Are people in the poorest parts of the world dying primarily due to lack of aid from richer nations, or are they being killed or living in destitution more because of the violence, greed and corruption of their leaders who want power or to retain power, stealing the local resources?
IS THE CUT IN UK AID RIGHT?
Ever since Rishi Sunak announced in 2020 the temporary cut in the UK Development Aid commitment from 0.7% to 0.5% of Gross National Income, the topic has been a moral and political football. In 2019 UKGOV spent over £15billion in Overseas aid. Many Conservative MPs, the Labour party and other opposition, as well as some commentators, believe the cut to be unjustifiable as well as a political error. They cite the Conservative manifesto commitment to 0.7%, also enshrined in law (probably stupidly) – but the need to vary from that can be reasonably explained by the unique unforeseeable costs of fighting the pandemic. They cite the fact that the some £4billion cut will cause thousands of deaths or at least huge deprivation in various areas of relief, which is being withdrawn, and the moral imperative for the richest nations to help the poorest and this is no doubt the most compelling of arguments. However, UKGOV historically has been and, even after the cut, remains a leader in the provision of aid, and the British people are exceptionally generous in supporting aid charities and international emergencies, an important context. They can cite too that Development Aid is a major source of “soft power”, and that this, with the UK’s reputation and reliability, will be severely diminished. Perhaps correct, but perhaps also there will be some set-off of the benefits to the poorer world of the UK’s contribution to the vaccine programme worldwide as well as its contribution as the major global finder of relieving medication against Covid, and the consequent saving of lives. The WHO is now warning that the cut will put “millions at risk of neglected tropical diseases”.
Against that background, Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer made the point that £4 billion saved is today little more than a rounding error to the UK Treasury in the context of the huge spending spree to combat the pandemic, when compared to the good work which will now not happen without that cash. That is perhaps the most compelling reason why it is hard for UKGOV to emerge from this looking good.
Is it not however fair to ask whether the measure of any Development Aid success and moral correctness is the amount spent as a percentage of GDP? The aid money is taxpayers’ money and surely there is a duty on UKGOV to consider what it spends and how in the best interests of the UK in the current circumstances? Reputation, doing the right thing, soft power, and the amount in the context of what the UK can afford in the light of domestic needs of the UK people themselves are all factors. There will be other factors too. UKGOV has to weigh them all and as long as it does so in good faith and carefully it can reasonably come to the conclusion it has. Whether it regrets it or not is another matter. Perhaps it would be better to decide the aid budget when setting out as a whole the budgetary needs and financial risks faced by the UK: as presumably the £4billion cut is money to be used elsewhere when resources are tight due to the pandemic.
Do the vast sums given away find themselves into the right places? Are the funds used for the most needy causes, and efficiently? In 2017 a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance recorded considerable waste, for example some £234 million spent in bank administrative fees for accounts into which funds went. Rather than judging by the overall sum of money given away, would not better criteria be to decide objectives, select projects which meet them and then measure against the targets the impact achieved for as little money as possible. It always seems strange, and totally the opposite of the measure applied in any commercial business, that Government success seems to be measured by the spend not the outcome, the commitment to the NHS being the highest profile example.
CORRUPTION AND POWER HUNGER ARE THE REAL CAUSES OF DEATH AND DEPRIVATION
Before rushing to blame the Western developed world for failing to solve deprivation through its selfish miserliness, it is worth asking why there is so much unnecessary death and poverty worldwide? Could there perhaps be a correlation between many of the countries which are highest in the league table of famine and poverty and the countries topping the league table of corruption or violence caused by corrupt leaders of different interest groups? And it is the case that many of those countries make the highest demands on richer countries’ aid programmes.
Reports show that currently the countries worst hit by famine related emergencies, or at risk of descending into hunger crisis include the following: The Democratic Republic of Congo; the Yemen; NE Nigeria; South Sudan; Burkina Faso; North Korea; Ethiopia; Afghanistan; Venezuela; Syria; Zimbabwe. How many of these are the victims of war and other power struggles, extremists and terrorists, or corrupt leaderships, or a mix of those? There will be arguments too that the West, Russia and China or Middle East countries encourage or do not discourage the conflicts where relevant, feeding with weapons and other support, but fundamentally the perpetrators are bad local protagonists hungry for power for their own ends, not the interests of the ordinary people.
For example, consider the Northern Tigray region of Ethiopia. An interview with Mark Lowcock, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, recorded in the Daily Telegraph of 4 June, described how starvation is being used as a weapon of war and over 5 million people need emergency food aid, in a civil war which includes “a systematic campaign of rape, the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, ethnic cleansing and dozens of reported massacres”. Perhaps all of the most extreme situations are being caused by human cruelty against other humans in the struggle for power, name of religion, or greed. Why and how, as another example, has once flourishing Zimbabwe been destroyed to now be at famine risk? Is the answer corrupt leadership and their elites? Development aid or shortage of it has not by and large created the worst situations yet is called on to remedy disaster. Should not the real perpetrators of human degradation be brought to book?
Is it a reasonable proposition to suggest that in most countries where aid is most needed, a primary reason for the deprivation is that the leaders and their “elite” cronies and officials or business owners have stolen the core resources of the nation, or sold them off to others for corrupt payments, ensuring that the vast majority are always in a state of struggle to survive? The very same elites are recognised by richer nations, and the chances are their considerable fortunes are housed in financial and other assets in the developed countries of the world. Perhaps, aid is often simply perpetuating a poverty which the corrupt have ensured is ingrained, and that aid in effect feeds the corruption?
G7 TO THE RESCUE?
The recent G7 conference made good noises about collaboration to defeat the pandemic, on climate change, equality for all, and human rights, all to improve globally. They vowed to “reinvigorate our (G7) economies”, citing proudly the circa $12 trillion they have spent supporting their own nations’ economies through the pandemic. All their commitments to help other less well-off countries globally are welcome but mostly unspecific: another billion vaccines to be provided to those who need them is a drop in the ocean compared to the $12 trillions. There was no tangible commitment to alleviate world poverty, and so that mission, where there has been some success in recent decades, looks stalled and some say has reversed due to the pandemic. Some G7 countries, like the UK, are generous with aid, but while the basic human famines, and deaths and destitution caused by violence, such as those described above, go unchecked, the progress needed rapidly is unlikely to emerge. The G7 committed “to increase prosperity and wellbeing for all people while upholding our values as open societies” but the resultant action is unclear. So, the G7 has not come to the rescue. They remain focussed on domestic solutions to the pandemic. The deprived will get help from outside, but sadly depend on their largely corrupt regimes of leadership to resolve their plight.
There are of course criminals with vast wealth in developed countries; there are also numerous billionaires who are not criminals, and the source of wealth is transparent. Yet some of the wealthiest people in the world head up poor nations. How did the oligarchs of Russia get so rich, and its people remain so poor? Why so much poverty across Africa and such wealthy leaders? Whatever the G7 were to propose by way of aid, the fundamental causes of poverty will remain. They really need to lance the boils of corruption, not lend active or passive support to those who are complicit in the theft of their own national resources, leaving their peoples destitute or nearly so. Then perhaps aid would truly benefit the intended recipients. The strident debate about UK commitment to aid is important in that the approach must reflect the democratic wish, but by focussing on aid as a political issue, there is a risk that the massive neglect of the humanitarian catastrophes of the world will be forgotten, and the true blame for deaths and destitution will be ignored.
