Development Aid_Reflection Memo

If someone is to talk about aid there is usually involved a lot of criticism. When grants, loans or humanitarian help is donated many things can go wrong or get complicated even though they should not since the aid aims to improve the lives of the ones who are in desperate need of such help. However, we can still hear the critics pointing to the linkage of aid and corruption, to ineffective spending of loans and grants, or talking about aid missing its targets and goals and of course many more. Everyone would agree, especially the ones in need and of course also the tax payers, that this is not what should be associated with humanitarian or development aid. But how can we change this state of aid? And most importantly where can we find the cause of these damages?

As my colleague has explained during the lesson, I have also started my “thinking era” somehow later, after what I would describe as a “receiving era” of my life. It was the time of just observing, receiving and listening to lots of information coming towards me via television, radio or newspapers without actually searching underneath them or exploring and thinking critically about what I hear and see. In the case of aid donations the criticism is surely needed mainly when the damages are not addressed properly or successfully by the aid or when the aid actually causes additional damages. The critical assessment is thus necessary in order to improve the conditions; however, the constructive approach to criticism is necessary I would say. It would mean to assess what was done successfully and what was not. Then eventually the possible additional damages should be repaired and most of all, what has been said through the lesson and what I definitely agree with is that, the mistakes that have been made should be the lesson to learn from. Furthermore, the aid policy that was assessed as ineffective and unsuccessful should be redirect or the approach should be change in a way to make the aid targets its goals. Thirdly, what we have also mentioned during the class is that this criticism is more useful when it comes in advance. Despite it is surely not entirely possible to identify all the things that might go wrong. It is always better to define the mistakes before the aid is spend and the additional damages are done. The most useful would be in this case to take into consideration past experiences or to compare it to similar cases. Finally, after grants, loans or aid meet their receivers this should be the time for what I would called “after criticism” and which should include a strong evaluation mechanisms, so the aid would not be donated only for the sake of donation but for the sake of either improvement, development or humanitarian reasons present in recipient country.  

We can then ask ourselves whose responsibility is to conduct these steps. Does it lie within the competencies of donors or receivers? In most of the cases we can hear this criticism coming from human rights activists or agencies either international or local where the aid was misused for different purposes. Anyway doesn’t the responsibility of critical thinking belong to the states, private companies or international organizations which donate and coordinate development and aid? Shouldn’t they first and foremost calculate the costs and benefits, but not only the costs for them and their states but for the countries where the aid goes to? I would say that the donors have or should have the prime interest in the evaluation of aid spending even though I would also agree that recipients should hold accountable for the aid spending as well.

In relation to these we were discussing another question through the lesson and that was: “Why states give money to somebody else anyway?” There is a variety of motives and interests including economic as well as political. In relation to today’s world and I am referring mostly to migration crisis and the rise of extremism and recent terrorist attacks within the European Union and the USA the geopolitical and security consideration are in my opinion high on the agenda of aid donor countries coming from these areas. Moreover, even though the search for allies outside the European or North American areas might decreased after the end of the Cold War, it has certainly started to play a much bigger role after 11 September attacks in 2001 and more concretely with the declaration of the fight against terror. That is why both the security concerns and geopolitical aspects are in my opinion very crucial when creating dependency ties with countries within African continent or the Middle East. Such dependency ties or “allies making” developed through aid may create valuable benefits besides the economic ones. I would include information sharing and cooperation in the already mentioned fight against terror. These security interests are particularly the one I think that should motivate the donor countries to think critically and assess constructively how the aid they donate is spend and distribute if they want to satisfy their security interests. On the other hand the geopolitical and security motives may also be the motives which cause that donor countries do not investigate in corruption and effective aid spending and rather prefer continuous government to government cooperation even if it means that recipient government are not transparent but corrupted when it comes to aid in the forms of grants and loans.

Furthermore, considering the development or any aid I think that the legacy of “white man’s burden” and the narratives of neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism will most probably never disappear. And that is the additional reason why donors be it private or governments should abide to transparent and effective aid spending and distribution. My opinion would be that it is crucial to bear in mind the causes why the aid is needed. Mainly development needs, improvement goals, help, and recovery aims. But when it serves mostly interests of donors could it be perceived otherwise than imperialist or neo-colonialist. Does it mean then that donor countries of North America or Western Europe do not want to free themselves from the “burden”? If they continue to serve only their interest then probably they would still be trapped in the vicious circle of these two narratives. Furthermore, they would most probably create additional and additional burdens in the form of poor people opting either to radicalism or criminal activity including terrorism or towards presently very unpopular phenomena within the EU spheres which is the economic migration otherwise known as the “stealing of jobs”.