financing for development

I found out today, that interestingly the most controversial country in the world concerning foreign affairs, actually “invented” development aid. The country who’s foreign policy in Iraq alone cost 74.312 lives and will cost taxpayers an estimated $1.9 trillion.* Development aid, as a matter of fact, originally emerged from the USAs foreign affairs commitment. So America, feeling as the superior mother of the world and initiator of God’s will, meddling with every single country and not leaving any country be, actually triggered something now indispensable.
A few decades ago it was satisfactory enough to debate on how much more money was needed in those countries. But today the problems in the developing countries are far beyond finance. In November 2005 the USA promised 18 states, mostly African ones, to lend them $ 40 billion*², but without the right reforms and the actual activation of a proper industrialisation and movement towards true development, the money is useless.
The biggest problem of today’s charitable and humanitarian help is that it’s sole purpose is to calm our conscience and give us the feeling we are doing the best we can do to help. Seeing that we’re not successful discourages most of us. We could be more successful, if we actually tried to help trigger a truly effective development strategy, that aids countries to go through the transformation process that we Europeans went through over a century ago. And it isn’t just technical in it’s modernisation, but also a spiritual, mental and intellectual transformation.
Already developed countries that vow humanitarian help, are in fact mostly dominated by their own interests and restrained by greed and materialism. Politics have become a dirty business, but our generation, the youth that will take on the future, must be motivated to change things. Our optimism must grow through the collective vision of a peaceful future, that results not only through cease-fire, but through an international understanding and unification of humankind.
As Shoghi Effendi*³ said: “The present condition of the world — its economic instability, social dissensions, political dissatisfaction and international distrust — should awaken the youth from their slumber and make them enquire what the future is going to bring. It is surely they who will suffer most if some calamity sweep over the world. They should therefore open their eyes to the existing conditions, study the evil forces that are at play and then with a concerted effort arise and bring about the necessary reforms — reforms that shall contain within their scope the spiritual as well as social and political phases of human life.”

* Source: wikipedia.org
*² Source: der überblick 4/2006 December
*³ appointed head of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957, Quote from “Lights of Guidance” p. 628

a higher level of awareness

I decided to start this blog because I felt like I had something to say. I thought I had thoughts people should reflect on, facts they should chew on. But as I started, I remembered a quote I once read, about how you can’t really teach anyone anything he doesn’t already know. And that is evidently true. I can’t tell you anything you haven’t already heard before, or known deep inside of you anyway. I could write about anything that occupies me, mostly it revolves around the desperation and the crisises in the world, concerning hunger, poverty, discrimination and missing development. But you all know about that…
I think it’s important, and that’s how the quote went on, to bring things to a higher level of awareness. I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know, I can only try and bring it to a higher level of awareness. So for my first blog entry, I’m going to give you a cross-section of what interests me, as in what I’m going to try to bring to a higher level of awareness.
You know about how religious discrimination takes place. So you probably know that elimination of religious minorities still takes place today.
The about 300.000 followers of the Bahá’í religion build Iran’s biggest religious minority. Seeing as it is historically younger than Islam, it isn’t a true religion, or so the fundamentalistic understanding of the Qur’án as the ideal, whole and complete word of God says. For the Bahá’i the Qur’án isn’t the last word of God, but there are words to follow. In the eyes of muslim fanatics this is an unforgivable heresy. But the religious persecution is denied. Instead the Bahá’ís are accused of being a political party aiming an overthrow of the islamic government. The right to higher education is denied to all Bahá’is and between 1979 and 1998 more than 200 Bahá’ìs were killed or executed and hundreds more were wrongfully imprisoned. Thousands were fired from their jobs without a reason, except for Membership in a religious community that isn’t in agreement with the islamic, fanatic understanding that prevails since the revolution.
Apart from all the racial and religious discrimination, that doesn’t have to take that degree (but also happens here in Europe), we are facing much larger problems today. Everyone knows about development aid, but it’s success is controversial. The European Union (EU) and it’s aid in African states south of the Sahara is failing miserably. It’s effort with regard to political diplomacy, financial economics and security and safety demand measures that are understandable, but difficult to collaborate with for the population. It’s not easy going through the technical, intellectual, spiritual and mental development we Europeans went through during industrialisation, whilst having soldiers with AK-47s roaming up and down your streets.
All forms of development and humanitarian aid have weaknesses and strengths, but we must deal with the problems that we are facing, or no change for the better is in sight. John F. Kennedy once said: “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”