The politics of aid

A natural disaster is not so very far from a natural one. Tsunami occur regularly in the Pacific - 80% of all tsunami occur there. But the last time I remember hearing about a lot of tsunami deaths was in the case of the Chilean 'quake. I think it was in 1960. A lot of Chileans were killed and some Japanese too. (I remember stuff about the water being sucked out and the animals behaving strangely before it hit - but I was a kid and that's about all I remember.) Since then a warning system has been set up and you don't hear a lot about people being killed by tsunami.

Has anyone ever heard of a famine occurring in a democratic country? Sure, we have droughts, but we don't have famines. That's because the natural disaster doesn't lead to large-scale human catastrophes in democracies. Governments that respond to the people can't afford to allow people to die just because there's a natural calamity in one part of the country. People who live in drought-stricken areas get government subsidies and welfare if they lose their farms/businesses. They don't die.

Man-made disasters are more obviously man-made. They happen because of civil wars, governments that don't give a damn about the poor, siphoning of wealth out of the country and exclusion of the majority from the benefits of economic growth. While the rich get richer, the poor fight each other over access to a diminishing pool of resources.

It has been great to see the outpouring of public sympathy and contributions by people in the developed world to the victims of the tsunami. But really, we should ask ourselves if the people of Darfur are any less deserving, or the Bam earthquake victims, or the people caught up in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Rwanda etc., etc.. The world is full of disasters, yet we in the West apparently have 'disaster fatigue'.

Do we really have disaster fatigue? Or is it just that we don't know what to do? Is it just that we get no guidance from those who have the necessary information and the ability to pull the resources together? If our governments are not interested in the plight of Darfur - but they can spend hundreds of billions on invading Iraq (which wasn't a poor country, but is now) - how can the rest of us be expected to respond adequately?

There's no point in blaming the UN. The UN is made up of its member governments - especially the Permanent Five in the Security Council. If the governments won't act, the UN cannot act. Read Linda Polman's book, We Did Nothing.

The UN has a target: the rich countries should spend 3% of GDP on foreign aid. Only one or two countries come anywhere near it (maybe the Dutch and one or two Scandinavian countries). The US is near the bottom of the list (around 1%).

In this country, successive governments have prided themselves on the fact that 80% of the foreign aid budget is spent in Australia! Foreign aid is designed to support Australian companies! But even in that case there are benefits to the developing countries - after all, they do get roads, bridges, water supply and whatever. But it is the Australian firms that determine the aid priorities, not the poor people in the assisted countries.

That leaves the NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Ordinary individuals can support these on a continuing basis by making regular contributions (in Australia these are tax deductible). Their advantage is that they are on the ground, they listen to the voice of the poor and they do their best to promote economic and social development. Generally, they are less involved in the corruption that characterizes officialdom in most developing countries.

Their disadvantages are also manifold, however. Increasingly they rely on government funding - so they have to dovetail their programs to government priorities. The classic recent case is the Bush administration's imposition of it's "Christian" agenda on NGOs. But it goes way back. The Peace Corps, for example, was widely regarded as a tool of US imperialism in the Vietnam War era. Another case is that of CARE International, which was badly divided during the Yugoslav crisis between those (in Australia) who took a politically neutral line and those who thought they should also advocate the human rights agenda of the Canadian government. Steve Pratt, an Australian CARE worker, ended up in a Serbian prison because he spied for Canadian CARE. By supporting NGOs, however, individuals can have more say in how they operate.

Another problem of NGOs is that their resources are small. They can't build bridges and highways, yet these are also needed if economic development is to take place. What's the point of setting up a producer co-operative if the people can't get their goods to market before they're spoiled? In a lot of cases - microfinance is the classic example - NGO projects rely on continuing subsidies. The poor get some income, but the need to subsidize the project means that somebody else loses out and economic efficiency is never achieved.

Basically, the problem lies with our governments and what we, in our relatively democratic societies, can force them to do. I don't think the answer lies in anti-globalization politics. Destroying the myth that US and EU farm subsidies benefit mainly the family farmers would be a good start. We can also ask governments to meet the 3% target and, even if they spend most of the money at home there will still be benefits for the aid recipients. Ultimately, it could be a matter of life and death for us.