Aid: understanding international development cooperation

This is a time of crisis for international development cooperation. The conditions for many areas of cooperation have changed, especially since the end of the Cold War. Cooperation between rich and poor countries has acquired a new meaning for both parties. The forms of cooperation have changed character. This applies to both bilateral and multilateral cooperation, and its also applies to the role of NGOs in both North and South. With this book, we hope to create comprehensive understanding of these changes and present a coherent picture of how development cooperation is carried out today. We will discuss the motives behind foreign aid initiatives and the arguments for and against various forms of aid. We will question and criticized where we find it necessary, but will also indicate positive points and make proposals for improvements, in order to stimulate a constructive debate. It is important to think through how foreign aid can be improved at a time when this form of international cooperation is under economic and political pressure. Since 1992, foreign aid from North and South has decreased in real value, even though the problem and poverty in most developing countries have increased. In recent years, foreign aid has fallen to the lowest level since the start of the 1960s, measured as a percentage, or rather per capita - of the rich countries' national product. Some of the central questions we will consider are the following: -Why do we give aid and why are so many countries interested in receiving it? -How is development cooperation carried out? -What is the aid given to? What are the objectives - and does it fulfil its intentions? -Should development cooperation continue as it has been, or it there need for decisive changes? -Is there a future for aid cooperation? This book attempts to create a comprehensive view of the various answers that have been give to such questions and to present the reasoning behind these different answers. But we also wish to create debate. We have made no attempts to hide our own views and attitudes about how aid functions and ought to function. We try to understand the viewpoints of both the different donors and recipients, but we acknowledge that our perspective is mainly....