The heated discussions between France’s President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister before attending the conference on Foreign Aid to Poor Nations were not on how to improve aid to the poor but about France’s elections. Nor does the difference in concepts between the secretary of the US treasury and the US president represent a significant contradiction on how to aid poor nations or how to improve their nutrition or health conditions. Sincere rich nations are keen to channel aid properly to poor nations.
This is important because it has been evident during the Cold War that much of the foreign aid was indirectly conditional on political aims. Or restricted to meet certain private requirements of rulers of poor countries, as could be seen in the case of the Congolese ruler who became rich beyond belief for “services” rendered. Former US president Jimmy Carter admitted that aiding poor nations must be “linked” to interests or goals of donor nations. Israel receives around $10 million as humanitarian aid on daily basis but it has the biggest inventory of military hardware in the region. George W. Bush was recently quoted as saying “We must give the poor new hope”. How in the world does the US intend to give any new hope when it fails to pay its share of foreign aid designated by the UN for poor nations. A UN report indicates that the US has only paid one-tenth of the amount it has pledged. This is what we may call meaningless talk! Now let’s look at some blatant hypocrisy by the US president. The Financial Times quoted him, “Persistent poverty or persecution leads to hopelessness. However, the poverty factor shouldn’t be a motive for someone to become a serial killer.” We agree with the first sentence but why don’t Western leaders try to understand the motives of an 18-year old girl detonating herself in the middle of the Israeli occupiers in downtown Jerusalem?
Ironically, on the one hand the United States pretends that it is keen to increase foreign aid. Let’s suppose this claim is true. But on the other hand the US is in fact competing with poor countries by subsidizing local agricultural products that are cheaper than those of the poor! Hence the US is playing the role of saboteur by crushing the economies of poor countries and by doing so making them dependent on foreign aid, donations or alms.
Mike Moore, Director General of the WTO, stated that instead of subsidizing local farmers, rich countries should direct the funds to effective foreign aid. This will help create a balance between rich and poor nations and improve world trade. The poor countries expect rich nations to adopt corrective programs that would allow them to be self-sufficient. Needless to say, aid forever means dependency forever. The rich nations must stop imposing conditions on the poor in terms of aid or trade. The rich nations must look instead into how to participate in building the infrastructure of poor countries so as to ensure adequate water, power generation, sewage systems and disease eradication. The poor countries need joint-ventures, technical aid, vocational training and foreign investments in order to curb unemployment and poverty. However, foreign aid should be monitored by agencies that have the ability to channel, monitor and control it in an honest, proper and professional manner. Above all, there must be accountability and transparency in administering humanitarian and economic foreign aid.
