Giving to charity is something you have to think about at Christmas time. The huge number of charity leaflets coming through the post and by email, the focus on charities by newspapers and magazines and the ongoing bad news from Syria to floods in Britain – how can you not think of doing something to help those less fortunate than yourselves? Although I am not in the same league as the poor lady in her eighties who received hundreds of requests, (because I can be ruthless in ignoring charities I think are a waste of money), nevertheless I do receive an awful lot of stuff through the post, from suffering donkeys to save the whale.
Now that Christmas is behind us, I can reflect yet again on what my priorities are and to what organisations I have actually given.
To some extent they match. I am keen on supporting organisations countering environmental problems, women’s rights and education, certain medical charities, and these all feature in my list. I have supported Rainforest Savers, a small organization which is trying out a method of preventing slash and burn in Cameroon and other places, I support my old college in improving access to girls from poor backgrounds, and I have supported the Red Cross, MSF and Doctors of the World in their work with refugees. I also support Sightsavers, which tackles avoidable blindness all over the world; Action Aid, for their work in Kenya, and several one off donations to DEC and similar umbrella organisations. And Wikipedia, which is a huge resource for everyone needing a quick answer to everything!
But at the end of it all, what difference does it make? A tiny bit here and there perhaps, but considering the problems affecting the world, so little. Even the big philanthropists like Bill Gates can’t solve very much.
And the one cause I would really like to support, I find great difficulty in doing. My priority for funds would be to support people doing work in providing family planning for women in refugee camps all over the world, but particularly for those displaced by the Syrian civil war. Their needs are so great, for food, shelter, medical care and education for their children that family planning is barely considered. There is good evidence that major catastrophes and wars which kill and injure millions, don’t make a dent in the population. In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake for instance, the population numbers soon rose again very quickly, because of lack of contraception or unwillingness to use it, even as poverty was getting worse. But trying to give money for family planning is fraught with difficulties. Telling people in refugee camps that they there are too many of them and they should reduce the size of their families seems callous in the extreme. And especially in the Middle East where large families are seen as a gift from God, contraception is often looked on with great hostility especially from the men. There are myths, that contraception causes sterility, that it causes disease, and of course men are often against it because they want as many children as possible.
“My husband says it is religiously forbidden, and that what God gives is good,” is a common refrain.
It is clear from working in the field that most women in refugee camps do want at the very least to space their families, as they are terrified of getting pregnant again in those conditions. Yet contraception is just not available. Contraception was free in pre-civil war Syria and 58% of women used it. But now for those in refugee camps in Lebanon it is expensive and hard to get. The result is that more than 250,000 women in Syria and refugee settings became pregnant during 2014. The burdens on the health services in Lebanon especially are huge, with 15% of deliveries needing medical care, and only part of this cost being covered by aid agencies. Refugees see their savings running out and many cannot afford such extra costs, so women suffer, and some die, because of pregnancy and obstetric complications.
Because there are so many needs in refugee camps “extras” like family planning get put to the bottom of the list, even though family planning provision would pay for itself very quickly, especially in reducing medical costs. Some charities like MSF and Merlin (now Save the Children) have tried, very, very cautiously to provide contraception to women who want to space their families. But conflict-affected settings receive 50% less funding for reproductive health than stable settings, so that women, who in pre -war Syria used to use contraception readily, now cannot.
But I cannot find any charity which will prioritise family planning in these areas, and when I give to MSF or Merlin I cannot state that this is what I want. While I am touched by stores of children suffering, like everyone else, I cannot but think that parents who cannot provide for more children should be helped not to have more.
Last year I gave to the Marie Stopes Foundation. They did not ask for it, I did not receive an acknowledgement and I have no idea whether it went to the rich world or to refugees. They certainly did not ask me to donate again.
Does anyone have an idea where I should send my money now?
References
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2010/haiti.aspx
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/jul/25/refugees-family-planning-health-syria
Managing Complications in Pregnancy and Childbirth WHO report/RHR/00.7
WHO statistics Syrian Arab republic
Elen Samuel, doctor and writer 