AFRO-NETS> Food for donors' thoughts (3)

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Food for donors' thoughts (3)
-----------------------------

Reading the response of Manjula to "donors" I cannot but be reminded 
of de Gaulle's famous maxim: States do not have friends, only inter-
ests.

I am inclined to think that:

1. As we have it now, foreign aid is instrumental in decreasing con-
structive social, economic, and political tensions and internal con-
tradictions that would tend, sooner or later, redress or resolve the 
growing imbalances and injustices of the prevailing internal ex-
ploitative system in many a recipient country.

2. In the best of cases, donors give their aid in a well-intentioned, 
but nevertheless vain and futile attempt to mitigate or remedy this 
ongoing internal economic exploitation.

3. In the worst of cases, as we all know, donors channel their aid 
through ruling national elites, most often fully aware of how these 
elites are instrumental in perpetuating this state of affairs: there-
fore, do the donors become accomplices in the process of exploita-
tion?

4. Local governments channel their own development funds often to ur-
ban and more prestigious projects, resting assured that foreign aid 
will assume a sizable fraction of rural development costs for them.

5. To top things off, foreign aid often attempts to impose Western 
(Northern) models of development, e.g. cash-crop support or large ir-
rigation schemes, which carry not only the seeds of the further ex-
ploitation of those supposedly aided, but also the continuing enrich-
ment of the ruling elites.

6. The difficult to take truth is that, if current type Western 
(Northern) foreign aid does not cease or is drastically reoriented, 
it will never achieve its stated aims and objectives - a fact that is 
already widely recognized, but for which all kinds of excuses are 
found. If donors do not begin to look at macro-economic parameters, 
their "good will" will be used facetiously to perpetuate the status 
quo. (Chances are strong that many of the donor countries would not 
mind being used in such a way, as long as their public image looks 
good to the rest of the world, especially to the other members of the 
club of donors).

7. Most countries face quite a number of problems in managing to ab-
sorb all the foreign aid efficiently and clearly lag behind in that 
task. The bottlenecks that explain this are related among other fac-
tors, to shortages of trained manpower, serious limitations in infra-
structure, and a slow-paced bureaucracy.

8. Instead of asking ourselves how much foreign aid poor people need, 
we must ask ourselves whether Western (Northern) tax dollars are be-
ing used to shore up the economic and political power of a few who 
make the powerlessness of the many inevitable. Do these tax dollars 
go to regimes that sustain themselves in power by repression against 
the poor? Statistics cannot help us answer such questions. Only iden-
tifying with needless human suffering will.

Any comments?

Claudio

PS: Incidentally, this all very much relates to the Human Rights is-
sues I have been proposing. 

--
Claudio Schuftan
Hanoi, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn

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