied; some gave credit to the Ugandan officials who initially  highlighted the fraud; some called for Irish Aid to channel more of its aid through NGOs and charities as opposed to governments; many commenter's on social media called for the permanent suspension of Irish Aid.


To give or not to give?

The whole debacle has highlighted increasing tensions in Eurozone countries surrounding the issue of foreign aid. Ireland has a long, generally proud history of foreign aid. As I talk about in this post, given that we are a small, neutral country with a recent history of conflict ourselves, Irish Aid is generally respected as being non-partisan, not tied to conditions and genuinely concerned with conflict resolution and peacemaking around the world.

Irish people, in turn, have traditionally valued our foreign aid programme and taken a proud view of our commitment to the developing world. There's a lot of reasons behind this but basically: it wasn't too long ago that we were awful poor ourselves and the Irish education system beats you over the head with talk of the Famine from Primary level. So, we appreciate the importance of both charity and long term aid (We are sorry about inflicting Bono and Bob Geldof on the rest of the world though).

Now however, we're poor again- or we think we are anyway. The boom years of the Celtic Tiger are gone. Times are tough, taxes are increasing, benefits are being cut, unemployment is rising, emigration levels are soaring. This story broke as Ireland approaches what is expected to be the harshest national budget in decades. It isn't hard to see why it prompted some people to question the amount of money donated through Irish Aid.

The misappropriated funds in Uganda have increased the calls for a dramatic rethink of the amount of foreign aid, or at the very least the method in which, Ireland donates. This is not a bad thing. We all know that there are many issues with international aid, how it's used, etc. However, we also know it's very easy to point out the problems but much harder to come up with feasible, sensible solutions.

So do we need to justify giving aid in the first place? I often skip these endless discussions of the motivation behind aid, not because I think it's unimportant (far from it) but it's exhausting. Usually, I take foreign aid as a given and focus on ways of improving it but how can we assist development in countries such as Uganda which have corrupt political regimes?

Having spent some time in Uganda last year, I can see how desperately the country needs development. I also think it has one of the most ruthlessly corrupt political system I have ever seen- and coming from an Irish person, that's really saying something. So we come to the difficult questions; Do we refuse to hep the Ugandan people because of political corruption? Why don't we work through the third sector? But will the Ugandan government allow aid to be channelled through others? Is it permissible to turn a blind eye to small levels of corruption in order to get aid to people who really need it?


That's what she said. . .

Once Ireland suspended aid and the Scandinavian countries quickly followed suit. Although hardly an unjustified reaction, are these governments just trying to appear to act decisively on this issue? After all, if they had proper Monitoring and Evaluation procedures in place to start with, would such an instance of fraud have been allowed to occur?

Reports emerged yesterday that the UK had suspended aid chanelled through the OPM (although this decision will not affect the regular budgetry aid it provides to Uganda) back in August when allegations of fraud first emerged and had since launched an independent inquiry. This was even though no British money was taken.

The rapid reaction of the UK to such reports, even though it was not their money alleged to be misappropriated, reflects poorly on the Irish government's slow reaction.

A friend of mine pointed out that the Uganda fraud case appears to be similar to the recent incident in which European donors suspended aid to Rwanda over its connections to militias in neighbouring DRC. European governments were not so outraged by this fact that they cancelled aid. Rwanda's involvement in the DRC had long been an open secret. But with a leaked UN report explicitly spelling it out, many governments felt something must be seen to be done.

Is this the reasoning behind the deployment of the DFA officials to Kampala? A member of the political opposition  I spoke to questioned the decision to send three Irish officials to Kampala. Surely the very capable staff at Ireland's embassy in Kampala are better placed to investigate such an issue. How can the DFA justify the expense of sending three officials, considering the slight returns any such trip is likely to incur? Is it all merely for show?

There are also some nuances to the story which have been under reported in the Irish media . Firstly, the story first began to break in Uganda back in July, when an accountant attached to the OPM went missing. Secondly, it was Ugandan officials and media who forced the story out into the open. The Irish media only picked up on the story last week once aid to Uganda was suspended (although the Irish Times did give credit to the Ugandan whistle blowers). This is not insignificant as it raises serious questions about the M&E procedures employed by Irish Aid. Again, are the DFA now acting to cover up their own failures perhaps?

In the end, even if Irish Aid and the DFA are somewhat at fault, the fraud was committed by the Ugandan OPM and it is the people of Northern Uganda who will suffer, as well as other Ugandan citizens who are tired of the endemic corruption in their country. But there are questions on the Irish side which need to be answered.

So I'll just owe you one Ireland?

This incident however could prove to be a game changer. I don't think Irish Aid will be scraped. But I do think this incident will leave a terrible legacy. It's proving to be a massive headache for the Irish government. It's difficult to justify international aid when you are cutting vital services in your own country such as rural garda stations, special needs assistants in primary schools, hospital beds and home help for carers. It is especially difficult to make such justifications when the foreign aid is found to be misappropriated. This incident has unfortunately increased the likelihood of Irish Aid being cut in the upcoming budget. The Dail's taxpayer watchdog is due to launch a special investigation into the spending of the country's third world aid budget.

The Irish government is demanding repayment of the 4 million euro from its Ugandan counterparts. News reports that the Ugandan government is "considering" such a repayment prompted much amusement from online commentators with a basic sentiment of "yeah, good luck with that one,".

And so we wait the budget in December, to see the real impact this affair will have on Irish Aid.


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