Donor funding direction

When you are young and don’t want to speak out to rock the boat, you don’t look too closely at what you do and just take the money.

When you get older and to the point where you don’t have a future career to worry about, you look a little more closely and see where perhaps the systems can be improved.

Having worked on projects in 52 countries and seen the poverty around the globe and more specifically in Sudan and now the Middle East, I see these slum areas and in so many cases women with a few bedraggled children hanging on their clothing with no man and certainly no “husband” in sight. Aid support projects keep trying to feed everyone but the problem perpetuates.

In Australia there are reports of three generations living on welfare and one whole street where no one works.

In “The Evening news”- (Arthur Hailey published Corgi 1990, pg 481), a news editor and broadcaster in Peru is quoted as saying-

“The areas of the world in deepest trouble, including ours, have two main groups of people - the reasonably educated and affluent on the one hand; on the other, the ignorant and hopelessly poor who are largely unemployable. The first group breeds only moderately, the second breed like flies, inexorably growing larger - a human time bomb ready to destroy the first.”

Saying “breed like flies” might be a bit harsh expressed in 2015 where we are so politically correct but his solution was – “Flood the world with birth control teaching teams”.

The wealthiest man in Indonesia once told me he supported programs to help the poor because otherwise one day they will rise and take it all away from him. Logic in that.

Now I realise that as soon as anyone suggests any form of social engineering which goes against our instinctive behaviour to breed, guns come out. On the other hand perhaps it’s time to face the question on a global basis and not just as the Chinese have done with their one child policy.

So back to focus on aid policy direction. We spend billions on projects to try and make governments run better, build roads, enhance security etc. etc., all of which receive high profile attention - but by comparison what is spent on teaching about birth control and moderating behaviour along with capacity to pay seems only small change.

Understandably religious organisations fight to keep propagation flourishing so as to build their devotee numbers with the Catholic Church long against birth control. This in itself hampers any activity in this area. However if one is serious and looks at the world as now a conjoined society, the insane fighting over my God is better than your God – and with modern weapons, Hailey’s second group gets larger by the day (remember his words were 1990), and might it not just lead to his postulated human time bomb ready to destroy itself?

Governments have to take this seriously so that everyone can have a better life but that won’t work on perpetual social welfare. Unfortunately reducing birth is harder to measure than increasing it and doesn't look as sexy. The general public have to be educated towards this end and the general hypothesis should be that Donor organisations, The World Bank, EU, Asian and African Development Banks should take the lead and treat this as a focus area ramping up their efforts on education as well as front line measures at the pit face. Governments contributing to Multilateral funds should push for such action.