From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM AIDIt is noteworthy that the major INGOs are based in the same countriesthat won the Second World War and which came to dominate theinstitutions of global governance: the USA, Britain, and France.A second tier is made up of INGOs based in other former colonialpowers (the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan), with asmattering from rich countries with less historical baggage in thedeveloping world (Canada, Australia, New Zealand).The major agencies underwent a huge expansion in the 1980s,when they began attracting government funding and when the publicbegan to donate massively in response to humanitarian disasters,most notably the Ethiopian famine early in that decade. With growthcame scale, professionalism, co-ordination, and an increasing diversificationof activities.Total government support to INGOs concerned with developmentissues totalled an estimated $379m in 2003, a tiny fraction of overallaid, but nearly three times the amount given a decade earlier.Meanwhile, national NGOs operating in their own territories receivedsome four times that amount. 126 Total revenues from all sources,including public donations, to development NGOs are estimated atabout $12bn a year, just over one-tenth of the volume of officialgovernment aid. 127THE QUANTITY OF AIDIn a reflection of the geopolitical motivation for much aid, volumesdeclined precipitously when the Cold War ended, falling to a low of$58bn in 2000. However, the millennium marked an apparent turnaround,with global aid reaching $107bn in 2005, and promises that itwould increase even further. 128 Renewed faith in aid is due partly tocareful advocacy at the UN and among publics in donor countries,and partly to new concerns about failed states and their relationship toterrorism. However, some dubious accounting practices have inflatedthe figures. Debt cancellation for Iraq, which was clearly driven moreby geopolitical than by developmental concerns, single-handedlyboosted the aid figure by $12.2bn in 2005. 129 Moreover, total aid fellback to $104bn in 2006 (again inflated by Iraq) 130 and, barring miracles,was set to fall further in 2007, leaving a mountain to climb to meet thepromises made at the Gleneagles Summit in Scotland in 2005.357