Join us in the fight for economic justice and an end to global poverty.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Chris White has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Chris White MP now to help stop big business cashing
in on aid.
The UK government is yet again undermining grassroots poverty alleviation by channelling UK aid towards huge agribusiness. The Hunger Games, a report recently published by War on Want, criticises the Department for International Development (DfID) for working with the ‘who’s who’ of agrochemical and GM seed companies including Monsanto, Unilever and Syngenta.
In coalition with these companies, DfID is funding dodgy agricultural initiatives such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). This initiative in particular seeks to “trigger a uniquely African green revolution” by promoting networks of GM seed and agrochemical providers to small farmers.
The companies working beneath this banner, posing under a guise of African development, are seeking to extend their reach over emerging markets in countries like Malawi. Monsanto, a company that originally made its money from making chemical weapons but has now switched to agrochemicals, has openly declared its intention to control all of Malawi’s 30,000 tonne seed market. This transition, if it was allowed to happen, would decimate traditional seed markets, and lock local farmers further into a dependency on foreign inputs....
A Bangladeshi human rights worker has written an open letter to Bob Geldof ahead of a meeting tomorrow between the rock star and the UK international development secretary, Justine Greening, telling him that UK aid money is promoting sweatshops in Bangladesh.
Human rights worker Khorshed Alam says in the letter:
I am writing to tell you that UK aid money is being used to set up ‘special economic zones’ in Bangladesh. In zones that already exist, multinational companies pay workers less than £1 a day, trade unions are not allowed to function properly, and police crush protests with rubber bullets.
This kind of ‘aid’ is not helping the poor. It is only helping the multinational companies.
Companies like Nike, Reebok, Adidas, H&M and Gap all have factories in existing zones in my country. They provide jobs for local people, but at a cost of sweatshop-style working conditions.
Mr Geldof, I ask you to not promote economic development at the expense of human rights and basic needs. Please use your meeting with Justine Greening to support better provision of public services that meet the needs of the poorest, not the balance sheets of big business."...
The UK government is increasingly emphasising the role of private companies in delivering overseas aid. But there is a very real danger that, in taking this approach, the real purpose of aid, which is to help people out of poverty, is taking second place to corporate profit.
Here are some examples of how aid money is benefiting big business:
UK aid money helps multinational companies dodge tax
1. £11 million of UK aid money has gone to the World Bank to help set up ‘special economic zones’ (also known as export processing zones) in Bangladesh specifically aimed at attracting investment from foreign companies.
o Multi-national, high street names like Nike, Walmart, Adidas, H&M and Gap have factories in these zones in Bangladesh and were granted ten year tax holidays when they set up.
o However, unskilled factory workers in these zones earn on average less than £1 a day, have few employment rights and are banned from joining a trade union.
o...
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Hugh Bayley has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Hugh Bayley MP now to help stop big business cashing
in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Richard Burden has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Richard Burden MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Sam Gyimah has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Sam Gyimah MP now to help stop big business cashing
in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Richard Harrington has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Richard Harrington MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Pauline Latham has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Pauline Latham MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Jeremy Lefroy has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Jeremy Lefroy MP now to help stop big business cashing
in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Michael McCann has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Michael McCann MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Alison McGovern has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Alison McGovern MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Fiona O'Donnell has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Fiona O'Donnell MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Sir Malcolm Bruce has a key role to play in our campaign.
The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.
Please email Sir Malcolm Bruce MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.
Over the past decade, the UK government has increasingly put the interests of big business at the heart of its aid policy. The result is that the power structures that keep people in poverty are now even stronger.
While aid is vital (and the government must not go back on its commitments to
fund it) to be really effective it must be used to bring about social justice and
equity for the poorest people.
Aid is not, and should never be, a business opportunity.
An independent parliamentary inquiry into this worrying trend is urgently needed - should the Kelvin coal power plant in South Africa (pictured right) really be benefiting from UK aid funding, for example?
Please write to your MP now and help us stop big business cashing in on aid.
And everyone who takes action will be able to watch our staff and volunteers in their own rendition...
Aid is not the answer to global poverty. Fighting the structural causes of poverty such as unfair trade and excessive corporate power is far more important than pushing for more aid. But that doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore aid, especially when it is being used precisely to increase corporate power and entrench unfair trade.
Our research shows a worrying trend within the Department for International Development (DfID) towards prioritising the interests of the private sector and seeing aid as something that should serve the UK’s national interests.
UK overseas aid is currently backing tax breaks for multinationals like Nike, Reebok and Walmart, and promoting public-private partnerships, a model that has attracted much criticism within the UK, as a one-size-fits-all solution to the provision of health, education and new infrastructure in the global south.
For example: The World Bank’s Bangladesh Private Sector Development Support project has received £11 million from DfID. The project provides technical expertise to the Bangladeshi government in the creation of ‘special economic zones’, also known as ‘export processing zones’ (EPZ). EPZs...
WDM’s landmark Pergau Dam legal victory in 1994 meant that the promotion of UK exports to developing countries, or ’tied aid’, was no longer legal. Now, however, UK government aid policy is showing a worrying trend towards once again prioritising a pro-market view of aid over the needs of the world’s poorest people.
Whether it's technical assistance to secure tax incentives for foreign investment in south Asia, or promoting public-private partnerships in health, education and water, the private sector now seems to be central to UK aid programmes.
But is the role of aid to promote market-oriented policies or should greater emphasis be placed on public provision and the role of governments? Or should we move beyond aid as a charitable act and instead see it as a form of international wealth redistribution to be used by recipient countries to pursue their own development goals?
This blog appeared on the New Statesman website on 23 September 2012.
On Monday, the new International Development Secretary Justine Greening launched an investigation into the millions of pounds of UK aid money diverted into the pockets of private sector consultants such as the staunchly pro-market Adam Smith International (ASI), following an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph.
This is certainly welcome news. The World Development Movement has for years argued that money made by highly paid consultants like ASI, forcing privatisation, is a dubious use of public funds at best. As early as 2001, ASI was paid to facilitate a water privatisation project in Tanzania, including earning a handsome £250,000 to promote a pop song.
But the worrying thing is that the use of the aid budget in this way is only the tip of the iceberg. Increasing consultancy spend is part and parcel of a wider undying faith that DfID has in the private sector to deliver poverty reduction.
In one stark example, UK aid money is currently paying for consultants to advise the Bangladeshi government on the establishment of new special...
Deborah Doane, director of anti-poverty group the World Development Movement, said today that the UK government’s aid spending inquiry should scrutinise the growing private sector cash-in on development aid.
The new development secretary Justine Greening said on Sunday that her department would review its spending on consultants, following revelations that UK-based ‘poverty barons’ are making hundreds of millions of pounds from the foreign aid budget.
Deborah Doane said:
Increased scrutiny into the spending of UK aid money on consultants and contractors is very welcome. But this is only one part of a bigger picture, which shows the increasing involvement of the private sector, including multinational corporations, in the delivery of the UK aid budget.
Methods such as public private partnerships that have been discredited here in the UK are being promoted by the UK government in developing countries. We need a wide-ranging and independent inquiry to look at the growing private sector involvement in development aid, and how effective this approach is in meeting the needs of the poorest people, compared to approaches that focus on strengthening the public sector. Aid should be given by the UK as a contribution to global equity, not as a...
Deborah Doane, director of anti-poverty group the World Development Movement, has commented on Justine Greening’s appointment as international development secretary:
“On Andrew Mitchell’s watch, UK aid policy took an alarming turn towards promoting the interests of business over the needs of the world’s poorest people. His admission last year that Britain’s foreign aid programme to India was partly designed to sell Typhoon fighter jets clearly showed this shift.
"Justine Greening’s previous support for tough climate change laws suggest a stronger commitment to justice than her predecessor. Her challenge will be to reverse the direction taken by Andrew Mitchell, and to ensure that aid is truly a contribution to global equity, not a business opportunity.”
Last month, our director, Deborah Doane, blogged about the worrying noises coming out of DFID lately on aid. Indeed, the past few months have seen proposals like moving towards a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ model of aid that would see ‘returns for the UK taxpayer’. And Andrew Mitchell has been busy recasting aid as something that we give because it is in the UK national interest, rather than as a purely altruistic gesture.
Ostensibly, the idea behind all of this is to sell the idea of increased foreign development assistance to the British public, who are assumed to be sceptical of foreign aid in a time of economic crisis. It appears the logic is that people will be won back to the idea of aid if only it can be proved that ‘we’ are somehow getting something out of the deal.
Thankfully, a new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Overseas Development Institute appears to show what many progressive voices have been saying for a long time – most people don’t want aid to benefit us, they want to see it leading to real benefits for the poorest:
...Last week’s Queen’s Speech saw a glaring omission – the failure to include a key coalition promise to enshrine into law the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of our gross national income on development aid.
The commitment, made at the 2005 Gleneagles summit, has for years been seen as the holy grail of development policy – often referred to, never fully attained. It was even upheld by all political parties during the 2010 general election, despite the severe economic downturn. But after a few years of defending 0.7 per cent, politicians are now backsliding. A recent report form the House of Lords proposed that the government should abandon the target, arguing that aid may hinder rather than help development.
But the coalition purportedly remains committed. So, as a way of fighting off the sceptics, David Cameron and international development secretary Andrew Mitchell have been vociferously...
This blog appeared on the Guardian's Poverty Matters blog on 6 February 2012.
The worrying trend – and potentially illegal direction – of British aid policy showed further signs of rearing its ugly head last week, when the government expressed disappointment at not getting the contract for Typhoon fighter jets in India. The contract was largely expected in return for the UK's ongoing commitment to provide aid to India. India, of course, has increasing prosperity among the middle and upper classes, but it is still blighted by high levels of extreme poverty.
The illegality of tied aid was clarified 18 years ago in a landmark legal action. In 1994, the World Development Movement launched an action in the high court about the proposed British financing of the Pergau dam, a hydro-electric dam on the river Pergau in Malaysia. The UK's partial funding of the dam, through aid totalling $351m, was alleged at the time to be linked to the sale of arms by British firms to Malaysia.
While the UK government had pursued a controversial policy of aid for trade since the late 1970s, the World Development Movement asserted in the...
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The UK government puts £10 million of its climate finance towards the UN Adaptation Fund, and agrees to give the majority of its funds to the World Bank's climate adaptation fund as grants rather than loans.
The Royal Bank of Scotland commits to developing external environmental, social and ethical risk statements and internally implementing similar policies for oil and gas, mining and metals and forestry and defence.
The EU allocates €40 million to support twinning arrangements between public water utilities in poor regions of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific and wealthier European countries.
Following joint campaigning by WDM and other groups and organisations, EON shelves plans for a new coal power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.
