Too much of a good thing

1... 2.. 3... ok, I tell it: I am pissed off at the attention and outpouring of aid for the victims of the asian tsunamis.

Yes, it's awful what happened there. Yes, they really need our help. And yes, it is beautiful to see how humanity can come together. What pisses me off, is that it took such an event to make things happen.

First, long-term development money is increasingly diverted to those high-profile humanitarian and emergency events. "Generous countries" like the attention they get for being so sensitive to misery - and they're right to notice that they get too little for their day-to-day interventions. And they know that if they don't do it, they'll get more than their money's worth of criticism. But the fact remains that rich countries still don't give a mere 0.7% of their GDP to official development assistance and the United States are the worst.

Second, money comes from rich countries, Germany for example, who lost the most nationals in this disaster - and most of them are still missing right now. This private money is not clear of plain self-interest, like it appears to be.

Third, there is so much money and so much attention mixing together, that won't take long for a financial scandal (corruption, diverted aid) to arise. Then, people will dismiss international aid as if perfect attribution and honesty was possible in such a human world.

Suddenly, there is people in need in the world and we can show how generous we are, how open-hearted, how we are so willing to help those in need. But we're just not. We refuse to look at ongoing catastrophes.

• 27.9% of people in low and middle income countries live on less than 1$ a day.
• 36 million adults and 2 million children live with HIV/AIDS.
• Darfur (Sudan) is burning.
  

And it could go on almost forever, since these are just the most well-known. What about Columbia civil war (what happened to Ingrid Betancourt?), human rights in Chechnya, the fighting in the "Democratic Republic" of Congo?

It seems like the best thing that could happen to those people is a tsunami. In the meantime, let them eat cake.