Translator: Jane Rumrill Reviewer: Mohand Habchi
Hello, everyone.
I am Élodie Vialle, I'm a journalist.
I report in France
and abroad, notably in Haiti.
In 2011, I went to Port-au-Prince a couple months after the earthquake,
to give classes on online journalism.
I don't know if you remember,
at that time, in France,
the media, the NGOs,
were calling for help for the country.
We had to save Haiti.
I got there,
I expected to see poverty,
people suffering,
people crying for help.
And then in the Acra camp, in Delmas and in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince
I met this woman.
Natacha, 32 years old, five children.
She was living in a tent on a dump,
you can see the smoke behind her.
It smelled really bad in this camp.
You know, it's not always obvious when you get on the ground.
You can bring back info,
make a report,
and then you have these children who pull on your sleeve,
because they want money, then food,
then they ask you for water.
Children who live in tents
where the heat is suffocating.
So, Natacha. At first, she really did not want to speak with me,
then we started to talk, even laugh,
and she let me take her picture.
Natacha told me something that made me think.
She said to me, "You're going to take these photos,
sell them to the NGOs
which are then going to make money back home in Europe,
all, supposedly, for the Haitians."
Natacha is not an expert in fundraising,
but it seems to me that she had a fairly accurate view
of what passes for fundraising and communications at the NGOs.
"You make money on the backs of the Haitians."
How many times I heard that phrase in Haiti!
And, in reality, it's true.
A journalist sells her articles, her photos,
it's how she earns a living.
The same for an NGO,
It asks for donations,
and for that, it's going to use the photos of the people it helps.
So, what should we do?
Not show poverty?
And you? What would you do?
The fact is that, in this society of over-mediatization,
a reality does not truly exist if we do not have a picture.
In any case,
this interaction with Natacha allowed me to realize something:
The distance between the way we perceive aid,
our aid here,
and the way it is perceived on the ground.
And if on the ground, the humanitarians were in fact perceived like this.
This photo was taken by a Haitian colleague,
the journalist Ralph Thomassin Joseph.
It was three months ago, we had gone to do some shopping,
and in the parking lot of the supermarket,
we happened upon these young humanitarians.
It was like we were in the parking lot of an American supermarket in the US,
but it is definitely in Port-au-Prince.
Now, I'm not saying that humanitarians are not allowed to go shopping,
obviously,
nor that they are in Haiti to go sightseeing
or just go to the beach, as I've sometimes heard.
But it should be noted
that we, the image they have of humanitarians,
it is more or less this one.
Ah, Bernard!
Bernard Kouchner and his bag of rice in 1992 in Somalia.
I remember at that time,
you were probably still young,
but I was in primary school,
and I, too, had collected a little bag of rice
for Somali children.
I was a heroine like Bernard.
And there again, same thing,
a couple years later, on the "Guignols" satire news show.
You know, humanitarians started showing their activities
at the end of the 60s
with the Biafran war.
At that time, the Second World War was not very distant,
so their fear, was to remain silent.
To become equally guilty in their silence.
To allow another genocide.
So, they showed it.
They showed the poor.
They showed the victims.
They showed the beneficiaries.
You know the term, "beneficiaries"?
That's what we call the people who benefit from the aid
from an organization.
It's a term as if it was a homogeneous group.
Later, they tried to personify this suffering a little.
Like on this poster from Action Against Hunger
There, that was in 1994.
At the time, this poster created a lot of controversy,
including within the Action Against Hunger NGO itself,
which no longer uses this type of media campaign.
But look at this poster.
Really look at it.
It gives the impression
that the transformation of the life of a person in the South
depends on the goodwill in this case, a donation,
from a person in the North.
In fact, it is more than a gaze on poverty,
it is a condescending gaze from the North to the South
and, it has to be said, a post-colonial gaze.
To appeal to donors, you give them something to see,
something to chew on:
skinny children.
But did anyone ask permission from the parents of these children?
Because in France, when you are a journalist
and you have a report to do in a school, it's very, very complicated.
You need the parents' permission,
it's slow, it's laborious, sometimes it doesn't work out.
But it's funny how the minute we want to photograph children
who are farther away and often poorer,
well then, there aren't as many questions about image rights.
About the use of their image.
And what would we say, if an American NGO came to France
to take photos of kids in our schools,
then used these photos to collect money,
money to send their experts
supposedly to lead large humanitarian missions here,
all to improve our lives?
How would you react?
My question is:
Do we ask ourselves enough of this type of question
when we are getting ready to depict humanitarian aid,
to depict poverty?
Do we take the dignity of these people into account enough,
when we speak for them?
"It is our gaze that often closes others
into their more narrow worlds,
and it is also our gaze that can free them,"
the writer Amin Maalouf tells us.
"It is also our gaze that can free them."
The beneficiaries, do they really benefit
from the victimization of which they are the object?
In the end, the symbol is so strong,
that the cliché becomes reality.
It's as if the victim is locked into the cliché.
So, changing the way you look at poor people in Haiti,
but also in France.
How do we see our poor people in France?
That is the question that my colleague Ralph asked me,
you know, the one who took the photo of the humanitarians in the parking lot.
The first time he came to France, it was recently,
he was very surprised to see so many poor people
in such a rich country.
How to show poverty without succumbing to sordidness?
"I'm going out with Rihanna
and it's expensive to keep a girl like that."
This photo was taken by Little Shao,
it was shown in the context of an exhibit
organized by the Abbé Pierre Foundation.
The author of the message on the sign is Luigi Li.
A comedian who uses his talent
to change our gaze on the homeless.
Humor to get rid of stereotypes.
Like in this video I wanted to show you.
(Video)
The director: Cut!
What are you doing?
I thought you could carry bucket on your head.
Michael: You can't tell me that wasn't funny.
Michael: The fundraising actor.
M: Each time these filmmakers from overseas come down Africa,
I'm the first person they call.
I've got mad skills.
Wait for it...
That is a sad African.
A woman: It's my first time in Africa.
And as a young mother I'm really looking forward to meeting the children.
Your father... where is he?
M: My father left when I was two years old.
He went to look for a job and he never returned ever since.
So I've been the man of the house.
Is this your first charity appeal?
D: Cut!
Michael, you must stick to the script.
W: So Michael, where is your father now?
M: My father left when I was two years old.
W: The gifts we brings we bring don't mean anything to us,
but their faces light up like nothing I've ever seen before.
Michael, do you have Danishes in Africa?
M: No!
W: I've got a surprise for you.
M: Thank you.
W: You're welcome.
M: Tastes like shit!
Celebrities always give me these crappy presents.
W: They have so little.
Yet they smile.
M: So you see...
It's a tough business, you know.
Sometimes I think about quitting.
But then again it's for a good cause.
W: For only 9 $, you can make a difference in these poor little angels' lives.
So please reach into your hearts and dig into your pockets,
and together we can save Africa!
Stereotypes harm dignity.
Challenge the perceptions.
Reach into your heart, dig into your pockets.
Donate your stereotypes at rustyradiator.com.
(Applause)
E.V: Yes, it's very funny,
but I assure you, this video does not show reality either.
That is to say that, in fact,
NGOs do not pay child actors to go play beneficiaries.
But that is a good example of how humor can as Jérôme was saying before,
break stereotypes just as well.
Break stereotypes about poverty,
about humanitarian aid.
Humanitarian aid, it is not only a white hand
that gives to a black hand.
Have we said enough, for example,
that after the earthquake
and before the NGOs,
it was the Haitians who first helped the Haitians?
who saved the lives of Haitians?
Like this person, Loramus Rosemond.
He is also a journalist,
and after the earthquake, he lost his house.
It was destroyed.
But that didn't stop him from wanting to help.
So, he went to the camps to meet with elderly people
to listen to their needs,
to relay their needs on the radio.
In conclusion,
journalists, what do they do?
They seek information, gather it,
try to make it understood,
- they must first understand it -
transcribe it again.
That doesn't mean that poverty must not be shown.
What these people are living through must be shown.
It's a first step toward raising awareness,
toward action,
but it is information, an image, that must be contextualized.
Because the victim must not make us forget the cause.
Reporting on Haiti today,
is not to evoke the awful fate of the island,
it is to get back to the causes of the earthquake.
We knew it was going to happen,
and we know it will happen again.
It is this road
that has already been explored by journalists,
that we have to keep going down
if we want to inform,
and not just move, with clichés.
Thank you.
(Applause)