Every other child born in Sweden in the
year 2000 is expected to live up to the
age of 100 years. Whereas a child born
in the developing world can expect to live
58 years (or eight years longer than the
average life expectancy of his/her parents).
In sub-Saharan Africa life expectancy is
even much lower. HIV/AIDS epidemic is indeed
a major factor but it cannot explain the
huge gap of the human condition between
the north and the south. Of the 4.6 billion
people in developing countries, 2.8 billion
lack basic sanitation and live on less
than 2 USD a day. And those who attempt
to survive on less than $1 a day make up
a staggering 1.2 billion people.
Last year, there were
more than 100 million Africans dependent
on food aid. During
the same year, about 500 million Africans
attempted to survive on per capita income
of less than 1 USD per day. In this context
the UN declarations of Human, economic
and social rights (1948 and 1966) lose
a great deal of their value. Likewise,
the World Bank's ritual campaign held every
year against world poverty has little value
other than rhetoric, since the total number
of those who are too poor to feed themselves
continues to grow.
Yet the most ironic
aspect of this state of affairs is that
the more the OECD countries
become rich, the less they are prepared
to assist the developing countries in general
and the sub-Saharan region in particular.
The 1990s witnessed the decline of total
amount of development aid to sub-Saharan
Africa. Several reasons have been put forward
to explain the continuous reduction of
the amount of development aid in the face
of growing poverty. Rising financial problems
in the donor countries, growing scepticism
towards the effectiveness of development
aid programs, and the decline in the strategic
importance of sub-Saharan Africa are some
of the explanations put forward. These
reasons, with the exception of the last
one, are hardly convincing.
The amount of development aid to Africa
made available by the OECD countries is
a trifle that can hardly affect the macro-economies
of African societies. Moreover, up to 70
percent of the development aid made available,
for instance by Sweden to Ethiopia, does
not reach Ethiopia but instead remains
in Sweden in the form of salaries and equipment.
The argument that the decline of the amount
of development aid has to do with scepticism
does not carry too much weight. Most of
the expensive development programs planned
under the auspices of the World Bank proved
ineffective greatly because the assumptions
set by the World Bank were wrong. The World
Bank knew that the projects it financed
were weak and not sustainable (Susan George
and Fabio Sabelli, 1992). While there are
hundreds of failed projects (white elephants)
there are very few examples of successful
development aid projects.
One of the structural
factors that might explain the neglect
of Africa is the end
of the Cold War and the triumph of liberalism.
Prior to and during the Cold War era, development
aid was institutionalised as a weapon to
promote the interest of either one of the
super-powers. Africa was the playing field
of the major players, namely, the USA,
the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain
and to some extent China. The super-powers
were often engaged in proxy wars. Any African
regime that officially sided with one of
the super-powers was given sufficient material
support to remain in power. Hence dictatorial
and authoritarian system of rule was sanctioned
in Africa. And in the process it was the
ordinary Africans who suffered most. The
distortions that were introduced into the
African political culture by the pervasive
presence of the Cold War merits far more
attention than the few pioneering scholars
have so far accomplished. But it is worthwhile
to stress that it was during this era of
the cold war that most of the poorly planned
projects were forced upon African states
and ended up in total failure. The study
by Susan George and Fabio Sabelli (1992)
on the empire that the World Bank had both
created and inherited is an eloquent evidence
of the links between development aid and
political considerations. With the collapse
of communism, the major donor countries
have to devise a new purpose for development
aid.
The first objective of this paper is to
re-examine the reasons why the OECD world
lost interest in assisting Africa out of
its deep crisis of development. The OECD
countries are several times richer now
than what they were in 1960. In contrast,
for the majority of sub-Saharan Africans,
the conditions of life (access to food,
health and shelter) are worse now (2002)
than what they were around 1960. The second
objective of this exploratory paper is
to try to grasp the purpose of development
aid that is implemented by the OECD countries.
Moreover, this paper is based on two premises.
First, a sustained development aid could
indeed ensure a decent livelihood for the
ca one billion people who are daily struggling
to survive on less than a dollar a day.
Second, the OECD world has both the economic
resources and the technological capacity
to eliminate poverty and to bridge the
gap between the rich and the poor citizens
of this world.
I wish to do this through
a historical inquiry into the articulation
of development
aid. How have, for instance, the issues
of poverty and development been articulated
from the first UN document in the late
1960s to the recent document: UN Millennium
Development Goals? I also wish to explore
the role of development aid in closing
the progressively growing gap between the
citizens of the rich and poor countries
thus laying down the foundations for a
dynamic and sustainable development? Moreover,
I find it relevant to examine the interplay
between development aid, the explosive
growth of NGOs and the documented incapacity
of the latter to deal with societal problems?
A very clear example
of the capacity of the OECD world is the amount of money
spent on the pet industry. Pfizer, the
world's second-largest supplier of animal
medicines, estimates that there are about
120 million cats and 115 million dogs kept
as pets around the world. Sweden, alone, with
a population of just nine million inhabitants
is a home of about 1.2 million cats and
800 000 dogs. A rough extrapolation of
the Swedish data appears to suggest that
there might be up two million pets for
every 10 million inhabitants in the OECD
world. It would not be off the mark, therefore,
to argue that there could be about 40 million
cats and 30 million dogs in the European
Union.
According to a conservative estimate the
pet owning citizens of the European Union
spend about 150 million USD daily or 45
billion USD per annum on pet food. This
staggering amount that the citizens of
the European Union spent to keep their
cats and dogs alive is nearly three times
as much as the total amount that Sub-Saharan
Africa annually gets from the industrialised
countries in terms of official development
assistance (Alex de Wall and Timothy Johnson,
1996). The amount of money that the citizens
of the OECD countries spend on soft drinks,
liquor and gambling is far more greater
than those spend on pet animals. The annual
consumption of liquor is considerably greater
than the total amount of Swedish development
aid. Swedes gamble for about 2 billion
USD per annum; or nearly twice as much
as the total Swedish development aid.
The size of the pet
industry vis a vis the volume of funds
transferred from the
OECD countries to the poorer regions and
peoples of the world demonstrates two points.
First, it shows the kind of luxury goods
disposed by the citizens of the OECD countries.
Second, it highlights the sharp contrast
between life destinies of individuals. It
matters where one is born although an individual
is born to parents and nationality without
her/his choice. While many a person may
not wish to swap parents, far too many
of us would certainly go a long way in
search for a life free of hunger and curable
diseases.
I have dwelt on the
economy of the pet industry to stress
the economic capacity
of a great majority of the OECD citizens.
But it is not my intention, as Peter Singer
has recently done, to link this capacity
to moral responsibility. In a brief commentary
to the UN Millennium Development Goals,
Peter Singer wrote that "those who have
enough to spend on luxuries [ca. 900 million
of the world's population] yet fail to
share even a tiny fraction of their income
with the poor, must bear some responsibility
for the deaths they could have prevented" (Project
Syndicate, June 2002).
The capacity of the
OECD citizens to make a substantial contribution
to the elimination
of hunger cannot be compared with the resources that
the OECD states have at their disposal.
The defence expenditures of the OECD countries
is so vast that a tiny fraction of it would
wipe hunger out of the surface of the world.
It is, however, worrying that the globalized
economy made possible by advances in information
technology has created an extremely polarised
and conflict ridden world between the minority
who bask in luxury and the majority who
are daily deprived of basic needs such
as clean water, functional food and shelter
and thus die at early ages. Unless grounded
on an equitable distribution of resources
that ensures the basic needs of all individuals,
a global system would have to rely on naked
force for its survival.
It is, therefore, relevant
to review how development aid was articulated
in the
past and of how the process of disengagement
(on the part of the OECD) was set in motion.
It is also equally important to assess
the role of development aid in the evolution
of a truly global world. This paper is
organised in the following. The paper first
outlines a revisionist interpretation of
colonialism as a preamble to the development
debate of the late 1960´s and 1970s. Then
the paper makes an abrupt jump into the
growing role of the NGOs and the type of
development that we can expect from them.
Finally, the paper analyses the UN Millennium
Development Goals as a betrayal of the
poor, and as example of the absence of
meaningful humanitarian concerns on the
part of the OECD countries.
Late colonialism as a form of development
aid
Ever since the 16th century
Europe has dominated Africa. European needs
and perceptions formed the basis for the
construction and implementation of relations
with Africa south of the Sahara. The decision
to end the slave trade was taken by European
states at a period when it suited them
to do so. Even during the period commonly
described as the century of legitimate
trade (1807-1885) the terms of trade between
European and African states were determined
in Europe. The philosophical and ideological
arguments for the partition of tropical
Africa and the eventual colonisation of
the continent were debated and eventually
decided in Europe. And colonisation took
place at a period when the European juridical
and epistemological framework considered
Africa res nullius a landscape
without any rightful owners. Colonialism,
as long as it lasted, was a highly authoritarian
system. Even the timing of decolonization,
with the exception of Portugal's possessions
was determined by European colonial powers.
Yet it could be strongly argued that the
ideology of colonialism was based on the
logic that the African was also a brother/sister
(a human being).
Colonialism has come
and gone. Most of
the sub-Saharan region has been independent
for the last forty years. But the record
of independent Africa is dismal. Independent
Africa has failed completely to adequately
feed its own population. The conditions
of life for the majority of sub-Saharan
Africans are worse now (2002) than they
were in 1960 (UN Millennium Development
Goals, 2000). Food production and consumption
has declined by more than twenty percent
during the last three decades while population
grew at the rate of about three percent
per annum. As we enter the new millennium,
the image of Africa that impinges on us
is that of failed experiments and unfulfilled
expectations. According to recent evidence,
the World Bank led structural adjustment
policies and the official development aid
(ODA) have either failed or so far have
proved insufficient to even contain the
rapidly deteriorating economic and social
infrastructure of Sub-Saharan Africa. This
in brief is the record of post colonial
Africa (George, Susan 1989; Baratt-Brown,
Michael and Pauline Tiffen 1992; O´Connor,
Anthony 1991; Davidson, Basil1992; George,
Susan and Fabio Sabelli, 1992; Chossudovsky,
Michel 1997 ).
Compared to the post-colonial period,
colonialism could indeed be conceptualised
as a joint venture of the European political,
economical and religious institutions designed
to integrate Africa and its inhabitants
to the European system. Colonialism could
also be seen as an attempt to rectify the
damage brought by the European slave trade.
Extreme poverty and famine did not exist
in most of colonial Africa. Self-sufficiency
in food production was encouraged and in
actual fact maintained. Peace, albeit unilaterally
imposed from above, was nonetheless maintained
in colonial Africa, especially after the
First World War. The basic infrastructure
of roads, railways, harbours and telecommunication
network was completed during the colonial
period. Paternalism was the norm and development
of African colonies was geared to the interests
of the colonial power as well as of the
colonies. Colonies were reconstructed in
the image of the imperial power in the
same way as man is conceived in the image
of God.
One of the most puzzling
aspects of the relations between Europe
and Africa was
the way colonialism came to an end. The
devastating impact of the Second World
War on the economies of the major colonial
powers, i.e. Great Britain and France was
indeed an important factor. The emergence
of the United States and the Soviet Union
as the leading powers and who demanded
a share of influence in Africa was also
another reason. But I believe the most
cogent explanation for the demise of colonialism
is that provided by Joseph Schumpeter (1919).
The main argument of Schumpeter was that
the spirit of European colonialism was
not at all capitalist. Although Europe
was in the second century of its industrial
and capitalist phase, its political culture
was permeated by that of feudalism. The
feudal culture was predominantly non-capitalist
and was driven by values such as chivalry
and honour. The feudal man was not driven
by economic interests alone. Shumpeter
further argued that if Europe had been
thoroughly capitalist, not only in terms
of its mode of production but also in its
mode of thought, it would not have gone
to the unnecessary business of colonising
the world. A mature capitalist system,
Schumpeter argued, does not require colonies.
The job of extracting resources can be
carried out by means other than colonialism.
Finally Schumpeter predicted, as early
as 1919, that colonialism will wither away
with the rise and maturity of capitalism.
It is indeed tempting
to argue that events developed in the
way envisaged by Joseph
Schumpeter. Africa was catapulted into
independence in the early 1960s as suddenly
as it was suddenly colonised slightly more
than a half century earlier. The extraction
of African resources could henceforth be
done without the medium of colonialism.
The colonial project (extensively explained
in the memos of colonial governors and
the home office) was hardly accomplished
when the colonial powers decided to pack
their files and leave Africa ostensibly
on its own. Pushed and cudgelled by the
combined forces of the Soviet Union and
the USA, the major colonial powers gave
up their privileges as well as their responsibilities
in most parts of the world- a world that
later came to be designated in many names
during the last four decades.
Most of the states in Africa became independent
between 1957 and 1965. Decolonisation coincided
with the economic boom in the Europe and
North America. No sooner had African states
gained their independence it became apparent
that the gap between the rich countries
(the great majority of colonial powers
formed part of this group) and the ex-colonies
(now described as developing or underdeveloped
) was rapidly growing. There was a growing
realisation among the former colonial powers
as well within the United Nations that
unless resources from the rich countries
in the form of development aid were made
available, the gap would continue to grow.
It was roughly in this context that the
first United Nations Commission on International
Development under the leadership of Lester
Pearson was established. In the following
paragraphs, I shall outline the findings
of the Pearson Commission and the responses
the report elicited.
Pearson commission and the debate of
Development Aid
The context under which
the first UN Commission on International
Development that Lestor
Pearson headed was very similar to the
current context that led to the UN Millennium
Development goals. In the mid 1960s, the
per capita income of more than half of
the world's population was less than 100USD.
The world of the 1960s was divided between
the rich who were getting richer and the
poor getting poorer.
Development in the
1960s, Pearson wrote, was very different
from what it was during
the great period of Western growth in the
last two centuries. Between 1600 and 1900
Europeans occupied virtually all the vacant
and semi-vacant temperate lands in the
world. Wherever the white man could go,
he settled down and took over. In doing
so, he developed the new land, opened up
new resources, and laid the basis for the
economic advances of the industrial revolution
and for the technological, post-industrial
society of today. Since the beginning of
the nineteenth century, the advances in
industrial revolution and the growth of
world trade transformed the process of
development into a system where the western
world stood to gain at the expense of the
rest of the world. Parson's lucid summation
is apt that it worthwhile quoting it in
full:
This, roughly, is how the cycle worked:
From America or Britain would come the
capital to open up a mine or establish
a settlement or build a plantation. Then
the raw materials would be shipped back.
Any local development would be to facilitate
this movement. Roads, railways, and ports
were built, and the financial mechanism
for exchange created, all under the control
of the Western nations and designed to
help drain away the profits to them. Manufactures
were sent to pay for the raw materials.
These manufactures would be provided by
European or American firms and distributed
by the large commercial agencies, all under
Western control.
Only that limited sector of the colonial
or overseas country which was concerned
with non-competitive and raw material exports
was developed, or allowed to be developed.
Very little capital or savings, so necessary
for growth, spilled over into the local
community. Whatever did, as wages, was
then mopped up by the sale of manufactured
goods fro overseas, the profits from which
went back to the metropolitan power (Pearson,
1971: 13-14).
Such was the pattern of development in
the world outside the northern hemisphere.
And such pattern was not easy to change.
The development situation throughout the
colonial period, wrote Pearson, was not
much different from that which had existed
in the 18th and 19th centuries
in the sense that the basic facilities
for productive investment and growth were
still absent (Pearson, 1971:14)
I do agree with the
above description, but writing thirty
years later I take exception
of Pearson´s analysis of colonialism. Besides
the draining of the resources of the colonies,
colonialism was saddled with other objectives.
The Imperial powers could not continue
to disregard the welfare of their colonial
subjects. The educational policies that
these powers pursued and implemented, albeit
contradictory, were designed to create African
citizens in the image of the citizens of
the imperial nation[1].
The main thrust of Pearson Commission
was that the setting in motion of a long-term
and self-sustaining development among the
developing nations was to the interest
of all the citizens of the world. On the
basis of such logic and the repeated campaigns
from various quarters, the Pearson commission
recommended that the volume of development
aid should be sufficient to help the less
developed countries to a level of growth
of at least 6 per cent per year (Pearson,
1969:124). Elaborating further the Pearson
Commission argued that a growth of 6 per
cent per year would transform the economic
outlook of any aid recipient country as
this would imply that per capita income
would increase four times in a half a century.
Such a growth rate brought about by foreign
aid and the conducive local environment
could easily absorb rapid increase of the
population (Pearson, 1971: 53).
The report of the Pearson Commission was
reviewed by a group of economists who met
at Columbia University in 1971. The Columbia
Conference, according to Hans Singer and
Javed Ansari (1979: 141-42) stressed that,
even if a 6 percent growth rate was attained,
the gap between the rich and the poor countries
would be four times its present size by
the year 2000. It was necessary for the
whole attitude to the problem of international
assistance to be fundamentally altered.
The Columbia Conference argued that aid
must be targeted to the income per capita
in the recipient countries. Specifically,
aid must not be less than 400 USD per person
per annum in the least developing countries
by the year 2000. Aid should be related
to specific social targets (e.g. better
nutrition for children, health standards,
education levels, etc.) and must be concentrated
to the group of countries which have a
per capita income of less than 300 USD
per annum.
Commenting to the report of Lester B.
Pearson and the Columbia Conference that
reviewed the Pearson Commission, Singer
and Ansari (1978: 142-3) wrote:
A primary objective
of aid allocation policy must be the
reduction of the ever-widening
international gap. Aid must not be seen
as a temporary self-liquidating, stop-gap
measure. Instead, it must be frankly recognised
that aid, as we know it, ought to be the
first step that has been taken towards
the evolution of a progressive international
taxation structure based on the principle "From
each according to his ability; to each
according to his need". In other words,
the fact must be faced that aid is a permanent
feature of the process of international
resource allocation. The extent to which
it is distributed in accordance with the
true principles of equity and efficiency
reflects the contribution of the well-to-do
members of the international community
towards eliminating the imbalances and
inequalities within the world economic
system. Instead, international assistance
that is given without regard to the relative
needs of the recipients is self-defeating,
in that its contribution to the development
of the recipient country is highly unlikely
to be very fruitful. The contribution of
the rich economies towards the development
requirements of the poor nations will thus
have to be geared to the development needs
of the latter and not to the interests,
both political and economic, of the rich
countries themselves.
Furthermore Singer and Ansari stressed
that there should be no ambiguity in the
allocation criteria that should be used
for aid distribution. The criteria should
provide an index that could be used to
measure the contribution of the rich countries
towards the effective reduction of the
widening gap between the rich and poor
countries. The value judgements implied
by aid allocation based on such criteria
of this sort reflect merely an extension
of the concept of the welfare state from
the national to the international level
(Singer and Ansari, 1978:156)
By the end of the 1980´s the development
debate that the Pearson Commission articulated
was for all purpose and intent forgotten.
As I shall attempt to demonstrate towards
the end of this paper, the UN Millennium
Document on Development hardly defines
the conditions for development and the
obligations of the OECD countries. Since
the 1980s the OECD countries have successively
divested themselves from active engagement
in the development of Africa. Since the
early 1990s the total amount of Aid to
Africa have declined. In 1992 Africa got
18 billion US Dollars. This figure declined
since 1995. Aid to Africa is now in the
range of 16 billion US Dollars. The continent
gets another 14 billion US dollars in the
form of loans. There are several reasons
for the decline. Rising financial problems
in the donor countries, the growing scepticism
toward the effectiveness of aid programme,
decline in the strategic importance of
Africa and the emergence of new claimants
in eastern Europe are mentioned as some
of the reasons. Here it has to be remembered
that Africa pays annually more than 30
billion US dollars in terms of rent and
mortgage to the World Bank and other commercial
lenders (Tiffen and Barat-Brown, 1992).
One of the significant shifts in Official
Development Aid to Africa is the decline
in agricultural aid. African agriculture
is the single victim of this shift (Nicolas
van de Valle and Timothy A Johnston, 1996).
This is very difficult to explain, first
because, donor countries speak about the
importance of agriculture; and secondly,
it is a well known fact that the majority
of Africans still depend on agriculture.
Instead some major donors increased funding
for environment and conservation at the
expense of agriculture. Whereas development
aid to economic infrastructure such as
roads, energy, and telecommunications has
remained stable. About 20 percent of all
aid from the OECD countries goes to infrastructure
support.
There are strong indications to argue
that the OECD have given the entire sub-continent
of Africa to the Non-governmental Organisations.
Can NGOs replace the role of OECD states
as partners of development in Africa? The
opinion of this paper is clear. The records
that we so far have strongly point out
that the NGOs cannot be partners of development
in the sense used by the Pearson Commission.
Here below I shall point out the critical
voices but also dwell on the literature
that is sympathetic to the role of the
NGOs.
NGOs and Foreign Development Aid: some
critical voices.
Foreign aid is primarily allocated to
countries who are deemed so poor that they
could not generate the funds needed to
carry out the tasks themselves. The recipients
of foreign aid are in principle all those
countries commonly described as least developed.
The countries that have been on the receiving
end of both foreign aid and NGOs development/
humanitarian inputs are to be found mostly
in Africa. It is therefore, appropriate
that the role of foreign aid and NGOs in
Africa has become the focus of inquiry
for this introductory paper.
A critical inquiry into the role of foreign
aid and into the role of the NGOs was virtually
impossible during the era of the Cold War.
During the cold war era, both foreign aid, NGOs
as well as the policies of the World Bank
were used as important instruments at the
disposal of the Western World in the war
against the spread of world communism.
There were critical voices against the
Western policies on Africa (Susan George,
1989). but these voices were quickly dismissed.
Only after the demise of "communism/socialism" did authors
begin to seriously look into the overall
impact of foreign aid and the aid offered
by NGOs on that part of the world that
has been the playing field for such kind
of interventions.
One such critical voice
is Michael Maren´s The
Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of
Foreign aid and International Charity
(1997). For Maren, foreign aid and
NGOs humanitarian/relief assistance is
an industry, a religion and a self-serving
system. This industry sacrifices its
own practitioners as well as its intended
beneficiaries in order that it may serve
and grow (Maren, 1997:11). And his main
conclusion is that foreign aid and international
charity is highly destructive. It has
to be noted that Maren´s experience is
largely based on his long experience
in the Republics Kenya and Somalia.
The distribution of
development aid, according to Maren,
was a big private business that
relies on government contracts. NGOs like
the Catholic Relief Services are paid by
the United States government to give a
way surplus food produced by subsidised
farmers. The more food NGOs give away,
the more money they received from the government
to administer the handouts. Maren stressed
that since the securing of the government
money is the primary goal, NGOs are rarely
interested to find out whether the project
they are supposed to implement is good
or not.
In most parts of Africa
politicians loved to receive any kind
of foreign aid. Some
influential politicians could give aid
projects as gifts to their supporters. An
African politician could for instance
ask a European NGO to start projects in
his native district. The location of a
European NGO in a district could in the
short term perspective create employment
opportunities for the inhabitants of that
district. But the ordinary people see foreign
aid and NGOs for what they are. Aid workers
move into the big colonial houses and ride
in high cars and are not different than
the former colonial masters (both in colour
and style of life).
Destruction brought by development
and humanitarian assistance: the case
of Somalia
According to Michael
Maren Somalia was destroyed by foreign
and humanitarian aid.
During the time of Siyyad Barre (ruler
of Somalia from 1969-1991) too much foreign
aid came to Somalia. Those who gave the
aid did not bother to find out how the
aid funds were used. Aid money was divided
among local officials and among the sons
and daughters of politicians. The donors
knew about this kind of gross corruption
but did nothing to prevent it.
As Somalia was within
the Western Bloc at least since 1978,
it was entitled to
receive US development aid. It is since
this period that the destruction of the
Somali agricultural infrastructure began
to take place. The US food aid destroyed
Somalia but who gained from it and how?
All US food aid arrives under the authority
of Public Law-480. This law has three mechanisms
for delivering food to poor countries.
These are: i) emergency food. This is a
direct donation to feed starving children
and is also used as food for work. ii)
Food for development. This American food
enters Somalia and is sold to anybody.
The money collected in this way is used
to finance development projects. iii).
Food sold to merchants at a heavily subsided
price. The American food that was sold
to Somalia was bought by the people close
to the president. The minister of Agriculture
was one of those who sold American food
and bought a huge farm with the profit.
While Somalia's agricultural self-sufficiency
was being destroyed, the political elite
was busily engaged in the production of
bananas and watermelons for export.
Traditional farmers
were forced out of business by low prices
and were either
driven off their land or forced to sell
it cheaply. The US surplus food grains
were subsidising the production of bananas
and other crops that did not compete with
Western agricultural interests. Those who
were relatives and friends of Siyyad Barre
made millions of dollars, first by selling
US grains and secondly by exporting bananas
and water-melons to Europe. All this was
made possible by food aid. And as more
farmers were forced off their land, food
aid became more necessary. The cycle of
food aid dependence was firmly created.
The final and direct impact of the massive
food aid was the complete destruction of
the subsistence agriculture in Somalia.
The World Bank knew (at least by 1988)
what was happening in Somalia as a result
of food aid. It pointed out that donors
(Germany and Italy in addition to the US)
were more interested to supply food rather
than hard currency to Somalia. By dumping
food in Somalia, these countries were subsidising
their own farmers. NGOs like Save the
Children were either not competent
enough to analyse the impact of their intervention
or were only interested in raising money
to keep themselves in business.
The American government
also knew. In
a study commissioned by the US Department
of State's Centre for the Study of Foreign
Affairs, the author of the report wrote
that donors were aware of Somalia's problems
but did very little other than offering
food aid.
Alex de Waal (1997)
confirmed what Michael Maren explained,
i.e. the disaster brought
about by the international NGOs. According
to de Waal, both the UN and the major NGOs
committed serious acts of omission. They
did not show any sense of accountability
to their main mission of meeting humanitarian
needs. But as the case of Somalia demonstrates,
the international NGOs prospered institutionally,
and their staff advanced their careers.
So the NGOs and their staff gained whereas
the humanitarian needs of the Somali people
were completely ignored. The power of the
international NGOs was so strong that they
were able to advocate the military occupation
of an independent country on humanitarian
grounds. But as events were later to prove,
international military intervention in
Somalia was primarily aimed at protecting
NGOs rather than the population of the
region.
Food aid destroyed the survival strategies
that the Somalis had developed in the past.
During periods of famine the Somali society
had a credit system where the nomads would
come to the urban areas and could get loans
that they would pay when times were good.
There was a system among the nomads of
sharing resources.
Which interests are protected in the
name of feeding starving Africans: An
example from the United Sates.
The story that Maren narrates and a summary
of which is presented below appears at
first sight highly conspiratorial. But
read together with Alex de Waal (1997)
and Graham Hancock (1989) the facts that
Maren compiles are strong enough to take
seriously his conclusions. In 1992 the
US government, according to Maren, spent
about 12 billion dollars in domestic and
export subsidies for agricultural products.
The shipping companies that transported
food aid to Africa and other countries
gained 580 million dollars over and above
the world cargo rate. All these subsidy
is part of the foreign aid that the US
government gave the third world.
Maren further argues
that the real battles over foreign aid
are fought not in terms
of helping the hungry but in terms of getting
subsidies. The agricultural industry, the
shipping industry, the big private food
exporters, and the NGOs speak about food
security, jobs and humanitarianism. The
words they use to get their piece of the
action are determined by their audience.
The rationale can be hard-nosed utilitarian
or humanitarian or a mixture of the two.
But at the end, they are always after public
money for private interests. The massive
amount of this money cannot be compared
with the few millions stolen by corrupted
African dictators. The money to be made
in Europe and America is much more and
has no relation from what actually happens
to the food once it leaves the European
and American ports.
The role that the NGOs are made to
play
Europe as well as the United States have
annual food surplus that has either to
be sold or destroyed. In places where they
can be sold, they are sold at world prices.
But the world market price for grains is
not as high as when food is given away
as food aid by European and United Sates
governments. European and the US government
buy their food for poor countries at domestic
prices. In this way European governments
subsidise the agricultural sector. The
shipping industry and the big food exporting
companies stand to gain. The profit margin
is so significant that the agricultural,
the shipping and food exporting companies
are the most strongest advocates of food
aid programmes. But they cannot do it alone.
They need NGOs to assist them.
The NGOs serve two important functions.
First, the NGOs are the primary lobbyists
for sending food to the third world countries.
For instance no one can lobby more effectively
than the late Mother Theresa. Second, the
NGOs are the agents and the contractors
who move the food. In 1993, CARE, the biggest
American NGO distributed almost 1.2 million
metric tons of US donated food aid to 58
countries. Most of this food was transported
by the American shipping industry. The
shipping industry made huge profits as
it charges several times more than the
cargo rate at world market prices. It would
not be difficult to imagine the profit
made by the American shipping industry
as it charges several times more than the
world cargo rate.
The United States International
Aid for Development (USAID) and the NGOs
have evaluated
food aid projects based on commodity management
and outputs, such as numbers of children
fed or miles of road constructed, but have
not assessed the impact of their projects
on long-term food security. NGOs have become
too dependent on the food exporting companies.
Maren believed that the survival of many
NGOs depend on how much money they can
get from the food exporting and shipping
companies. The humanitarian instinct has
become perverted by its partnership with
special domestic interests. Having read
Maren´s assessment I draw the following
conclusion. Indeed it would be very interesting
to study if there is a link between the
decline of aid to agriculture and the politics
of food aid where the major beneficiaries
are the grain merchants and the shipping
industry of Europe and North America.
A view that is far more critical than
the one put forward by Michael Maren, Alex
de Waal and Johnston is that by Graham
Hancock. His major argument is that western
aid (via the United Nations, the IMF, the
World Bank and individual donor states)
would not and could not bring about any
meaningful development for the poor regions
of the world. According to Hancock, development
aid is an industry that benefits the countries
who give aid and the international organisations
who administer it. Hancock cites some examples.
Since the 1980s, most of the billions of
US dollars given as aid is returned back
to Europe and North America in terms of
rent and mortgage. In 1988 the South got
about 60 billion US dollars worth of aid
but it paid back to the North about 40
billion US Dollars. The situation in Africa
is the same. Since the 1990s, Africa makes
annual payments about 30 billion US dollars
to the International financial institutions
whereas the annual amount of aid and loans
made available to Africa has been in the
range of 30 billion US dollars (Barrat-Brown
and Mary Tiffen, 1992)
The volume of aid is according to Hancock
big enough to do harm. Aid is profoundly
dangerous to the poor and inimical to their
interests. Aid has destroyed the lives
and environment of millions of people.
Aid has supported and legitimised brutal
tyrannies and has facilitated the emergence
of inefficient bureaucracies. Aid has sapped
the initiative, creativity and enterprise
of ordinary people. Aid has created a moral
tone in international affairs that denies
the hard task of wealth creation and that
substitutes easy handouts for the rigors
of self-help.
The above description
of the role of foreign aid and NGOs is
of course not shared by
all researchers. In fact the views of Michael
Maren, Alex de Waal and Graham Hancock can
be taken as too harsh. What is however
certain is that the performance of NGOs
has so far been far modest than what the
NGOs and their supporters claim. In actual
fact foreign aid and international charity
have not succeeded to confront issues of
poverty and development. The complex reasons
and institutional constraints facing foreign
aid and international charity are issues
discussed widely by among others, Roger
Ridell (1995).
One of the recent authors
who studied this subject is Terje Tvedt
(1998). Here
are some of the salient features of the
arguments. NGOs have promoted themselves
as being involved in both neutral humanitarianism
and partisan activities. In fact, most
NGOs have taken on both roles in different
circumstances. At one time NGOs advocated
neutral humanitarian issues and at other
times the same NGOs have spoken out in
favour or against, for example the conflict
in Bosnia. The general dilemma between
humanitarian aid and "speaking out" is
not a new one. But Humanitarian organisations
have in general stood for bringing aid
to anybody regardless of political or religious
affiliations.
Yet the fact remains
that there has been a shift from development
aid to emergency
aid, where NGOs are active players. Emergency
aid encourages and reproduces images of
misery. A growing number of NGO employees
are living on disaster and misery management.
This reality creates and recreates all
the time a social base for a special type
of image production of "we" and "them".
NGOs humanitarianism rests more on an image
of permanent emergencies and peoples inability
to help themselves.
Most NGOs seem to be less activist, and
more geared towards humanitarian aid or
towards long term project implementation.
It is however important to remember that
the most influential NGOs gain quite a
lot in prestige and visibility during crises
and emergencies. In conflict situations
the NGOs appear as a humanitarian monolith.
In Rwanda more than 100 NGOs from all over
the western world worked together in the
refugee camps without raising debates on
policy or aid issues. This is a clear evidence
that NGOs do not criticise each other.
With thousands of NGOs (there are about
4000 NGOs in Western Europe and North America
with development and humanitarian activities
in the developing countries) working in
the same country, it is astonishing that
the NGOs seldom disagree among themselves
on fundamental policy issues or aid strategies.
There is indeed an internal solidarity
within the international world of the NGOs.
From Pearson Commission to the UN Millennium
Development Goals: a betrayal of the poor
The UN Millennium development
goal is based on the data collected and
interpreted
by the World Bank. And according to this
data, nearly half of the world's population
attempts to survive on less than 2 USD
per day. But according to the United Nations
these are not considered poor. Those that
the UN targets as poor are the 1.2 billion
(one thousand and two hundred million)
people who struggle to survive on less
than 1 USD per day. The great majority
of these poor people live in Africa and
Asia. In spite of the absence of reliable
figures, as much as 70 percent of the African
population fall within the category of
the poor who survive on less than 2USD
per day. The UN millennium document noted
what researchers have pointed out over
15 years ago that a great majority of Africans
were as poor today as they were twenty
years ago.
Further, the UN Millennium
document pointed out the impact of the
persistence of income
inequality on the global political climate.
We live in a world where 20 percent of
the population (most of whom reside in
Europe, North America and Japan) consume
about 70 percent of the world's income.
And more than 60 percent of the world's
poor earn leas than 20 percent of the world's
income. Extreme poverty, the United nations
says is as an affront to common humanity.
In fairness to the UN Millennium Development
Goals, the document identifies correctly
the central challenge, namely that of ensuring
that globalisation becomes a positive force
for all people throughout the world, instead
of leaving billions of them behind in squalor.
Inclusive globalisation must be built on
the great enabling force of the market,
but market forces alone will not achieve
it. It requires a broader effort to create
a shared future, based upon our common
humanity in all its diversity (Millennium
goals, p. 4).
It is also important
to state that the Millennium Development
Goals document does
indeed point out the need for a serious
global commitment: It writes: no where
is a global commitment to poverty reduction
needed more than in Africa south of the
Sahara, because no region of the world
endures greater human suffering. The latest
estimates indicate that sub-Saharan Africa
has the largest proportion of people who
live on less than $1 a day. Growth in per
capita income averaged 1.5 per cent in
the 1960´s, 0.8 per cent in the 1970s,
and minus 1.2 per cent in the 1980s. In
the 1990s, the region grew more slowly
than any other group of middle- or low-income
countries.
According to my view, the UN Millennium
Document on Development is a tragic failure.
The central problem with the UN Millennium
Document is the poverty of its vision and
hence of its commitment. In sharp contrast
to the first UN Commission on Development
(Pearson Commission), the UN Millennium
Document on Development limits itself to
a principle of intention of four points.
First, the UN Millennium document expresses
the wish that poverty (those living below
1 USD per day) would be reduced by half
by 2015. Second, it limits itself by reminding
the rich countries that they have an indispensable
role to play by further opening their markets,
by providing deeper and faster debt relief,
and by giving more and better-focused development
assistance. Thirdly, it challenges the
foremost experts in the field of agriculture
to think through the barriers of low productivity
in Africa. And finally, the Millennium
document leaves the task of the renewal
of African agriculture to the philanthropic
[NGOs] foundations.
Each of the above four
points are so vague that they are virtually
impossible to implement
and monitor. Let us for instance take the
strategy on poverty reduction. What does
the reduction of the number of the poor
by half by 2015 mean? Does this mean the
reduction by half of those 1.2 billion
poor people at the year 2000? The population
of the poor of the world is bound to nearly
double in the coming fifteen years. So
does the UN Millennium Document refer to
the population at 2015 or at 2000? Even
if we concede the UN Millennium Document
does indeed refer to the population at
2015, there is no mention of strategies
that need to be in place. The UN Millennium
Document limits itself by reminding rich
countries to open up their markets.
The UN Millennium Document
is a betrayal of the poor It has nothing
to say about the development needs of
the poor regions
of the world. Yet it is only the UN that
has the mandate and the moral responsibility
to lay down policies for a stable and sustainable
world. How far the UN has neglected its
role in the evolution of an equitable international
economic order becomes clear when two of
its documents are put side by side.
|
Pearson Commission (1969)
Development aid should enable the
recipient country to achieve an annual
growth of 6 %
|
UN Millennium Document (2000)
Reduce by half the proportion of
people living on less than 1 USD
a day by 2015.
|
Concluding remarks
A globalised world requires a global policy
of welfare. In sub-Saharan Africa, the
scarcity of funds is the absolute reason
for continued poverty. Africa pays more
in the form of rent and mortgage to the
international financial institutions and
the World Bank than what it gets in Official
Development Aid. Most of the capital that
is produced in Africa (by the sale of primary
products) is handed to the World Bank and
other lenders as a repayment of ill conceived
and failed projects (Susan George and Fabio
Sabelli, 1992). The cancellation of African
debts would certainly go some way in releasing
some funds to finance the social infrastructure.
This, however, would not be enough. Sub-Saharan
Africa requires a continuous flow of funds
for a good number of years before its economy
could reach a dynamic level as recommended
by the Pearson Commission. But where are
the resources to come from? The resources
for rebuilding (or building) the shattered
(undeveloped) economies of regions crippled
by poverty is available in the OECD countries.
The crucial issue that has to be answered
quite urgently is why the OECD countries
should be concerned with global poverty.
The Pearson Commission answered the question
though it did not provide clear strategies.
The UN Millennium Document on Development
recognises the impact of extreme inequality
on the global political climate. The goal
of a global welfare policy is neither utopian
nor speculative. It is a solution to a
world that has become truly global in its
economic and cultural dimensions.
A possible scenario
is to mandate the World Bank to raise
funds that it needs
to provide basic needs (health, education,
housing) until such time that the economies
of the developing world has reached a take
off stage in terms of revenue collection
and implementation of social policies.
A global economic system that excludes
the vast majority of the world´s population
from a life free of un-freedom (to borrow
the words of Amartya Sen) is degrading
for humanity. The Pearson Commission pointed
out that the rich countries of the world
had (even more now than ever) the possibilities
to assist the poorer regions to achieve
a sustainable economies, but the question
was (and still valid today) whether the
rich countries have the will to do so.
