Saudi Arabian NGOs in Somalia:‘Wahabi’da’wah or humanitarian aid?

In the Western world, both the Geneva Conventions and the Red Cross-sponsored ‘Code of Conduct for NGOs in Disaster Relief’ are seen to provide the mandate and operational framework for humanitarian action. However, a renewed linking of aid and broader political goals, common during the Cold War, can now be observed. Even before the war on terror, questions as to the usefulness of a separation of aid from politics were being raised (cf. Duffield 2001). The distinguished journalist David Rieff in, A Bed for the Night: the Crisis of Humanitarianism (2002) went further, pronouncing the death of pure humanitarianism, viewing it cynically as an extension of the foreign policy of Western governments. The picture today remains mixed and the NGO community continues to be the main vehicle for humanitarian aid, calling into question how ‘non-governmental’ many NGOs can actually be. As Joanna Macrae (2002: 53) puts it, ‘[it] is not whether humanitarian aid is political, but how.’