Aid industry: "More harm than good"? from BBC News | Business | UK Edition

International humanitarian assistance is a multibillion dollar enterprise, but is much of the aid doing more harm than good?
That is the controversial question raised by Linda Polman, a Dutch writer and journalist who has covered conflict and humanitarian crises from Haiti to Darfur, eastern Congo and Afghanistan.
There are situations, she says, in which the best thing the aid givers can do is walk away. HARDtalk asks if that means turning our backs on a world of human suffering.

You can watch the full BBC Hard Talk interview here.

Does humanitarian aid prolong wars? from The Guardian World News by Andrew Anthony

Exactly what took place in Ethiopia 25 years ago will probably never be established beyond doubt. After all, it was a war zone mired in chaos, desperation and human misery. It may be, as Geldof insists, that the vast majority of aid his charity raised reached its intended recipients and that none was used, contrary to the BBC report, to buy military hardware.

But according to a new book by the Dutch writer Linda Polman, such positive outcomes are the exception in the field of humanitarian aid. In War Games: the Story of Aid and War in Modern Times, Polman argues that humanitarianism has become a massive industry that, along with the global media, forms an unholy alliance with warmongers.

You can read the full Guardian, The Observer article here.