A public opinion survey released earlier this month shows that 67 per cent of Alaskans think gay couples deserve some form of legal recognition. So, in a meeting of the Alaska House Majority Caucus February 15, Mark Miller, a reporter for the Juneau Empire newspaper, asked, “would the caucus support the idea of having domestic partnerships or civil unions open to same-sex couples?”

Cue laughter.

Nothing like a gay joke to prime Republican Law-makers for President’s Day long weekend.

By law in Alaska, LGBT couples do not exist—their relationships have illegitimate, bastard status in the eyes of government. People who identify as LGBT are exempt from hate crime laws and they’re not protected against housing and workplace discrimination.

After recovering from the knee-slapper of a question, the caucus justified the reaction, saying the idea of gay couples’ rights was so funny because it wasn’t on the agenda (lol, duh!).

Lance Pruitt, the House Majority leader Rep. says, “What’s important about this caucus is that we focused on the things that really allow people to have a great life.”

Ohhhhhhh. A great life! Which has NOTHING to do with personal relationships. Gotcha.

Aside from the caucus’ totally inappropriate reaction to the idea of better gay rights, it’s yet another example of the disconnect between elected officials and the people they supposedly represent. Silly Americans.

But wait! Here in Canada, we too send mixed signals about our stance on sexual identity and orientation. We tout ourselves as the leader of human rights and acceptance, but we have found loopholes (in true Harper fashion) through which to thread homophobia.

Since 1999, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has been funding Crossroads Christian Communications—a Burlington, Ont.-based evangelical group with staunch views against LGBT rights, as in, they consider homosexuality and cross-dressing as “sinful” and “perverse” as bestiality and pedophilia (Crossroads recently had these opinions removed from its website). CIDA has given Crossroads more than $2 million for humanitarian work in Africa. Some of that money has gone towards HIV/AIDS education, and right now Crossroads is building a water filtration system in Uganda with $544,813 from CIDA.

Uganda, by the way, is notoriously homophobic. Since 2009, the Sub-Saharan country has been considering an Anti-Homosexuality Bill that, if passed, could mean the death penalty for homosexuals and jail time for people who don’t report anyone they know to be gay.

The international community has lambasted Uganda over the “Kill the Gays” bill. Amnesty International launched a campaign to stop the bill, and along with other Western nations, Canada dutifully denounced Uganda’s homophobia.  So why are we still supporting programs lead by homophobic organizations in a homophobic country?

Early this month, CIDA announced it will halt funding to Crossroads until it completes a review of the organization. Meanwhile, the Canadian government continues to justify funding Crossroads. Minister of International Co-operation, Julian Fantino stated, “We fund results-based projects, not organizations.”

Funding an organization’s projects, however, implies support of that organization’s values. Whether it’s building toilets that flush or exorcising the gay out of religious deviants, by giving Crossroads money, CIDA is backing the organization and what it stands for. Maybe Canada’s not laughing in the face of LGBT rights—just doing it behind their back.

Is Rahul Singh a visionary innovator, a pushy maverick—or both? Photo by Steve Payne

It’s two and a half days since the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010. The Adventist Hospital, an enormous white building in a formerly leafy suburb of Port-au-Prince, now looks more like a war zone. Thousands of people are camped around the hospital in need of urgent medical care—mangled limbs, bleeding head wounds, shattered bones. Every few minutes a pickup truck emerges from the dust and rubbish to deposit yet another injured body onto the hospital grounds.

In the midst of this bloody chaos stands Rahul Singh, a Toronto paramedic who rushed to the Haitian capital within hours of hearing the catastrophic news. A big, charismatic bear of a man, Singh becomes the natural centre of gravity of most rooms he walks into, and in the swirling chaos of the hospital, he’s the eye of the storm, someone people can’t help but look to for leadership. He doesn’t keep them waiting. Singh quickly sets to work with four paramedics, a general surgeon, and a water technician, all people he brought with him on a few hours’ notice.

The medical team begins to set fractures and amputate gangrenous limbs while Singh searches the surrounding area for a place to set up the water purification unit. He discovers a swimming pool that’s fed by a creek on the adjoining university campus. There are thousands of litres of water in the pool that they can purify. The creek will refill the pool, providing a continuous supply of water. He concentrates on the task at hand, blocking out the chaos around him. Later, he’ll describe it as a “Zen moment” in which time stands still. Within a few minutes, clean water is flowing from the tap. Singh and his team have only been in Haiti for a few hours, but they’re up and running.

In the immediate days after the quake, this was no small feat. The death toll was already estimated at 200,000 victims, and thousands more lay trapped or dead in the rubble. Non-governmental agencies tried to mobilize but faced complications because the country was in shambles without electricity or phone service. Wreckage, dead bodies, fires and homeless people blocked most roads. Schools, government buildings, and hospitals had collapsed, and even a prison was destroyed, leaving 4,000 inmates at large. Yet over an eight-week period, Rahul Singh and his small group of colleagues from the international aid NGO he founded, Global Medic, provided medical assistance to more than 7,000 people and distributed 15 million litres of clean water. Even more remarkable is that they did it on a budget of $400,000—miniscule by the measure of any humanitarian operation.

Global Medic’s work in Haiti earned Singh a place on TIME magazine’s “2010 TIME 100” list of the world’s most influential people, putting him in the company of Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, and Steve Jobs. The Globe and Mail named him one of Canada’s “Top 40 under 40” in 2009. Though the recognition is a recent development, he’s been doing his unorthodox humanitarian work for a long time: for the past 13 years Singh and his team have provided life-saving assistance in more than 40 countries suffering in the aftermath of tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones, floods,landslides, and other disasters. However, despite his numerous awards and considerable experience, Singh remains an outsider in Canadian international disaster aid.

Singh is naturally gregarious, with a natural everyman charm. Whether it’s chatting up Taylor Swift’s backing band in a New York elevator (they were also attending the TIME 100 awards in 2010, and he offered to share a cab) or addressing the Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, he draws people in. Colleagues describe him as larger than life—the kind of person that can walk into a room and instantly captivate everyone’s attention. He brushes off any suggestion, however, that his rising-star status means he has any special talents. “I just work hard,” he says. “That’s all I’ve got. I see talented people around me and I can put them in a position to deliver.”

Born in 1970, Singh grew up as an only child with a single mother in Verdun, a former working class neighbourhood on the island of Montreal. “I was a poor kid. I was also an English kid in a French community and a brown kid in a white community,” he says. After his rough and tumble youth, Singh ended up in law enforcement and made his way to Hamilton, Ontario where he took a job with the Niagara Regional Police Service. He later moved to Toronto to work as a community patrol officer with Toronto Community Housing. The stress of working in a milieu of drugs, guns, and violence began to take a toll on Singh’s marriage, among other factors. He decided to leave law enforcement and become a paramedic instead, graduating from college in 1989.

The switch to working ambulances was a better fit for Singh, but it failed to save his marriage. At the age of 27, he was divorced, balding, and grumpy. Deciding that he needed to change things up, he took off travelling the world, and eventually wound up in Nepal where he worked with an organization that was training local medics. When a mudslide wiped out a nearby village, Singh was sent on his first humanitarian mission.

He slept in a hammock that was not at all designed for a man of his bulky frame; most nights it sagged so low that he ended up sitting in floodwater. Among the few comforts he enjoyed were cheese rations and listening to Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” on his Walkman. But despite the deprivations of the job, Singh found he was enjoying himself: “I discovered that I’m good at this. I’m thinking, ‘it’s the bomb!’” But the project soon ran out of money and was forced to close down. Singh’s dedication to the mission had not gone unnoticed, however, and he was invited to a meeting in Kathmandu to meet the director of the aid agency. When Singh arrived, he found the director staying in a five-star hotel. “There’s people dying and he’s eating a $21 pepper steak,” Singh says, shaking his head in disbelief. “I couldn’t swallow it, so I told him off.”

That experience was the catalyst for the development of Global Medic. Singh wanted to create an aid NGO that would do away with the executive salaries, bureaucracy, equipment overhead, and the other expensive trappings of aid delivery that he saw as wasteful. He started the David McAntony Gibson Foundation (named after his best friend, who had died in 1998), of which Global Medic would be the operational arm. He raised $8,500 in the foundation’s first year as a charity. And he rounded up his dirty dozen, 13 fellow Canadian paramedics. They set off on their first international mission in 2003, assisting anti-landmine personnel in Cambodia.

Global Medic has now worked on more than 60 missions and their 2010/2011 budget topped out at $1.4 million. Yet Singh takes no paycheque; he still works full-time as a paramedic with the Toronto Emergency Service. He and his full roster of paramedics, firefighters, and police officers all volunteer for missions by taking vacation time or unpaid leave. “I think we’ve got more credibility when we are unpaid,” Singh says, “and more importantly, it’s pretty hard to question our motivations.”

It’s remarkable that Singh has amassed a team of volunteers to call upon at a moment’s notice. The model best suits shift workers who can take time off without losing their jobs. Julie Colgan, a London, Ontario paramedic who has served three missions with Global Medic, says she enjoys the experience of seeing firsthand the difference she can make in a community, but she also appreciates the opportunity to work with Singh because of his “no bullshit, get out of my way because I’m coming in’ attitude.”

It’s precisely that approach—Singh calls it “pigheaded,” and says it’s typical of the paramedic mentality necessary to cope with the job—that has enabled Global Medic to grow exponentially in such a short period of time. Singh’s persuasive skills mean money and supplies seem to multiply in his care. He asks companies to donate generators, medicine, tents, water purification tablets and food to supply the warehouse outside Toronto. The team goes to Costco to stock up on food, PowerBars, bandages, and gauze before a mission. “Store clerks ask us why we’re buying so much stuff, and when I explain that we’re taking it to earthquake victims in Japan they give it to us for free,” he says. He often persuades airline and helicopter companies to fly in personnel and supplies at no cost. He also donates his speaking fees—up to $10,000 per talk—to Global Medic. One of Singh’s signature maneuvers is to tell speaking sponsors that he donates his fee, then ask them to double it. They usually do.

All this chutzpah hasn’t won Singh many friends among government officials at home. Singh is one of the few NGO directors in Canada willing to openly criticize the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He becomes livid when describing how long it takes for the agency to make funding decisions following a disaster. “They tell me they’re doing a good job but they’re sitting behind a desk,” he says, pounding a fist on the table. “I’ve just been in Haiti watching nine-year-old girls getting their legs chopped off, so don’t tell me you’re doing a good job, because you’re not.”

As a paramedic, Singh knows that time is of the essence when it comes to saving lives. It’s his primary focus—get into a country as fast as possible with life saving assistance—much like a 911 call—and then get out of the way so that longer-term agencies can take over. He believes Canada should have a prepackaged program like his, complete with inflatable hospitals and portable water units, ready to go at all times. “We get Canadian supplies, innovation, and boots on the ground within the first 24 hours of a disaster,” he says.

In the current system, the bulk of Canada’s humanitarian funding goes to the multinational organizations such as CARE, Oxfam and Save the Children. It frustrates Singh to see funding for immediate disaster response go to agencies that he says are better suited to long-term development. Trying to crack into that closed circle has put Singh at loggerheads with the bigger agencies, which—perhaps understandably—don’t agree with Singh’s assessment. “I get a real push back, ‘stay down young man’ type of vibe from them,” he says.

Agencies such as CARE and Oxfam have developed their mandate for disaster response in a way that takes into account their long term relief goals and advocacy work. They maintain the view that it’s important not just to get in fast after a disaster but also to get it right. “There are moments in which an organization that is first on the scene can appear to be more efficient,” says Kevin McCort, president and CEO of Care Canada. “In the long run, though, it makes sense for the community to benefit from a group that can stay there and provide value for a long time, rather than the person who gets their first with whatever they happen to have.”

Faster isn’t necessarily better, McCort says. He describes how the Canadian Medical Assistance Teams, a small NGO based in Brantford, Ontario, immediately got on planes to fly to Tokyo after the 2011 earthquake in Japan. However, once they landed they realized they weren’t prepared to deal with the radiation crisis, so they had to come home. The focus on getting into a country first is also not entirely altruistic. “There’s a macho component among aid groups,” says Susan MacGregor, professor of international development at Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning. “Part of it is bragging rights to a certain extent. All the NGOs want to be first on the ground.”

In theory, getting into a country for the initial life saving response following a disaster should be simple. “It’s easy in the sense that the needs are clear,” says MacGregor. “When people don’t have water, you give them water. That is much more clear than trying to give somebody a livelihood, or trying to improve somebody’s life expectancy.” Yet providing these basic necessities becomes extremely difficult in the midst of chaotic conditions. The result is that disaster aid—an estimated $15 billion a year industry with more than 250,000 employees worldwide—has become a circus.

The size of the circus has gotten bigger in recent years as instantaneous news reports with images of suffering create awareness around the need for help. That prompts a flood of well-intentioned—but not necessarily competent—do-gooders into high-profile locations. While there is logic to having more players on the ground, it hasn’t yet resulted in a more effective response.

Many experienced organizations have become increasingly frustrated at the bottleneck of aid that occurs. Médecins Sans Frontières had their planes bumped off schedule in Haiti because flights for celebrities such as John Travolta and Sean Penn took precedence. Involvement of state actors such as military and government compounds the problem and seems to be an increasing trend. Add to that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of church groups and small NGOs with varying degrees of professionalism, capability, and contextual understanding and you have an atmosphere not unlike the Wild West. “There is a difference between ‘able to do’ and ‘has the capacity to do’ and those are important distinctions,” says Michael Fark, operations manager with MSF.

MacGregor describes a situation in which a group called Mothers Without Borders came to Indonesia after the earthquake and tsunami in 2004. The group of women from Arkansas wanted to get to Banda Aceh to care for orphaned babies, but they arrived in the country without tents, water bottles, or food. “They came with a few thousand dollars in cash and had absolutely no idea how to get north in the country. It’s these types that are a huge drain on the system,” she says.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) tries to coordinate the work of various agencies through a cluster system, which splits relief efforts into sectors such as shelter, food, water, and education. However, many small NGOs don’t know about it. Others, such as Global Medic, don’t have full-time personnel to attend meetings, and don’t consider the system useful to them anyway.

Singh prefers to find his own local partners to work with. “The meetings don’t even happen until a week after a disaster and by that time it’s too late,” Singh says. Outsider groups such as Global Medic are branded “cowboys” in the aid world by the larger NGOs. While OCHA is clearly still a work in progress, the UN believes the effort is worthwhile because lack of coordination results in duplicated efforts and wasted resources.

“It’s not that we want to have somebody sitting in a meeting all day,” says Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam. “But we recognize that if we don’t, we’re operating on partial information and we’re likely to be complicating, rather than helping the situation.” Yet even the UN system has its limitations. “It’s difficult to coordinate 50 agencies,” says Fox. “ It’s impossible to coordinate 5,000.”

Global Medic has now joined Policy Action Group on Emergency Response, a network that promotes coordination between aid agencies. It’s a signal to others in the industry that Singh is willing to play along—up to a point. It’s an acknowledgement that Global Medic may ultimately have to temper Singh’s shoot-first bravado in order to grow. Singh wants access to CIDA funds, which means courting the very agency Singh has spent more than a decade antagonizing.

There have already been some tangible results of this new, more congenial approach: CIDA provided $535,000 to Global Medic to assist with relief following the 2010 flooding in Pakistan. Still, Singh is impatient as ever: “It’s like pulling teeth,” he says. “They’re taking their time to warm up to us, and I’m like, ‘let’s get into bed.’”

For now, however, Global Medic continues to depend on private and corporate donations. “Our donors are different. They don’t want to see pictures of crying babies,” Singh says. He recounts how a law firm in Toronto called up after the earthquake in Haiti and wanted to donate $50,000. When they asked him what he would do with the money, Singh told them “we’ll put another hospital and water unit in, and we can do it tomorrow.” It’s that straight-shooter response and apparent financial transparency that make Global Medic popular with a public that is increasingly aware that there is a gap in what NGOs claim they accomplish and what they can actually do.

Sitting in his office, surrounded by hundreds of framed press clippings, Singh sips tea and reflects on whether he can change the way disaster response is currently delivered. The TIME award has opened doors and in some ways leveled the playing field, but Singh is up-front about his limitations. “We need a CEO here. We need somebody that can wear a tie and go talk to government and speak the language and schmooze—because that’s just not me,” he says. It hasn’t escaped Singh’s attention that often he is the lowest-paid and least-educated person in the room. He shrugs it off. “It’s funny, this life that I lead, because I’m a blue-collar grunt. I’m not a caviar-and-Perrier kind of guy.”

Nevertheless, Singh is determined to change the way Canadian humanitarian aid is delivered, whether the caviar-and-Perrier set—or anyone else—likes it or not. “We’ll get there eventually,” he says. “But will the government open their arms and welcome me?” He throws back his head and a huge bellow of laughter fills the room. “Hell no!”

Cambodians protest their government's new law cementing its grip on civil society and aid. Photo courtesy LICADHO.

More than two months have passed since the Cambodian government released the second draft of the controversial Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations (known colloquially as the NGO law),and the country’s civil society organizations are still holding their collective breath.

The government has long called for an NGO law, though no one seems able to articulate exactly why it is needed. Official statements have been all over the map — some say it’s needed to control “illegal activities” among NGOs; other say it’s to increase transparency; some even say it’s necessary to combat terrorism.

But the release of the second draft of the law dramatically exposed the government’s phony rationalizations. The law, as highlighted in this analysis, is simply a transparent attempt to control independent civil society and stifle dissent. It’s also a blatant violation of domestic and international protections on association, assembly and speech.

Besides affecting local groups, the passage of this law would significantly undermine the efforts of international donors and NGOs working in Cambodia, including the Canadian International Development Agency. CIDA invested a projected $17.03 million into development programs in the country between 2009-2010.

Among other things, the proposed law imposes a burdensome and mandatory registration process onall NGOs and associations working in Cambodia, and outlaws those that don’t comply. Meanwhile, it gives authorities unbounded discretion to approve registration applications, with few substantive guidelines to steer their decisions. There is no appeals process if registration is denied.

In this way, the new law takes government confrontation of NGOs and associations behind the scenes, out of public view. One paperwork error, real or imagined, and the organization will cease to exist.

The proposed law is also sloppy — one example being its apparently unlimited scope. It’s unclear whether this aspect was intentional, but the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) concluded that the law would require “every group of individuals who gather together with a differing level of frequency and perform the broadest variety of imaginable activities, from trekking and football fans, to chess and silk weaving groups,” to register. Failing to do so would be a violation of the law. (So would, apparently, founding an NGO or association without the required number of Cambodian citizen “founding members” required by the law — three and 11, respectively).

By impairing and even closing down local groups, the law will stifle information needed by funding bodies like CIDA, and make it more difficult to design, implement and monitor development programs. Local groups including informal networks and associations are often the best source for information on the human rights and development landscape. For example, one of CIDA’s main development goals in Cambodia is to help increase access to legal land titles, which would strengthen communities’ ability to fight land grabbing. Land grabbing is closely tied to government action and without politically independent partners, CIDA’s goals will be compromised. Moreover, CIDA endorses the idea that the promotion of civil society is vital in fostering respect for human rights and encouraging development in Cambodia.

Canada-registered NGOs working in Cambodia are also concerned. LICADHO Canada, an organization that combats land evictions in Cambodia, says that the draft law, in its current form, would mean that many of the community groups LICADHO Canada works with would be deemed illegal entities and their activities outlawed if the groups refuse to conform to registration requirements. LICADHO Canada is one of several NGOs in the region working to protect communities from land grabbing.

It may seem incongruous that the Cambodian government feels compelled to pass a specific law in order to strengthen its grip on civil society. This is a country, after all, where an activist was recently shot dead after helping his community protest a military land grab. Nearly 40 human rights defenders were imprisoned as of November 2010. The authorities are shameless in persecuting those who pose a threat to their grip on power and resources, even in the most minor cases.

But the fact that the government feels the need for new legislation indicates that they do indeed have an Achilles heel. Under current law, confronting NGOs is a messy and embarrassing business that often requires trumped-up charges. This tarnishes Cambodia’s reputation and threatens the two things that the government really cares about: Western aid money and the international legitimacy that comes with it. Cambodia’s leaders don’t want the country to become another Burma. (They also need the money; foreign aid still represents half of the national budget).

The government’s release of the second draft of the law on March 24, 2011, produced an uncharacteristically vocal and unified outcry from local and international civil society organizations. The draft law was universally condemned as the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in years. Even Cambodia’s major foreign donors chimed in, most notably the United States, which publicly stated that passage of the law in its current state could threaten aid money.

While it is too early to tell whether the outcry will ultimately impact the law, there is some reason for optimism. Many expected that the government would push the law through the Council of Ministers and National Assembly immediately after the release of the second draft, as has been done in the past with other controversial legislation. That has yet to happen.

It appears now that the backers of this law are regrouping. It is unclear what their next step will be, but this much is certain: continued opposition from Western donors, including CIDA, and international NGOs is key to preserving Cambodia’s independent civil society. Canadian taxpayers should also be concerned: if the law passes, the effectiveness of CIDA’s $17.03 million investment will be compromised by the Cambodian government’s total discretion over the operation of CIDA’s local partners.

The Cambodian government has played chicken with Western donors before, cynically manipulating their fears — China’s growing influence, the prospect of abandoning ordinary Cambodians, and the need to “engage” at all costs — in order to keep the money flowing. Too often it’s the donors who flinch.

This time should be different. Civil society teeters on the brink, and all of the proverbial chips are on the table. This is not the time to be timid; it’s time to call their bluff.

Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transitions to More Sustainable Livelihoods Through Partnerships and Land Use Solidarity, or MERET-PLUS, is a joint project between the Ethiopian government and the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Through it, Tekale and thousands others are employed to plant rows of tiny trees, destined for hillside farms like his. The roots should stop erosion, and the fruit can be eaten, traded or sold. “Our whole livelihood now depends on this,” says Tekale.

Thanks to MERET-PLUS, dozens of seedling nurseries and other small-scale sites have sprung up across Ethiopia. The program pays participants in grain to make compost to refresh tired soils, build retaining walls to stop erosion, and ponds to catch rainwater. Tekale earns 135 kilograms of grain per month, which feeds his family, his wife’s family and her relatives.

Meanwhile, though, MERET-PLUS itself is going hungry. A 2009 WFP report says expected donor contributions to MERET-PLUS fell nearly 50 percent since 2007, a shortfall blamed on food price increases and the global economic meltdown. Of US$166 million promised for 2007–2011, MERET-PLUS officials now expect to receive US$75 million. Major donors are Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway and Russia.

WFP officer Arega Yirga won’t say which country is the weak funding link, but Canada claims to be doing its part. Denise Robichaud, media officer at the Canadian International Development Agency, says we met our 2006 commitment of $20 million. It’s of little comfort. The funding gap caused postponement of 260 planned projects in 2008, and only 76,000 people—of a planned 122,000—received grain payments.

This wasted potential frustrates Fisseha Gizachew, MERET-PLUS regional coordinator in Awassa, southern Ethiopia. “People are coming to us because they understand the problems they are facing,” he says, adding, at the same time, lost funding has his office waiting for grain promised by the WFP seven months ago.

He won’t be the only one. This year, lost funding will force over 45,000 Ethiopian farmers off work while their land degrades. Too bad; during that time thousands of retaining walls and catchment ponds could have been built—long-term investments that help Ethiopians help themselves.

With today’s edition of Verbatim, we’ve got This Magazine associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey in conversation with Liberal Party critic for International Cooperation Glen Pearson. You can hear the original podcast of this conversation, as always, on the podcast blog.

Nick and Glen discuss Canada’s humanitarian commitments past, present, and future, ranging from Darfur to Afghanistan to Haiti and Latin America. With the Afghanistan mission scheduled to end in 2011, Canada’s international development priorities are up for discussion again, but there appears to be little agreement in parliament about where exactly Canadian resources—attention, aid, military support—ought to go.

Q&A

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: Let’s talk about, first, the aftermath in Afghanistan, when the Canadian combat mission in Kandahar ends in 2011. What happens next?

Glen Pearson: I think it’s a great time to ask that question because up until two weeks ago I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen. Peter McKay the defence minister and I, we’re friends, but we discussed often, and I traveled to some of the NATO meetings with him in opposition, we talk about these things. He would say “Glen, pretty soon we’re wrapping up in Afghanistan, in 2011, and we need to consider where we go next.”

So he was thinking of three places in Africa, one was to maybe Darfur, which is a traditional one that people have looked at, one was maybe Somalia and one was maybe the Congo because of the UN declarations there.

So he’s asked me to do some thinking about it, and then I went off to Darfur and I just got back a couple of days ago. What happened between then and now is obviously Haiti. What you’re seeing with the Conservative government, and I’m not trying to be partisan, but they have tended to look at Africa as a Liberal construct and I’ve spoken to many people on the other side, on the Conservative side, and they want to find their own place where they can leave their own legacy and that will be in Latin and South America.

So as a result we’re opening up all these new lines of free-trade zones right there in Bolivia and Columbia and all those other things. As far as aid goes CIDA has now pulled out of eight African countries, mostly for its long-term development, and moved those funds over to places like Colombia, Haiti and other places. So that leaves defence, it seems to me that the Prime Minister and others over there wish to move the focus out of Africa—and I think Africa was the default position for two reasons: one is that it’s obviously the hardest pressed area in the world, and it’s kind of been a legacy here. Even with the Mulroney Government and the Diefenbaker government Africa mattered.

I think now that has begun to change. Now, it still was a default position and I think because of that Canada has made long-term commitments. We have donor nations who have agreed with Canada—United States, European Union and others—that Africa is the big thing.

So there’s the Millennial Development Goals and everything else. So I think I naturally assumed the default position would be Africa. But I’ve come to understand pretty well how the Conservatives think on things like aid and other things. I think right now there are more troops moving into Haiti then there are in Afghanistan at present. So I think if they ever wanted to make a move militarily to put some of their troops in various places, and I don’t mean battle type of things, but keeping security, peacekeeping, doing humanitarian aid, helping with various projects, now would be their time if they wanted to switch, because Haiti has given them the opportunity to capture the public’s attention and move them over.

It’s not like with Afghanistan, where that was a whole bunch of elites deciding that that’s where they were going to go. The public is already well ahead of the game about Haiti, so I think you’ll probably see the debate beginning to grow that the place for the troops to go will not be Africa. It will probably be a much larger enforcement group within Haiti and maybe in other countries, as well militarily.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: How would that discussion happen? How would that commitment come about?

Glen Pearson: Well, probably secretly. I mean, this is one of the things that has bothered me a lot. These issues are so important that they should be part of parliament having a discussion, because our troops are sent by parliament, they’re not sent by their general or even by the Prime Minister. These kinds of things have to be passed by an act of parliament for anything that’s major. One would hope that they would sit down and come to their counterparts. The Liberals and the Conservatives have a vested interest in both Haiti and Afghanistan, it was the Liberals that first went into Haiti for instance and it was also the Liberals who first went into Afghanistan.

So we have a vested interest in cooperating together as parties, but we’re not being consulted. I think what you’ll see, it (the decision to move troops out of Africa, to Haiti and South America) will be by stealth. So you’ll suddenly realize the troop deployment in Haiti is now 3000, and then it might be 4000 and we’ve established and airbase. It won’t be, I don’t believe, by some big announcement that we’ve decided to move the construct as to where we’re going to go because that would fly directly in the face of most of the NGOs that do international development. It will also fly in the face of the commitments you have made to the G8, G20 and others that you would pursue the millennial development goal in Africa.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: I wonder, would any commitment to Haiti militarily in terms of development hurt the Canadian commitment to Africa, which was made just a few years ago by the Liberals primarily? Is Africa going to be a forgotten continent again?

Glen Pearson: I think it’s very quickly on its way to becoming that within Canada. But I just finished meeting Mr. Obama’s key guy for U.S. Aid, his new person who he’s just appointed. They’re totally committed to Africa and they’re going to double their aid to Africa.

Gordon Brown, whom I’ve met and discussed things with, and also his assistant, they’ve just announced they’re going to reach their 0.7  percent  aid development target and that they’re going to do that in Africa. You’ve got places like China and Japan and others who are investing in Africa, not just in aid, but also in business and development. The European Union has a huge history in Africa, so obviously you’re not going to be able to wrench them away from it. So I think it’s going to be Canada that decides to now align itself with American foreign policy primarily. While Americans might be doubling their aid to Africa, their real interest is in the Americas. That’s where they want to be, for trade reasons and for other reasons, because there are lots of goods down there. I think it’s going to be difficult. My personal view is that it’s going to isolate us more from the world—just like Copenhagen did. You know, the formula we were supposed to follow and we never did and that was a Liberal problem and also a Conservative problem. But at the end of the day we’ve been isolated from the world environmentally. Now we’re going to be isolated from the world in the areas of Global Millennial development goals, which are supposed to be for the poorest of the poor. You can only measure them when you go to the poorest countries. Well, we just left those countries.

Now Conservatives will tell you: “No, we stayed in Africa.” But it’s emergency funding—it’s like Haiti funding. It’s not the long-term development goals that end up making the difference. That’s what’s gone wrong in Haiti; all this has become an aid economy. It’s an NGO-driven welfare state in Haiti because people didn’t really do development, they just kept doing aid every time a new natural disaster happened. There’s no long-term future in that. We need to get back to development and I just think that’s not going to happen and Canada will be isolated from the European Union and other nations.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: What would you do if you were in charge?

Glen Pearson: Paul Martin and I do a lot of work together. Paul is helping to lead the African development bank. I just talked with him a couple days ago and he’s pulling together what he calls the African common market. It’s much like the E.U., he’s getting all these countries that now have certain benefits and certain growth patterns to begin to cooperate together to get world wide investment. He and I often get into fights about it because I’ll say: “Well that doesn’t help me in Darfur with the people who are trying to get water.”

He has agreed to that, so he and I are trying to put together a kind of plan that’s sky high for him and the people that he’s going with, but also how do we get markets and things like that to grow in places like Darfur or Nigeria or whatever. So I think what has happened in the last four or five years is that people have begun to realize that many countries in Africa have rounded the corner, but it comes after 50 years of investment and people are tired of it. So just as we are there, we’re suddenly moving on and I really fear that.

Haiti has been through that process as well, just as we’re getting somewhere we kind of pull out and it fell back to where it was. The biggest problem that I see in that is not the aid that would be going to Africa but environmental refugees. We’re told probably 160 million refugees will be coming from Africa, especially the coastal regions, over the course of the next decade. Where we are in Darfur, the rains came last year, but they didn’t come this year. So those people will move to the places resources can be. And they won’t move within Darfur, they’ll move into Chad, which then becomes an international nightmare.

Immigration legislation, refugee legislation, no country has anything to handle environmental refugees. You’re a refugee if you’re being persecuted. But what happens if you’re being persecuted by our own pollution.

I’m concerned about that and the second thing is I think Africa has huge resources. Not just natural, but people resources. Paul Martin has picked that up along with many in the World Bank, IMF and other and just as they see Africa now has the potential to also drive its own growth and it’s own interest we’re in the process of pulling out; that really worries me.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: So we’ve talked a lot now about Haiti and about Africa, what about Afghanistan? What do we do after the troops largely vacate Kandahar, how do we make sure that Afghanistan isn’t forgotten?

Glen Pearson: It’s just going to happen. I mean, I hate it, I hate telling you this, but it’s what we seem to do in the west. Like also, we have a tsunami so we pour a billion bucks into the place and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t invested well, it was wasted, projects were wasted and it’s because we moved on, we didn’t maintain our interest.

Already the public has moved on from Afghanistan and now I’m starting to notice politically—I’m one of the people in the Liberal party, and I’m one of the few, who feels we should stay on in Afghanistan militarily. I think we have to re-jig the mission somewhat to provide protection for development, but mine is not a popular view. But as a development person, all the work that I’ve been doing in Africa for the last 15 years, if all of a sudden you pulled out the security from those areas all the work that we’ve done over the years will just be run over. The leaders will be killed; the women’s leaders will be killed. And it’s going to happen in Afghanistan, the Taliban will remember who was helping to work with the Canadian projects, and who allowed the Canadian military to provide protection of their village and once we leave these forces will come in.

I think that’s a really major thing, it’s like bringing up a child, you can’t have a baby and just think it’s absolutely wonderful and when the baby is five you’re kind of tired of it and you move on. You can’t do that, development is not like that, development is a long time and a long-term waltz, very, very complicated. It takes a lot of compassion and you can’t just look to the public to give you the directions on where you should go because today it might be Darfur, tomorrow it might be Haiti. You have to have good policy that says where the neediest places in the world are, and says lets donate a half a century, a century to those places to help them grow.

So it’s interesting hearing the Prime Minister say yesterday that if we’re going to do anything we’re going to have to spend 10 years in Haiti, that’s very unlike him. He would rather do a temporary thing for a year and move on. Because his interest is in Central and South America, he’s willing to give them the 10 years, but he’s willing to pull out of Africa, it worries me.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: It seems like you’re talking about a long-term plan. That doesn’t’ really exist here in Canada, we seem to go from country to country, problem to problem. How can that be changed?

Glen Pearson: I think it needs to be changed at the government level by smart thinking. I don’t think you can expect the public to know all of those things, but I hosted a dinner here last June at the parliamentary restaurant for all the former foreign affairs ministers of the Liberal party. There were eight of them that came and it was a great session, but every single one of them admitted they never had a foreign policy. Canada has never had one, it’s not like Israel where it’s fighting for its survival and therefore has to have a policy because its survival is at stake. Canada is very much protected by that, we have access to trade and other things and so therefore a policy isn’t so important.

The difficulty for them as they said, we inherited the policy was from the people before us, they just went on and did that. I think we need to have a foreign policy that says: “Here are our interests.” They might involve trade, you know business corporate, those things; it might involve environment; it might involve women; it might involve development and micro enterprises; it might involve the poorest of the poor in education. You know we have to have a policy that says wherever Canada goes in the world; these are the five things that Canada looks at.

So we can go to China and go ahead and do business with that and that’s fine. But, we’ll also look to a place like Africa and realize since our major responsibility is to help the poorest of the poor, that’s where we’ll be. But without somebody setting up that agenda, the Liberals will pick up where the Conservatives left off.

Let’s say I was chosen as a minister in the government, lets say I was chosen as CIDA minister. What do I do now? Do I go the Haiti and Bolivia and Columbia and say, “It’s been swell, but we’re gone because my personal preference is back to Africa.” So all these deals that have been signed from CIDA and all these things is it right for me to come along because I have a personal preference for Africa? To roll up the carpet from Columbia and head back over to Sudan? That’s no way to do foreign policy. So I think we need to have a bipartisan effort, a multi-partisan effort of determining what are our values that are sacrosanct to us and then our foreign policy will reflect that and very much as part of that will be international development.

Nick Taylor-Vaisey: People like priorities though, they like to know that Canada is committed to Afghanistan, or Canada is committed to Haiti and if you try to spread troops or foreign aid around to much people will say “Canada has no priorities.” How do you balance that?

Glen Pearson: That’s why you need the policy, if the policy said “look we’re not just going to follow the Americans wherever they want us to go,” we’re a United Nations country, we’ve always believed in that. So if the United Nations has something, that’s part of our policy, we will go where they want us to go. But our policy should also be “If security is at stake and we regard that that is important, the public might want us to leave Afghanistan, but we don’t believe that that is the right thing to do because our European partners don’t want us to do it, the Americans don’t want us to do it, the UN doesn’t want us to do it, and definitely the Afghans don’t want us to do it.”

But then that’s the problem with democracy, it becomes an unpopular war because some 60 Canadian soldiers have been killed and when I go to an election I’ve got to try to sell people on the fact I’ve got to stay. People are going to say screw off; it’s not going to happen. People will vote us out of office.

So a much deeper amount of work needs to be done on how we preserve institutional arrangements and longevity of policy that can be better for any party so that we’re not at the whim of whatever is politically popular. Because if that is the case, we’ll always be in Haiti three months and then gone to the next one. It’s how we work.

Because we have everything here, we don’t understand about development and what it requires. So we just move on. The problem is not international development and the problem is not Haiti or Sudan, the problem is democracy. We have a citizenry that has probably everything that it wants, right? I realize there are sectors of the society that are really struggling, but overall we’re doing very well so we don’t have a development temperament. We don’t. As a result the Canadian image is going to continue to suffer.

We were in Cypress for something like 50 years, we’ve been in Africa since the end of World War II, and we’ve been in Haiti for something like 18 years. These things are important, it’s where our legacy came from that everybody respects and now we’re going to pull out of a bunch of those places. I think people are not going to respect that, it’s a problem, but the problem is democratic.

I’ll give you an example, I got $3 million out of the Prime Minister to build these women’s centres and also water centres for these refugees that came out of Darfur. That was two years ago, it was my first speech in the house. I spoke directly to the Prime Minister. I asked for the money, to my shock he gave it. It was given to the International Organization of Migration with us kind of parlaying that. This time when we went back in January we took a team of 15 people with us and we went in and they saw we had 130,000 refugees last year come out of Darfur into our area where we had been working for 10 years. Swamping over the area and we realized something had to be done. So that $3 million was given, it was given to the IOM and just four months ago they finished all their projects so we arrived a couple of weeks ago and I’ll tell you, I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Here’s the Canadian flag on water towers, water systems, women’s micro-enterprises, this is Darfur I’m talking about and now we’re building a high school there for Darfur refugees. You tell me a person in Darfur who ever thought they would get a high school education. All of these things are happening because it’s government money. It’s not the little NGO that my wife and I lead; it would take us 50 years to raise that kind of money.

When government decides to act it makes a massive difference if it’s invested wisely. So the team all sat around with me, and they’ve known me for years, they said “Glen, we just think it’s awesome you got that $3 million, it made a big difference, we got to keep it going.” And I told them the way you keep these things going is you should help me in the next election, like you should get involved politically. I don’t care which party it is, but if you believe Darfur is important or people like that are, you need to get involved politically and make sure that politicians keep focus on these things that matter to you. And every single one of them said; “nah, politics is a nasty business.”

We’ve so much turned people off of politics that the idea that the public would keep our minds set on the things that we believe in, I’m not saying the public couldn’t, it just doesn’t care. It just doesn’t think that we as politicians anymore are worth it. So we get 59 percent voter turn out in the last election. It’s terrible.

How can Africa remain a priority, or Haiti, I don’t care what it is: any kind of foreign policy. How can it remain a priority when the vast majority of people who need to vote to keep that priority in mind and hold governments accountable will not vote? That’s the big issue, the big issue is not priorities over development, the big issue is the expansion of the franchise of democracy and we’re doing a pitsy job of it as politicians, its abysmal.

A sunset in Elongatuas, Masai Mara, Kenya (2009). Photo by Siena Anstis.

[Editor’s Note: Siena Anstis, who has served as our Africa correspondent on the blog over the past few months, is moving on to new projects. She’ll continue to contribute to the blog, but wanted to pass on some of the things she’s learned during her time working and reporting in Uganda, Kenya, and elsewhere for other young Western journalists looking to work abroad.]

I will be packing my bags next week and leaving Nairobi after an 8-month fellowship with the Aga Khan Foundation (East Africa) and freelance work under the Journalism & Development Scholarship funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Of course, the idea of leaving and juggling with new choices is both exhausting and exhilarating.

On that note, I know I am privileged to have traveled this much over the past few years (with a lot more to come). I regularly think back on how important the guidance and opportunities I received have been (parents are probably the biggest asset in this department). So, if you are interested in entering international development, I figured I would share a few other tips, after the jump:

Develop a specialty: Whether I want to work in journalism or not, having the skills and training of a journalist is a big asset. Getting into international development is no walk in the park – entry level positions often ask for 5 or more years of experience. However, if you have something that makes you versatile – in my case, photography, design and writing – you might make the cut.

Studying International Development: You do NOT need to study International Development to enter the field. An undergraduate degree (Social Sciences or Humanities) in any discipline is what you make of it and is equally as relevant. Also, grades matter. You will need to do a Master’s at some point to climb the ladder and high grades are key.

Study both applied and research: Instead, combine your undergraduate. For example, do a major in a research degree and another major in an applied degree. You might not have time to do an Honors in the research section, but you will have a lot more skills when you graduate. Plus, no Honors will not stop you from getting into Canadian or UK graduate schools (I can guarantee you this). Applied degrees can be anything from journalism to graphic design and marketing. All applied skills are valuable when you start an internship or a new job in international development. The applied degree will always add that extra edge to your applications – and be your emergency money-maker down the line.

Apply your “applied skills” now: I started freelancing the moment I entered journalism school. A lot of it was unpaid work with minimal exposure, but it taught me the difficult ropes of freelancing. I also wrote regularly for the school newspaper and did a stint as a news editor. I continue to do a mix of free and paid work, using all of it as an opportunity to market myself online. This also applies to other degree. For example, if you are a graphic design and political science major (maybe a strange – but interesting – mix), try volunteering/working for some local NGOs.

Start early. Get “involved” now: Being involved can mean anything from attending lectures and seminars you would not usually bother with to helping at the soup kitchen and assisting with the Amnesty Chapter at your university. I would suggest a mix of the obscure and the obvious. Having UN-related organizations on your CV is fantastic, but remember that you will probably get more experience working with that small local organization that really needs extra hands. Getting involved takes some determination: many organizations are too disorganized or busy to streamline volunteers. Harass them persistently.

Travel with purpose: Wherever you travel, analyze the conditions around you. From racism in Denmark to tourism in Zanzibar, there is a story in every surrounding. Recognize these stories, write a blog, use social media to disseminate your stories (namely Twitter). Show that you are engaged in your environment. If anything, this will help you discover more about yourself and the world around you.

Internships: There is a point where you get to say “no more work for free.” However, the time between now and then is getting longer and longer, particularly with the job market in disarray. Some people spend several years after university working for next to nothing or free and getting their foot in the door. So, beat them to it. Do internships abroad every summer. Use some of your student loans and savings. Don’t wait until you’ve graduated. For example, I spent the the second and third summers of university working in Uganda. I then did an exchange for 6 months to Europe and threw in some freelancing in Kosovo. I started a non-profit (and basically surrendered myself to no-income for a year). And now I’m finishing a costs-covered (but no profit) 8-month fellowship. Yes, I had to take out some extra bank loans, but it’s worth it.

Look outside the box: Instead of applying for those mainstream and hard to get internships that everyone applies to, contact an organization you would like to work for directly. Say you are moving to where they are based and want to volunteer for free for several months. Getting an internship is not hard, making the most of it is. And sometimes these internships change you whole perspective. For example, I started working for Women of Uganda Network because a friend heard the organization occasionally took foreign interns and referred me. WOUGNET introduced me to a whole other area in development, information and communication for development (ICT4D) in broad terms, which is now my thesis focus and has helped me get accepted to top schools in the UK.

Prepare for your internship: Like I said, making the most of an internship is hard. Many are office-based and involve little field-work. You’ll find yourself editing documents and writing tired Facebook messages. Unless, of course, you bring some ideas of your own. Spend the first few weeks recognizing gaps in the organization and, once people are comfortable with you, suggest a particular project you would like to work on or pitch your own idea. When I was working with the Women of Uganda Network, in Kampala, Uganda, the first few weeks were slow – until I stumbled across their citizen journalism initiative and asked to design and facilitate a workshop for local non-governmental organizations.

Award/Internships: There are a few good organization and awards you should be applying to while in university or after graduation. This applies primarily to Canadians and is based on some of my previous work experience. There are dozens more – if you know them, post in the comments section!

The Aga Khan Foundation Fellowship (8 months, costs covered): This fellowship has funded my current position. There are position all around the world, from Tajikistan to the white beaches of Zanzibar. Applications are generally due in December. They take university graduates with a preference for Masters students (however, there were plenty non-Masters in my cohort).

Insight Collaborative (1-year, costs covered): This fellowship is for people with a bit more experience (several international internships under their belt – whether summer or longer-term).  Training is primarily in conflict resolution, with the opportunity to organize internship placements anywhere in the world.

Forces Avenir: For students studying in Quebec, this competition is a fantastic way to gain more exposure for yourself or your project.

Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program (summer, unpaid): If you are at Concordia University, this is a great way to get your first field experience. It is the most basic introduction to international development you can get while being cared for.

McGill Internship Program (summer, bursaries available): If you are at McGill, you can look into this highly competitive program. A friend of mine used to work in their offices, feel free to contact me for more details.

CIDA Internships (5-6 months, costs covered): These internships are good for people on their first or second work experience abroad. They are getting increasingly competitive, I presume, as the job market stalls.

Women of Kireka (rolling, unpaid): A bit of self-promotion, but the organization I started with Project Diaspora in Kampala, Uganda, is looking for interns. You can read more about the positions here.