There is no doubt that overseas aid plays a major role in alleviating global poverty.

Examples of success include:

• Every dollar invested in HIV/AIDS programs has a $40 return and increased access to anti-retro viral drugs has saved between 250,000 and 300,000 lives in recent years.
• Overseas aid has also played a major role in global initiatives such as the eradication of small pox.
• Global vaccination coverage for diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, tetanus and yellow fever has also saved millions of people each year with coverage increasing from five per cent in the 1970s to currently more than 70 per cent.

Our aid should be focused on reducing poverty, and bringing hope and opportunity to poor communities. If Australia adopted a greater focus on health and education in our region we could achieve:

• an average decrease of more than 150,000 child deaths per year by 2015;
• an average decrease of 4,800 maternal deaths a year by 2015;
• at least 16,000 fewer AIDS deaths each year;
• an average of 32,000 less deaths from tuberculosis each year by 2015;
• 20 million more people with access to safe drinking water
• about 110,000 more children receiving basic education

Our aid should be focused on the poorest countries in our region. Despite the fact that two-thirds of the world’s poor live in Asia, more than 50 per cent of Australia’s country-allocated aid is directed towards the Pacific, where only 0.4 per cent of the region’s poor live.

Throughout the developing world eight million lives could be saved annually if basic healthcare was available.

Just $10 billion a year in aid would provide a quality primary school education for every child in the world. The world spends that amount on weapons and soldiers every three days. Young people who have completed primary education are less than half as likely to contract HIV/AIDS.

An immediate annual injection of at least $50 billion is needed to allow countries to make progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. As much as $94 billion extra may be required if countries are to meet the targets in full. Without proper funding, 30,000 children will continue to die needlessly every day from causes associated with extreme poverty.

Which countries have honoured their foreign aid commitments or have established a binding timetable to do so by 2015? The list includes Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain and Belgium.

Australia is not on this list. Although Australian aid is growing in volume, in historical terms it is not keeping pace with the increases in Australian wealth. We are richer as a nation than ever before, but we give a smaller proportion of our national wealth than we did, for instance in 1984, when over 0.47% of our Gross National Income was used for development assistance.

In 2005 the Australian Government committed to increasing the amount of aid we give to $4 billion by 2010 (which will only be around 0.35% of our Gross National Income). However, this figure is still significantly lower than that pledged by other wealthy nations, which have committed to give 0.5 per cent of GNI by the end of the decade in line with meeting a 0.7 per cent target by 2015.

Corruption is a serious and widespread problem in many developing countries – it reduces economic development and minimises domestic resources, diverts aid and hurts the poor most. The causes of corruption are complex and there is no “one size fits all” approach to dealing with corruption.

However, concerns about corruption should not stop the fight against poverty. Corruption should change how we give our aid, it shouldn’t determine whether we give aid.

Because corruption is both a cause and effect of poverty, giving aid to improve health, education and public administration will help to reduce corruption. As people become healthier, better educated, and more empowered to address their own community’s issues, they will be better able to hold their own governments to account and work to reduce corruption. Make Poverty History’s partner campaigns in developing countries (through the Global Call to Action Against Poverty) are united in working to hold governments accountable for delivering basic services and protecting the human rights of the poor.

Suspending aid would only increase the suffering of the poor and increase the risks of global problems such as infectious diseases and terrorism impacting on Australia.

Even in corrupt environments, aid has contributed to the eradication of smallpox and the virtual elimination of polio, while debt relief has boosted spending on education and health.

Maura Hassan lives in Tabata, a poor area of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Although she has water pipes connected to her home, she is unable to get any water through them. Since the water supply to the area has been privatised, she has been receiving bills for water she hasn’t used. Her last bill was for $400.

Maura is forced to buy water from a well dug by a private individual. Although this is much more expensive than piped water and she has no guarantee that it is safe to drink, she has no choice since the water connection to her house doesn’t work. Other local families can’t afford to buy any kind of water and are forced to use the local shallow wells. People who bathe in them start to itch and those who drink from them need expensive medicines to treat their subsequent illnesses.

Resources from Make Poverty History members:

AID/WATCH