What’s New May 2010

This page lists changes to this site for May 2010.

See below for other updates and to get notified of changes to the site.

Military aid can be controversial. Its stated aim is usually to help allies or poor countries fight terrorism, counter-insurgencies or to help fight drug wars.

The aid may be in the form of training, or even giving credits for foreign militaries to purchase weapons and equipment from the donor country.

But military aid may even be given to opposition groups to fight nations. This could be understandable if the opposition is a potential democratic force standing up against authoritarian rule.

However, as was especially seen during the Cold War, democratic nations (or potentially emerging democratic fledgling nations) often found themselves fighting foreign supported undemocratic forces because of geopolitical goals of the superpowers who tolerated or supported such regimes and dictatorships in order to achieve their own geopolitical aims.

This new page provides a brief overview of some of the issues.

This web site has provided a number of articles related to aid and they have been categorized under various other issues.

This new issue page simply brings them together and inter-relates some of those issues.

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) recently published new preliminary figures for aid in 2009.

It showed official development assistance (ODA) aid from wealthy governments had increased to just over $123 billion in 2009 (at constant 2008 prices). This is roughly 0.31% of GNI (Gross National Income) of the donor nations.

Net ODA in dollars: the US provided the most in dollar terms. As a percent of their GNI, Sweden provided the most

Yet, almost 40 years ago nations promised to reach 0.7% of their GNI. While each year the amount of aid falls quite short of that 0.7% target, the quality and effectiveness of that aid is often questionable, sometimes benefiting the donor more than the recipient due to the types of conditions attached to this aid.

This update includes a number of new and updated charts and graphs.

Almost 40 years ago, rich country governments agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official aid to poor countries for development assistance.

The average aid delivered each year has actually been between 0.2 to 0.4%. The shortfall has therefore accumulated to over $4 trillion dollars at 2008 prices, while total aid delivered in that same time frame has reached just under $3 trillion.

Year after year, the accumulated shortfall increases at almost a steady rate

This update includes updated charts and graphs that look into this further.

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