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News: In recent years, Canada, Australia, and the UK have merged their independent aid ministries with their foreign ministries. Germany and other countries are also considering such a merger.
What are the reasons behind the merger?
1. Increase efficiency of aids, 2. Enhance cross-government coherence, 3. Aid will serve the national interest. For instance, countries like the US, France, and India, have always accepted that providing aids will strengthen their international objectives.
About the types of aid
Countries can frame aids on two types. 1. Framing aid for altruism (Aid without any self-interest of the donor), 2. Framing aid as an instrument to strengthen their country’s objectives.
On the other hand, some kinds of aid — humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, combating HIV— were framed beyond altruistic objectives.
What is the impact of framing aid to fulfil national objectives?
Small amounts of aids from donor countries for poverty reduction, improving the lives and livelihoods of people, etc. was not enough to alleviate the root cause such as the drivers of poverty, notable inequality within and outside the donee country. So consultants and researchers from the donor countries and donee countries demanded more altruistic grounds for aid.
| Note: Instead of the United Nations model of more equal and transparent funding to all, the developed countries prefer the World Bank model (quota system). In this, the donee countries had little say in decision-making. |
Does the merger of aid ministries with foreign ministries help in altruism?
The merger of ministries is motivated by parochial considerations and stuck with old notions of national interest. So, the mergers are mean-spirited and Hobbesian.
| Note: Hobbesian means following similar ideas of the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, especially the idea that humans naturally compete and fight for their own interests. |
What needs to be done?
The pandemic and crisis-ridden times highlight the abysmal global cooperation in the public interest and the need to direct resources towards more efficient ends. The following steps would be needed to achieve them.
First, promote multilateralism: Multilateral action would have considerably reduced the impact of the pandemic. So, it is in the national interest to promote multilateralism.
Second, Global public finance for global public goods: The successes of global disaster management initiatives and naval cooperation in combating piracy, force nations to work on global public finance for global public goods. It will generate adequate and universal access to global public goods.
Third, enhance global security through collective action: To create a globally agreed framework of human rights and global justice, nations have to invest in global security like they do in trade cooperation through the World Trade Organization and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
In conclusion, an enlightened mutually beneficial vision of national interest is the only credible alternative. Nations have to focus on this, not on aid that focuses on Altruism and philanthropy.
Source: This post is based on the article “Imagine: The common good” published in Business Standard on 10th December 2021.
