Stop aid for corporate gain!
Stop aid for corporate gain!
There are worrying developments in the way the UK government plans to give aid. Coalition leaders are starting to view it as an investment, with a main aim of generating profit.
This type of spending uses aid to serve the interests of big business instead of the world’s poor.
You can help stop this.
Make a donation to WDM.
What’s the problem?
The government wants to make a profit from aid. International development secretary Andrew Mitchell supports turning the aid budget into a 'sovereign wealth fund.' This means making ‘pro poor’ investments rather than giving aid in the traditional sense.
This would move us dangerously close to linking aid to trade once again. After the UK failed to win a contract to sell fighter jets to India, Mitchell admitted that the aid to India was 'partly designed to win the bid'.
It has also been suggested that aid is being offered to war torn Somalia in the hope that oil contracts will be given to UK companies such as BP.
A donation of £30 or however much you can afford will help us campaign against aid that puts profit before people.
What do we do?
Over the past 20 years we have run a number of campaigns exposing how rich countries use aid for their own gain.
We have fought against unfair conditions placed on aid spending and demanded that aid should benefit the world’s poor, not corporations.
In 1994 we won an important legal victory. The Pergau Dam case held the government to account for giving aid money to Malaysia in return for arms deals. The judge found this practice of ‘tied-aid’ to be illegal, a historic win.
Now it's looking like the government is returning to using aid to benefit corporations. We need your help to start campaigning on this issue again.
What can you do?
It was only thanks to the support of people like you that we won the campaign to stop aid being tied to trade back in 1994.
But as the government now looks to be returning to using aid as a way of promoting British business interests, we need your support again to hold the government to account for how the aid budget is used.
Whilst aid is far from the long term answer to many of the challenges facing developing countries, money that is committed by rich countries should be for the benefit of poor people and not UK companies.
Your donation will help us push for aid for the world’s poor, not corporations. Please donate to WDM now.
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