Development Cooperation Seen Through a Moral Lens.
Addres sby Barbara Baudot to Symposium on Social Development, UN 2002
Mr. Chairman,
The Triglav Circle offers a view of development cooperation through a moral lens.
This lens is multi-faceted offering a three dimensional perspective: the first lies on the plane of action; the second in the inner motivations that drive donors and recipients; and the third on the philosophical and theoretical plane—to what end this development cooperation.
The great British literary and religious thinker, CS Lewis considered moral values, markers with guidance for the global society— and serving to prevent its breakdown, which happens in three ways. First: when countries, institutions or groups of individuals collide with one another. Second: when things are awry in the integrity of the actors, and Third: when there is no cement of higher purpose for life to guide the course of development. It follows that to prevent breakdowns in any village, global, or otherwise:
- there must be compassion, fair play, and harmony between the actors—individual countries and institutions,
- the motivations of each party must be selflessly concerned with the common good, and
- there must be a meaningful vision of a developed society to inspire the development project.
This approach offers promising although, unorthodox ideas for improving the development cooperation. The ideas are not original, they are common sense, but they are not part of the liberal or realist approaches to cooperation, which prevail today. Yet such idealism might be heeded to enrich a discourse that is too often sterile and confounded by frustration for lack of positive results.
Now, permit me to offer an idealist’s view to enrich the discourse on development cooperation. This perspective has the protection of the human spirit as its objective.
- The promotion of fair play and harmony between countries:
Few but the most convinced social Darwinist would argue that the rich should not lend a hand to his poor neighbor. Such moral action is a mainstay of all the great religions and philosophies known to mankind.
In actual fact there is considerable solidarity between the fortunate and less fortunate in times of crisis including civil war, famine, epidemics and natural disaster. There is much less willingness on the part of many, more fortunate societies, to reach out to the less fortunate as a matter of course, out of a natural sense of responsibility for the sake of harmony in the planetary village. And, all too often when help is proffered under regular circumstances, the donors fail to listen, to empathize, and to sympathize with the needs of the recipients, to be appreciative of their cultures, their innate and inherent intelligence, their values and their aspiration.
Ethnocentrism is all too often at the helm—imposing foreign cultural institutions on recipients and creating competitive obstacles to aspirations of local entrepreneurs. Bullying, twisting, and graft conveyed through the process of patron-client type negotiations between representatives of public donor/lenders or private companies and the needy officials of the recipient countries are also too frequent.
Rather than promote fair play and harmony, such actions lead to the social breakdowns, dislocations, and more of the very poverty cooperation was intended to overcome.
B Dealing with the integrity of the actors: the issues of motivation and commitment:
This is a less obvious question. The act of sharing wealth, knowledge, and technology with the poor is insufficient to promote a harmonious society of countries, no matter how much is tendered, if the principle motivations of the actors are tainted with negative bias and excessive self-interest. Too often cooperation is tainted by assumptions such as ‘success is measurable in monetary terms, dignity depends on material affluence, and the beliefs and institutions of the rich western countries are superior because they are based on reason.’ The beliefs of the poor result from innumerable mindless events or causes such as illiteracy, ignorance, superstition and empty rituals and are largely void of reason. This bias can spell failure from the beginning.
Today, a considerable portion of development assistance, in particular bilateral cooperation, is based on calculations of return on the investment, national security gains, or just good press. While there is less of a tendency to self interest expressed in tied aid, today a more common motivation is to ensure that capitalistic economic and social relations are fairly securely embedded across the world. This policy leads to greater dependency of recipient countries on the competitive world market where few have demonstrated their fair chance to make meaningful gains. Social disequilibria, widespread despondency, cynicism, even hatred for patronizing donors who push development assistance packaged with political institutional changes, alien to the communal societies and cultures of many developing countries often result. Most devastating are the breakdowns in the national social order since these western-modeled democratic political institutions are not immune to the multiple defects of developing societies.
The motivations of the receivers are not always pristine. Patron-clientalism and the desire to maintain and extend personal power and wealth often leads to misdirected use of money.
It should not be impossible to incorporate the following
—Prudence, the application of wisdom, intelligence and common sense. It means taking the trouble to look beyond numbers and percentages to see what cooperation is leading to and what will come of it in a noble sense. What is the sense of telling poor countries how they should proceed according to international standards if they are in such a fragile and run down state, that they cannot absorb the shocks demanded to satisfy the donors.
—Justice that embraces honesty, transparency in all dealings, fairness, and keeping promises. One cannot make people good by law and without good people you cannot have a good society no matter how much money is given and taken.
–Charity and grace. In the economic world, pure love for humankind and nature may seem to be an unlikely stimulus for financing development, but as long as development financing remains an economic calculation and not a heart felt, moral responsibility the machinery may breakdown. With love at the helm there is mutual understanding and sympathy of needs and possibilities. There is mutual respect and honor. The machinery will respond appropriately.
C The dimension of purpose.
Even if the world society were in order, the parts in harmony with one another and principled within themselves, there is still the need for purpose. One of the darkest sides of western modernity, the paradigm for the rest of the world, is the perception that the only purpose of development is more gross national product: the process is the end in itself. The commercial relationships this purpose generates has penetrated every nook and cranny of social intercourse, chilling social relationships and weakening families, communities.
In the every day lives in modern societies, people are occupied by their economic tasks and their bodily needs and spend little time reflecting on the path to human happiness and satisfaction. In this mental vacuum, the forces of the market entice the world into consumerism—to seek fulfillment in the ownership of things. In such soft pleasure seeking democracies people would seem to have no causes worth dying for and nothing of much meaning to live for. John Kenneth Galbraith recently said “Of life there is only one; its goal cannot necessarily be the commitment of those scarce and terminal days to an assembly line or to a computer.”
Yet societies may escape this mass mesmeric vision of human life by seeking purpose in full realization of each individuals particular gifts and their place in the infinite scheme of possibilities offered by the universe. The purpose must be higher than human capacity to reach yet real enough to strive for it. Economics should not be the guide and the test; instead it must be in the realm of the diverse enjoyments of life and service to the well being of human kind. To be one with the stars and to be at peace with the rose without the need to dissect its beauty may be the secret of it all. In this scheme of things economic and social progress becomes a very useful tool and assistance towards this goal impelled by compassion and the desire to share in the adventure of life with a multiplicity of ideas.
There is a purpose for living, which is profoundly satisfying worth achieving for the genuine peace and security it brings. This purpose begins in the forming, nurturing and flourishing of harmonious and mutually respectful relationships between individuals and between individuals and institutions at all levels—be they families, communities, nations, or the planet.
In aspiring to such a goal, it should be possible for international cooperation to reduce meaningfully the glaring inequalities and disparities that exist between the developing and the developed worlds. It should be possible to do this and at the same time to elaborate together a vision of development and social progress that best inspires and brings to fore the nobility in all of human nature.
Inspired by lecture of CS Lewis, “The Three Parts of Morality” in his book Mere Christianity 69-75. Published Harper Collins edition 2001.