Battleangel

The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway lead the way in the annual Center for Global Development (CGD) report on the efforts to improve the lot of developing nations.

The CGD’s measures a broad number of factors for the index, rather than merely the amount of aid countries provide.

It also examines several policy areas - such as trade investment migration and environment - while aid is measured not only in terms of quantity but as a share of its income and the quality of aid given.

About the U.S. specifically:

Meanwhile, despite the US giving the largest amount of aid that donation was the smallest in relation to the size of its economy.

The CGD added that a lot of the money was also contingent on the purchase of US goods, and so was in fact a “backdoor subsidy for American interests”.

America was also criticised for its handling of aid in Iraq with the CGD claiming that 90 cents in every dollar was lost to violence and corruption.

The idea of aid contingency is of course part of the “phantom aid” aspect of development assistance. Something that by and large is perpetrated by the U.S. and its fellow G8 brethren. Of course, for the index to be truly competent, it should really also reflect the cost of foreign interventions, effectively subtracting the losses of lives and infrastructure from the nation score. Though for now, indexes like the CGD offer a much welcomed change of perspective to wash away the stale and hegemonic views championed by those that are naturally exposed through this shifting way of looking at the relationship between rich and poor. The work of the CGD may not be groundbreaking as such, but there are still those that are kicking and screaming, manipulating public perception, doing their very best to cover up the truth and their own part in the ongoing crimes against the developing world.

Several nations were also rightly penalized for willingly selling arms to undemocratic governments (despite wasting a considerable amount of hot air deriding the same type of undemocratic regimes).