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Bangkok: The body representing more than 100 of Australia's non-government aid organisations has denounced charities that use images portraying people in a "pitiful way" to manipulate a story in their fundraising campaigns.
The Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), which represents 135 organisations, says campaigns should "honestly convey the context and complexity of the situations in which local people live".
The council reiterated its stand, spelt out in a code of conduct, after Fairfax Media revealed that Sunrise Cambodia, a charity that has raised millions of dollars for Cambodian orphanages, portrayed a village girl as dirty, miserable and dishevelled and labelled her a sex worker in its latest advertising.
Critics of the campaign say the girl dubbed "Pisey" will have to live with the stigma of being portrayed as a sex worker for the rest of her life.
But Sunrise's chief executive Lucy Perry has again defended using images of the girl and other children, declaring in her latest blog the "Sunrise Cambodia crew, including the board of directors, proudly stands by every element of the Brains Trust appeal and so do our supporters".
Ms Perry repeated the claim that the appeal, which has raised more than $200,000 in Australia, was "created within" the ACFID code and "the beautiful, brave people featured in the images were treated ethically, with appropriate consent and a small payment to the kids after their images were selected for the campaign".
But Marc Purcell, ACFID's chief executive, told Fairfax Media that Sunrise Cambodia is not a signatory to the group's code and was therefore not subject to annual assessments and a complaints process.
"ACFID encourages non-member aid organisations to apply the code and strive for good practice," Mr Purcell said. "But only by joining ACFID do organisations affirm the strength of their commitment to the code's principles and values by agreeing to be held accountable by an independent authority for the way their raise and manage donations," he said.
Mr Purcell said the code's purpose was to "ensure a respectful and truthful portrayal of the local people involved in Australian development and aid activities."
"The code guide suggests not using images that manipulate a story to portray people in a pitiful way and to ensure they 'honestly convey the context and complexity of the situations in which local people live'. "
Sunrise's campaign sparked a fire-storm of criticism in and raised new questions about "poverty porn" and "pity charity," the practices where charities use hard-hitting images, such as malnourished children, to draw empathy and donations.
The controversy comes after Cambodia's world celebrity anti-child sex slavery campaigner Somaly Mam was forced to resign from her foundation over revelations she fabricated child-sex slave stories to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sunrise Cambodia, which was founded in 1997 by flamboyant former Australian diplomat Geraldine Cox, is one of hundreds of Cambodian orphanages and centres under pressure to end residential care for children.
Studies show that children should not be living in institutions and that orphanages should be transformed into schools and day care centres supporting children connected to their communities.
Most of the children in Cambodia's orphanages have at least one parent.
Sunrise Cambodia now has 133 live-in children and plans to send 50 back to live in their communities by the end of the year.
But Ms Perry wrote in her blog that closing all fulltime residential care centres in Cambodia is not in the best interests of some of the world's most vulnerable children.
"Bad orphanages should be closed but the good ones should never be painted with the same brush," she wrote.
