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| Extreme poverty and the bottom billion. |
Would more money solve the
problem of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries? Paul Collier, former Director of Research at
World Bank, does not think so. He
writes, “Unfortunately, it is not just about giving these countries our money. If it were, it would be relatively easy
because there are not that many. With
some important exceptions, aid does not work so well in these environments, at
least as it has been provided in the past.”
He adds, “Our approach to the bottom billion [of the world’s poorest people]
has been failing. Many of these
societies are heading down, not up and they are collectively diverging from the
rest of the world” [ Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest
Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), xi, 190].
Collier noted another problem
with aid to certain countries called “leakage.”
“Our conclusion was that some aid does leak into military spending, but
surprising little—our best
estimate is about 11 percent. We
estimate that something around 40 percent of Africa’s military spending is
inadvertently financed by aid” [The Bottom Billion, 103].
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| Famine's ravaging effects. |
Michael
Maren has reported on his perception of the damaging effects of USAID funds while serving 20 years in Africa
as an aid worker. Maren focused much of his book, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging
Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, on the country of Somalia. Maren believes, “…Aid distribution is just another
big, private business that relies on government contracts.” Maren was hired by Catholic Relief Services
(CRS) in Kenya
and worked with a district experiencing famine.
He was to implement a “food-for-work” project in the area but did not
believe the project had much chance to succeed.
Maren explains the “…people were too weak to work and it would be
difficult to demand that some people dig holes and move rocks while others were
getting food for doing nothing. A young woman who worked for CRS at the time
and who was my immediate supervisor conceded my point but said we had to find
some way to establish a program in the region.
‘We have to take advantage of this famine to expand our regular
program,’ she insisted. For her, and the
organization, famine was a growth opportunity.
Whatever the original intentions, aid programs had become an end in
themselves. Hungry people were potential
clients to be preyed upon in the same way hair replacement companies seek out
bald people.”
For
years Somalia
has experienced famines, NGO assistance and aid. Maren quips, “Somalia doesn’t need our help. Somalia can feed itself. The problems are political, and we don’t have
a plan for solving their political problems.
In fact, we cause a lot of their political problems.” He adds, “Twenty-five years ago most of the
countries in Africa had indigenous methods for
dealing with food shortages. Somalia in
particular had a swelling established system for dealing with regular cycles of
drought and famine.”
According
to Maren, Somalia ’s
famines were caused primarily by Somalia itself. “Very few
policy makers understand what famine is.
They think it means there’s no food….
Famine is a failure of the market.
And you can’t fight an economic problem by giving away food.”
Amartya Sen in “Democracy as a
Universal Value” claims, “Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious
effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms
from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such
an effort. Not surprisingly, while India
continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they
disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a
free press.” [“Democracy as a
Universal Value” in Journal of Democracy, 10:3 1999B, 8].
Maren
believes it was to Somalia ’s
ruling elite’s advantage to maintain a country crisis because it kept aid money
flowing. Famine refugees are good
business for those who know how to use it for their advantage. Maren cites, “The Somali government wanted
the refugees to stay…[as] some government officials were getting rich stealing
refugee supplies….” Maren declares,
“Starvation in Somalia
was political. It was caused by the
warlords. The solution was going to have
to be political, and probably military.”
He adds, “Like most of the African continent’s famines, it had its roots
not in poor harvests or droughts but in colossal malevolence on the part of the
country’s civil authorities.”
The
Bible has much to say about the poor and corrupt government. “By
justice a king brings stability to a land, but a man who demands “contributions”
demolishes it. The righteous person
knows the rights of the poor, but the wicked one does not understand these
concerns” (Proverbs 29:4, 7). And, a warning is given concerning dealing
unjustly with the poor, “Don’t rob a poor
man because he is poor, and don’t crush the oppressed at the gate, for the LORD
will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them” (Proverbs
22:22-23).
The next
blog post will report on corruption in government aid programs and specific
examples where aid for the poor is syphoned off making a few people rich and leaving so many with little or no help.
