From The Metro:
Britain is to target foreign aid at improving security and justice in the world's most "fragile" states. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander is due to say that up to half of new aid could be pushed into states ravaged by war, weak governments and poverty-fuelled civil unrest...
The change in priorities was signalled by Mr Alexander in a speech in April when he said: "Poor people want security and justice in the same way that they want sanitation, education or health care. Without it they cannot tend their fields, collect water, send their children to school or seek to improve their incomes. Insecurity is a handbrake on development."
He warned then that aid agencies had become "afraid to engage in building political institutions for fear of being accused of interfering in a developing country's politics".
Unfortunately, the Dept for International Development forgot to tip off fakecharity ActionAid about this. Also in today's Metro:
The world's eight richest nations must spend billions of pounds more on food aid or one in six of the world's population may starve to death, a charity warns. The G8 countries should sign up to a 'new global compact to end hunger' to save a billion people from malnutrition, according to ActionAid.
This week's summit in L'Aquila, Italy, is the last chance to act against worsening hunger in the developing world and the group should agree to increase farming aid by £14billion a year by 2012, it claims...
Monday 6 July 2009
Outbreak of commonsense at the DfID
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6 comments:
That really is a sensible idea, I expect it will soon be cancelled or changed, thanks to the vested interests of all the Aid Charities.
Action"aid" know that providing free food aid will kill off farms and make sure that Action"aid" staff have a job for life.
Who's going to pin the fake charities down then?
Aid is a classic case of something that the government has no business to be involved with. We can all perfectly well hand over dosh individually - there is no need for collective action.
Even if the government is going to hand over money to dictat.... poor people overseas, there is no good reason to have the DfID as a seperate organisation from the Foreign Office.
Government sponsoerd aid is what keeps most of the third world - and Africa in particular - in poverty.
Look at Somaliland. Because it doesn't officially exist it does not qualify for official government aid - so it has become largely self-reliant and as a result has democratic elections (internationally recognised as being both free and fair), a small but improving economy, improving infrastructure, a free and independent media (we could learn something from them here!) and is one of the few places in Africa where refugees are happily returning to.
Meanwhile, it's southerly neighbour - Somalia - is a hellhole of corruption, war and poverty despite (or because of) untold millions of international aid.
Typically, governments give aid to other governments with little restraint on how that money is then used. It just should not happen. International aid should be restricted to emergency situations - such as the tsunami or earthquake situations. it should not become part of the annual budget of some despot government.
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