| | These valuable surveys are one of the only sources on the food economy and demography of regions of the Horn which have been affected by conflict. They thus provide a further illustration of NGOs as an invaluable source of information, previously undertaken by government or academic researchers. This involvement is an inevitable by-product of their increasing role in administering relief: if they are to plan and to target a major part of food aid they clearly need information. They thus become important as a vital source of information as well as welfare, which in turn raises crucial and more general questions regarding the role of the NGOs, not at least the cynical question of whether this represents the privatisation of service delivery and furtherance of IFI goals in reducing the state sector? Or is this an efficient operation rationally executed by the organisation best suited for the job, or at least the only provider? These questions about their several roles underlies such studies as these but the specific issue as to how they fare as investigators and compilers of information are best answered by an evolution of reports themselves. |
