DEVELOPMENT REPORT - Does Foreign Aid Work? Opinions Are Div

DEVELOPMENT REPORT - Does Foreign Aid Work? Opinions Are Divided
By Jill Moss¹

Broadcast: Monday, December 19, 2005

I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English Development Report.

Foreign aid is an important part of international efforts to reduce poverty. The United States Agency for International Development has an estimate of the amount given since the early nineteen fifties. It says seventy countries have received more than one million million dollars in payments and loans from Western nations.

 
aid
But does foreign aid work? Reporter Aida Akl recently discussed the issue with several experts for VOA's Focus program.

Michael Radew is a researcher at the World Policy Institute in New York. He says foreign aid can lead to, in his words, "all the wrong economic policies that made those countries poor in the first place." Mister Radew argues that it does not help the majority of poor people in a country. Instead, he says, it strengthens the officials in power who are generally unelected.

Other experts say foreign aid has produced mixed results, depending on where and how the money is spent. They note successful examples like Taiwan and South Korea. The two have since become wealthy enough to give foreign aid themselves.

Steve Radelet is a researcher at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. He says foreign aid is least effective in countries like Somalia and Haiti where governments are especially weak. And he says it is "highly risky²" also in politically insecure countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. But Mister Radelet says the world must continue to give money, even though some of it will disappear or be stolen.

United Nations experts agree that foreign aid faces difficulties in parts of the world without much democracy. In southern Africa, poverty rates increased from forty-one percent in nineteen eighty-one to forty-six percent in two thousand one.

The director of the Poverty Reduction Program at the World Bank notes the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. But Luca Barbone says foreign aid has done a lot to reduce poverty worldwide.

Yet because it is often stolen or misused³, there are calls for new methods of giving. George Ayitey is a Ghanaian-born economics⁴ professor at American University in Washington. He says Western countries should give less aid, but remove trade barriers so they import more goods from developing nations. Professor Ayitey also suggests that donor⁵ nations direct how they want their money spent.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill Moss.  I'm Steve Ember.

1 moss   

n.苔，藓，地衣

参考例句：

• Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
• He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。

2 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

3 misused   

v.使用…不当( misuse的过去式和过去分词 )；把…派作不正当的用途；虐待；滥用

参考例句：

• He misused his dog shamefully. 他可耻地虐待自己的狗。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He had grossly misused his power. 他严重滥用职权。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 economics   

n.经济学，经济情况

参考例句：

• He is studying economics,which subject is very important.他正在学习经济学，该学科是很重要的。
• One can't separate politics from economics.不能把政治与经济割裂开来。

5 donor   

n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体

参考例句：

• In these cases,the recipient usually takes care of the donor afterwards.在这类情况下，接受捐献者以后通常会照顾捐赠者。
• The Doctor transplanted the donor's heart to Mike's chest cavity.医生将捐赠者的心脏移植进麦克的胸腔。