However to be able to answer the overall question of this essay it is necessary for us to have some idea of what is meant by equality in this area. It is my belief that the equality in question is that of development. ‘The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology defines development as involving “the analysis of the social and political effects of industrialization on third world societies”(Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 2000: pp 335) In our case these third world societies would be the countries in the South. This means that overall we are questioning the failure of International Aid programs to bring about social and political equality between the countries in the northern hemisphere and those in the southern hemisphere.
This division of the world into countries of the North and South and the identification of inequality has lead to the emergence of International Aid programs in the hope that they may be able to bring about some measure of equality between the two hemispheres. However it seems that some of these programs have been a failure due to the continual divide. This raises the question of what exactly is a failure defined as? In their book, ‘Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid’, Crewe and Harrison state that a “failure may be accounted for by blaming the traditionalism of an ill-defined, but convenient, idea of culture”. (Crewe and Harrison, 1998: pp 1)
This definition of failure brings us to our first possible reason as to why International Aid programs have failed. In the first chapter of their book, Crewe and Harrison give two stories depicting aid being organized and distributed to southern countries. In the first story the example of a fish-farming training program is given and in the second story the example of the production of hoods and stoves in order to increase healthy living standards is given. What becomes clear from these two stories is that sometimes aid programs can lose sight of the initial target.
In the case of the fish farming the project has not spread widely enough ad it disrupts peoples routines and may not be entirely beneficial. In the case of the stoves their target was also never reached, as instead of decreasing indoor pollution they went off on a tangent producing stoves for sale using the money the World Health Organisation had given them as capital in this endeavor. In both of these cases culture can be seen as having been a barrier in allowing these aid programs to be successful.
In Chapter seven of the same book Crewe and Harrison discuss the question of cultural barriers impeding the progress of aid programs. They point out that that culture or social structures derive balance through which societies function. It is hard for an external entity to understand these cultures and the idea of giving aid to these less advanced cultures may seem simple and easy enough, but to the people whose culture this is aid may seem as an imposition and a possible threat to their culture and so may not be fully accepting of it. This can be seen in the example of the stoves where by the hoods were seen as “interfering with a cultural function of the traditional fires”. (Crewe and Harrison, 1998: pp 3). This example shows that while the change required to be put in place in order to have great benefit may be small it is not always welcomed if it imposes upon the already existing culture.
Another problem that the failure of International Aid programs can be linked to is the inequality in aid organisations. At present there are two main types of aid programs used by governments, multilateral aid and bilateral aid as stated in both ‘Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid’ and ‘Poverty and Development into the 21st Century’. Bilateral aid involves aid going directly from government to government, for example in the 1960’s Ireland began its bilateral aid program with the main recipient being Zambia. However there is a possibility of this type of aid program failing because it is not uncommon for the donor government to place conditions upon the government receiving the aid.
This ‘conditionality’ is “a means of promoting what donors perceive to be ‘good governance’ and ‘sound’ economic practices”. (Allen and Thomas, 2000: pp 209) However one nations view of these factors may not be the same as another nations and therefore the receiving nation may be put in the position of compromising themselves for the sake of aid. This may cause restrictions and conflict not allowing the country to grow politically or socially, and so causing inequality. It may also mean that nations will not accept the aid as it will mean comprising themselves and will therefore again increase inequality, although this is not as likely as the previous point.
Multilateral aid involves aid from governments being distributed “through international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank”. (Crewe and Harrison, 1998: pp 71) This may seem a much fairer way of distributing aid as it means that restrictions may not be placed on one government from another, but unfortunately this is not the case. As stated above two of the main international agencies that distribute this aid internationally are the United Nations and the World Bank, and while both o these organisations promote equality between nations they do not permit equal representation for each country.
In their book ‘ Development into the 21st century, Allen and Thomas look at the voting structure of the United Nations. The majority of “UN affiliated agencies are nominally managed on a ‘country-a-vote basis, even if there tends to be pressure placed on tem by those affluent states which are their main funders”. (Allen and Thomas, 2000: pp 204) This possibly shows the restrictions of bilateral aid through the conditions put in place by a donor government, e.g. one government will provide ad to another with the guarantee that the receiving government will vote whatever way directed. However this is not only isolated to bilateral aid, as it may also be a condition placed upon multilateral aid.
One area where this voting structure is put in place is in the General Assembly. Here the majority of the nations are from the South and so therefore it would be seen that countries in the South would hold the power. However as was already stated it is possibly that pressure is put on this nations to vote a certain way, and also the resolutions made by the General Assembly are not binding, and so therefore they may never come to be. This again promotes inequality, as it does not allow the South to be heard properly.
The General Assembly oversees a number of international aid programs and funds, such as the World Food Program and the United Nations Development Program (Allen and Thomas, 2000: pp 201), but due to these resolutions made by the General Assembly not being binding southern nations may not get a fair chance to say where this aid goes. This increases inequality between the North and the South, as the aid may not reach where it is really necessary, impeding the political and social growth of a country.
The World Bank is another International Aid agency, which has restricted equality between the North and the South. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are both products of the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and “were set up essentially to regulate the global economy under the sponsorship and direction of the US”. (Allen and Thomas, 2000: pp 204) At present both the IMF and the World Bank are run on a dollar a vote basis. This means that there it is unfair due to the fact that the northern countries will have more votes then the southern countries, as they are richer. This inequality in voting can then led unto inequality in the distribution of aid, so increasing inequality between the North and the South.
Allen and Thomas also make the point that apart from governments and aid agencies, such as the UN and the World Bank, aid may also be distributed through NGO’s. These are non-governmental organisations that work separately from the government to provide aid where it may be needed, such as Gorta or Trocaire. While these agencies claim to have no government connections they are often partially or largely funded by governments, but the governments have do not have a say in where the aid is directed and what it is. Therefore this aid can be seen as being unconditional and fair. However many NGO’s have also failed to bring about equality between the North and South. There are two main reasons for this.
One problem that these organisations face is bureaucracies and funding. Organisations such as the UN are non-profit organisations but NGO’s “have to survive as bureaucracies, something which requires considerably more finance than that which is spent on their supposed beneficiaries”. (Allen and Thomas, 2000: pp 210) Another problem which they face is that the projects which these organisations fund are mainly small localized projects and so do not have an international impact. While these programs are of great benefit to local communities they do not help bring about global equality.
There are many reasons as to why International Aid programs have failed to bring about equality between the North and the South, but there is no exactly correct one. I have only stated a few of them in this essay, but none-the-less they are each substantial reasons. It is also possible that they each contribute to each other and the overall failure of the programs is due to each individual failure. However we cannot pick one precise reason for the failure of these programs, just as we cannot precisely define what is the equality that they are looking for.
Bibliography:
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Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., and Turner, B. (2000) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. England, Penguin Books
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Allen, T. and Thomas, A., (2000) Poverty and Development into the 21st Century. Milton Keynes, Open University Press
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Crewe, E. and Harrison, E. (1998) Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid. London, Zed Books
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Tucker, Vincent (1999) ‘The Myth of Development: A critique of a Eurocentric Discourse’ in Munck, R. and O’Hearn, D. Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm. London, Zed Books
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Heywood, Andrew, (2002) Politics. Hampshire, Palgrave
