[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how foreign aid (ODA) was of dubious long-term benefit even before Trump scrapping it for the wrong reasons.
For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—The system remains stuck on a treadmill of substantial words without substantive change. (Dustin Barter, Mohamed Yarrow)
Pervasive capitalist logic and expansionist incentives, easily undermine solidarity and cooperation
1. Capitalist ODA is a mindset and a behavior that dominates foreign aid (better called external funding since ‘aid’ is dubious) and is a key impediment to any substantive reform. The calls for ODA’s reform are bountiful as the broader aid sector continues its freefall. Yet most critiques fail to capture one fundamental problem: a pervasive capitalist mindset that is contradictory to human rights. The words ‘streamline’ and ‘simplify’ proliferate in the narrative to modernize ODA. But small-scale projects are to stay hiding the fact that they are designed to distract us from the big picture. All these intended adjustments just represent reductionist solutions for complex problems.
Will the current chaos instigate genuine change, or will we snap back to an internationally dominated system ill-suited to contemporary crises?
–‘Donor’ nations always have the temptation to maximize self-interest by taking the bilateral (rather than the multilateral) route. (Takashi Inoguchi)
2. Capitalist humanitarianism mirrors the deeply inequitable global economic order –a classic case of elite capture. Power accumulates as capital concentrates, leaving any chance of substantive reform dead on arrival. Just like the global economy, the ODA oligarchy asserts vast influence and stands in the way of systemic change: “Do whatever, but don’t challenge the underlying economic structures”. (D. Barter, M. Yarrow)
3. The truth is that development agencies have turned over development assistance to a bureaucracy sequestered in state capitals –a bureaucracy that knows little about true development problems and that is chiefly geared to achieving targets dictated by their political masters (or external consultants)*. The ‘experts‘ are also too often clueless, but are still willing to sell advice to the unwary. (Louis Casado) This is why we need alternative development policies based on local priorities rather than on the global development agenda of the elites in the North.
*: Governments are mereley clearinghouses that respond to pressures from interested parties (mostly from outside, but also from inside).
Bottom line
4. Three (of several) alternatives on what to do to decrease dependency on external funding:
- First, reduce indebtedness in the Global South which expends more in loan repayments than on human development.
- Second, tackle illicit financing flows that rob poor countries of billions of dollars.
- Third, agree on a fair corporate tax regimen for multinationals so that poor jurisdictions are not unduly exploited by profit-seekers.
5. These are achievable measures for a fairer development financing system. Getting better value from aid requires shifts from institutions deeply vested in the current arrangements. It absolutely includes reforming the World Bank and the IMF. However, the bigger challenge is on achieving consensus for a meaningful re-visioning of ‘aid’ that restores its moral purpose away from its self-interest-geopolitical-objectives.** (Mukesh Kapila)
**: Is there a malignant neglect in foreign aid…?
6. None of the admirable goals the international community has pursued around the world –not peace, not human rights, not democratization, not environmental protection, not population stabilization, not an end to hunger– can be accomplished except in the context of a more equitable, sustained development. And this kind of development does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding unless we forge a new framework for develoment cooperation and back it up with real, sincere commitments and financial resources. (J. Gustav Speth) …not forgetting debt relief.
7. Moreover, aid will never be able to substitute for fair trade. Equitable trade alone will give the developing countries a decent chance to climb out of their colonially inherited poverty and give human rights a chance. (Erskine Childers)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
—Official. Development. Assistance. Five terrible words (Global Nation)
Not one of these words strike a chord. Why would countries do something that is fundamentally ‘foreign’? With global crises galore, what appetite is there to give ‘aid’ or ‘assistance’ (and who wants to be cast as a recipient of charity)? Who cares if it is ‘official’? Furthermore, what does ‘development’ even mean? Very few people understand what foreign aid does, and even fewer see it as particularly valuable. No wonder these international financial transfers are being slashed during hard times (or in Trump times).
Government international expenditures should not be a branding exercise, but need to explain its purpose. The international expenditures that are lumped together as foreign aid is a hodgepodge of programs, doing wildly different things –and aimed at a variety of goals. Some of them are questionable in value. Other programs are truly essential.
Under the opaque, unappealing brand of ‘official development assistance’, all is currently being slashed, resting on the assumption that none of it really matters: The baby is being thrown out with the bath water.
Each rubric of international development funding should have its own budget line, which can sit in whatever ministry is deemed most appropriate. There is no need to lump them together into a unifying construct like ‘official development assistance or ‘foreign aid’. Each of them has its own clear purpose (climate-, migration-, environment-, health-…. related), and should be managed, and explained, as an exercise in doing exactly that.
Let us not be fooled: Funding that ‘helps’ other countries is really intended to increase the security, build the economy, or improve the climate for the ‘donor’ country –it should be called out exactly for what it is. The charity label may have been helpful in political terms at one time. But today, it turns off nearly everyone. Donor countries do not feel generous, and low- and middle-income countries do not want handouts. However, there should still be a place for genuine solidarity, i.e., funding that has no purpose other than to help other people, because of the moral case for action. One can imagine, for example, humanitarian aid to a disaster zone that poses no security, health, economic or climate risk whatsoever to the country sending funds. Some prefer to call this ‘solidarity’ rather than ‘charity’. There is now an opportunity to build something better, to remove the hypocrisy and acknowledge self-interest when it is there, and to protect funding for true solidarity, paid for by those who can most afford it. There is no need for the words like ‘aid’ or ‘development aid’ to survive that evolution. (Global Nation)