Politician | Lawyer | Member of Parliament of Ukraine | Executive MBA at London Business School
Why further activity of Amnesty International and organizations alike brings more harm than good Recently I called a senior manager of a large international bank. I was looking for a small donation required to order 20 tones of humanitarian aid for Kharkiv. My second goal was to establish a long-term relations similar to subscription model (i.e., every month this particular bank donates defined amount of money required to buy / or buys 20 tons of food). I wanted to make a good impression and listed all arguments in support of my idea (including my experience of bringing 1,000 tones of humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war), but received a very clear response - “No”. The manager stressed that the bank strongly supports Ukraine, therefore it has already donated €5 mln. to the Red Cross. CEO of the bank believes this is a perfect move from all angles: (1) shareholders will not ask any questions as the Red Cross is internationally recognized organization, (2) compliance department will be happy as this transaction raises no questions from their perspective, (3) the bank can make a press release saying that it has made a great contribution helping Ukraine to win the war. CEO clearly see this as a win-win decision. However, it is not. Such a decision does not help Ukraine and here is why. Red Cross, Amnesty international and organizations alike are huge multinational companies which require quite substantive amount of money to cover their own costs. Thus, part of €5 mln. bill will be allocated for their own purposes. In addition, my personal experience of working with similar organizations shows that usually they tend to spend money on researches and drafting useless recommendations. This is the easiest way to use money, however a research on how to feed Ukrainian refugees will actually not save them from starvation. Finally, understanding that they need to do something real, an organization (eg, Red Cross) may come up with the idea to help everyone who suffers from the war (eg, let’s finance rehabilitation of russian soldiers as they are also victims of the war). This is not a theory, this idea was in fact offered by the Red Cross few months ago. With this in mind, I presume that only a tiny fraction of money donated to Amnesty, Red Cross, etc with the goal to help Ukraine will actually reach Ukraine. Therefore, in my view, international companies, which really want to help my country, should start working directly with Ukrainian organizations. Many of them already have good reputation and those which are young should be first checked by compliance. I believe this is the only way to stop hiding behind well-known but useless names and start reaching real needs of real people who are suffering from the real war.
Great post. To add to this I would like to shed some light on more complex problems with such organization from the prospective of multinational companies and possibly high street banks. Multinationals often use so called "Red Cross trusts", the structures where organizations like Amnesty and Red Cross are appointed as the beneficiaries of funds held in such trust, usually for them without even knowing about this appointment. The funds are held in a charitable trust by multinationals without being ever transferred to the organizations. On one hand, this allows to avoid taxation of these funds by pretending that they are transferred to the charity. On the other hand, it allows to retain indirect control over such funds in the future. Therefore, I would hardly believe that multinationals would transfer those funds to the charity, without announcing a huge advertising campaign.
It is presumptuous to discredit the work of the Red Cross or Amnesty International, especially in view of the many projects the organizations undertake for, in and outside the country. If you can't count what the organizations spend on the refugees here in this country or have no evidence of how much is "wasted", you should perhaps think twice about who you are blaming. And by the way, sometimes it's better to pay the well-known name a little more than seek out local organizations in a country that has one of the highest corruption rates.
not convinced this as a clear cut as you try to present it: "just "30-40%" of the supplies coming across the border reached its final destination" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-military-aid-weapons-front-lines/ amnesty brought an important point highlighting issues many, including me, were vocal since 2014: ukraine not only putting in danger own civilians https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrainian-fighting-tactics-endanger-civilians/ but also targeted them sabotaging minsk agreement these issues ought to be addressed - taxpayers here must be sure where their money are gone and that they are not spent for targeting ukrainian civilians or being stolen by "the most corrupt nation in Europe" (per gardian)! #peace #nowar #diplomacy
Having fed over 1M New Yorkers during the Pandemic with $0 ZERO government funding, I can fully attest to the assertions here -- the "Bigs" truly suck up all the oxygen in the room.
Absolutely true opinion and I’m totally agree- such organisations are not helping they are just doing business with investors /governments/terrorists . We are very appreciate to all those people that are donating and who works with #RedCross ! But Red Cross and other similar organisations are just businessmen who use them and use situations !
yep, unfortunately, all those organizations were not ready for the challenges of the real war in the middle of Europe.
Give to small organisations to support Ukraine
So very true. Same story with my personal experience.
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1yFully agree! As a representative of the private sector i have refused to wire money to any international organisation (and i have been asked a lot!). Instead, i focus my resources and efforts on targeted help on a smaller scale where i can control the entire chain. Proved to be 100% effective and able to deliver relief where urgently needed! 💙💛