WHEN one of my relatives started working for a humanitarian agency, about 25 years ago, the reaction from their friends and relatives was generally positive: “It’s so good that you’re helping people, and so brave to work in disaster zones.” Today, when new colleagues join the agency, the reaction from their acquaintances is likely to be negative: “Why are we spending our money helping people abroad?” Similarly, politicians ask: “Why should we spend our money helping people elsewhere, when there are so many needs at home?”
The relevance of this question has been heightened by the Prime Minister’s announcement this week that the UK’s spending on international aid will fall from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of national income, and by the recent suspension of US government funding for aid and the impact that this has had on its wide-ranging projects in many disadvantaged countries (News, 7 February).
There are two misconceptions that need to be corrected. First, that international aid doesn’t work. It does: smallpox, which killed about 300 million people in the 20th century, has been eradicated. Polio vaccines have prevented about 20 million cases of child paralysis in the past 35 years. Cases of guinea-worm disease have dropped from 3.5 million a year in the 1980s to just a handful in 2024. The American emergency plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has saved more than 25 million lives. The number of people living in extreme poverty has dropped from almost two billion people in 1990 to just 700 million today.
Second, expenditure on international aid is a much smaller part of government budgets than most people realise. On average, British people think that 18 per cent of government spending goes on foreign aid. In fact, in 1970, developed countries set a target to allocate 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Income to international aid. The UK met this target in 2013. In 2021, however, the Government “temporarily” rolled its expenditure back to 0.5 per cent (News, 16 July 2021).
THREE main arguments can be put forward for international aid. First, for people of faith, the answer is straightforward: mankind’s Golden Rule: “Do to others, as you would have them do unto you,” or, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Where doubts creep in is to what extent this applies to people far from us: people from our village, or people from the same ethnic, religious, or political “tribe” as us, or even people from our own country. But, as is often insinuated by populist political parties, can we really be expected to extend this concern to people in other countries? To people from different religions? To groups we dislike and distrust?
In Luke 10, an expert in the law asked Jesus “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus doesn’t merely answer the question, but instead provides a radically different frame of reference in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and concludes with “Go and do likewise.” We should be a neighbour not merely to people we like, or who are similar to us, but also to those whom we distrust, those who are different from us — and those who live far away from us.
The second argument revolves around justice and equity. Most countries in Africa and Asia were, at some point in the past two centuries, colonies of a major power. European empires left a legacy of arbitrarily drawn borders and inappropriate forms of governance, which contributed to the conflicts that have followed.
Extraction of natural resources may have powered the global economy, but it often brought environmental damage and little economic benefit to local communities. The world’s poorest countries are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, despite contributing the least to greenhouse-gas emissions.
The “brain drain” of skilled migrants means that poor countries are left without the people they have invested money in educating, while rich countries benefit from a skilled labour force that they have not had to train. Current levels of foreign aid are barely enough simply to reimburse poor countries for their expenditure in educating our workforce.
Foreign aid is neither “charity” nor compensation for the damage that developed countries have done to the developing world. Instead, it is a barely adequate contribution to help people to overcome the challenges placed in their way.
THE third argument in favour of foreign aid is the concept of “enlightened self-interest”. Many of the biggest challenges that we face currently — climate change, new diseases such as Covid-19 or mpox, civil and aggressive wars, terrorism, and migration — are global in nature. Rich countries need to remember that they and the rest of the world will be better off if disease outbreaks are stopped rather than left to spread unchecked; if countries are assisted to mitigate the worst effects of climate change; if causes of conflict are addressed; if people are supported to sustain their livelihoods at home; and if people know that, when disaster strikes, wealthy countries will be ready to assist them.
In the past, the Church has been in the forefront of campaigns that focused attention and expenditure on foreign aid, as part of our collective obligation to love our (global) neighbours as ourselves. Maybe the Church could do that again.
Helen Morgan is a former member of the General Synod, who has visited aid projects in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Sudan.
