IDST 1000Y Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Humanitarian Aid, United States Agency For International Development, Good Governance
15 Dec 2016
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IDST Semester 2: 7th January, 2015 – Lecture 1
International Development Assistance: Help or Hindrance
• Humanitarian assistance – assisting people in the context of an unexpected
emergency
• Scale of aid changes based on country, region, context, etc.
• Aid originated in the idea of a “charitable impulse/assistance”
• Often given because of religion/cultural beliefs, guilt, self-interest, etc.
• Continues today – called “private aid” – administrated through churches, and
charitable organizations
• Aid is different from charitable impulse
• There is a singular aim or framework at its inception (aid) and an enormity of
resources and organizations
• Aid is political – they want to promote foreign policy goals, economic growth,
specific industries or companies, and furthermore, it is the mark of a wealthy
country to give aid
• Aid was given during war times in order to create political/military alliances
• Self-interest – ‘food-aid’ in the USA was not created to help hungry people in
other countries, but to help the US farmers get rid of their overproduction of food
• In the 1990s, aid had an emphasis on “good governance”
• USAID is always involved in politics – single largest donor organization in the
world
• Specifically interfering in order to promote their own agenda
• Aid is dispersed (architecture of aid) by multilateral agencies (i.e. World Bank),
bilateral agencies (i.e. country based agencies), and non-government
organizations (NGOs)
• NGOs heavily rely on money coming from multilateral and bilateral agencies
• Project aid – aid to build, or do something very specific (i.e. digging a well,
building a house)
• Programme aid – set of interconnected projects are implemented in a particular
area (i.e. program that digs wells, provides schools, training in agriculture, etc.)
• Technical assistance – providing :know-how” to do a specific action
• Humanitarian aid – grants that combat famine, natural disasters, and conflict
• Military aid – military payments that come out of aid budgets
• Development sectors – projects/programs that are about a series of interventions
within a specific sector
• Aid characteristics: bulk of resources flow through a small amount of
multilaterals, policies of a bilateral agency reflect the values of that country, there
are extensive interconnections between multilateral and bilateral agencies, and
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