The State has core functions which overall allow citizens to flourish individually, socially and economically. These functions include ensuring the rule of law, managing public finance and assets, developing social policies, upholding human rights, maintaining administrative control and the legitimate use of violence. It is ONLY the State that can carry out these duties and therefore one could argue that any form of external aid, especially in times of conflict and/or disaster, should – indeed MUST – support and enhance these functions. But does it?
The answer is generally – no. At a CPA conference last week I argued strongly that aid unfortunately tends to undermine the unity and power of the state. There are too many examples for this to be refuted. The World Bank’s own Evaluation Department as well as the US National Academy of Public Administration have provided corruscating reports on the absolute failure of billions of dollars expended in Haiti over three decades – much of it directed at the development of democratic governance – to achieve anything other than political dysfunction and impoverishment. One of the reports concludes that aid:
“made almost no impact on governance. Institutional development impact is negligible and the sustainability of the few benefits that have accrued, unlikely.” Similarly a World Bank Operations Evaluation Dept report says that aid was ineffective ‘………..due to inappropriate conditionality, ineffective capacity building, faulty implementation and delusions about what constituted program success.’
In Afghanistan there was a golden opportunity once the Taliban had been routed in late 2001 to build a credible government, respected by both its citizens and the international community. Instead donors and their programmes became instruments for division and chaos; each donor agency of which there were and are 100s, created alliances with different ministries, contributing to the fragmentation of Cabinet unity. Dozens of donors and agencies and 100s of NGOs each had their own budgets, priorities, rules and preferences. One minister reported that he spent perhaps 60% of his time simply trying to co-ordinate donors.
A week-end guest has just told me of an amputee centre in Sierra Leone in which immense piles of oversupplied prosthetic limbs are visible – and those agencies requiring even greater exposure fly a few victims to a Western country for highly sophisticated treatment which is then used as promotional material for yet more fundraising. Meanwhile, reports on the sexual abuse of war victims by international community staff in war torn regions of Africa are quashed. And has anyone calculated the cost of the thousands and thousands of the multilateral and private donor agency staff who sit in the capitals of the world ? Your tax money and mine?
You may think that I am being over critical – but in the late 1970s I and others set up an independent reseach institute to look precisely at the aid industry. We applied scientific method to evaluating the impact of aid and came to some very shocking conclusions which we published …….earning the undying hostility of much of the aid community. Not much has changed, the wrong aid goes to the wrong people at the wrong time and it does damage. Perhaps the most injurious outcome is the destruction of the state’s ability to devise and implement indigenous policies and thereby begin the task of building effective states.
One of the most egregious examples of this, which I saw in a film called ‘T-Shirt Travels’ being shown yonks ago at a film festival in Zanzibar, was how our old clothes, donated to charity, end up being sold to Africans. Their indigenous textile trade is then put out of business because they cannot compete with the ‘donations’ [the middlemen have to make some charge to the customer at the end, otherwise distribution wouldn’t happen] and the country is left dependent on ‘donations’. Which they have to pay for !!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCIlgUeYlM
This is the film, I think, and it focuses on Zambia.
“A week-end guest has just told me of an amputee centre in Sierra Leone in which immense piles of oversupplied prosthetic limbs are visible”
I have used a crutch or two for some years after a botched broken leg op; there are some marvellous crutches about, designs for every different situation, and problem. They probably only cost pence to manufacture.
I was also watching a program about one of the African countries where there were a number of “Buruli ulcer” victims, which is said to be caused by witchcraft.
They need cheap and plenty of crutches for the children who crawl about on all fours, same as I used to do when I was at home!
Under arm cruches should be a thing of the past. hand grip crutches, and elbow rest crutches are needed in Africa!
Here are ten million….. Oh! look! there they are in a pile, like those prosthetic limbs in Sierra Leone!”
It may be the low unit cost of the limbs which was the cause of the over supply.
[Aren’t bicycles wonderful inventions for all the people of the world?!]
The noble baroness’ comments are complex and sophisticated. They are questions to which there are no easy answers.
Am I right in thinking that at one time, the FCO and the Dept for International Development were one and the same thing?
I rather regret getting mixed up with the Foreign Affairs yobs(!) and not being concerned with International Development, which is really where a good heart lies.
Jimmy Doherty’s programs on the sourcing/origin of the food we buy in our supermarkets, has been a wonderful eye opener to me, but when you consider that we could so easily be growing our own green beans and roses, rather than buy them from
Kenya, and that there are hundreds of thousands living in poverty and squalor in Mombasa/Nairobi, it makes on wonder precisely how we should be assisting the ‘underdeveloped’ world, in what way.
My own preference, noble baroness, is for the Ethical Consumerism of the cooperative movement, a philosophy which has been very carefully worked and developed; that is when I HAVE to be a consumer at all.
In the recent post of Noble B. Deech on ‘human rightsology’ I have tried to set out discreetly the extremes of modern politics, to include those who are ANTI-world trade on such a scale, the ANTI-Consumerist.
These people, and to some extent, myself,
are concerned that the Kenyans, who currently send rich roses for the luxury market in Europe, as a new type cash crop, should be shown SELF SUFFICIENCY, even if it is based on the modern nations state of Africa.
fancy roses for Europe means no food for the
starving townspeople of the shanty towns of Kenya.
The leap from hunter gatherer to agriculture
in a few short years, has shown up vast anomalies, being exploited by capitalist enterprise, without a care for the poverty that the noble Baroness is so seriously concerned with.
What does the cash from roses to Europe matter, when there are empty mouths to feed in
Africa?
Off-topic [just for a change..]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/representatives/search?type=representatives&institution=House%20of%20Lords
The BBC now seems to have information for ALL [or at least ‘most’ ] of the Lords and Ladies including their interests.
“You may think that I am being over critical”
Not at all.
There is a depressing familiarity with which international agencies seem more interested in planning some fabulous paper state and drawing up western notions of constitutional arrangements, rights and values with an almost total indifference to whether the people want such rights/values or in some cases the state itself. When you have often largely illiterate populations with vast cultural tribal and historic tensions and animosities, coupled with deep poverty the mindset that sees the an identikit generic democracy model and the ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission’ as any sort of priority and solution bewilders me.
The issue of aid is, as touched upon by Bedd Gelert, difficult. The US and EU have done vast damage by dumping their subsidised grain into the aid system destroying local production and economic systems. We can’t stop aid but trying to source and buy it outside of the first world would at least help 2nd/3rd world markets to function in a somewhat more normal manner.
I’d rather see a bare fraction of the number of agencies trying to do the most basic work close to the population than these vainglorious state building exercises. People have to build their own states and this process is not helped by foreign models imposed to suit western ideals.
I agree that a lot of CHzrities mainly exist to sef perpetuate, and even those who are genuine about their desire ot help smetimes harm.
Of ocurse soem succeed, look art Mother teresa. (Unless you g with Hitchens diatribe agaisnt her, that is.)
This is why I miss the ld Order so. Why shoudl our modern Democracy, so rife with corruption, be udnerstood as good when its resulrs are corruption at home and devistation abroad?
In terms of Aid, why not simply allow a sort of Crown Clearing House and make all Charities comply with Her Majesty’s commission work. That seemed to work in the past.