PLOS Blogs’ “Global Health”: How to Stop the Next Oxfam Scandal — A Yelp for International Aid?
Abraar Karan, resident physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Lauren Taylor, author and doctoral candidate at Harvard Business School; and Nir Eyal, associate professor of global health and population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discuss the potential development of a “Yelp-like web-based system’ to help hold NGOs accountable in light of the recent Oxfam scandal. The authors write, “Such a Yelp-like web-based system would be fraught with hard choices and implementation barriers. We do not purport to have ready answers but are eager to stimulate discussion about how it could develop and enhance accountability effectively. Recent revelations indicate the critical need to capture and catalogue wrongs done to the communities that global aid seeks to help” (3/23).