"Parched Earth"

        This article focuses on the question, should aid be tied to how its government behaves? Aid doled out bilaterally is not often free of commercial objectives. This tied aid usually involves the recipient pledging to by products from the donor country. In this case aid is being tied not the commercial objectives of the donor, but for humanitarian objectives. Ethiopia is using much of its money to fund an extended was against neighboring Eritrea, because much of the Aid is used to finance war, it is ineffective and masses of people still starve. Similarly, in the past, most multilateral aid has been tied to participation in SAPS. Structural adjustment programs involve the recipient government following certain economic policies that have the effect of increasing foreign currency earnings. In Ethiopia's case, this has meant the donor countries supporting cash cropping. Cash cropping has failed Ethiopia in two ways, leading to its present dilemma. First, the values of the cash crops Ethiopia had planted have gone down due to an increase in world supply. Second, cash cropping has harmed Ethiopia's little arable farmland by over-exploiting it to the point where very little can be grown. Another economic reason for Ethiopia's struggling people is the reliance of the country on primary industry. Primary industries relate to the direct use of natural resources, such as fish, land, and minerals. This reliance on primary industry makes the country's people more susceptible to nature, in this case to drought.

        The author of this article attempts to be objective but in the end, they clearly fail in this pursuit. The author is opposed to Ethiopia using aid to help subsidize war. The question this article asks is innately a normative one. The reader's or author's personal reply to this question will also usually be normative. It involves an issue of personal opinion, and upon value judgments, which are concerned with what something should, or ought to be. Conversely, a positive statement is once that is concerned with what something actually is, as opposed to what something should be.

449 Words

Zoher Abdoolcarim  (8 May 2000). Parched Earth, Time Magazine.