WIDDY ON WEDNESDAY
OVERSEAS AID : Kindness or Waste?
First of all sorry for the Christmas hiatus! It is now all back to normal.
Some fifteen years ago I suffered a detached retina. If I had not been operated on within 24 hours I would have lost the sight in that eye. That is what routinely happened to our ancestors and what, now today, routinely happens in the Third World.
One of my favourite charities is the Leprosy Mission, with which I used to visit African outposts, one of which was in Ethiopia. There I went to a leprosy-affected community or, in the parlance of a past age, a leper colony where 20,000 people shared 200 holes in the ground to serve as lavatories. The paths flowed with both human and animal waste, through which elderly beggars, their legs rendered useless by leprosy, crawled to reach roads where they might beg from healthy passers- by. Their homes were barely even shacks or mud huts but rather tents made up from bits and pieces of cloth.
In the West we take a great deal for granted: a roof over our heads, food on the table, water on tap, internal sanitation, access to health services, clean clothes. Our elderly have pensions, our poorest have social security. There may be heated discussion about the adequacy of some of the provision but millions of the world’s poorest have no provision at all and what they cannot beg they do not get. In just the same way therefore that the better-off both through higher taxes and charitable donations help the less well-off in countries throughout the West, so rich countries have a moral obligation to help poor countries.
But what exactly is that help? The two biggest factors which introduced health and longevity to the West were first the purification of the water supply and then the discovery of antibiotics. Yet after decades in which advanced countries have given billions upon billions year by year to the Third World, vast areas of it still have no pure water supply and children drink water that has been contaminated by animal waste. Consider my earlier description of the conditions I found in Ethiopia and then consider that in 2017 ministers were willing to give over £5m to an Ethiopian pop group because it enhanced the role of women. Fierce public criticism finally put an end to that but it demonstrates all too clearly some of the flaws in our approach to foreign aid. Five million pounds could have transformed that leprosy community.
First of all the management is not by objective but by amount and secondly we sometimes put the imposition of Western values above basic need. Enhancing the role of women is a debate for those who already have food in their stomachs.
The UK government committed to spend 0.7% of its GNI ( Gross National Income) from 2013 to 2020 and reduced that to 0.5% during the pandemic. In 2022 Germany was spending 0.85% , Luxembourg 1.05%, Norway 1.02%, Sweden 0.99%and Denmark 0.71%. And still the water does not flow.
Thirdly, we spread the aid thinly instead of concentrating it where it is needed most. If a country can afford a space programme does it really need aid? Yes, there is still enormous poverty in India, but that is first and foremost the responsibility of its government. Ours is to supplement not replace those responsibilities.
Some important progress has been made. Governments of all parties recognise the need to distribute aid through charities to obviate its diversion into the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt governments. Yet there still needs to be harder accountability for the spending of the money.
In summary, overseas aid is a moral obligation but it is not moral to waste it, to spend it where it is not needed or to spend according to an arbitrary figure rather than by objective. Water first,please.
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