Development

Return to Globalisation:International Policy Network

IPN believe that promoting development is about more than throwing good money after bad. “In Development” (The Times, 13 January) demonstrates well that compassion towards the world’s poor cannot effectively be fulfilled through the vehicle of government-to-government foreign aid. Public opinion towards aid and development is shifting both among donors and recipients. For fifty years, proponents of ‘aid’ have argued that poor countries are poor because they lack the funds to invest in the infrastructure that would enable economic activity to take place, which in turn means that they are unable to attract investment. As a result, aid has failed to ‘fill the gap’. Instead, it has, over the past fifty years, largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty. '

IPN found that for fifty years, proponents of ‘aid’ have argued that poor countries are poor because they lack the funds to invest in the infrastructure that would enable economic activity to take place, which in turn means that they are unable to attract investment. At the UN's World Conference on Disaster Reduction the Sustainable Development Network stated that they believe that governments and international agencies must stop focussing on ways to stick plasters over gaping wounds and must commit instead to eliminating the underlying causes of vulnerability to disasters and other causes of premature deaths only through the institutions of a free society can poor people move from the vicious circle of poverty and oppression, to a virtuous circle of empowerment and development.'