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