President Donald Trump’s Blitzkrieg campaign against the United States Organization for International Development (USAID) has quickly left aid workers to destroy an organization called the “world’s biggest donor” and save international development aid and humanitarian response systems. Many lament the serious consequences of the US President’s unprecedented decision, and moves by other countries such as the UK to cut aid.
Commenting on the situation in a LinkedIn post, Luca Crudeli, who said she has been “immersed in development” since 2003, spoke about “the feeling that the moral center of our work is quietly slipping down” and “an uneasy recognition that the humanistic soul of development may be lost in the shuffle of contracts and strategic scorecards.”
But explaining “development” as having a humanitarian spirit is a contradiction for many in the Global South. That doesn’t mean that many people who work in “development” are not decent moral people who are truly interested in improving the welfare of others around the world. It is not a denying that the aid industry provides the vital support it relies on to survive by millions.
The soul of “development” is to say that it is not always more humane than its supporters argue. In fact, the entire aid enterprise is a tool for geopolitical control, a means of preserving rather than eliminating global inequality, employing resource extraction that feeds it.
Recently, following the end of the USAID, there has been a growing number of openness about this reality, consciously or unconsciously.
For example, a statement issued by the interaction that “integrates and amplifies the voices of America’s major humanitarian and development organizations” made it very clear. Before rushing to rewrite the organization, the organizations stated that they will “work tirelessly to save lives and promote US interests worldwide.” It added that the attack on USAID has halted “programs that support America’s global leadership and programs that produce dangerous vacuums that China and our enemies will soon fill.”
Does that sound less humane?
Marina Cotzeva has spent nearly 20 years commenting on how her colleagues from the Global North and Global South responded to the statement. She described the former as “poor language, honest mistakes,” while the latter expressed a sense of proof that “finality is finally showing their true colour.”
Western humanitarianism is not just losing its way. It has been closely tied to Western colonialism from the beginning. For example, the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, which set the stage for the conquest of Africa in Europe, was framed as a humanitarian event.
And with the collapse of the post-World War II reconstruction project, the first humanitarian organizations were created to deal with the wild consequences of European conflict, but many began to play active roles in the Global South.
The aid industry effectively inherited the “civilized mission” of colonialism. Its good image papers around the extractive nature of the international system attempt to improve the worst excess without actually challenging the system. If anything, the two are in a symbiotic relationship. The aid industry justifies extractive global trade and governance systems and produces results that justify the existence of aid agencies.
As a result, despite the spread of aid and development institutions today, little has been discovered, and deep inequality continues to characterize relations between states. A 1997 study by the US Congressional Budget Office found that foreign aid plays a small role in promoting economic development, improving human welfare, and even “to hinder development depending on the environment in which it is used and the conditions it is given.”
Therefore, it is not surprising that some of those that claim to help the aid sector find themselves on the brink of , would not be totally saddened to see its back. Heba Ally, former CEO of the new Humanitarian News Agency, said at a recent meeting that “some activists in the Global South have proven that donors are less concerned about cutting aid than they wanted their leaders to take responsibility and force them to stop in response to aid.”
This highlights how aid replaces fundamental reforms in both global and national systems of colonial extraction for charity.
The cries of Western aid will undoubtedly be tragic and painful. Some of the world’s most vulnerable people will suffer and many will die. We should not lose sight of this in discussions about the righteousness or evilness of aid in general. In fact, we need to deal with the world rather than the way we want it to, and we need to do everything we can to improve its impact.
That said, this is also an opportunity to start building the world without assistance. “If this is the beginning of the end of aid,” Aly wrote, “we should focus on structural transformations.” It is a reform of the world trade and financial system that saw the poorest wages for the rich lifestyle.
That doesn’t mean it will become a world of Hobbes without solidarity. Rather, it would be something that charity is not permitted to be covered for global injustice.
Also, at the end of aid, we need to see that the end of “development” is a harmful ideology that assumes “developmental countries” where prosperity is built on the ruin of other societies and planets. We need to work for an order that truly embodies the humanistic soul.
The views expressed in this article are the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.