Jun 13 2011
"The problem is that U.N. agencies, USAID, its European counterparts (90 percent of relief funding still comes from the OECD countries), and NGOs almost all think that to get attention for a given crisis, they must use apocalyptic language and err on the side of overestimating the death, damage, and displacement that has been caused," author David Rieff writes in a Foreign Policy opinion piece. When organizations exaggerate, "they up the rhetorical ante that much more," he writes, adding, "In the name of mobilizing compassion, we are raising the bar to impossible heights" (6/9).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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