Rights group wants aid monitored

Heart to Heart International, a global humanitarian organisation working to serve the needs of the poor around the world by promoting health and alleviating hunger, has delivered humanitarian aid, pharmaceuticals and medical supplies worth US $6.7 million to Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian country. But a human rights group wants to see stricter monitoring of aid to countries like Uzbekistan. "We've worked very closely with the ministry of health in Uzbekistan. We've got an on-site coordinator and a group called PERDCA [the Project on Economic Reform and Development in Central Asia]," Barbi Moore, the organisation's senior vice-president for international programmes, told IRIN from Oklahoma city, adding that PERDCA was their programme through the US State Department, which had asked them to go to Uzbekistan to deliver aid. Moore said that they had been in that country since 1996, usually engaged in one project a year. The humanitarian aid delivered to the Uzbek health ministry on Tuesday comprised medicines and medical supplies to be sent to the poor and needy in several areas of Uzbekistan, including Tashkent Oblast, Tashkent City, Jizzakh, Sirdar'ya, Bokhoro, and Navoi. "First of all, there's been a request to Heart to Heart from the State Department asking us to deliver the aid," Moore said, adding that there had been close cooperation between Heart to Heart and the Uzbek authorities, with which the organisation had developed a good trust relationship. Regarding the distribution of the aid, Moore said they were involved in it, while their counterparts in the country had already submitted a list of recommended institutions. Moreover, Heart and Heart had staff on the ground who would not only help with the distribution but also with the follow-up monitoring of the aid until it was all gone. "It's not something that we just drop it off and walk away," Moore said, noting that they had a good system, a network of people who were assisting in distribution and monitoring. Heart to Heart had delivered more than $300 million in aid to people in need around the world, including more than $50 million worth of humanitarian aid for Uzbekistan specifically, the US embassy in the capital, Tashkent, said in a recent press release. Rights groups have been critical of unconditional aid to countries like Uzbekistan with poor human rights records. Matilda Bogner, the office director for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Uzbekistan, told IRIN from Tashkent that in general terms it was good to provide aid. "We believe that it's good to provide aid so long as it's provided in a certain way and to certain parts of the population that are in need," she said, However, Bogner emphasised the point that any aid had to be monitored very carefully. "I know that a lot of local human rights activists and a lot of just local citizens are very sceptical about where pharmaceuticals and other aid end up," Bogner explained, adding that HRW believed that a lot of aid was ending up at local markets, while the money - the profits from such sales - often was going to government officials. Some human rights activists were aware that the US had laws restricting the provision of aid to governments involved in torture or other systematic human rights abuses, she said, noting that any aid going to military or law-enforcement bodies within Uzbekistan had to be very carefully assessed, because many of those bodies, especially law-enforcement agencies, were involved in torture.