Defending Aid
By Max Lawson
I think the world could see an end to aid within a very short period of time, and I also think that this would be a truly terrible thing.
Aid has few friends, especially at this moment. Right wing governments are cutting aid budgets and attacking the whole concept of aid. Right wing media attacks aid constantly. Not just in the US, but across Europe too. Even Scandinavian stalwarts like Sweden and Finland are grappling with major changes.
Aid has always been an easy target for the right, but on the left too aid is not well liked. It is seen, often with very good reason, as a colonial legacy, or at least something that perpetuates stereotypes of rich country charity and benevolence. It also is seen to cover up and distract the world from more structural economic issues that are far more fundamental to the fortunes of the nations of the Global South. In our recent Davos report for example we showed how the rigged global financial system is taking four dollars out of the Global South for every dollar given in aid.
But at Oxfam we have always also fiercely defended aid, as well as fighting to change the more fundamental structural inequalities in our world. For us it is about both.
Life-saving aid
I feel it really personally too because I have been able to see what aid, given well, can achieve. For me the best example is HIV/AIDS. When I lived in Malawi in the early 2000s, HIV/AIDS was killing so many people. We lost so many friends and colleagues, young people just starting out in life, cut down and taken away. It was a very dark time.
The world mobilised to do something about this, and aid was, and remains, a huge part of this response. The new multilateral organization the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria was set up and the US, under a Republican government, initiated the President’s Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Together, these two aid-funded institutions provide incredible support, including free anti-retroviral drugs to millions and millions of people.
I saw it myself in Malawi. HIV/AIDS went from being a death sentence to that of a chronic condition, enabling millions to live a normal life. The drugs also massively reduced transmission of the disease too. Cutting these life-saving aid funded actions now will kill people. UNAIDS has estimated that if the US cut PEPFAR, as many as 6.3 million people could die by 2029.
Aid plays a critical role in reducing inequality too through actions like funding public health and public education, helping countries collect more tax progressively, protecting families from the impacts of climate breakdown, and ensuring they have enough food to eat and a safe place to live.
Nevertheless, defending aid can be hard. Sometimes it feels like the opponents have all the best arguments. But it is not impossible, and we must not give up. There is far too much at stake.
Arguing for Aid
I think one simple and important thing as always is the power of adjectives. The use of the pejorative ‘foreign’ in ‘foreign aid’ does so much work already for aid’s opponents. It is easy to be against foreign aid. It is harder to be against life-saving aid.
I think we should also focus more strongly on what a tiny amount of money this is for rich countries: less than a cent in every dollar. The UN aid target of 0.7% of GNI is a fraction of any other area of government spending. Some have argued that campaigning on an arbitrary target does not work, but I disagree. Of course, you have always to link it to the good it does in the world, the schools, the hospitals, but there is also value in calling for 0.7% because it clearly shows what a tiny amount is being asked for.
Interestingly NATO have demonstrated the political power of arbitrary targets in recent years by insisting that governments spend at least 2% of GDP on the military. Imagine how much better a place the world would be if the opposite was the case.
Refusing to pit the poor against the poor
We have also found how essential it is to link aid both to tax justice and to inequality & poverty in rich countries. Oxfam works to support the poorest people not just in the Global South but in rich nations too. When confronted with the argument that ‘charity begins at home’ we have a strong counter. We can acknowledge the brutal and tough reality faced by people living in poverty in rich countries, forced to choose between eating or heating their homes. Of course, these people must be helped. But we refuse to be forced to pit their poverty against those of other nations. This is a false choice. We instead point out that if the super-rich paid their tax, instead of the 2-3% some billionaires are paying, then governments could easily do both, support those who are struggling at home and across the world. This we have found is a good argument that shifts the debate from a fruitless one over whose poverty is the most deserving, to those who can well afford to pay.
Being honest
Honesty helps too. Overclaiming that aid on its own can end poverty, or that every penny of aid works, is not true and ends up backfiring. Better to say that of course aid is not perfect, but given well is an incredible thing that is saving millions of lives as we speak. Examples of aid failing are arguments for fixing it, not scrapping it. If a hospital is failing, we don’t decide to close all hospitals but to fix that one.
Honesty about the greater importance of structural changes too, that aid, whilst vital, on its own is not enough and never will be. Tax justice, debt cancellation, trade justice - huge changes are required in the way we run our globe to permanently end inequality and poverty. PEPFAR and the Global Fund are only able to help as many as they can because of the huge trade justice victories over Big Pharma that enabled treatments to be made generically and not under patent, which brought the price down from thousands of dollars to a handful of dollars per person.
Arguments that appeal to self-interest work with certain groups of people in rich countries, and often those who are in positions of power. For small nations in particular, a generous aid budget is a huge source of soft power in the world, and this seems to have been forgotten. The first time I lived in South Africa, I remember being so surprised how everyone I worked with knew where the Danish embassy was and the importance of Denmark’s support.
But I do think that this approach is limited too and should not come at the expense of making the simple, powerful case that giving aid is the right thing to do. I personally believe that most people in rich countries are kind. They want to help others. They understandably want to help those in their own community, their own country first but that they also have room in their hearts for their fellow human beings all over the world facing hardship. It is a motivation that is found more on the left but crosses party lines too. I think it is often a motivation that is found more amongst those who have less than those who have more.
Sadly, this basic motivation has in recent times been attacked from all sides, as racism, nationalism and a cold-hearted world seem to be pressing in all around us, and life becoming harder for many ordinary people in Global North countries. But now is not the time to give up hope, but to instead to fight harder for the basic human idea that those who have should do all they can to support those who have not. As part of this fight just this week, Oxfam America has joined a lawsuit with Public Citizen and others to defend USAID, U.S. foreign assistance, and address the severe humanitarian impact of the USAID foreign aid freeze on the world’s most marginalized people which is brilliant.
This is not an issue of charity but one of justice. Aid, given well, is a vital part of this story and we should all be defending it fiercely.
The world will be a much worse place if it was gone.
Author: Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International and EQUALS podcast co-host. He is also the co-chair of the Global People’s Medicines Alliance.
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