The Effectiveness Of Foreign Aid And The Issues And Complications Involved In Its Use In Elevating World Poverty
GENT0708: International Governance of the 21st Century
Essay: The effectiveness of Foreign Aid and the issues and complications involved in its use in elevating World Poverty
The effectiveness of Foreign Aid and the issues and complications involved in its use in elevating World Poverty.
World poverty has been a global issue that has concerned the world for decades. For years international financial organizations such as the World Bank or the IMF, other international non-government organizations and individual nations have all worked together to help countries overcome the detrimental effects of poverty. Yet despite all the measures we have taken, poverty still remains in the world today.
Poverty is usually defined in terms of extreme poverty and relative poverty. Extreme poverty defined by the World Bank includes those who live on less than US$1.25 (Measured in terms of PPP) per day. These are people who cannot afford even the basic necessities in life. Research from the World Bank has shown that while extreme poverty has been reducing, from 1.8bn to 1.4 billion between 1981 to 2005 (World Bank 2009), poverty still remains a critical issue in the world today. Relative poverty on the other hand is referred to as poverty in terms of social context – that is relative poverty is a measure of income inequality in terms of within a population. This essay will focus on addressing poverty in terms of extreme poverty.
Debates have arisen over the years concerning the effectiveness of foreign aid. Each year, around US$71.4 billion goes to Africa in International Aid (Moyo 2009a). Wealthy countries spend billions of dollars a year, whether in the form of bilateral, multilateral or individual aid, as international foreign aid to those countries in need. Australia itself has pledged in its 2009-2010 budget to raise its foreign aid spending to $3.8bn and to increase aid to 0.5% of GNI by 2015-2016 (AusAID 2009).
While statistics can show that conditions in...
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