Each unique situation requires unique solutions, and understanding a variety of view points will help us all be better prepared to adjust to the challenges we continue to face. No one solution is going to help bring about any of the changes we want to see in the world, and each genre of aid, like micro-finance solutions can have positive or negative impacts depending on how/when/why/where they are implemented.

It’s complicated, at best, but I do very much agree with the comment above stating that education is the key to change. OUR education is part of that key, knowing what questions to ask, and where to give our money and time to best support the work we believe in is a great place to start. Thanks for encouraging us to learn more, Eric!

We first need to split aid into various categories:

a) emergency humanitarian interventions. There is generally little disagreement that sending food, blankets, and what have you to crisis situations – an earthquake, a civil war, etc. I believe that’s not what we’re concerned about.

b) Budget support. This is long term assistance going directly to the central budget of governments. It is often discretionary spending and primarily helps pay government salaries. There is indeed a possible question of dependency here.

c) Development aid. Geared towards the establishment of development projects – a very large category – this type of aid often comes with many strings attached, from national purchases (meaning, if USAID gives money to renew a hospital, the machines need to be bought from the US) to the donor selecting what they want to fund regardless of the preferences of the host country (ex: Spain for some reason loves to finance agricultural projects in Palestine, even though the Palestinian government has different spending priorities).

So, is aid imperfect? Totally. But we need to realise that if it weren’t for it, many people would go hungry tonight, government employees would be unpaid (ex: in 2006/2007, Palestinian employees went 7 months without a salary because aid was suspended for political reasons), and someone would not be able to get their dialysis, jeopardising their life.

As for microfinance – yes, a brilliant idea. I celebrated the day Muhammad Yunus won a peace prize. But we need to have realistic expectations. Microfinance cannot pay for a million employees’ salaries, can it? Plus microfinance will only grow this much – after that, a growing micro-enterprise will necessarily rely on commercial banking anyway…

The discussion is far from being over. However, claiming that aid is harmful with nothing but anecdotal evidence is counterproductive.

If a real debate about aid is what you’re after, then I suggest you pick up Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty, and Bill Easterly’s White Man’s Burden – diametrically opposed arguments by a pair of brilliant development economists (Dambisa Moyo is not a development economist, she’s an investment banker for heaven’s sake).

Cambodia is a great place to study development issues – one major problem is the lack of accountability on the part of the government because of the ubiquity of aid organizations. If the government perpetrates a land grab, and moves the displaced people to a barren patch of land, they know that NGOs will descend to drill wells, build schools and take care of the basic needs of the affected population. No wonder land grabbing is such a pervasive issue in Cambodia, and no wonder the Cambodian People’s Part seems oblivious to the problem.

I certainly believe in the micro-loans initiative (though I understand there are issues there, too), and think something has got to change QUICK in our efforts to propel certain countries, specifically within Africa, considering they almost solely rely on rainwater and there has been so much drought in the past decade there. I think current foreign aid policy from Western countries is hardly well-thought out and is only an attempted band-aid that doesn’t really want the wound to heal.

Thanks for this thoughtful, intelligent article.

And thanks to everyone else for your equally thoughtful comments; I particularly appreciate that they’re based on your own experiences working on foreign aid and development projects.

Eric, though this article is framed around the delivery of foreign aid, I think the arguments you present here are equally applicable to domestic aid efforts, and perhaps no example is more illustrative than the recovery efforts in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the US after Hurricane Katrina.

I was in New Orleans last summer documenting the work of a group called the Culinary Corps, which I’ve profiled here on Matador, and I was able to observe lots of other organizations and efforts in the community in the areas of rebuilding, repairing infrastructure, and providing work/school opportunities. I spoke with someone who made a really powerful observation about the musicians’ community spearheaded by Brad Pitt and Harry Connick Jr. The idea was that a neighborhood would be built specifically for musicians–they’d be given houses and the whole thing would be this great idea. But a local community organizer and planner said: “It sounds nice, and the efforts were appreciated, but why do people think that musicians necessarily want to live together? And can you imagine practicing your tuba while your neighbor’s practicing the drums?”

What I realized was what this person was saying was really a metaphor for all kinds of aid and development: all too often, people with excellent intentions and resources sweep into a community and think that the idea for rescue/recovery/assistance they’ve developed will save the day. Or it’s a model that worked somewhere else, so it should work here. Yet they never involve the people who will be directly affected by this aid in their planning and decision making conversations.

And that, I think, is the problem that is inherent in all three models of aid.