Do no Harm or feel the Pain

Continuing to ponder the ethics of my work - what should I expect to achieve and at what cost? Mary Anderson's famous treatise on the interaction between aid and conflict - "Do No Harm" - recounts how people chose even criminal actions in the pursuit of justice. Humble, small incremental changes in a few lives within a framework of honesty and caring is probably the most realistic expectation I should have.

Nonetheless I still idealize that we could measure our impact in the feelings and experiences of those with whom we work. Perhaps "feel the pain" is the "do no harm" analogy - a bottom line without which we do not have permission to operate. A young woman at Mirwais Girls School in Kandahar Afghanistan - one of 15 victims of a recent acid attack - is succinct in her analysis of the perpetrators. "The people who did this do not feel the pain of others."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?_r=1&th&emc=th