BY RAMIRO SEBASTIÁN FÚNEZ

By now, you’ve probably heard the news.

Oxfam, a U.K.-based non-governmental organization, has been implicated in a major sex scandal in Haiti. Roland Van Hauwermeiren, a top Oxfam official, admitted to hiring sex workers — including minors — using charitable funds after the Caribbean country’s devastating 2010 earthquake.

Similar events involving sex workers occurred in Chad.

To top it off, it’s been revealed that Oxfam knew about the sex scandal and quietly tried to brush it off by not informing Haitian authorities, allowing those implicated to walk free and silencing those who have called them out on it.

At this point, the story has made waves across the world — and rightfully so. But mainstream media outlets are making it seem as if it’s somehow beyond imagination that an NGO like Oxfam committed such acts.

We’re constantly told that NGOs, especially those from the West, are “forces of good” in the world that are solving issues like poverty, hunger and environmental destruction. In reality, however, most of these NGOs are forces of bullshit, perpetuating the oppressive capitalist-imperialist world system while masquerading as agents of revolutionary change.

Occasionally they commit blatant acts of bullshit, like using donations to hire sex workers or outright stealing money from the Haitian people and profiting off of their misery. Here are two glaring examples.

Following the 2010 earthquake, the American Red Cross raised nearly half a million dollars for “relief.” However, numerous investigative journalists have revealed that most of those funds were not used to build houses, provide water or guarantee other essential aid, as was promised. Instead, most of these funds went into the coffers of NGO leaders who made a fortune out of the Haitian people’s disaster.

The Clinton Foundation, run by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has also been accused of funneling billions of dollars of aid to personal friends and business partners.

These are examples of overt acts of bullshit committed by NGOs in Haiti. Most of the time, however, their acts of bullshit are hidden from plain sight.

Their overall intention is to covertly preserve the ruling oppressive system and its elites by artificially addressing economic and political issues that may lead to mass revolution. They brush colorful paint over a decaying wall to hide its rotting foundation instead of building a new one.

As revolutionary Indian author Arundhati Roy once said, NGOs “form a sort of buffer between Empire and its subjects,” adding that they “defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right.”

That’s exactly what we’ve seen in Haiti.

No other country in the world has more NGOs per capita as Haiti, according to the North American Congress on Latin America. Most of these organizations claim to be dedicated to “poverty relief” and “humanitarian aid.”

Haiti, however, still continues to be one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. NGOs there have served as a buffer between the First World capitalist-imperialist economies that have totally devastated the Caribbean nation and the militant, impoverished masses who are opposed to the way things are.

There will soon come a point, however, when the people of Haiti will become fed up with the political neutralization and economic exploitation carried out by NGOs and will rise up against the capitalist-imperialist system as a whole.

ANTICONQUISTA will be there to support them.

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