Humanitarian Aid and Corruption
Post here on issues of Humanitarian aid and corruption in distributing that aid.
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Examples of what NOT to do with aid
Informative article about foreign aid on a global basis
This post was edited on: 2013-04-04 at 03:48 PM by: david
I was discussing with sandiaprep-david about the corruption within the organizations that distribute aid. The situation we came up worth that would give goods to those who need it would be one centralized organization distributing it all. It would have to be self checking to keep out the corruption. Perhaps this would be part of the UN. This lacks necessary details to be totally functional but I would appreciate people asking hard questions and pointing out problems constructively so that we can find answers. Also any ideas on how to do this would be appreciated.
That's an interesting point, Daniel and coming up with such an organization would be challenging AND make some sense considering all of the factors in distributing aid to nations around the world.
what if we got all the poor people together in one country and gave them all money?
I like the sentiment. The problem I see is that the economy would be put totally out of whack. Sudden inflation (caused by new money in the economy) would cause money to be worth less (since there is more of it). This would reek havoc on the economy of the nation.
I think a key aspect of any international organization is transparency: if everyone can see where all the money is going and hold each other accountable, people are less likely to attempt to cheat the system.
Just a thought I had.
In some cases it's not the organizations who aren't the problem. The U.S. directly donate to some countries. Take Egypt for example, they receive $2 billion for general aid and $1.3 billion in military aid. With all this aid Egypt doesn't have much to show, but an impressive military force.
Second idea to build on. What if we took out the middle man? Made an efficient way for people to directly send aid to the people involved. A site or something that just had the addresses of people who needed food/help which the people could post themselves on and then people could mail the stuff directly too the people in need. The site would not know what had been sent or by whom so it could not take part of the money or anything. The people who receive aid could then take themselves off of the website if they ever received enough aid to need no more aid. People could have to post their personal information so they could be held easily accountable to those who send them aid. There could be chat rooms for people to communicate. In this way the website cannot take anything from the aid sent. Sounds pretty good for me, but as usual constructive criticism would be awesome.
david
Apr 4, 2013 at 3:46 PM