International NGO's and the Aid Industry

NGOs want to be able to provide services to the people that cannot a lot of time provide for themselves on levels of education, health, environmental living conditions and so forth. NGOs will research and analyze information in a particular area(s) of interest and bring aide is ways that those may not be able to provide for themselves or provide services in order for them to improve.

This paper would contain a detailed overview of African Continent’s history and evolution. Social and cultural reformations and practices would be taken into consideration. It will carry a detail oriented research on the poverty and underdevelopment issues of the continent. A brief review to the history in the relevance of the topic would be included. Developmental crises would be analysed from several perspectives. The cultural and social norms and their relation to their relation to developmental crises would be evaluated. Possible solutions regarding the limitations and issues in the developmental social and cultural prosperity and well-being would be discussed. A meaningful conclusion would be evaluated on the research

Modern African states have various problems ranging from corruption, to armed conflict, to stunted structural development. Africa’s ongoing political instability and economic crisis have hindered the improvement of Africa. Thus, the lack of money, advancement in technology, and climate has hampered economic development. Despite European mistreatment and oppression African’s have endured hardships that have encouraged economy, education, and political

The JSTOR Review by Kristian Hoelscher on the book Dead Aid elaborates how Moyo “half-right” in her critique of foreign aid nonetheless Hoelscher mentions how “her review is unfortunately shallow and lacking nuance” in the areas of acknowledging the successes of aid in Africa. Additionally, another review of JSTOR by S.U. Fwatshak reiterated how “aid could not have been the fundamental reason why Africa poor… African’s problem are rooted in a mosaic of a factors (157).” These two reviews provided to be good sources to shed light on the issues of foreign aid and to counter-balance the Moyo’s critique on aid. Lastly, the book is quite short with only one-hundred and eighty-three pages therefore it seemed so like some concepts needed to be elaborated more but were not. On the other hand, the reason I choose this as a source because it does a suitable job in showing the history of aid, speaking on aid effectiveness, and exemplifying the stagnant economic growth (e.g. ten percent Africans are living in poverty in the 1970s compared to seventy-percent now (Moyo 33)). While, I wished the book concentrated more in a section of Africa, such as Sub-Saharan, it was an insightful and factual

African nations easily fall at the bottom of any list that involve economic measures. In fact, “34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa” (“UN List of Least Developed Countries”) and “40% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty” and this is definitely a problem (“Poverty”). Poverty is known as the state of being extremely poor. The causes of Africa’s poverty ranges from “political instability, national debt, discrimination and social inequality, vulnerability to natural disasters, and overpopulation” (“What Are the Causes of Poverty?”). However, these are just a few examples. There are many other economical disasters that are currently happening in Africa. Poverty is a conflict that can easily relate to any other problem, which is why it should be considered the biggest problem in Africa. Moreover, if poverty is reduced, it would solve a number of Africa’s other complications. Poverty has many affects on Africans such as reducing their education, unfortunately gives residents mental and physical issues and diseases, and extra social spending from adults.

The trouble with aid reveals, over time government in start to lose their sovereignty as they keep receiving aid. The aid created restrictions by the government because of the regulations of placed by those giving the donations. For they have a certain idea of how and where the money should be spent. This reduces the accountability of the government to its people and gives more agency in countries to while reducing the agency of the local government to intervene their rule of a state.

They argue that, many thinkers within the NGO world were mostly concerned with how these organizations would “adapt to the end of the funding boom and correct its adverse effects” yet the one major issue about the scope for introducing collective self-regulation of the organizational structure and procedures had largely been ignored. Hence corporate governance for NGOs attempt to describe how this scope could help solve some problems faced by NGOs in poor countries. The article was written in the late 1998 so perhaps some of these problems have since been addressed.

Governments and state agencies need to be more concerned in the obliteration of poverty through providing foreign aid. "As much as people think that America does its part in providing foreign aid, statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development show that the U.S has been at the bottom of the list of industrialized countries as per proceeds that they give to foreign support." (Singer, 2009)

Every year sub-Saharan Africa receives around $134bn in loans, foreign investment and development aid, according to the UN. Nonetheless, sub-Saharan Africa is still the poorest region in the world. For many years the international community has debated over the reasons why every year billion and billions of dollars are not taking sub-Saharan Africans out of poverty. Three major groups have prevailed in the discussion. First, the people who totally blame Africa for not doing its job right, completely forgetting that most of the funds are not administrated by Africans. Second, the people who believe that even though aids are not working, the international community should keep investing funds in Africa even if is failing; one day they will work.

What happens when projects and interventions undertaken by international NGOs go wrong? Although my scholarly source understands most of these organizations do not seek to do harm, nonetheless harm occurs. This article by global development believes with a few legal and regulatory frameworks setting out how communities can hold NGOs to account, and with even less support fro communities to engage in such a process, there is a significant accountability deficit at the heart of international NGOs. Here we talk about accountability in regards to how NGOs answer to donors or to the national governments of countries in which they are operating. NGOs should account for the money they spend as contracted agents of donors. And they should, of course, be working within the parameters of national regulatory frameworks and laws (although the fact that NGOs themselves often sit on the committees that draw up such regulatory systems is troubling). When development interventions go wrong, or do not work the way they were intended, it is often no one's fault, due rather to events beyond any individual or organization's control. But people's lives are affected, sometimes (as when cholera sweeps through a refugee camp) with the most tragic of consequences (Global Development). Systems for recognizing the "rights" of beneficiaries and the obligations of agencies do exist. The Sphere Project, for example, sets out in great detail the minimum standards to be expected in, say, a refugee camp. But there are few legal frameworks capable of holding NGOs to account, or setting out in detail exactly when, where and how communities might be able to hold an organization accountable for an intervention that has gone disastrously wrong (Global Development). Unless NGOs and humanitarian agencies can be legally challenged and held to account, such principles and minimum standards do not do enough to establish real

The United State’s aid agencies played a tremendous role in Humanitarian services in crisis areas. Most of the time, the United States aid agencies get involved in areas which have been destroyed either by natural or man made disasters. After a devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, causing death of hundreds of thousands and displacing almost the same number, the United States military and aid agencies were at the Frontline to provide emergency supplies for the people. In Libya the United States involved to protect civilians after the being targeted by the Libyan president at that time Muammar al-Qaddafi militias. But at the end of the day it became military intervention, “military intervention has created a de-stabilized (some say failed)

NGOs exist independent of the governments in which they are formed and these organizations can operate in several states, or globally, depending on their mission. NGOs are endowed with a soft power. Soft power is essentially the ability to obtain their objectives by attraction instead of compulsion. Hard power is naturally not in their arsenal, but with enough funds and very little oversight, NGO activity can be a liability to any state that doesn’t conform to the ideals that NGOs subscribe to. In the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, NGOs comprised of powerful citizens and officials are able to manipulate governmental applications of law creating negative outcomes for states like Israel who may or may not actually be acting outside of international law.

Charity, foreign aid, and mission trips are examples of overly publicized methods of helping the less fortunate. Money going into charities and foreign aid accounts do not reach their intended population. Government and community leaders have a history of stealing and misappropriating funds. Foreign aid can help to extinguish and eliminate diseases, burden weak bureaucracies, prop up dictators, and help prolong civil wars (Anonymous, 2016). Foreign aid is selective. The purpose of foreign money is to improve the lives of the poor people. However, some countries give large amount of resources to friendly countries. Nations would rather give aid to nations like themselves. The Misplaced Charity article states that donors often reward countries with well-run countries and aim to punish corrupt countries (Anonymous, 2016). The issue with this is that most of the well-run countries are not in

International aid has saved lives but has dug the poor in a hole so deep it will be impossible for them to come out without a change in the way non-governmental organization (NGO) are helping third world countries. In the current system governments such as the United States have been shipping aid for free to third world countries in order to jump start their economy and leap in to the industrial market. This has been a huge gamble which will never pay off because in the famous quote written in the bible it says: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The meaning of this quote is that you cannot feed a nation and expect them to thrive without first becoming

Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been poured into Sub-Saharan Africa over the past century in an effort to propel development, Africa remains by far the poorest continent in the world. Failure has arisen from the problematic nature of the administration of the aid. Traditionally, aid has come in the form of military aid, and large international financial transactions. Although these forms of aid have overall failing track records, targeted developmental assistance has been historically successful. In order to pull Africa out of poverty, the international community should focus on targeted developmental assistance.