Sean Penn is Growing Up–International Agencies Never Cooperate

Sorry to tell you Sean, this is always the way that international multilateral, bilateral and private agencies have worked–everyone for themselves.  Each bureaucracy is unwilling to cede power to another, each follows its own procurement procedures and each responds to a different board of directors.  This will not change for a small, powerless country–only the big countries (say, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina in Latin American) set their own terms and have the power to force “some” coordination.

While every organization he’s come across has “extremely dedicated people,” there are “competing cultures in the international relief world” with one focused on emergency relief and the other on sustainable development, he added later.

“These have to work with each other against the problem of poverty and not against each other in competition for donors,” he said. “It’s one of the basic embarrassments and failures in the aid community.”

via Sean Penn sees Haiti relief shortfalls | World news | guardian.co.uk.