Aid to Somalia?

[GreengagePie]

We have pensioners losing their winter fuel allowance, veterans rough sleeping, NHS collapsing, economy tanking and now Labour are sending money to Somalia.
£25million in next 5 years for "Green Urban Growth" (whatever that is).

These are the guys guilty of Piracy on the High Seas!

According to the International Maritime Bureau, a piracy reporting centre based in Malaysia, some 54 crew members and passengers have been killed worldwide since 2006.
The economic losses are also enormous.

AIBU in thinking this isn't exactly a priority?

devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/programme/GB-GOV-1-300797/summary#

That's an argument for cancelling foreign aid altogether. Spend the money on improving living conditions here, people might not resort to shoplifting and other crime.

Maybe if they weren't so poor and desperate, they wouldn't be pirates.

Given global travel patterns we are affected by what happens abroad, whether people like it or not. Look at COVID. So it's best to influence things in our favour.

I got my introduction from Greg Palast in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" which was published in 2002.

@FOJN Someone recommended "Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Foreign Policy" by Mark Curtis. Really made me question all foreign aid in general and quite a lot of other things.

I read that one too.

There is a compelling argument for foreign aid as a means of buying soft power but that's not what we do. Our current system is so corrupt our grandchildren will wonder why we spent time self flagellating about the slave trade and empire whilst, in our lifetime, our government was using "foreign aid" to export misery all over the globe.

@zeddybrek
"Or how about the UK/US implement the Aid themselves. Send paid builders from the UK to build the infrastructure. E.g. build a school and send paid UK teachers to support and train poorer countries. Or send people to teach them how to improve tourism etc. Has anyone seen the beaches in Somalia, it's like the Maldives! Actual tangible help, not money transfer into the leaders personal bank accounts."

My god, this is the most naive and depressing thought. It sounds like one of those Gap Yah ideas, where darling Isabella and Edward are far better qualified to hug orphans and skip around the playground with photogenic black kids than any intelligent intervention.

A LOT of humanitarian money goes into supporting local institutions to grow and develop. So supporting the health ministry to learn how to better budget for health provision or helping the education ministries develop school structures that enable girls to access education as well as boys.

As others have said - do you think that waving a passport and pulling up the drawbridge is any great defence against threats such as infectious diseases hitting our shores? No, but helping countries put structures in place to manage and solve these crises is.

Any country will try and take aid from the UK if they can. Somalia doesn't really need aid. Look on youtube to see what Somalia looks like now. It's all modernized with new apartments and investors flooding to purchase them.

@DownWithTrump ok I used clumsy wording but agree with your last sentence and that was I trying to get to.

Fundamentally I don't think millions of aid goes towards helping people each year, I would bet the vast majority is used to buy power and geopolitical influence.

@zeddybrek and I agree that there are issues, corruption and concerns throughout the whole process. But it is too simplistic to do a Trump and cut off foreign aid spending in one fell swoop. It needs to be considered far more intelligently and carefully. If not the HUGE risk we face is other actors moving into that space. China is veeeeery interested in increasing its influence in Africa for example - gaining access to the minerals and resources found there. Russia is very interested in destabilising the west and pursuing dominance. Pulling out of all humanitarian and development spending 'just like that' is counterproductive and leaves the door open to non-benign actors.

I find it very odd that so many developed economies would be so interested in sending billions abroad without pursuit of some kind of agenda and purpose.

I find it odd you don't think there is an agenda.

Completely agree and as transnational corporations become more and more wealthy and have more and more power, it makes you wonder just why exactly various governments are so involved in interfering in other countries' affairs and funding various wars and whose interests such interference really serves as I am absolutely confident that the average citizen in most countries is more interested in welfare of his own country, education and employment of self and his children, own retirement, healthcare, support for the less fortunate in own country than in sending billions to some land far, far away that he may not even has been able to point out on the map before his government started interfering with its affairs.

From 1960 -2000, $3 trillion was spent on aid to Africa, and the continent became poorer.

He's not cutting off aid, he's closing USAID, the dept which administers the funds. The money will be administered via the state dept instead.

@FOJN "He's not cutting off aid, he's closing USAID, the dept which administers the funds. The money will be administered via the state dept instead."

If you believe that you're as batshit as Musk.

He has ALREADY cut off aid and people are ALREADY dying.

You don't think an agency which can't account for trillions of dollars needed an overhaul?

I'm sure the heroin producers of Afghanistan are devastated that USAID will no longer be funding their irrigation systems.

@FOJN - firstly - yes I do think it needed an overhaul, but in an intelligent and systematic way. The same way I think the benefits system in the UK needs an overall, as does the NHS, but not by entirely disbanding it and stopping all funding in a single day.

Secondly, don't believe everything you read. Yes, there was money to assist in irrigation in Afghanistan. But to help farmers diversify AWAY from growing poppy, not supporting the narcotics trade.

Elon's misinformation is extremely prolific.

Yep, it's not fair when the government supports other countries while their citizens scrimp by with inflation.

Too many areas have been forgotten, the same areas that people are labelled lazy or antisocial.

These places cannot be turned around without local investments, it is letting down an entire generation.

And of course "people are ALREADY dying" because the orange man is very, very bad.

It's amazing that USAID doesn't know where the money went but, within a matter of days, they do know how many people have died because they haven't been able to float those funds out into the wind to perform humanitarian miracles.

Yup, I'm the bat shit one.

I haven't read a word Musk has said about it.

A while ago, I read an article about foreign aid to Africa and how it made farmers in various countries poor or bankrupt.

Foreign aid killed farming in many countries in Africa by bankrupting their farmers through supplies of food from US and European transnational corporations that was delivered "free of charge" under the banner of aid.

Several US and European governments used money from charitable donations to places like USAID and large charities to buy food and food supplies from their own corporations to send as aid to Africa and other countries until it bankrupted local farmers, who obviously couldn't compete with free food. This also made many countries dependent on the food of foreign transnational corporations, who not only benefited from their products being bought by various governments but later also from contracts with governments which were previously in receipt of "foreign aid".

What a bizarre response

I have a feeling that the living conditions in Somalia wouldn't improve with the cash we send, but the pirate ships would get improved firepower and shiny new engines.

OK. Consider this (real) scenario.

South Asian country heavily contaminated by bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam War.

The US was funding ongoing clearance activities.

These activities enable the land to be used for farming etc and stopped kids (and it usually is kids) being blown up or losing limbs.

Funding has now ceased.

Is this something that should be supported by humanitarian funding?

Not to mention a bit random 😊

We’ve been piling billions of money into third world countries for countless years and they remain the same, sorry / not sorry but i think we need to be piling more of this money into the UK first.

Yes I think they are probably hoping that giving aid (and it should be properly focussed) might stop a bit of piracy rather than encourage more…

But I do see a wider point here- if we can’t send an ambulance for a dying pensioner should we really be giving aid at all outside. a humanitarian crisis? And so much of aid is linked to politics- like Israel being able to banning UNRWA- I am sceptical that anyone sees this as an egalitarian exercise, it’s more just about the UK trying to maintain its status.