Politics Has a Grip on U.S. Humanitarian Aid

A group of private citizens who wished to deliver food, clothing and medicine to children was prevented from doing so recently by the Reagan Administration. The reason for the Administration’s reluctance to permit the aid is that by happenstance of geography the children are Nicaraguan.

The Administration’s denial of relief aid for Nicaraguan children is paralleled by an insistence that any aid to the Contras that does not consist of guns and bullets is “humanitarian.” The confusion of meaning has spread to Congress, where supplies to a fighting force are called “humanitarian” by some while aid to hospitals and schools is identified a national security threat.

The time to stop this distortion of language and common sense has long since passed. No aid to a fighting force, be it in Nicaragua, Afghanistan or Angola, is humanitarian in the commonly understood sense of the term. And, equally strongly, assistance intended to relieve human suffering, sent to hospitals, schools and other organizations anywhere, is undeniably humanitarian. Until we use words understood by all in the same way, urgently needed supplies for innocent victims of war will be held up by semantic arguments.

In the same way the Reagan Administration is selective in its definition of humanitarian aid, it is selective in its application of laws governing aid. This indifference to law and the intent of Congress prevents American citizens from donating genuine humanitarian aid.

The Veterans Peace Convoy of 38 vehicles and more than 100 people was stopped last month by the U.S. Customs Service in Laredo, Tex. when they attempted to cross the border on their way to Central America. U.S. Customs officials refused to let them continue because the convoy declined to apply for a license authorizing the export of vehicles carrying food, clothing and medicine to Nicaragua. The convoy leaders say that the vehicles--including a 1961 Dodge bus and a 1970 Volkswagen van--were part of their humanitarian cargo; therefore, the Customs Service could not hold up their delivery to Nicaragua. But officials did.

The convoy is not the first group to run into roadblocks set by the Reagan Administration: Catholic Relief Services still has $1,400 worth of tools and shovels in a Miami warehouse where they help no one and Oxfam America was not permitted to ship $41,000 of agricultural tools and housing supplies. All this and more has happened since the President imposed an embargo on Nicaragua in 1985.

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the legislation that governs such matters, is straightforward on this subject. The President does not have the authority to prohibit the donation of articles “intended to be used to relieve human suffering” unless the President determines that one of three situations exists: the donations “would seriously impair his ability to deal with any national emergency”; the donations were provided “in response to coercion,” or the donations would “endanger” members of the U.S. armed forces already in combat in the region or about to enter combat there. None of these reasons was advanced by the Administration when it prevented the convoy from crossing the border with its humanitarian supplies.

Legislative history makes it clear that Congress intended that any article other than military or strategic items could be donated. While the legality of the convoy’s donations and the Administration’s action will be determined later in a court of law, it is difficult for me to believe that this collection of small, aging trucks could “seriously impair” the President’s ability to deal with the national emergency with Nicaragua.

The Reagan Administration has devoted much rhetoric to its respect for the rights of individuals and the notion that the government should get off the backs of U.S. citizens. Again, when ideological conflicts are involved, such principles are dropped quickly. The Administration is willing to harass private citizens and to deny help to children in its vendetta against the Nicaraguan government.

Much of the hunger and physical suffering in today’s world occurs as the result of clashes within nations. As Peter Davies, president of InterAction, an organization of 112 private American aid agencies, points out, “in countries such as Ethiopia and the Sudan, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, the conflicts themselves make providing aid difficult.” These difficulties are compounded when humanitarian aid is allowed to become a tool of ideology or political strategy, instead of assessing the aid strictly on the basis on greatest need.

The moral stature of the United States as a world leader is based to a great extent on our generous humanitarian response to people in need. This tradition began after World War I, when Herbert Hoover led a relief effort to help our former enemies in war-ravaged Europe. Can we deny American citizens the right to do the same for our neighbors in this hemisphere?