Comment by Diana Evans
Agenda 21, signed at the UNCED Earth Summit in Rio, committed the world's nations to a global blueprint for sustainable development in the 21st century which will cost and estimated $800 billion annually. For the developed nations to foot their share, it is necessary for the majority not only to dramatically increase their foreign aid budgets, but also to drastically reform the character and content of aid.
Dr Nafis Sadik, head of the UN Population Fund, recently warned that unless global population growth is stopped, ecological disaster will overwhelm us. UN recommendations of global population restraint, considerable reduction in consumption/waste in developed countries and greatly increased aid to developing countries are urgent if the world is to survive beyond the next century. As Fidel Castro stated in his rousing address to the UNCED, "Tomorrow is too late to do what should have been done a long time ago".
The UN has recommended that all First World countries provide 0.7% of GNP for aid to Third World development by the year 2000. However, what constitutes "aid" and "development" is at present the cause of much controversy.
In the last 50 years the industrialised nations have foisted economic development upon the Third World with the same religious fervour with which their forebears foisted Christianity upon the "heathens". The effects of both on the Third World have been devastating.
Along with plant and animal species and the environment, many rich and diverse human cultures have been wiped from the face of the earth, as the economic and social structures that the First World operates both cause and perpetuate profound injustice and oppression of the poor. Increasingly the term "aid" has obscured exploitative trade practices which benefit the "donor" and those least in need in the developing country.
Australian foreign aid is no exception. Over the last decade, Australian aid has been severely cut — from 0.5% of GNP in 1983-4 to a mere 0.36% today. The budget for 1992-93 failed to increase foreign aid despite intense lobbying by non-government aid organisations.
A decline in quality of Australian aid has accompanied the decline in quantity. The UN Development Program has called for greater attention to social priority, primary health care, basic education, family planning, rural water supply and income-generating opportunities for the poor, particularly women. It is shameful that this aspect of Australia's aid has been reduced to a mere 7.7% of its overall miserly aid package.
The worst aspects of Australian aid are the disproportionate amounts as Indonesia and the Philippines for political motives, as well as to such discredited organisations as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the Development Impact Finance Facility (DIFF), the latter existing purely to assist Australian industry and as such having nothing whatsoever to do with aid. DIFF's funding was increased from $98 million to $120 million in the budget.
The World Health Organisation states that 300 million couples in developing countries who do not want any more children have no access to family planning. It further states that abortions performed illegally and in unsafe conditions result in approximately 500 deaths every day and that a total of 1400 women die every day in the course of childbirth or pregnancy. Many more are left with serious physical and psychological scars.
Research indicates that women are a key to successful grassroots development. Women are the most disadvantaged group worldwide, owning less than 1% of the world's property. It is only by raising the living standards, health, legal and social status, skills and income-generating abilities of women that we can begin to curb the world's explosive population growth.
With 17 million officially defined refugees worldwide, it is obvious that a country like Australia that admits a token few could in fact far more beneficially attack the problem at its various political and ecological sources. In fact the real number of refugees is far in excess of 17 million. World Watch Institute research indicates that there may be more ecological refugees than political refugees, and that this situation will get worse in the years ahead.
Rather than applying a bandaid to the problem of refugees, it is essential that developed nations, including Australia, attempt to address those appalling inequities in Third World countries that are causing the refugee crisis.
Internationally and here, aid should be dramatically increased and reformed to focus on the plight of oppressed people with the aim of enhancing their control over their own lives, fertility and destiny. Currently we continue to contribute to ever more social dislocation, poverty and overpopulation through the flooding of indigenous people and non-industrialised cultures with Western-style products, production methods and consumerism in the guise of foreign aid and US-style development.
The budget, while falling well short of changes recommended by the non-government aid agencies, did increase the Women and Development Fund ($0.7 million to $1.5 million), provide a $3 million boost to fight the AIDS/HIV epidemic in developing countries and fund $4 million for population activities. Non-government aid organisations will also receive an additional $4 million.
Foreign aid is one area where there is still a sharp division between Labour and Liberal policy. The Coalition's morally degenerate and irresponsible policy will slash $209 million from foreign aid and end and indeed all aid not directly connected to Australia's own specific commercial and political area of Asia and the Pacific. By comparison, Labor's weak and insufficient initiatives are humane and responsible.