Group 1

TO AID OR NOT TO AID? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

1ST POINT

AID MAY NOT REACH THE PEOPLE WHO NEED IT MOST. CORRUPTION MAY LEAD TO LOCAL POLITICIANS USING AID FOR THEIR OWN MEANS OR FOR POLITICAL GAIN.

1ST POINT• Aid sent to developing countries rarely reaches the people it was intended to benefit.

• Instead, it is used by oppressive governments to subsidize their military or spent on projects that benefit local elites, or ends up on the black market.

• Between 1978 and 1984, more than 80% of 596 million of food aid sent to Somalia went to the military and other public institutions. In El Salvador, 80% of U.S. aid in dry milk ended up on the black market.

2ND POINT

AID CAN INCREASE THE DEPENDENCY OF LEDCS

2ND POINT

• Giving aid to poor countries undermines any incentive on the part of these countries to become self-sufficient through programs that would benefit the poor, such as those that would increase food production or control population growth.

• Farmers in countries that have experienced food aid such as Swaziland due to severe weather have complete given up on farming and thus, caused their children to know nothing about agricultural skills. Hence the quote:

“Give a man a fish, and you will feed him for a day.Teach a man to fish, and you will feed him for a lifetime.”

-Lao Tzu

3RD POINT

SOMETIMES PROJECTS DO NOT BENEFIT SMALLER FARMERS AND PROJECTS ARE OFTEN LARGE SCALE.

3RD POINT

• Food aid, for example, depresses local food prices, discouraging local food production and agricultural development.

• e.g. Poor dairy farmers in El Salvador have found themselves competing against free milk from the U.S.

4TH POINT

IT MAY BE A CONDITION OF THE INVESTMENT THAT THE PROJECTS ARE RUN BY FOREIGN COMPANIES OR THAT A PROPORTION OF THE RESOURCES OR PROFITS WILL BE SENT ABROAD.

4TH POINT

• The current Third World land owners, producing for the First World, are appendages to the industrialized world.

• They strip all natural wealth from the land to produce food, lumber, and other products for wealthy nations. (Rich natural resources of poor countries are exploited for the benefits of wealthy nations.)

CONCLUSION

• Finally, all persons have a basic right to freedom, which includes the right to use the resources they have legitimately acquired as they freely choose.

• To oblige people in wealthy nations to give aid to poor nations violates this right.

• Aiding poor nations may be praiseworthy, but not obligatory.

CASE STUDY: ETHIOPIA

BEFORE

• Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa.

• Second poorest countries in the world.

• About 90% of the total population live under the poverty line.

• Around 4.5 million people are in need of food emergency assistance.

AFTER

Reduces people’s incomes

• Food aid is supposed to provide relief for the poor but it has a chance of reducing price of food and the incomes of farmers. For farmers in Ethiopia to get the same amount of money as before the food aid, they’ll have to sell more products for too little money.

Dependency

• Food aid given is actually in the form of surplus food. From this, we can conclude that these countries will not ALWAYS have surplus food as their population is also growing. Thus Ethiopia cannot always depend on the giving country.

CASE STUDY: SOMALIA

INEFFECTIVE FOOD AID

• Food aid from the WFP (World Food Programme) which are sent to Somalia are often sold in the market.

• “There's no food,” said Ali Gouled, a camp resident. "When they bring rice, people take it to town. It flies away from here like a bird."

• Hassan Bilaal, a programme assistant for the WFP, said 80 per cent of the grain sold in Somali markets had been intended as food aid.

• From Biafra in the 1960s to present-day Somalia, armed groups have seized it to feed their ranks and to buy weapons.

• In fact, some of the families from the needy who receives food aid sells part of it.

BRIEF CASE STUDY: HAITI

HAITI• On March 10, the US was exporting cheap rice to Haiti, undercutting local growers.

• Before: Haitian farmers provided 47 percent of the country's rice (1988)

• After: Haitian farmers are only providing 15 percent of the country’s rice (2008)