InterAction President and CEO, Samuel Worthington has sent a letter to General David Petraeus, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, expressing concern about the use of a vaccination campaign to collect intelligence information in Pakistan last year.
The letter was sent on behalf of the InterAction’s nearly 200 member organizations, many with humanitarian operations in Pakistan. In the letter, Worthington states that the CIA’s use of humanitarian activity for cover casts doubts on the integrity of humanitarian NGOs in Pakistan.
Worthington urges Petraeus to avoid tactics that erode the ability of humanitarian actors to perform their life-saving work and notes, “Any blurring of the two risks causing setbacks in decades-long global health and humanitarian efforts and endangers the lives of those working to make those advances on the behalf of the global community.”
For more information, read the full letter here.
