Providing aid is not an overly generous act

Jun 15 2011

Noting that aid "has mixed impacts," Jonathan Glennie, a research fellow with the Overseas Development Institute, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog" that "there is one argument against aid that we need to tackle head on; the idea that we cannot afford aid, that we are being over-generous, especially in a time of cuts at home." Glennie continues, "The notion that giving away our loose change is embarrassingly generous would be an odd one to poor people around the world trying to scrape together a living under the unfair system rich countries have established to work in their favour."

He concludes, "Getting the facts and ethics straight on this issue is crucial not to defend aid, but to defend the very concept of generosity in a changing world" (6/14).