ODA? It's the foreign policy, stupid!

The fundamental critics of development aid argue in global terms and eschew specific questions. We do not know precisely what they are criticising. Are they objecting to the fact that Western countries helped to demobilise armed combatants in the civil war in Mozambique and to enable them to make a new start in civilian life? Or are they criticising the fact that after 11 September 2001 the USA stepped up its aid to Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Chad in order to launch the «Trans-Sahara Front against Terrorism»? Would the critics like to dispense with the aid that is ensuring the survival for millions of people displaced by the Congolese civil war? Or do they want to cancel World Bank loans intended to further the liberalisation of economic policy in beneficiary countries, in line with Anglo-Saxon free market preachings? Do they see some harm in private aid agencies helping the casteless in India to enforce their constitutionally guaranteed rights? Or are they against the use of aid funds to build major dams, which, according to Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre, deprived some 10 million people annually of the basis of their livelihood during the 1990s, without adequate compensation? Are they criticising the fact that diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, river blindness or leprosy have been controlled thanks to targeted development aid efforts? Or that foreign experts drawing princely wages are managing the Finance Ministry in Papua New Guinea, and so keeping an eye on the interests of Australia and its mining corporations?

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Contact: Peter Niggli, Alliance Sud

This article has been published in one of Switzerland’s leading weeklies (Weltwoche) in reply to criticism of development aid.