An interesting look at Foreign Aid and the Bono style make poverty history view. They suggest that Foreign Aid does more harm than good, supporting the corrupt governments that are one of the biggest problems. The author makes the interesting point that go back 50 years east Asia was as poor as Africa yet with much lower levels of Foreign aid those country's are now much better off than Africa. Worth reading do people agree or disagree?
Read more at www.abcnews.go.com/2020...
6 comments:
The article agrees with what I have always suspected. I think the UN needs to be a lot more agressive in auditing the actions of African governments. However I suppose at the end of the day it comes down to power - short of invading, how can the UN *make* African governments do what they want?
Yes it is rather hard to work out how deal with the corrupt governments.
One method might be to simply withdraw all the Aid and block weapons and other imports in the hope that the people get sick enough of the governments to deal with them, them selves. Unfortunately the human cost of such a move would probably be very high though it could end up producing reasonably decent governments. The other method I guess would be to move Aid funding to the charities and provide peacekeeping forces to protect them from the governments of the places where they work. Again though the human cost would be high, and it would be hard to find that many incorruptible peacekeepers, also that would pretty much amount to an invasion.
Yeah, I think the key move could be to stop channelling the aid funding through governments, and having it going to UN controlled people at ground level.
You think UN people would be a better group for the money to go to rather than the Charities that already work in such places?
Leftist ideologies are ignorant and stupid. i wonder if it ever occurs to Sir Bob Geldof that that what he despises — capitalism and business — are what make poverty history and that which he extolls — government to government aid — is what perpetuates and deepens it
An interesting article. It is a complex problem, you have politicians and citizens (who often don't get much chance to vote the way they want to).
You want to help the majority of these people (the citizens) but how? Giving money to the government fails because of corruption. It does seem that money therefore is not enough. You need trustworthy people to help distribute the resources.
So, say you get a trust worthy group (UN or charity) who sends some people to the areas with the food and divert your funding to assist this project. The government is then not happy because their personal nest egg has decreased. What will the government do to its people then?
I don't know what the answer is. Do complex problems like this require complex solutions or is there an obvious answer I am missing?
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