2008-12-22/More Danes want cuts in foreign development aid
By Michael de Laine, 22nd December 2008
More Danes want development aid cut as they do not believe it works. The minister in charge of foreign development welcomes the debate.
Danes are less willing to see taxpayers’ money used on foreign development aid, according to a new opinion poll published in the trade union movement’s weekly newsletter, Ugebrevet A4, today.
Whereas 16% of Danes polled in 2005 said development aid to Africa, Asia and Latin America should be cut, this number has risen to 30% in the latest poll.
“The figures are a definite wink to the government that it must be far better at informing Danes about development aid and getting them involved in it,” said Vagn Berthelsen, secretary-general of IBIS, a humanitarian organisation. “I believe that many Danes see a great gap between the woman or the child that is the direct beneficiary of the aid and all the stories about fraud and bad administration.”
The present government has cut the grants used for information about developing countries from DKr 66.1 million in 203 to DKr 40.3 million in 2007, Ugebrevet A4 said.
“The increasingly negative attitude towards aid to developing countries is a reflection that the government has cut heavily in the money for information about developing countries, so fewer Danes know what development aid really is and what the money is spent on,” said Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats’ spokesman on development aid. “Sweden uses twice as much per capita as Denmark on information about developing countries. Many Danes simply don’t know what the money is used on.”
The Ugebrevet A4 poll also shows that 61% of Danes have doubts about whether the aid actually helps people out of the slough of poverty. And every other person who wants the aid cut says ‘I don’t believe that public development aid works.’
“The broad skepticism is very bad as I don’t want Danes to pay taxes to anything they see no value in,” said Ulla Tørnæs, the minister in charge of foreign development. “But the critical attitude is also good, because it is about time that we had a debate about development aid with more nuances. For too many years, the aid organization Danida and others have helped paint too rosy a picture of development aid as a miracle cure and exclusively beneficial for recipient countries. That’s led to the erroneous conclusion that more development aid is better.”