Causecast

By Phil Ross

The headline reads: “U.N. facing severe food shortage in Kenya”(msnbc.com). For many of us, our innate, human reaction is to want to get food to those people as fast as possible. Some inner conviction steers us to work towards the obvious solution to a problem: hungry people need food, so send food! There’s nothing inherently wrong with this at all. The beauty of the human spirit is our awareness of our own humanity, our collective correspondence with one another that allows us to recognize the suffering of our fellow citizens of earth, and to respond. But could foreign aid possibly be doing more harm than good? Of course, this is purely for dialectical purposes. I don’t want to suggest that donating to a charitable cause that keeps people alive through food and aid are, in any sense of the word, hurtful. I like to believe I’m a fan of anything that promotes human life. I just think it’s critical we challenge our notion of “foreign aid,” a notion that perpetuates a donor-recipient relationship with people in poverty. I think we need to question whether or not, in the long run, this relationship does more harm than good. The implications of these words alone are pretty severe. Recipient implies that the receiver can’t fend for themselves and must rely on someone else to provide. Donor implies an endless supply of goods and services, given freely from a position of power and authority. In contrast, people of all economies, all ways of life, are resilient, ingenious, adaptive, and capable. It would be a mistake for us to undermine the creativity and ingenuity of the human race. But unfortunately, certain systems, certain exploitations, particular situations and specific structures keep people in subservient states, stifling these human qualities. Corrupt governments. Lack of access to education, healthcare, and clean drinking water. The failure of law to provide a safe environment for economic activity to flourish. These are the culprits of such deprivation. By creating a dependency on an outside organization, we remove the sense of responsibility from local governments to take care of their own people. Sudan produces enough food to feed much of northern Africa, yet the people in the country are starving. The government has realized they can make more money selling off their produce to other countries than they can by feeding their own people. In the minds of these leaders, why create structure, spend tons of money on infrastructure to produce food, when food is already pouring in for free from the US and other donor countries? While food aid for areas in crisis keeps people fed, it also keeps those individuals in a state of dependency on outside agencies. Of course, many of the governing bodies in countries high in poverty are corrupt systems. Leaders that won’t relinquish power, even when popular vote says otherwise; bureaucrats that hoard money rather than distributing it to those in need; regimes that use force and intimidation to maintain authority; these are all characteristic of many governments in the global south. So what’s to be done? How can we end the donor-recipient relationship between us in the prosperous North and those in poverty without seeing people die from hunger, disease, and disaster? We can’t simply let go. But we also can’t continue to just cover up the problem, like a band-aid over a festering wound. We have to work to promote systems, structures, movements, and social organizations that allow people the means to grow their own food, drink clean water, visit a nearby doctor, and vote freely for their leaders. This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. And all of this must be accomplished through peaceful means, with love and understanding, not war. But what do I know, I’ve only been to four years of college, traveled a bit, read a few books – filtering everything through my own limited perceptions of life – so I really don’t think I have many answers at this point. More just curiosity. And concern. And a willingness to learn, converse, and work towards something better with anyone who’s willing to do the same.