[nradov]

This is unfortunately also one of the biggest problems with donating to NGOs that operate in many foreign countries. Much of the aid money gets stolen by corrupt officials and local criminals. Donors have to check carefully that NGOs are legitimately benefiting the intended recipients.

[goobatrooba]

"much" is an unqualified and unjustified word here. It definitely happens but this would at most affect a tiny fraction of donor money.

Many of the NGOs have strict no-bribery policies, else they would not receive support from bodies like the EU (which is the biggest humanitarian donor on the planet).

In some cases the choice may be between "letting people starve" and "feeding people but the local warlord extracts some benefits" but these are rare and only the worst crisis contexts (think South Sudan, DRC).

[trhway]

>a tiny fraction of donor money.

that is not what happened for example in Gaza. UNRWA sent billions to Gaza where that aid was hijacked by HAMAS, and even when the aid was distributed to people outside of HAMAS, HAMAS directly controlled the distribution of that aid. And i don't see UN operating any different at the other places too.

Or like Rubio said:

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/10/24/unrwa-is-subsidiary-...

"U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of being “a subsidiary of Hamas” "

[l23k4]

UNRWA sustains life in Gaza.

HAMAS mostly exists in Gaza.

Therefore UNRWA perhaps sustains HAMAS by delaying the indiscriminate mass murder of Gazans through manmade famine.

I don't really see how this would make UNRWA a subsidiary of HAMAS even if it happened to be true that the existence of HAMAS was predicated on the existence of UNRWA.

In practice, the only way to prevent this aid from reaching HAMAS is to prevent it from reaching anyone in Gaza.

[trhway]

Even if we go with your logic, what you described is HAMAS using Gazans as hostage - HAMAS threatening "the indiscriminate mass murder of Gazans through manmade famine" until the aid is given to and through HAMAS (and by using civilian population that way HAMAS does commit a crime against humanity). In such a case UNRWA at least should have publicly stated the issue and let the UN as a whole to decide. Quietly sending the aid to HAMAS makes UNRWA at minimum an accomplice. Financing a terrorist organization in response to its blackmail is pretty much a crime almost everywhere. And given the number of UNRWA employees being HAMAS members, some even openly participated in Oct 7 attack, it is definitely more than just an accomplice.

>UNRWA sustains life in Gaza.

and that doesn't seem true to me. Looking at pre-war Gaza - it seems that the regular Gazans have existed on their own, not much affected by UNRWA. There were businesses, trade, construction, some worked in Israel. Look at pre-war satellite photos - how much solar panels were on roofs there. I remember some Gazans even started to appear here on HN. And there was HAMAS fed by UNRWA. Removing HAMAS from the equation, there pretty much wouldn't be a need for UNRWA.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Imagine if Putin's war made ordinary Russians (not the top elites) go hungry, and Putin said that any humanitarian aid must go to Kremlin and they'll distribute it. How many people will say "yeah, it's a manmade murder of Russians and we need to give Putin what he wants".

[snthd]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas#Use_... (Revision https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Israeli_support_f...)

Debates

Use of Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority

In an interview with Israeli journalist, Dan Margalit in December 2012, Netanyahu told Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu also added that having two strong rivals, this would lessen pressure on him to negotiate towards a Palestinian state.[10] In an interview with the Israeli Army Radio in August 2019, Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, said that Netanyahu's main strategy is to keep Hamas "alive and kicking" in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority, even at the expense of "abandoning the citizens [of the south]."[41] In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas", before adding that "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza."[42]

At a Likud party conference in 2019, Netanyahu said: "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."[43][44] Netanyahu responded to the accusations of funding and strengthening Hamas by calling them "ridiculous".[45] In an interview with Time in 2024, he denied of giving support to Hamas and said that it was one of "many misquotes" attributed to him.[46]

Gershon Hacohen, former commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and an associate of Netanyahu, said in 2019 in an interview: "Netanyahu's strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it's an ally."[47][48] Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right lawmaker and finance minister under the Netanyahu government, called the Palestinian Authority a "burden" and Hamas an "asset".[49][50] Allegations of Israeli support for the creation of Hamas

Yuval Diskin, former director of Shin Bet from 2005 to 2011, told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013, that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi (Benjamin) Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister."[41][51] In October 2023, former Intelligence Chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, accused Israel of "funnelling Qatari money" to Hamas.[52]

On 19 January 2024, Reuters reported that Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said while receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Valladolid that "Israel had financed the creation of Palestinian militant group Hamas, publicly contradicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has denied such allegations." and that "Borrell added the only peaceful solution included the creation of a Palestinian state. 'We only believe a two-state solution imposed from the outside would bring peace even though Israel insists on the negative,' he said."[53][54][55] Borrell also described Israel as having "created Hamas", but immediately continued saying that "yes, Hamas was financed by Israel to weaken the Palestinian Authority".[b]

Professor Avner Cohen, publicly acknowledged that "Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation" and that Israel had "encouraged them as a counterweight to ... Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat's Fatah."[61] David Hacham, who worked in Gaza as an Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military in the late 1980s and early 1990s stated, "When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake. But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results."[62] Similar statements have been made by Yasser Arafat. For example, in an interview with Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera in December 2001, he referred to Hamas as a "creature of Israel".[63][64] Use of Hamas as a tool to disengage from peace talks

Shlomo Brom [he], retired general and former deputy to Israel's national security adviser, believes that an empowered Hamas helps Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, suggesting that there is no viable partner for peace talks.[10]

[trhway]

Israeli strategy of splitting the enemy into smaller pieces is a classic military strategy well known for millennia.

The question here is who made Gazans prefer HAMAS over PA? And why would HAMAS and PA be enemies to each other instead of allies?

[RobinL]

Yes, but it's important to note that just because a lot of aid is ineffective doesn't mean it all is. If you want to give to very poor people and be confident most (85%+) actually gets to them I encourage you to take a look at https://www.givedirectly.org/. Full disclosure, I'm an unpaid trustee of the UK sister charity

[fvdessen]

I do some work in Africa and that's not what i've seen. The NGOs have their own separate supply chains and are quite resistant to corrupt officials and local criminals. The problem with NGOs is that they're mostly regular business masquerading as 'aid' and out competing local businesses who dont have access to their infrastructure and subsidies. There's actually much more demand for NGOs from the West than from their recipients. African governments are trying to clamp down on NGOs, but there's a lot of pressure from the west for the status quo.

[MichaelZuo]

If the implication is true…

Shouldn’t people stop helping further entrench these shady practices?

If Ugandan decision makers know the people will effectively always be underwritten to receive some bread and water… no matter what happens…

Then what exactly is stopping them from piling on more and more nonsense?

[jrumbut]

The boundary on this is kind of fuzzy. You obviously wouldn't donate if 100% of it was stolen, but also if you wait until the world is in a perfected state before helping anyone you'll never help anyone.

[mikepurvis]

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but what I've decided works for me personally is supporting a handful of hyper-focused charities that run very lean in terms of western staff and employ local skilled labour.

One example is the Canadian charity One4Another which performs surgeries to reverse some common birth defects in kids and babies in Uganda. They're not trying to feed the world, they're not interfering with the local economy; in fact they're employing doctors and nurses to perform a one-time intervention that changes the life of thousands of kids a year in the catchment area of their facility.

Obviously there are things that a group like this can't do but a massive NGO can, and that's great too, but for what I have to give, I feel very good about the impact per dollar of this.

[rexpop]

OP is talking about corrupt officials, not charity workers, so how does "running lean" evade or obviate corruption?

Edit: my point is just that bribery and blackmail aren't the same as Global Northerners treating charities as synecures.

[mikepurvis]

Yes, fair, maybe it doesn't. But I think several factors do work in favour of the smaller organization in terms of it being a smaller target, having the operation based more on local relationships and trust networks, and being accountable for an overall smaller budget— it's harder to ignore 10k in bribes of if it's only half a million or so per year coming in from the west.

Anyway as I say it's not everything but I thought it seemed relevant to the GP post talking about NGOs and charity efficiency.

[virgildotcodes]

Better 20% of your money reaches a starving child than 0%.

[ekianjo]

You have no way to know its higher than zero though

[virgildotcodes]

There are many ways of knowing if you actually want to find out. Third party auditors, evaluations, reputation… just… reading reports and looking at evidence of field work.

Too many people use this as an excuse to throw up their hands and say “well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing, damn, darn, totally not the conclusion I was secretly hoping to reach, not at all, oh man, damn.”

[ekianjo]

The same problem applies to auditors and third parties. Unless you join a field audit ultimately you have to trust an opaque party.

If you think corruption cannot go very deep then you may be too trustful.

[codeforafrica]

But you are proving the point of the parent comment:

well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing

You can't donate without trust. By your reckoning any trust at all is to much trust. So you are saying: Never trust anyone. And you are not wrong.

I am actually following that advice. In general, I never donate money, but, I do donate my time. That is, I rather work less, and earn less money in order to have time to volunteer. That applies double now that I live in Africa. I do support some children that can't afford to go to school. But I know all these children in person. I see how they actually live, and in most cases, I give the money directly to the schools the children go to, because I could not even trust the children or the parents. In most cases that lack of trust was unnecessary, but in at least one case it turned out to be warranted. That child is not getting help from me anymore.

Now, once I started to ask people to help me supporting the children here, it became clear that anyone helping me has no way of verifying how the money is used. They have to trust me. And not only do they have to trust that the money goes to the children's school expenses but also that these children actually need the money. It is to easy to build up a narrative on how poor everyone here is. and unfortunately the whole charity industry (or however you want to call that) is built on those narratives.

That's one reason why I came here. To find out what is the actual reality. What is the truth. And, ultimately, what is really the best way to help. I don't know the answer yet.

My interim conclusion so far is to invest, buy, bring money into the local economy, ever which way. Most of it will not go to the neediest. But, actually, I believe only helping the neediest is not going to move the needle anyways. Sending money to the neediest will allow them to buy food, but sending money to the government will allow it to build infrastructure which will also benefit the neediest because it may give them access to clean water, electricity, internet, streets, which for example make it easier for those children to go to school.

People talk about the trickle-down effect, and how it does not work. But that's not what I mean here. At least not directly. The trickle-down effect assumes that giving money to the rich automatically leads to actions that benefit the poor. That's obviously not the case. What I mean is to actively invest into things that benefit everyone, including the poor, and give money to those who are building those things. That in turn is also easier to verify than any charity that helps individuals which you can not track.

That's my theory for now. Over time I hope I will learn more get a better understanding. I am unfortunately not in the position to make any investments myself, to test if my guess here is true. But I will keep observing and and learning, and I'll share what I learn in the comments here.

[virgildotcodes]

Honestly, even if you join the field audit - who's to say they didn't plan everything in advance and that these aren't all crisis actors?

Who's to say they didn't drug you, and you performed the "field audit" on a psychedelic trip from within a padded cell controlled by the nefarious cabal of do-gooders?

Frankly, if you believe your own eyes and ears aren't lying to you, you may be a touch naive.

[whiddershins]

You are right, the downvotes people gave this comment are wrong, the replies to you are wrong. Feeding evil in the hopes you will also feed a little good is not only bad morally, but bad practically, bad in a utilitarian calculus, and just dumb.

[interludead]

A polished website and audited reports don't always tell you whether aid is reaching people effectively on the ground

[overfeed]

Which is why, naturally, the American Red Cross is the gold standard for NGO donation efficiency.

[zeafoamrun]

You're joking about this right? An old colleague did a lot of work with them and he told me how incredibly corrupt they are and to stay away.

[SSLy]

Yeah, they were sarcastic.

[nothercastle]

They can’t even operate efficiently in the USA was that intended as sarcasm

[overfeed]

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

[gloflo]

Please don't be sarcastic here.

[overfeed]

No thank you.

[mig39]

Do you mean the ICRC?