Imagine yourself looking at the Red Cross advert “I am a Crisis”. The heartbreaking, poignant advert persuades you to donate money to young children who do not get the opportunity to be educated. What would you feel if you got to know that all the valuable money you donated has been stolen by a corrupt leader of the organisation?
Donor nations provide developmental aid to foster development in receiver nations. These receiver nations desperately need help through aid because they do not have the money to provide their citizens clean sewage systems, medication and many basic needs for survival. However, like the example presented above, the only hope left for citizens is illegally taken away by corrupt governments. The problems such as human rights issues, unfair elections and the inability of the criminal justice systems are left unsolved. To provide better living conditions, greater freedoms and dignity for citizens, economic support is needed. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the status quo.
Let’s talk about the mechanism of developmental aid and its connection with corruption. Donor nations support receiver nations economically, socially or politically by sharing developmental aid. With the aid provided, receiver nations use money to develop nations such as building infrastructure. Let’s say that the recipient country decided to build hospitals. Originally, citizens of the nation could not receive treatment at all because there were no hospitals, no doctors, machines and medical pills. Therefore, patients suffered from life-risking diseases or injuries. Luckily, through the donation of aid, citizens get the opportunity to get proper healthcare through hospitals. The government can use the money to build hospitals and the creation of a workplace will automatically bring doctors. However, by the encounterance of the evil groups of power, the vulnerable citizens lose the human right to healthcare. By the theft of aid, no doctors, medical pills nor hospitals actually exist. No development is brought to the nation and the citizens cannot discover a safe life.
A major example of corruption comes to us all the way from Zimbabwe. On the Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Zimbabwe scored a low 23 on a scale from 0 to 100. Due to its corrupt government, Zimbabwe ranked 139th in the Legatum Prosperity Index. In countries such as Zimbabwe, corruption of developmental aid totally destroys the nation in a myriad of ways such as human rights violations, harsh living conditions and lack of proper healthcare. This needs to change.
What actions can we take, to solve this problem? In order to prevent corruption in developmental aid, aid should become conditional on political reforms. For example: All major donors of developmental aid such as the USAID, World Bank or the EU should set certain political reform conditions. These conditions should be addressing human rights concerns, free and fair elections, reforms of the criminal justice system and corruption to ensure that aid is used in the correct way. The donor countries would monitor the progress of the recipient countries through independent NGOs or UN monitoring. In cases where receiving governments refuse to cooperate or do not meet their reform goals, the developmental aid would be cut in part or suspended in full until those reforms are back on track.
These conditions bring improved accountability and transparency. Conditional aid requires recipient governments to maintain transparent governance and financial reporting as donor countries can monitor them. This reduces embezzlement and corruption on all state levels.
In the case of Rwanda, following the devastating 1994 genocide, the nation embraced good governance reforms as a condition for receiving aid. As a result, Rwanda has achieved remarkable progress in areas like healthcare and education, contributing to its post-conflict recovery. Like the example of Rwanda’s development due to conditional aid, it is evident that others will benefit from it as well.
The tax you pay is used in providing economic support to nations. In the status quo where corruption occurs day and night, the money you pay goes directly to the corrupt governments’ pockets. Fortunately, in the world where conditional aid is implemented, corruption would decrease rapidly and your tax will be utilised in an effective way, changing the lives of millions.
Dabin (Oscar) Kim
Content Creator
