FRANCAISMedical Emergency Relief International - Comments
3) The financial resources
-Before the creation of the Euro currency in 1999, Merlin’s budgets are calculated by AidWatch according to the following exchange rates: £1 = €1.64 in 1996, £1 = €1.45 in 1997 and £1 = €1.49 in 1998.
-Financially speaking, Merlin’s budget had more than doubled in five years, between 1997 and 2003. The organisation depends a lot on institutional grants, which limits its room for manoeuvre. In Eastern Congo-Kinshasa at the end of 1996, explains for instance James Orbinski, it had to withdraw from the camps of Goma when governmental agencies started to reduce their funding in order to starve the refugees and push them back to Rwanda. Though its accounts are balanced, Merlin still encounters difficulties diversifying its funding and suffers from a lack of recognition by the British public, who usually prefer to donate to the older and better known charities. For private donations, the organisation belongs to the Disasters Emergency Committee, which launches ad hoc appeals and redistributes collected funds proportionally to the size of the budgets of its members. Merlin seeks new patrons in the private sector, especially pharmaceutical companies, but rests wary as to the origins of its funds. According to its director Geoff Prescott, the organisation thus refused 750,000 euros from Nestlé (a firm that War On Want had accused in 1974 of selling powdered milk regardless of the consequences on malnutrition and baby mortality in the third-world, breast feeding being the best way to immunise against various diseases).
-Grants from the Jersey Overseas Aid Committee could raise controversy because the island launders money from third world dictatorships like General Sani Abacha’s Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. Merlin thus risks using diverted public funds from developing countries that invest very little in health infrastructures.
