AID GOES TO KLEPTOCRATS

Aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country

Auditors call for more transparency in humanitarian aid

 

 

International auditors have launched an initiative to make humanitarian aid more transparent, accountable and effective. The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, INTOSAI, launched the proposals in the wake of humanitarian disasters where accountability proved elusive. Following the 2004 tsunami, some US$ 14 billion was donated to countries in South East Asia, but auditors found it difficult to account for many of these funds. INTOSAI proposes that donors and recipients publish humanitarian aid as open data, independently audited and available on the internet.

 

INTOSAI’s Integrated Financial Accountability Framework (IFAF) will make it easier to assess the effectiveness of the aid. It will also reduce bureaucracy for aid disbursing organizations. The Framework has been welcomed by the World Bank as “a powerful mechanism to strengthen transparency and accountability”. The European Commission, a leading humanitarian aid donor, said it will follow IFAF and other INTOSAI standards and promote them. 

 

“Disaster victims want aid to be transparent and effective. So do taxpayers in donor countries. This initiative enables them to follow the money”, said Gijs de Vries, member of the European Court of Auditors and chairman of the INTOSAI working group that prepared the initiative.

 

More than 160 governments and organizations already publish information about development aid through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). INTOSAI’s Integrated Financial Accountability Framework has been designed to be included as a module within IATI.

 

The United Nations has estimated that from 1992 to 2011, disasters have killed 1.3 million people, affected 4.4 billion people and resulted in economic losses of USD 2 trillion. Governments react to disasters by donating assistance to the victims. The total humanitarian response in 2012 was USD17.9 billion, of which governments contributed USD12.9 billion.

 

The INTOSAI proposal is designed to help providers (donors and multilateral organisations involved in channelling funds) and recipients of humanitarian aid to identify, clarify and simplify the flow of aid between them. Each provider and recipient (‘stakeholder’) of humanitarian aid is invited to produce a table using readily available data showing the origin of the funds and to whom and on what they are paid out. These Integrated Financial Accountability Framework (IFAF) tables should be audited along with the other financial reports. When used by all stakeholders, this allows for the reconciliation of balances between stakeholders and the construction of an overall picture of the humanitarian aid flows from donating to receiving entities. Once audited, stakeholders make IFAF tables and their auditor statements available on the internet as open data. With the support of International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), the world’s leading aid transparency initiative, IFAF tables can be converted into machine-readable format and registered with them. The audited information will facilitate assessment of the effectiveness of aid. It will also reduce bureaucracy as aid recipients will no longer have to provide separate reports to each aid provider. The Framework has been tested by several UN organizations, the European Commission, a national government and NGOs.

 

IT’S NOT YOURS TO GIVE!

Ron Paul points out foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country. Barroso has the terrible habit of junketing foreign countries and distributing foreign aid, showing off he is a big shot, and being treated like a Messiah. It’s not yours to give!  Squandering the taxpayers’ hard-earned money must stop right now. Throwing money to misery brings more misery.  Davy Crockett says: It’s not yours to give! 

 

 

Squandering the taxpayers’ hard-earned money on Third World is ridiculous.  It’s not yours to give!  There are many reasons for the failure of foreign aid. Foreign aid has a widespread record of waste, fraud, and abuse.  Aid programs have built tennis courts in Rwanda, sent sewing machines to areas without electricity, and constructed hospitals in cities where a dozen similar facilities already sat half empty. 

 

Frequently, the aid is stolen by corrupt foreign leaders. The Agency for International Development admitted that much of the investment financed by AID has disappeared without a trace.  Most euros sent to Palestine end up in the secret offshore accounts of Palestinian kleptocrats.  The rest of it ends up in buying guns and supporting terrorists.  Arafat’s wife inherited one billion euros!   EU robs at VAT gunpoint a poor Greek woman who cannot feed her children, in order to support Hamas terrorists!   Davy Crockett says: It’s not yours to give! 

 

Even when aid reaches its intended beneficiaries, the results are often counterproductive. Just as domestic welfare prevents citizens from becoming self-sufficient, foreign aid keeps entire nations dependent. According to one internal AID audit long-term feeding programs have great potential for creating disincentives for food production.

 

Specific examples of counterproductive aid policies are easy to come by. For example, following a devastating earthquake in Guatemala, farmers trying to sell their surplus grain found the market flooded by the Food for Peace program. As a result, food aid stood in the way of development.  Aid to Somalia aggravated the country's famine, disrupted local agriculture, and turned nomadic tribesmen into relief junkies.

 

Moreover, foreign aid has often been used to prop up failing socialist economies, preventing countries from moving to free-market economic policies. Yet, an examination of world economies clearly shows that those countries with free markets experience the greatest economic prosperity.  Foreign aid is structurally bad because it undermines the incentive to take responsibility. The more aid a country receives, the less the government of that country has to answer to the people. 

 

We saw how unwise policies had an impact. Some policies that countries enacted with the hope of mitigating the crisis, such as export bans on rice, only made matters worse. They spurred panic buying and hoarding, which made rice unaffordable from East Asia to West Africa to the Caribbean. They also undermined countries’ broader food security by discouraging farmers from increasing production. Rising food prices can have a positive effect if they send a signal to farmers to grow and sell more. But that can only happen if there is transparency in markets and stocks so signals about prices and supply are accurately received.

 

Now, there are few easy answers to the problems facing rural farmers, the majority of whom are women around the world, or those problems facing hungry people everywhere. And many of the new investments in agricultural development will not be evident for years. But we cannot let the complexity inhibit us. We cannot let the timeline of change deter us. We can’t keep falling back on providing emergency aid just to put the bandaid on to keep moving forward to try to mitigate the damage insofar as possible. 

The Greek presidency of EU must be annulled, because the kleptocratic alliance of Pasok mafia and Nea Democratia mafia cannot be trusted.  The freakish government of Greece stole my computer, my files, and my life in cold blood!  Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com @Venitis