Is itn't it ironic that Live8 did not aim to donate money; indeed the 20m (UK pounds) raised was spent on itself, organising the concerts. Why should 8 people be the ones responsible and blamed for the World's issues?
By declaring we don't want to raise money, we realise how ineffective aid has been, and will
continue to be, and remove the responsibility from our shoulders to place it on the shoulders of 8 people. We turn a movement that should be about life and death, into a movement about politics. We get the World's most famous musicians, worth tens of billions of dollars themselves, to not donate their money but to tell us how poor africa is.
Make Poverty History does not aim just to raise money but, honestly, raising money is the only goal it is likely to achieve. It won't make trade fair, or free. Yet despite not aiming to raise money, the concerts profiled the cases of people saved from Live Aid (from raising money), at the same time Geldof and many others all agree most of the money raised then was wasted, and he himself was too naive about what he hoped money could do, and where it would go.
It's ironic that as everyone says 'raise more aid for africa', most of the public perceive that aid won't make a difference and most acadacemics are still arguing over why 500 billion US dollars has made GDP go down on average in most impoverished countries. Noone has worked out how this aid can really make a difference on a grand scale.
Poor governance is a great excuse, yet those countries with the best governance are sometimes still the most poor. ODAs have now decided that local governments know how best to spend their aid money, and should not have countless conditions laid down. So they contribute 5% of a country's health budget...won't this increase corruption?
Sure, the most effective aid is that delivered from the bottom up. But why is live 8 asking for more money from the top down? why is live 8 asking for more aid, yet not know how to deliver it properly? There are papers arguing that the money in Ethipia resulting from Live Aid just kept a bad government in power for longer, pushing more into poverty.
Why is it respectful thinktanks (that are on UK national press and national prime-time TV) can issues papers entitled
'more aid, less growth'? So what 'they' should do, noone knows. What we are doing is removing responsibility from ourselves and placing it on
them. The politicians, the ones who are the slowest at doing anything and the onese elected to do what is best for their own country, not for the World. What does the UN do? Its run by same politicians trying to use the UN to make the best decision for themselves.
What should we do? Education and awareness is of course a crucial step -and for that live8 is commended, for raising the issue onto the 'average' person's agenda. Pressuring politicians is an admirable aim, but what they need to do is not something that can be done in days, weeks or even months. They need to do it. Spending a week telling them to do it won't work. Pressurising politicians through the media and public opinion os not how you achieve long-term policy. You achieve that by electing governments with those policies as their aims. What we need are politicians who really ask the public what we want, do we really want to sacrifice our own wellbeing for the poor (farmer's persepctive) or indeed believe the economists that argue its in our best interests (consumer's persepctive)?
I hope we do. I hope we can find the most effective political means to achieve determined, sustained, political change. I don't want to seem a pessimist, but we might make things worse..we might raise money and see it not achieve anything tangible; we might raise awareness for 1 week and then see everyone think the problem is solved and forget about it.
In the meantime, whilst we try to influence what 'they' should do, what should we do? On an individual level, we can make a concerted, immediate difference. For each of us, the answer is different. Some might run for political power, some might work for an NGO, some might write research papers, some might do business with the poor, others might continue to raise awareness. What will you do?
