[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about asking fundamental questions about official development assistance (ODA). For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–Fundamental questions remain about when states are actually under a duty to truly evenhandedly cooperate. (Aoife Nolan)
—Donor agencies’ actual job is “to be relieved of their money” in ways that do not make any waves in the mass media. (Hans Rosling)
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‘Aid experts’ range from selfless idealists to those cashing-in on ever present crises (Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari)
1. At an earlier colonial age, these experts would have been businessmen or soldiers or rarely academics. But now, we are in an era of charity where business and philanthropy are paramount. Now, a complex infrastructure is devoted to what has become irradicable misery, famine, displacement, poverty, illiteracy, AIDS… Name a development problem and there is an agency or a charity to deal with it. But this does not mean a workable solution is come-up-with and applied. Charities and aid programs seem to turn countries rendered poor into permanent recipients while conditions get messier.
2. The conceit among donors is that those rendered poor and sick or the hungry will take anything they are given. But even those rendered poor can be particular, and the sick have their own priorities, and the famine victims have a traditional diet…
3. Why is all this a foreign effort? Why are national authorities not involved in helping themselves? Why, after so many years of charity, so little progress has been made? An entire library of worthy books describes the uselessness and the serious harm brought about by aid agencies. The findings are the same.
4. ‘Aid is not help’. And ‘aid does not work’ are two of the conclusions Graham Hancok pointed out in his book The Lords of Poverty (1989). Aid projects are an end in themselves; all aid is self-serving (famines may be seen as a growth opportunity to advertise and stimulate donations for charities: a sort of ‘hunger porn’?). If a project is funded by foreigners, it will be typically also designed by foreigners and implemented by foreigners (or their close supervision) using foreign equipment procured in foreign markets. Labor-intensive projects are few, because so much donor is self-interested.
5. Recipient countries’ acceptance does not mean anything. They refuse nothing; but acceptance does neither mean the things are needed nor that they would be used or kept in repair. So many projects would become ruins, because they carry with them the seeds of their destruction; and then, they stop running, and nobody feels sorry …things just fall apart. If all that is done is to spend money not having inspired anyone, you can draw a clear lesson: turn your back and go home. “In general, I despair at the very sight of aid workers as no more than a maintenance crew on a power trip who had turned the people they purport to help into beggars and whiners and development into a study in futility”. (P. Theroux)
Many donor countries are now refraining from giving quality assistance to protect their own interests (The Reality of Aid Network)
6. It is aid conditionalities that ultimately shape geopolitical priorities and the security agendas that shape aid flows. Terms and conditions set by donor countries do not usually consider the true needs and contexts of the people and thus must be challenged to not undermine the true intentions of external financing.
7. Issues surrounding aid and development have evolved into a more chaotic web of complications, prompting deeper injustices and poverty.
8. Despite the fact that many global challenges are preventable, international institutions are refusing to reform their systems, because geopolitical and market interests continue to drive their development agenda.
9. To substitute the lack of holistic actions, development and financial institutions resort to another neoliberal favorite avenue, i.e., relying on the private sector to fund and implement development projects and provide social services –in fact, putting those basic social services at risk for those rendered marginalized. The development agendas of many political and financial actors continue to lean away from any people-centered initiatives. Furthermore, there is no significant evidence that private-sector led projects contribute to alleviate poverty and inequality. In fact, Private Sector Watch shows that such projects only result in more harm to the rights, livelihood, lands, and environment of the people.
10. The looming global economic recession risks burgeoning the debt of developing nations, emphasizing the need to cancel debt and other conditionalities attached prior to accessing external financing. There are many instances where aid allocation succumbs into a one-size-fits-all narrative which fails to consider the unique realities of local communities. Bottom line: With this emerging demand, conversations around shift the power, mostly from public interest civil society, are growing stronger. (The Reality of Aid Network)
When an ODA promise stays unfulfilled for half a century, that is a clear sign of dysfunctional politics (Ander de Mello e Souza)
10. ODA was originally meant to support recipient countries’ national development. The idea was that infrastructure investments would drive growth and lead to broad-based prosperity. This approach did not work as expected in Africa, Asia and Latin America though.
11. In principle, ODA would be fine if OECD member states contributed their fair share to global purposes; they are not doing so. They modified ODA rules to include public-private partnerships, but profit-maximizing companies have other priorities… As a result, the aid system has become even more fragmented and politicized –and less efficient too. Also, as a result, private-sector lending to countries with low and middle incomes has increased considerably. (A. de Mello e Souza)
So, what do these and other sources say needs to be done?
—It is clear: institutions that are owned or dominated by OECD countries, certainly must bear some responsibility for these poor outcomes too. (A. de Mello e Souza)
12. Despite and because of all of this, any door of opportunity must be seized to magnify the calls of the people for rights-based, people-centered development and for quality financing in areas concerning public services and climate justice, among others. There is the additional need to implement measures that promote debt cancellation, instead of continuing to anchor development and fiscal policies on the existing neoliberal order. Funding, programming, and implementation of development projects must be proactively coordinated with and by local communities. (The Reality of Aid Network)
13. Projects are at-times important; they can change people’s lives and now-and-again empower them. But they only have true power if they can light a spark to change the political framework. That is the way foreign aid must be overcome. Social movements are rightly raising fundamental questions. (Tsafrir Cohen)
14. As a result of mismanagement, ODA has not achieved the expected results. To be effective, aid must bypass corrupt governments and find local partners such as non-governmental and religious organizations with a proven track record of efficiency and honesty and must be free of conflicts of interest. (Cesar Chelala)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Colonialism is about keeping someone alive to drink their blood drop by drop. (Massa Makan Diabate).