The thing about countries like this. When like boxes of canned goods get sent as relief. Canned goods that were gotten together by kindergarten students, mind you. They get flown into the country, and right when it hits the airport, the government sends military in to seize it, and the starving kids or dieing people never see a kernal of corn.
Same thing when you donate money. The government of that country doesnt allow the private organizations who manage those donations distribute the money to people, or let any goods bought with them reach them either. So sending any kind of relief to Uganda, Ethiopia, ect. is almost always futile..
It really depends on the aid organisation, country and structures we're talking about.
Some situations are absurd and, in many ways counter-productive, granted. In Darfur, for example, many people are dependent on UN food parcel drops to survive the ravages of civil war and the gross human rights violations that sweep through the area. The problem being that the UN purchases an awful lot of the crops and staples in those packages from the Sudanese government - the self same government that is pursuing a genocide in Darfur. Here humanitarian intentions are actually helping to fund the root of the problem by financial supporting the murderers in Khartoum.
It's not always like that though. You just need to find charities or aid groups who work independently on the ground or directly with the people affected. International aid is a mess, frankly, with so much being siphoned off into corrupt governments and put to uses it wasn't intended for, but there are still effective alternatives on a smaller scale. I won't be supporting the particular charity mentioned in the OP because I don't know enough about the background of it or how effective it will be, but I do have a couple of standing orders with certain charities that are extremely effective and do save lives. It is achievable and it would be a mistake to assume that all avenues of helping the most needy in this world are futile because many of them do a lot of good. You just have to careful where you send your money and not simply let your heartstrings be tugged into supporting a cause you can't be sure is effective because, pure as your intentions may be, so doing might actually exacerbate the problem or there may simply be more efficient alternatives.
Places like
Intelligent Giving (UK) and
Charity Navigator (US) are excellent starting points.
Forgive the double post but Darkfinn posted this as I was writing my above post and it's a quite different subject form my last one.
I hate to say it... but I do not support the people in Africa. Their situation may be deplorable... but noone has ever stopped to think that if every "family" didn't have 5-10 kids there wouldn't be so many mouths to feed.
There is such a thing as population control... wars and viruses like HIV and Malaria are just nature's way of making sure that things stay at a reasonable level. Every environment has a carrying capacity... and most inhabited places in Africa are way way over the limit already... thus why war, disease, and famine run rampant. By sending aid to these people we are only making conditions worse for future generations.
A) I take it, then, that if ever you contract a serious disease you shan't bother treating it? It's just nature's way of keeping the population down, after all. Let those sick moochers shuffle off this mortal coil - more room for the rest of us! Victims of natural disasters? Just nature's way of letting us stretch our legs out. Murders? Doing us all a favour, never mind the injustice and suffering.
I'm being facetious but you see my point. We have a moral duty to help those who are alive, whether their life is ideal for the problem of a growing world population or not. Either everybody has a right to life from the moment they are born or no one does and each life is of equal worth. The only way we can live in a civilised world is to follow that.
B) Most African countries are not over the limit in terms of capacity. Indeed, many of the worst afflicted are resource-rich; look at all the oil in Sudan. The problem is access, distribution and finances and often has it routes in not just internal corruption and mismanagement but also outside exploitation. Currently, some in this world have access to great excesses of wealth and goods and some have access to nothing but it is perfectly possible for a more equitable distribution to occur, which would see many countries become sustainable. If African countries had the money to buy drugs, food and hospitals, their people would survive and prosper - it is simply a case of bringing that money into those regions. There is nothing inherently unlivable about most of the continent.
C) It is absolutely in the interests of the world to see stability in the poor countries. Poverty breeds crime, terrorism and shrinks the global market for everyone. It is not simply a case of 'us' helping 'them' - we are interdependent in this globalised world and if you let Africa go to hell in a hand basket, the repercussions will be felt in the West.
Also, "noone has ever stopped to think" about the problems of birth control, contraception and population growth in Africa? Really? Of course they have, it's a huge part of the picture and, again, something that can be addressed, not just written off as inevitable.
Sending aid badly is a problem but sending aid to build ground-up, sustainable societies with the prospect of economic growth is not. That will improve the lives of future generations both in Africa and the West.
