Category: Humanitarian Aid

Giving Aid to Poor Countries

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When polled, the American public agreed with the assertion that “taking care of problems at home is more important than giving aid to foreign countries.”

But this does mean that Americans think that no aid should go overseas?

When respondents were asked what percentage of their tax dollars that go to help poor people at home and abroad … should go to help poor people in other countries, the response was 16%. (Down from a 22% response in a 1996 poll.)

Strikingly, this turns out to be a far higher percentage than is currently given.

The year this poll was taken, only about four per cent (4%) of the total spent went toward causes that in any way benefited the poor abroad. (Nowhere near the above 16 – 22%.)

Budget perceptions: Program on International Policy Attitudes “Americans on Foreign Aid and World Hunger: A Study of U.S. Public Attitudes,”.

Despite our problems we are 100 times richer than the rest of the world

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When the U.S. became an independent nation in 1776, on average, Americans were about 4 times richer than the people of the world’s poorest countries.
Today, we are 100 times richer.
People in most countries do not have access to basic things that Americans take for granted. For example:
• Every year, 11 million children die before their fifth birthday from chronic hunger and related diseases.
• More than 1 million people a year die from malaria, a preventable disease that has been virtually eradicated in rich countries.
• In India and Pakistan, fewer than half of adult women can read.
• In Ecuador, only one in four poor families has access to running water.
• In Kenya, only 12% of roads are paved, making it hard for farmers and manufacturers to sell their products in their own markets, let alone in global markets.
Source: www.globaldevelopmentmatters.org/

International development aid

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Development aid has long been recognized as crucial to help poor developing nations grow out of poverty. There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to food aid, military assistance, etc.

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

  • Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
  • Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
  • Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
  • Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable as money can often be embezzled away.

[Anup Shah]

Africa still needs aid

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Views by Bob Geldof, musician, member of the Africa Progress Panel chaired by Kofi Annan, and a businessman and campaigner against poverty: 

With the U.K. becoming the first G-8 country to spend 0.7 percent of its gross national income on overseas aid, the government’s recent budget was an exciting moment for the international development community.

But with extreme poverty falling all around Africa, and the continent’s mineral resources providing more revenue now than international aid, some observers are asking whether international aid is out of date.

Africa needs trade, not aid, they say. In truth, however, they still need both.

Africa has the world’s fastest growing population, expanding by more than 20 million every year, and must create jobs fast to keep its unemployment rate from rising. Some analysts highlight the Middle East, where failure to generate enough jobs for young, urbanized populations had catastrophic consequences for political and economic stability.

Trade – in its broadest sense – will create the jobs that Africa so badly needs. So Africa’s leaders must identify and nurture labor-intensive industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and hospitality in order to create more jobs. This belief in trade is entirely consistent with a profound respect for aid. I have learned that one begets the other.

The 2005 Gleneagles G-8 summit, for example, brought debt cancellation and increasing levels of aid that helped to school tens of millions of children and triggered an intellectual stampede that is propelling at least some of Africa’s rapid economic growth. Today, Africa has some of the world’s fastest growing economies and foreign investors are tripping over themselves for a slice of African profit.

Almost two dozen of Africa’s 54 nations have now reached middle income status, and more undoubtedly will do so by 2025. As noted by the World Bank’s lead economist in its Nairobi office, if sub-Saharan Africa were a single country, the World Bank would already classify it as middle-income, with an average income of more than $1,500.

But Africa, like every other continent, needs its aid. Away from the investment analyses and high growth headlines, some 40 percent of Africa’s one billion population still live on $1.25 per day or less.

Trade, jobs, and opportunities remain critically important for Africa.

What if every aid worker was given a micro investment fund?

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What if every aid worker – local and international – at every level was given a micro investment fund, over which they have total personal discretion? How would aid delivery change?

The rise of and access to technology in the developing world is already significantly changing the way aid agencies work. It has also made alternative support mechanisms to seemingly “invisible” local leaders and initiatives more possible than ever before. In fact, there is a growing number of small NGOs and foundation that specialize in offering direct funding to grassroots leadership and small, often “informal” movements.

Why not expand that idea to give every aid worker ‘in the field’ a social change investment fund of $1,000 (£655), over which they have total personal discretion? Each person could be tasked to find an under-the-radar grassroots organization, local leader, or community initiative worthy of support. The only stipulation would be that the group has been in existence for at least three years and has never received international assistance. Allow only one-page proposals and reports to cut down on transaction costs.

People must find a person, an organization, or an idea that inspires them. The primary mandate will be to tap into the enthusiasm that drew them into aid work in the first place and see for themselves how a diversity of approaches and actors are all a part of unleashing social change.

At the end of the experiment, the fund managers could get together and share what they’ve learned through well-facilitated and documented reflection exercises to distil good practices and actionable insights.

The estimated 595,000 aid workers around the world are rarely called to examine the bureaucratic rigidities that govern their day-to-day work. With just $5,950,000, one in 10 of these aid workers could try the investment fund and find ways to change a corporate culture that no longer meets the demands of a rapidly-changing world.

[The Guardian]

Will US budget cuts create an isolationism?

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Excerpts of an opinion piece by Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Center:

The forced budget cuts, known in Washington as sequestration, are now in force in the United States and $85 billion in spending cuts are in the process of being implemented, with about half of them coming out of Washington’s spending on international engagement.

These reductions include foreign aid and … will shrink the U.S. footprint around the world, with consequences for the projection of both U.S. hard and soft power.

The question now, in the United States and overseas, is where exactly the cuts will fall.

China transforming Africa

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Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, and author of “Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa”,  is an outspoken critic of international aid, arguing for years that foreign handouts stifle Africa’s development, perpetuate corruption and hinder the continent’s growth.

In a new interview with CNN, Moyo explains why she’s optimistic about the future of Africa. She looks at the positive impact that China can have on the continent and details the key drivers that will spur Africa’s economic growth. Some briefs:

CNN: The Chinese story has been thrown into the mix, has that changed the landscape?

DM: Yes, absolutely, but in a strange way it’s exactly what we need in terms of delivering economic growth and meaningfully reducing poverty. We need jobs, we need investment, we need trade, we need foreign direct investment, whether investment domestically but also from the outside. It’s not some magic pill, everybody knows that this is the formula, and finally the Chinese are showing up, again, not just in Africa, but around the world with that elixir, that mix of opportunities to really transform these countries.

CNN: A lot of people are critical of Chinese “neo-colonialism” but you argue that’s not the case.

DM: Well, it’s not, because China has so many economic problems in itself. You know, this is a population of 1.3 billion people with 300 million people that live at the level of Western living style. So they’ve got a billion people to move out of poverty. The notion that they would be spending their time trying to colonize other places is just, frankly, absurd.

I’m not saying that China should be given a red carpet, carte blanche, to come into Africa or, indeed, anywhere in the world, and do what they like. We do need the investment, we need job creation and we do need actual trade in these places. But I think what’s really essential is to focus on what China can do for Africa, as well as what Africa can do for China. And I think that discussion is not had as objectively as it should be.

Afghans worry about International Aid

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The impending withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign combat forces from Afghanistan means more than a loss of firepower. International aid is also on the decline because of donor fatigue and fears of deteriorating security after nearly 12 years of war.

Worried about losing hard-won gains, many Afghan and international aid organizations are racing to finish projects or find new sources of funding to provide basic services such as health care, education and electricity that the weak central government has been unable to deliver.

The money that has flowed into Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban and their al-Qaida allies has led to drastic improvements, with nearly 8 million children, some 40 percent of them girls, enrolled in school — up from just over 1 million when girls were banned from school under the Taliban.

Afghan street children are packed into classrooms, raising their hands to answer math questions and bending their heads over art projects as part of a program funded by the European Union. But the money is about to disappear after a four-year grant expires next month, and the Afghan government isn’t ready to fill the gap. That leaves thousands of poor children who spend most of their days hawking goods on the street poised to lose their only access to an education.

The U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan has built or refurbished more than 680 schools, and child mortality has been halved with improved health facilities and other services.

A short history of US foreign aid

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Following World War II, US leaders realized that America’s security and prosperity are interconnected with the rest of the world, and that they had a duty to help people in Europe with their recovery from war.

In 1961, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in response to President John F. Kennedy’s request to unify all economic aid efforts under the jurisdiction of a single agency, the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

President George W. Bush began a process of rebuilding US foreign aid and introduced several notable reforms: He created the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to better enable countries to meet the needs of their own citizens; he developed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which paved the way for the Global Health Initiative (GHI); and he began to restore staffing levels at USAID through the Development Leadership Initiative (DLI).

Efforts to ensure that foreign aid works to reduce global poverty and human suffering have accelerated under President Barack Obama. In 2010, President Obama announced a new US Global Development Policy, recognizing that governments and citizens in poor countries shouldn’t be merely recipients of aid, but full partners in the process. The policy also outlines new tools for measuring programs to make sure they meet their goals, so both American taxpayers and poor people affected by US policies abroad can see where aid dollars are going and for what purposes.

[Source: Oxfam]

Hunger and world poverty

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About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone.

The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.

There are effective programs to break this spiral. For adults, there are “food for work” programs where the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on. This both nourishes them and builds infrastructure to end the poverty. For children, there are “food for education” programs where the children are provided with food when they attend school.

Learn more