ABSTRACT: the history of development assistance is a tragic one, and it involves both government and opposition forces. A dossier published by Mario Signorino in 1987 highlights some of the episodes of mismanagement of development assistance. Nonetheless "the warning of the Nobel prizes of the 80's is always up-to-date..."

[Below is a comprehensive extract of the Manifesto of the Nobel Prizes, with an appeal on the most urgent priorities].

***

Extracts from the warning sounded by the expert Rafael Moreno on the "population bomb" which is about to explode. Despite the urgency of this and other warnings, a clear program to address the problems concerning "limits to development" is still lacking, whilst an idle discussion between the lay milieus and the Catholics is dragging on. "The debate is morally and ideally mediocre" from both sides. It is necessary instead to "refute the belief according to which people are poor because they have many children". The truth is that "people have a lot of children because they are poor". Birth control could therefore be a "cultural consequence" of development. Priority should be given to "the fight against starvation".

***

The Agency for "the United Nations Development Program" reports a budget reduction (- 15% compared with 1992). The financial support of the developed world is used "for peacekeeping operations": "the world is spending much more money to stifle armed conflicts than it spends to encourage development". Thus, the percentage of GDP allocated for development must be increased.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE - 8 December 1993)

The management of development assistance has deliberately not been entrusted to a politically responsible and clearly defined authority; on the contrary, a management based on discretionary extraordinary interventions has been preferred, entrusted to the representatives of party power. The negative consequences of a policy of this kind were predictable. In fact, they had been foreseen and immediately denounced. The history of development assistance is clear and tragic, even though there is no intention of reforming it or punishing the responsibilities, which concern not only the political government forces but the opposition as well, which has sacrificed a world-scale project to a mediocre political vision.

Parliament passed the law on development assistance in 1984. In 1987, Mario Signorino, currently the Chairman of the Italian section of the "Amici della Terra" (friends of the earth, transl.) published an explosive dossier on public development assistance. "After many years of disputes, public development aid largely remains a mystery", he wrote. "More than 460 billion lire have been allocated, the equivalent of 25% of the total allocation of 1900 billion; the record for the allocations is held by emergency aid: almost half of the emergency effort has been absorbed by food aid..."

The impact of this type of aid on developing countries has been negative. It has produced distorting and harmful effects, has fueled waste and corruption, encouraged consumption and irrational production. "An alarming list of abandoned machinery and plants - the document continued - "of the anti-economic culture, of the lobbyism that surrounds the aid mechanism, especially in Africa, could be drawn. It's rare for aid to reach the people who really need it; it does not represent a factor of development, it is simply a support of the anti-economic and anti-humanitarian policies". In the end the judiciary agreed with that dossier.

A mechanism that could have represented the engine of an international project to integrate the South of the world into the global "development" process has instead become a fraud Italian-style, and a source of shame for our country.

The warning of the Nobel prizes in the 80's is ever up-to-date. The disaster gets more and more serious every day. We are beginning to witness the first repercussions even in developed countries, where the inflow of misery from the Third and Fourth world, of immigrants from non-EC countries, of refugees, of the starving, the poor and the sick are cause nothing but fear and selfishness, while no statesman has the courage and the honesty to encourage a strong, imaginative and at the same time strict policy.

***

From the Manifesto-Warning of the Nobel prizes, June 1981.

A new political will and a new specific organization of this will are needed, which must be directly and clearly aimed at overcoming the causes of this tragedy and averting its effects. An adequate method and procedure must be chosen and carried out among the many existing or imaginable ones; these must be supported by a system of converging plans corresponding to the plurality of forces, responsibilities and consciences. The highest international authorities, the States, the populations that are too often kept in the dark about the complete feasibility of a policy based on life and safety, as some of the highest spiritual authorities have been advocating, must work together with precise, and adequate objectives in order to tackle and defeat, in its different seats, starvation that is advancing, sentencing a large part of human beings to death.

It is necessary to rebel against the false realism that induces resignation to fate, whilst it is a matter of political responsibility and "established disorder".

It is necessary to fight realistically in order to achieve what is realistically possible.

It is necessary to change those welfare-policies that secure a clean conscience and that do not rescue those whom they should help, and those cruel and fruitless illusions that sacrifice today's men in the name of a project of man and today's society in the name of a project of society. Citizens and political officials must choose and vote, at their respective levels, electoral or parliamentary, governmental or international, new laws, new budgets, new projects and new initiatives that will immediately rescue billions of human beings from malnutrition and under- development, and thousands of millions of people, for each generation, from starvation.

It is necessary for each and every person to give legal value to the rescue of the living, to non-extermination by omission or indifference. While the powerful of the earth are responsible for this, they are not the only ones.

***

"By the year 2000 there will be 6 billion men and women; this is the maximum allowed number the world can bear...resources are lessening and the population is increasing". This tragic situation is described by an expert, Rafael Moreno, once candidate (then defeated, we do not know to what extent his rivals were innocent) to the administration of the FAO, the U.N. body designed for agricultural (and food) problems. Mr. Moreno is the last of a series of pessimists who have sounded documented warnings about the risks the world is running as a result of what is referred to as the "population bomb". The real major "ecological" threat for humanity and its "environments", not just the ones in Africa, but also ours. Despite the urgency of these warnings, which have never been discredited since the formulations of Aurelio Peccei and the "Club of Rome", there is still no clearness or political will to address the problems of "development limits"; whilst a controversy is under way on the question of population between

the Catholic world, which fears (with some reason) a Malthusian culture characterized by eugenics or, even worse, by unrestricted bio-engineering, and the lay milieus. The Pope has openly spoken against UNICEF and the United Nations, where pressure from the U.S. (now that the need for an alliance with the Catholics in an anti-Soviet function no longer exists) seems to encourage a stricter population control. His statements have rekindled in the lay milieus (including the Italian ones) an aversion that dates back to the Gulf War, when the Pope made no mystery of his disagreement on the U.S. intervention in the Middle East. But these same lay milieus have said nothing and advanced no project for the tragedy of under-development and starvation. The controversy is ideally and morally mediocre. Inducing the poor of the world to have less children promising to provide them with contraceptives alone is an inadequate "message"; equally mediocre is trying to convince them to a chastity which contradicts their cultura

l tradition and that neglects any human tolerance.

The belief according to which the poor are poor because they have many children must be refuted; the truth is that poor people have many children because they are poor. Thus, a voluntary and responsible population control could be the cultural consequence of development, as the experience in Southern Italy shows. Only embarking on the way to development will produce responsibilization, awareness and a sensible population control. Priority must be given again to the struggle against starvation: a struggle that must be carried out at the international level. Failing this, in a few years' time no one will be capable of stopping the exodus of millions of starving people towards the irresponsible and blind West, neither laws nor an illiberal violence.

***

920 billion dollars is the amount of the resources invested for 1993 by the UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme. But the U.S. agency is not optimistic: the budget collected from donor countries has dropped by 15% compared to 1992. In practice, the UNDP will need to limits its activities to 75% of the 174 receiver countries. But no one seems to take heed of the warning sounded by UNDP administrator James Gustave Speth. Likewise, no one wanted to listen to his predecessor, William Draper, who had warned about the risks of a progressive decline of commitment on the question of development. What are the causes for this lack of interest? The main reasons is that the financial effort of most United Nations member states is absorbed by peace-keeping operations, whose number has risen tremendously over the last three years. The money is diverted on the blue helmets rather than on the volunteers and NGOs that concern themselves with bringing the human development of the depressed areas of the world to an a

cceptable level. Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear - Unicef executive director James Grant recently commented - that investing on development means investing on a safer and more stable world".

The irony - Grant says - lies in the fact that while the world is spending more than it invests on development to stifle armed conflicts, a greater attention to development and poverty would help prevent other wars from breaking out, thus saving millions of human lives and billions of dollars".

His opinion is confirmed by Mahbub Ul Haq, author of the 1993 Human Development Report, who bitterly comments on the short-sighted policy of the international community.

"If the two billion spent on the peacekeeping operation in Somalia had been spent for its social needs during the eighties, this situation would not have taken place". The spread of AIDS could also be checked if money had been invested on primary health care in the seventies and eighties.

How to solve the situation? First of all, regarding the financial problem we must prevent the strongest countries from pulling on their side. The only way out is increasing the percentage of GDP which the countries allocate for human, social and medical development.