Talk:ActionAid

Inaccurate information

"ActionAid has been criticized for supporting US-led violent regime change in Haiti in 2004."

Inaccurate information. Source material (Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment, Verso 2007, 2010) mentions ActionAid only once on p182, as follows:

"They knew that, given the chance, groups like PAPDA and many similar organizations, together with their international allies like Christian Aid, Catholic Institute for International Relation, Catholic Relief Services, Action Aid, and so on, could provide some of the most trustworthy and media-friendly ammunition to the destabilization campaign."

No direct assertion of ActionAid support for the 2004 coup in any capacity is present anywhere in the given source material. Removing from main article.

Aa int (talk) 16:08, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

• Aa int, a few things. 1. You have an obvious COI, which is fine, and you announced it--please look at the note I just placed on your talk page, and have a look at Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#How_to_disclose_a_COI. 2. I had to block your account because of the user name; again, see the note on your talk page on how to request a name change. 3. I will accept in good faith that you read the book carefully--the reference was sloppy anyway since it lacked a page number, and the text itself was really unacceptably vague. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:14, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Original Research / Non-neutrality

I agree with the assessment of inaccuracy, and with Drmies that the reference was sloppy. I can see however that the questionable line has been restored and made into an even stronger statement.

ActionAid is no longer just criticised, but "strongly criticised".

Taking the quote from Peter Hallward's book above in good faith, we can see that Action Aid sic. is in a fairly long list of charities that are implicated together in a penstroke. The problem is, Wikipedia is treating each charity on that list very differently. For ActionAid, the wording of this criticism is in a passive voice, suggesting a well-established criticism for which you'd expect reports from various media sources -- which we do not have. In contrast, Christian Aid get's a more cautious criticism in which the article which makes clear it's just coming from this one philosophy professor:

"Canadian professor Peter Hallward, in his book Damming the Flood, accused Christian Aid of supporting US-led violent regime change in Haiti in 2004."

Catholic Relief Services is off the hook even more. It gets no mention of this supposed criticism at all.

The question then, is whether to put the same criticism on all three pages, or just get rid of it altogether.

First, it's debatable whether Peter Hallward is actually accusing these charities of supporting the coup. In fact I think he is not trying to do this at all. I think he is just saying that the alleged conspirators found the criticisms of the government useful to their cause. He refers to:

"groups like PAPDA and many similar organizations, together with their international allies like Christian Aid, Catholic Institute for International Relation, Catholic Relief Services, Action Aid, and so on"

Let's be clear here: Hallward is saying that ActionAid is an ally of PAPDA -- not of the conspiritors in the coup! PAPDA is another NGO. Looking at [1], it does seem they speak out against the local government. For example here: [2]. In this way, we can see what Hallward is getting at -- these organisations speak out against the government in various ways. Hallward is saying that the alleged conspirators could draw on these organisations for "media-friendly ammunition to the destabilization campaign". That's quite different from these NGOs deliberately supporting a coup against a government. Let's also add that the role of the US and French governments in the coup is disputed, and it's really tenuous to suggest that these NGOs directly and deliberately sought to support them in a coup of the Haitian government.

In fact, I can find no article, reputable or otherwise, suggesting ActionAid or Christian Aid supported a coup in Haiti. Actually, I can't find even an unreputable article taking this position. The only hit I get when I look for anything in this area, is this wikipedia article itself. This suggests that the wiki entry is original research and does not meet the No_original_research policy.

The additional citation of a Guardian article does nothing to support either the overall assertion of criticism or the added strong statement that ActionAid "openly agitated against the democratically elected Haitian government". That is really going too far from the article cited which is using ActionAid as a source and is not in any way attempting to report that NGO itself was in some way subject to wrongdoing:

A British charity, ActionAid, has expressed concern about its work supporting coffee growing in the town of Thiotte, after its staff were told not to criticise the government.

"We aim to promote the democratic process but we were called in by the local mayor. If our right to express our views is now in jeopardy, then this is becoming like the early years of the Duvalier regime," said the charity's regional coordinator, Helen Collinson."

Certainly, it is overly strong to suggest that ActionAid were engaged in political agitation. That would imply an attempt to cause unrest or upheaval. The best you can do with this article, is say that ActionAid were critical of the government. Criticising a government, is not the same as supporting a coup against that government. Not to mention, this was 4 years before the coup.

My conclusion, after much research and consideration, is that this criticism be fully removed from both the ActionAid and Christian Aid page. I will proceed to do so.

Robnpov (talk) 11:59, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Reflist

References

NPOV

"We believe everyone has the power within them to create change for themselves, their families and communities." "We have a ‘bottom up approach to decision-making, and uniquely, our head office is located in Africa." "We have hubs in Asia, The Americas and Europe too."

This is not an objective fact-based article. This article has been written by ActionAid itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.35.25 (talk) 07:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

— I've done some cleanup on the intro text (which was the part of the article that you refer to). I believe the article is now quite neutral (though I'm sure it needs to be improved in many ways). 88.20.95.178 (talk) 03:08, 23 March 2014 (UTC) cK

Proposed merge with ActionAid Rwanda

The details of the program in one specific country are not separately notable. As usual in such cases, it should be kept with the parent organization DGG ( talk ) 08:52, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

• Yes. Do the merge. Ajf773 (talk) 23:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

• No, this is not encyclopedic material. It reads like an internal wiki of a company. Boundarylayer (talk) 22:35, 27 September 2017 (UTC)