給孤兒院捐款錯了嗎

Last week, the author JK Rowling was in New York on a two-pronged mission. The first part of her crusade was unsurprising: the movie based on her book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens this month and she and lead actor Eddie Redmayne were in town to promote it.

作家J?K?羅琳(JK Rowling)不久前現身紐約，她帶着兩個任務。第一個任務並不出人意料：根據她的小說《神奇動物在哪裏》(Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)改編的電影於10月上映，她和主演埃迪?雷德梅因(Eddie Redmayne)來紐約宣傳影片。

The second part of Rowling’s sales mission had an unusual twist. Some years ago, the writer set up a charity, Lumos, to fight for the millions of children across the world living in orphanages. And while you might have thought she would be campaigning for funds for these institutions, that is not the case. Instead, Rowling believes that something has gone badly wrong with the way that well-meaning westerners do “charity” — and, in particular, give money to orphanages.

羅琳的第二個任務不同尋常。幾年前，她成立了一個慈善組織Lumos，致力於幫助全球生活在孤兒院的數百萬兒童。你可能會猜，她要爲這些孤兒院募捐。事實並非如此。她認爲，好心的西方人做“慈善”的方式、特別是給孤兒院捐款是大錯特錯的。

In recent years, aid money has flooded from the US and Europe into orphanages in places such as India, Brazil, Romania and Haiti, often following tragic events highlighted in the media. Rowling estimates, for example, that Americans have given $100m to Haitian orphanages alone since the country was hit by a series of natural disasters. This sounds worthy, and, of course, donations are made with the best of intentions but Rowling insists that they are doing more harm than good.

近些年，來自美國和歐洲的援助資金大量涌入印度、巴西、羅馬尼亞和海地等國的孤兒院，通常是在媒體大肆報道某起悲慘事件之後。例如，羅琳估計，自從海地遭受一系列自然災害以來，美國人已向海地孤兒院捐款1億美元。這聽上去很有意義，當然，這些捐款也是出於好心，但羅琳堅持表示，這種做法弊大於利。

Orphanages, she argues, are rarely “good” for children: at best, they leave them bereft of family ties; at worst, they promote abuse, neglect and trafficking. Precisely because orphanages have such a mixed track record, governments in the US and Europe have been shutting them down since the 1950s — preferring to place orphans with foster families instead.

她認爲，孤兒院很少是對兒童“有利的”：往輕了說，它們讓孩子與家人斷了聯繫；最壞的是它們會助長虐待兒童、對兒童疏於照顧以及人口販賣行爲。正是因爲孤兒院這種有利有弊的情況，美國和歐洲國家的政府自上世紀50年代以來一直在關閉孤兒院，傾向於把孤兒交給收養家庭。

But the bitter irony of the aid game today is that even as western governments have been closing orphanages at home, their aid programmes have been encouraging them to flourish in developing countries. Indeed, the more aid that flows into “poor” orphanages, the bigger they become — partly because an entire ecosystem is now directing vulnerable children there. In Cambodia, for example, the population of orphanages jumped 75 per cent between 2005 and 2011 as donor money poured in, according to a UN report. In Haiti, the increase has been even more dramatic, with numbers living in orphanages rising sevenfold, to 32,000.

然而，如今有關援助行爲的一大諷刺是在西方政府關閉本國的孤兒院時，它們的援助計劃卻在鼓勵孤兒院在發展中國家蓬勃發展。實際上，流入“貧困”孤兒院的援助資金越多，這類孤兒院的規模就變得越大，部分原因是整個體系正將處境悲慘的兒童引導向孤兒院。例如，在柬埔寨，根據聯合國(UN)的一份報告，隨着捐贈資金的涌入，2005年至2011年孤兒數量大增75%。在海地，增幅更爲明顯，孤兒院的孤兒數量增長了7倍，達到3.2萬人。

And the really cruel rub is that many of the eight million children currently living in orphanages are not true orphans at all: studies by Save the Children suggest that about 80 per cent have a living parent. Instead, they are being pushed into institutions because their families are desperately poor — and because the explosion of the aid “business” has created a momentum (and false incentives) all of its own.

真正殘酷的是，在如今生活在孤兒院裏的800萬名兒童中，有很多根本不是真正的孤兒。拯救兒童組織(Save the Children)的研究顯示，約80%是至少有一方父母在世的。他們被塞進孤兒院的一部分原因是他們的家庭非常貧困，同時援助“事業”的爆炸性發展也起到了推動作用（提供了錯誤的激勵）。

“Americans are amazingly generous,” Rowling told a crowd of wealthy New Yorkers, at the premiere of her film at Carnegie Hall. “But please don’t give money to orphanages?.?.?.?and don’t go and volunteer to work at one.” Instead, she wants donations to “community-based” initiatives that help poor families to keep their children or find foster families.

羅琳在她的電影在卡內基音樂廳(Carnegie Hall)的首映式上告訴在場的紐約富人們：“美國人非常慷慨。但請不要捐錢給孤兒院了……不要去孤兒院做志願工作了。”她希望人們捐款給一些“以社區爲基礎”(community-based)的公益計劃，這些計劃幫助貧困家庭養育自己的孩子或找到收養家庭。

Can this work? Not easily — or rapidly, alas. One reason why western aid has flooded into orphanages in recent years is that these institutions can be monitored. Giving to a “community” is more opaque and diffuse. And the sad reality is that even if all orphanages were closed tomorrow, life would still be grim for many poor children; street life is hellish in places such as India or Brazil.

這有用嗎？唉，不容易，也不會很快見效。近年西方援助資金大量涌入孤兒院的一個原因是孤兒院可以被監督。捐款給“社區”則不透明且分散。一個令人遺憾的事實是即便所有的孤兒院明天都關閉，對於很多貧困孩子來說，生活仍然是灰暗的；在印度或巴西等國，流浪街頭是很可怕的。

But Lumos is making some progress: it estimates that $500m of donor funds has already been redirected away from orphanages. And, if nothing else, Rowling deserves credit for using her pulpit — and Potter fame — to change attitudes.

不過Lumos正在取得一些進展：該組織估計，有5億美元資金的捐贈對象已從孤兒院轉向別處。而且，拋開別的不說，羅琳利用她的講臺——以及哈利?波特(Potter)的名聲——改變人們的態度也是值得稱道的。

Indeed, I would argue the lesson needs to be broadened. These days, most Americans take it for granted that philanthropy is a good thing, since giving is baked into popular American culture (and encouraged with tax breaks). But, as with the orphanage issue, there are a host of studies emerging that show how aid can distort economies or concentrate power in the hands of an elite.

實際上，我認爲孤兒院這種事上的教訓適用於更大的範圍。如今多數美國人想當然地認爲，慈善是好事，因爲捐贈已融入美國大衆文化（並得到稅收優惠的鼓勵）。然而，就如孤兒院問題一樣，現在有很多研究顯示，援助可能會扭曲經濟或導致權力集中到精英手中。

Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to stop generosity or philanthropy. But what is needed is a clear evaluation — and debate — about the cost and benefits of the aid business and its current structure. That is hard to do since the topic tends to be so emotive and guilt-laden. But if anyone can succeed, it is Rowling — the woman who taught the world to become passionate about a wizarding orphan but who is now trying to consign orphanages to fairy tales.

不要誤會我的意思：我並不是要阻止樂善好施之舉。但我們需要對援助事業的成本和效益及其目前的結構進行清晰的評估並展開相關辯論。這很難，因爲這個話題往往帶有很強的感情色彩而且讓人心懷內疚。但如果有人能做到的話，那就是羅琳，她教世人去喜歡一個會魔法的孤兒，她現在正試圖將孤兒院封存在童話故事中。