In 2012, after returning from working with a local NGO in the West Bank in Palestine, I suffered a burnout. It was the second time I had left a job in the aid sector because I could no longer cope with the pressures and demands of the role, and felt huge doubts as to whether any of my actions had a positive impact on the lives of others. These experiences inspired me to complete a PhD on stress in the aid sector, based on field research with national and international staff from a variety of international NGOs and UN agencies in Kenya.
My findings confirmed what most of us in the sector already know: mental health problems and emotional distress are common, and organisational support is insufficient. But the larger lesson is the extent to which these problems are understood and addressed according to white, western assumptions about aid work and its challenges. In a sector that’s approximately 90 per cent comprised of national staff from countries in the global South, the policies and practices of staff security and wellbeing are skewed in favour of employees from the global North.
There’s a clear racial dynamic at work here, since the aid and development sector has a long history of domination by the ideas and interests of white practitioners and decision-makers. While worthy of grave concern, reports of high rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and of sexual harassment, largely originate from this same group, but what about the opinions of national staff? What is their experience of stress? Here are some examples from my research.
