Conflict gold?

Well Well Well, haven't I been ignoring you. Ever so sorry, I have been in my home country and running around like a crazy person for the past couple of weeks.

Soooo... Let's treat the issue of Conflict Gold..
You may well have heard of conflict diamonds, but not of conflict gold. It's a similar principle with a different commodity.

In certain corrupted African countries, gold is being mined and the profit is used to fund their corrupt governments and conflicts.

 Hence, why it is called Conflict Gold. Now, this in principle means that it is banned from the markets. All gold has to have a registered point of origin, and if it is from these places it should not be used... However, with this come massive ethical issues. 

What are you on about?

Well... Often the gold mining is the only form of income for this remote areas, despite the workers only being paid a pittance. If you take away this income from the people, they won't have anything and they will be far worse off than if they mined the gold. 

They would not be able to afford food, clothes, school, transport etc. And thus the whole community would diminish back to a poorer state. And if you think about that, that isn't fair either, finally there is a way for these areas to flourish, at least a little bit, in developing countries.  When so much of what we do is about trying to help these developing countries, it doesn't seem right to take this away from the people living there.

And then you go back to the flipside:

The gold is funding conflicts, conflicts are bad and often have child soldiers involved in them. The governments are corrupt and totalitarian, so why on earth should we support a government that does such things? 

And that is exactly the question we face now, what matters more? Helping the people and their communities grow, or preventing the governments from funding their conflicts?

International Aid for Self Gain?

Sooo at uni we have to do a number of articles with a variety of titles, on of the first ones I think I have already posted, which is on the Palestine-Israel conflict. They're only allowed to be 4-5 hundred words long so I know there isn't a lot of depth in them.  They are meant to spark an interest and get people to research further for themselves. Below is one I did on international aid and I might post the redraft of the other article. If you're interested in any of this and would like to know where you can find more information, drop me a line and I'll help you as much as I can.

Discuss the extent to which developed countries use international aid for their own purposes.

International Aid was developed to aid those countries in need. One of the main goals that has been set for countries is to donate a minimum of 0.7% of GNI per year to stop hunger, but only a handful out of 22 countries that pledged to do so in the UN. 6 of those who have not met their pledge have not even started a schedule to work towards, including the US.

So if these countries are so reluctant to meet this pledge what is the point of International Aid at all?

Firstly, there is a difference between developmental and humanitarian aid. Humanitarian focusses mainly on instant relief from problems caused by natural disasters and conflict; whereas Developmental aid focusses on tackling the long term roots of the problems that cause poverty and hunger by prolonged donations from developed countries.

Secondly, on a very simplified basis International Aid works in a similar manner to the way that banks loan money to people and companies. One party lends to another with an interest rate, allowing for a greater return on the money lent. However, this would only lead the countries into greater debt eventually as they are lending from one country to pay back the other. Is it ethical to continue to ‘aid‘ when in the long term it doesn’t benefit the country you’re helping?

Thirdly, if a country puts a lot of aid into a particular nation then there is the possibility of political influence and personal gain. By aiding developing countries the western world is able to  build up ties with countries that have great oil supplies or tactical positioning on the globe. Additionally, there may also be imperialistic legacies that nations wish to be upheld - if a nation continues to assert influence within these regions then part of the culture that was brought initially may sustain for longer.

One of the great issues with aid remains the countries that gain it. Often developing countries have fledgling democracies - if that - and governments are corrupt, bringing with it the ethical issue that the support is going to a corrupt, often totalitarian rulership with little or no regard for Human Rights - is that justified?

According to many countries and organisations it is - they manage to get a lot of aid to the people in need and the governments that give eventually get a return out of their investment. But it is unclear as to whether the return is greater than the good that the aid will do in the long term, begging for the question: “Does International Aid really aid at all?”

Death of Millions vs Death of One?

Every day a lot of people die in the world, but not often these are people that we know about. Sometimes they die of horrible diseases, other times merely of old age - but what do their deaths really mean for this world?
A lot of people criticise the current community for mourning over the death of individuals when daily millions of people die of easily resolved issues in the developing world. The most recent example of this is Whitney Houston.

Each time after one of these momentous deaths of a public figure there are memes everywhere commenting on how 1 person dies and million cry but when millions die no one cries.  Something which I think to a certain extent is quite disrespectful.

Now before you get into an angry fit of rage because of my comment, this is how I mean it:
The reason why people are more upset when a famous person dies is because they have been involved in that persons life, often for a long time, or have been massively touched by it. When the millions of people die in the developing world humanity isn't as touched by it because it is far away and they have no real personal bond with those who have passed away.

(No I'm not saying that I agree with that. Bear with me for a moment longer please!)

Moreover, we are constantly being bombarded by images of starving children on tv, in magazines, newspapers etc. What this has done, rather than make us more aware, is it has apparently made us more desensitised. People ignore the adverts or even get annoyed when they come on, they think 'whatever' when they see the images.
There are also people who have the belief of 'why would I care about those people when our own countries have so many living below the poverty line?!'

Additionally, a lot of celebrities have brough a lot of awareness to the world regarding various important issues such as sexuality, poverty, education, drugs etc.
And ultimately a celebrity is still a human being - one with a family, friends - who will be missed after their passing. To say they don't matter is what I find disrespectful.

What seems to be happening in today's western society is a conflict of interests. There are people in our own modern, developed, seemingly wealthy countries that do not have the ability to get themselves above the poverty line. There are those that are homeless, those that have no money for food and those who have terrible diseases that they'll never recover from because the cures have not been found.
And then there are the people who live thousands of miles away - millions without enough food, no homes, no money and dying of diseases that we have long eradicated in our societies.

So which side is more important?