Does giving international aid sometimes cause more harm than good?

Does international aid always have a positive effect on a country, or can it cause more harm than good?

There is an old Chinese saying that would best sum up what I think about this question and this topic, and it goes like this: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” and here are some arguments for that opinion.

Firstly, when a poor country has to depend too much on aid of other countries and when that country finally starts to develop, improve and starts getting better in a lot of different ways those countries that have helped and gave aid to that country will stop giving aid. That process can be slow or very fast, depending on how much the poor country has approved, but either way if that poor country isn’t ready, they can collapse in a blink of an eye and be right where they started in the beginning or in an even worse situation than before. The example of a country being too dependent on aid is Afghanistan, which has largely survived on aid from 2001-2021, from Western countries, NATO and the World Bank. Because of that some development has happened, for example healthcare, education, infrastructure. But in 2021 when aid froze the result was catastrophic, their economy collapsed, there were banking failures and a massive poverty spike.

Secondly, when that poor country or should I say those in charge take aid and don’t use it to help the people of their country but take it for themselves. That can cause extreme tension in the country, which can lead to protests, attacks and even a civil war against the poor people and the people in charge that have taken all the money of aid for themselves. Those situations are even worse than just being poor, because it can lead to many more deaths, injuries, diseases and many more bad things. The example of a country where aid was taken by the wealthy and not used to help the rest of the population is South Sudan. Since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, billions in aid have gone in the country. But the political elites have redirected the aid money into private accounts, luxury homes etc. While the leaders were stealing money, the population was facing famine. And because of the publics anger, a civil war broke out between the civilians and the elite leaders in 2013 and in that civil war hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives.

Those who disagree with my opinion might think that international aid is always a good thing or at least the right thing to do, because we should all strive to help each other in whatever way we can. However, there are a couple of more reasons to prove my point. Firstly, striving to help one another is a way to go, but we should study and learn in what kind of ways we could help a certain country, because not all countries have the same problems and not all of their problems can be solved with international aid. Moreover, maybe for a certain country aid would be the right way to help them, but we should still research and evaluate in what kind of way our aid could affect them. And if we are not certain that aid would help them completely, or that there could be some problems because of aid, we should step in and guide them through the process and assist them in whatever way we can, so they can become the best possible country they could be, for their people and for the rest of the world.

In conclusion, I personally don’t think that international aid always has a positive effect on a poor country, but that doesn't have to be the reality we live in, and I would be so happy if we could just change it. The world would be so much better if we could truly help each country in a way that would be the best for them and their people. And maybe in the future we will be able to do just that by uniting all the countries so the stronger and more developed ones can help the weaker and poorer ones. Now, that would be a perfect world, and I hope we could come closer to it one day.