Aid as Imperialism is a common phrase in international development outside of the meeting rooms and conferences. The perception that all agencies involved in the development field are better to exist than to not exist at all is a flawed notion. When Occupy Wall Street protests are standing up to the corporate greed throughout the United States, the need to extend to the development field is just as vital a route.
When USAID, the US Agency for International Development, is far in the pockets of corporations like Monsanto and Pfizer, more damage can be done than positive development. The entire occupational field of development from a capitalist perspective is unsustainable, because in order to continue the illusion of development, no true changes can be made, or the workforce of such a field would be proven unnecessary.
On October 4, 2011, CNN and Bloomberg News, as well as other news sources, noted the shocking and ironic fact that HIV Risks in African Nations that have received Depo-Provera injections have doubled. While citizens in low-income areas in the US have avoided the injections and have the available legal outlets to sue if negligence has occurred, developing nations in Africa have been herded into development health projects promising treatment and even potential cures for HIV.
When foreign development policies are too close to the corporate interest, human lives are left as lab-rats. Pfizer and Monsanto are just two of the key US corporations using the US government as tools to dump their products in developing countries.
But this is not the first time we are learning about this. In the past few years, Dambisa Moyo has written a book shocking the popular markets entitled ‘Dead Aid’; however, long before the book was an awakening for passive audiences, writers and activists such as Susan George, Paul Harrison, Nigel Harris and Teresa Hayter have covered this issue from the 1960’s up through today. Many times these writers have been strategically pushed out-of-print to evade their calls.
A short list of books worth finding, if you can, regarding the issues of aid and underdevelopment are: Susan George 1) Another World is Possible If… 2) A Fate Worse Than Debt; Nigel Harris 3) The End of the Third World, 4) Of Bread and Guns; Paul Harrison 5) The Third World Tomorrow, 6) Inside the Third World; Teresa Hayter 7) Aid as Imperialism; and Michael Harrington 8) The Accidental Century.
The newest irresponsible blow to the global community that statistics on Depo-Provera has highlighted may be surprising for those unaware of the nature of the development aid. What appears true is that health experts are apathetic or passive victims of amnesia when it comes to development aid they recommend to civilians already struggling to gain the basic needs in Malawi, Nigeria, Botswana, and across the continent and across the globe. Companies like Monsanto, whose genetically modified corn dumps aid packages in rural areas, are not altruistic. Monsanto, notorious for products such as Agent Orange dumped in Vietnam during the war as a chemical weapon, should never be trusted with feeding the planet.
Already there is a cancer epidemic in the US, why should we be outsourcing our diseases to those who cannot even defend themselves? Like Canada’s Asbestos sales as a productive trade, selling negligent products that spread diseases is a crime against humanity. Now when governments, bowing down to corporate pressure, swindle poorer nations and poorer neighborhoods in our own countries to believe we are aiding them to progress, then we must hold our government regardless of party politics accountable.
There are development workers whose actions and activities sustain a steady paycheck, and then there are human beings willing to take action for the development of society home and abroad because they are passionate people. Are you a Nelson Mandela, a Wangari Maathai, or a Margaret Sanger, or are you the man in the suit working in the development agency preparing a powerpoint presentation for a room that already knows the same facts that push nothing more but more weightless pages of a report? My advice friend, deviate from evasion!
No comments:
Post a Comment