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Essay On The Pros And Cons Of Giving Foreign Aid

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The idea of giving foreign aid to those in need may seem noble at glance. Yet, if we look deeper into the issue and observe the outcome, what we discover may not exactly be a positive impact on the recipient countries. An efficient aid-giving program requires more than just good intentions. It would be hard to argue that foreign aid has not done any good, when there are also plenty of cases where foreign aid has been used efficiently. However, as that is rather an exception than a rule, in this essay I will look at the cons of foreign aid claiming that it is actually not fulfilling it’s purpose.
The reasons behind giving aid are simple and somewhat naive. Countries that are better off feel morally obliged to help poorer countries in need. It is believed that aid will improve people’s lives and will reduce poverty. However noble the cause, generous contributions without thorough analysis do not always lead to good outcomes. Actually, some of the aid …show more content…

Food is also a common option, but thinking that food is a safe and risk-free option to help the people in the recipient country could prove to be wrong. Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, from Harvard and Yale respectively, have studied the effects of sending food aid from the United States of America. They did so over a relatively long period of time, from 1971 to 2006 and the research compromised of 125 developing countries. The research shows that the amount of food aid sent to Africa from America is actually mostly based on the weather conditions, not on needs. The authors also conclude that sending more food aid actualy increases the amount of civil conflict in the region. They speculate the reason to be that armed groups of people stealing the food aid as they have seen the same pattern in the past. For instance, during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in the 1960s, rebel leader Odumegwu Ojukwu took the food aid to feed his soldiers, which helped prolong the conflict for years.

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Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” lays out a strong argument on why we are morally obligated to help those in need if we can. He first lays down a platform by saying that suffering and dying from starvation is bad, which most reasonable people would agree with. He builds on this by saying that if we can prevent something bad without causing any harm, then we are morally obligated to do it. This argument, much like the first, is one that would be widely accepted since most people wouldn’t want something bad to occur if they can prevent it.

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People in authority tend to disregard those who and that which does not benefit them, since the poor did not seem to benefit anybody, people in authority found them useless. (documents 2,3,4) Emperor Charles V had said in an imperial decree for the Netherlands in 1531, that the poor should be helped enough to have the power to survive on their own and not constantly giving them alms (Doc 2). “Many errors and abuses will result, for they will fall into idleness” (Doc 2) Charles V had stated that those who constantly beg for food or money take advantage of the kindness of the European population which will cause them to maintain that lifestyle of only begging for someone to help. Since Emperor Charles V is someone who has to give orders and have

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