Failure to hold foreign governments to account means that our aid is wasted[: Global Witness' Simon Taylor]

Fonors who are handing over millions of our pounds have the right to ask for minimum standards of transparency.

01 Nov 2010

Letter to The Telegraph (UK)

SIR,

The creed that foreign aid is automatically virtuous is indeed curious (Peter Oborne, Comment, October 29). Aid can, given well, be a life-saver. But, in our experience, this blanket approach to aid-giving has been counterproductive and, in the worst cases, harmful.

We're talking not only about human rights abuses, as reported by Human Rights Watch from Ethiopia, but also the facilitation of large-scale corruption. Corruption is not just about the aid money getting stolen.

In highly corrupt, resource-rich countries such as Cambodia, aid can end up providing basic state services while allowing the incumbent government to use the country's natural resources to fund their own luxurious lifestyles. For many of the poorest countries, natural resources offer the biggest potential for wealth generation. But these resources are finite: once gone, so are those countries' economic futures.

The donor-recipient relationship needs to be more reciprocal, and donors who are handing over millions of our pounds have the right – indeed the responsibility – to ask for minimum standards of transparency over natural resource revenues that will ensure our aid money is not undermined.