Sunday, November 12, 2017

Aid Becomes Political

 NGOs cautioned against the rising trend of development aid being used to further Germany's political goals at home. The report, titled "Compass 2030: The Reality of German Development Policy" urged that development policy "must not be instrumentalized" by Germany's next government to further migration or internal security goals.

"There's a growing danger that the use of development funds will be more determined by the domestic debate on migration management and security than by the shared responsibility of a rich, industrialized country for sustainable global development," Germany's Welthungerhilfe, an organization that fights hunger worldwide, and the child welfare organization Terre des Hommes said in their annual joint report. "Human rights are in danger of falling by the wayside," they added.

The G20 action plan agreed upon in Hamburg this summer took an "every man for himself" approach to carrying out development initiatives in African countries rather than agreeing on common, binding goals, the NGOs said. They cited three separate economic initiatives for Africa from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Finance Ministry (BMF) and the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy as "prime examples of competing rather than coherent policies."

Welthungerhilfe and Terre des Hommes also called on the next German government to put more effort into preventing conflicts rather than fueling them. Germany should "no longer speak about combatting the causes of migration while at the same time arming countries engaged in conflicts, like Saudi Arabia," Terre des Hommes board spokesman Jörg Angerstein said in a statement. "A policy that seeks to fight the causes of migration must also address the number one cause — conflicts and instability," the report stated, adding that "migration can neither be stopped nor decisively controlled."


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