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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Aid is it always the answer?

From my understanding of aid, aid is another word for 'help'. A quote from Oxfam GB, UK leading charity fighting global poverty: "Richer countries give poorer countries aid to help them to make a better future for themselves." It is needed because according to Oxfam GB, it provides facilities, like hospitals and schools and the more aid there is, it would mean that every child in the world can go to school. According to 2011 estimates from UNAIDS, WHO and UNICEF, there are around 30.6 million people have HIV/AIDS. They need money for buying medicines to heal them.

Aid is the answer because emergency aid in times of disaster saves lives. There was a tsunami called 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. It was a tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean. It killed lots of people in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. So, an organization called Christian Aid spent 45 millions pounds in order to help hundreds of thousands of people to rebuild the their lives there. This shows that without aid, people will be dying. Another reason is that the main part of aid is donation. From the quotes: "For just one penny, we can provide clean drinking water for a family of six." This shows that with aid, people can have a healthier lifestyle. Instead of drinking dirty water and having food that don't contain enough protein for them, aid can help them. According to the United Nations Human Rights, one of the rights is children are supposed to have an education. "For a monthly cost of cable television ($40) we can educate a child in the developing world for one year." This shows that even though aid help people to have a healthier lifestyle, they also can get education so that in the future, they can get a better job instead of working under the hot sun.

In the other hand, sometimes, aid is not always the answer. Sometimes, aid is misused or wasted. "Even if the rich countries fulfil their pledges to increase aid, the total amount will still be inadequate to finance all the health, education, nutrition, water and sanitation that people living on the edge of survival need. Above all, they [the poor countries] need economic growth to boost their incomes". This shows that people think that aid is not really helping them, they think that eonomic is the 'main point' to help people to live better. Another reason is that it causes problems for people who are transporting the aid items. Some aid items don't get to its destination due to the bad weather and the bad terrain. The people who are being aided will be angry because they have to wait and wait. This shows that some people are also not really patient and they are really depend on aid. Another problem will be that the prices of food will increased due to the competition with the farmers. This will be a problem for organizations and the government. This means that they have to spend a lot of money just to buy the food. As more people buy the same products, the more competition is going to be built between the manufacturers. In Haiti, there was a riot about the price of the food. A 16 year old Jean said that "Yes, it was very scary at the time. They shut our school because prices are going up all the time. Then someone started firing shots...People are just tired of not being able to afford things like rice, beans or fruit...it's mad, no one can afford these prices any more." This shows that with aid, it's just causing more problems for the government, which people hate it.

From considering the evidence I think aid is sometimes the answer and sometimes not the answer because aid helps people's lives. They need food, fresh water and proper shelter and this shows that they need money and aid is one of the solutions. Aid can increase the dependency of LEDCS on donor countries, Sometimes aid is not a gift, but a loan and the country may struggle to repay. Different people have different perspectives, so there's no final answer.



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