AID FOR AFRICA AS ONE OF THE ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT BY POLISH NGOs: LEGAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH

This article tackles the issue of aid for African states. Africa is one of the poorest continents, with many people living on the verge of poverty and suffering from malnutrition or famine. Hence, the humanitarian aid provided to the people of this continent is of particular importance. In Poland, such aid activities undertake entities defined in the Polish legal system as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs also conduct many other kinds of activities. The Act on public benefit and volunteer work is an example of creating legal mechanisms for the functioning of civil society in the legal system to provide international aid to those it needs. Assisting other societies is important for modern civil society the same as political or economic cooperations are. The role of NGOs operating in health protection, education, or entrepreneurship areas is crucially important. The authors of this paper discuss the issue of the said aid provided by selected Polish NGOs. The article aims to determine the extent and scope of the assistance to African countries provided by the NGOs, based on the respondents' experiences, whether such assistance is necessary, and what form it should take.

The Twenty Years’ War

The author, expert in British colonial history, explains the inevitability of the rout of the US/British-installed regime in Afghanistan in 2021 by the Taliban, in terms of the ways in which corruption, drug trafficking, pillage of international aid, war-lordism and non-payment of police and military personnel had been allowed to flourish over the past twenty years.

China, Africa and the International Aid System: A Challenge to (the Norms Underpinning) the Neoliberal World Order?

The China–Africa relationship has received increased interest over the past few decades as scholars critically examine the challenge that China, in its quest for a closer strategic partnership with Africa, poses to the norms governing the neoliberal world order (NLWO). One crucial aspect of this is international aid, and how Chinese aid to Africa differs from Western aid. This paper argues that Chinese aid reduces the power of traditional aid donors to shape the development route of African countries. This new development finance ultimately breaks the monopoly of Western aid to decide how poor countries in the global ‘South’ develop. In doing so, the Sino–African aid relationship is challenging the current world order as it offers African states the possibility to decouple (or delink) themselves from the global economy. By challenging assumed neoliberal economic development fundamentals, this relationship, if harnessed correctly by African leaders, can pose longer-term ideological questions around the very set of ideas that underpin development itself, while enabling African states the policy space needed to pursue more sustainable development from an Afro-centric perspective. It is this possibility to delink, due to changing ideological fundamentals concerning economic development, that is the challenge China and Africa pose to the NLWO.

The Roles of WHO in Handling Yemen Humanitarian Crisis during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yemen is noted to have the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. This condition is due to the civil war for the past six years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged as a health security threat. This research aims to analyse the WHO’s role in responding health crisis in Yemen. By using qualitative methods and literature review approach, this article uses Atlas.ti to collect data regarding WHO’s activity in Yemen throughout the pandemic analysed by the international organisation’s role concept according to Clive Archer. The health security concept is also used to explain the health situation in Yemen during the pandemic. This research found accordance between WHO’s activities with Clive Archer’s idea of roles, mainly on its role as an independent actor to combat the health crisis in Yemen. However, the three roles are intertwined. As WHO has emphasised the importance of international aid to overcome Yemen’s health emergency, the writer recommends strengthening global solidarity with Yemen’s authority to improve health within the country.

Mutual Learning in Development Cooperation: China and the West

This article looks at some of the characteristics of China’s foreign aid system and its development over the years. It discusses China’s foreign aid based on its own development experiences and its view of South–South development cooperation. Both the modalities and narratives of China’s international development cooperation need to be considered in order to better understand the complexities, strengths, and weaknesses of its aid system. As China’s international aid continues to grow and become more prominent, particularly in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, the article calls for a deeper understanding of China’s aid institutions and the need for greater cooperation and capacity building.

Applications of Biopower to NGO-Donor Partnerships for HIV Prevention in Jordan

NGOs serving marginalized groups in the developing world often lie under heavy donor influence, so they must toe the line between compliance with and resistance against their funders to best promote the well-being of their beneficiaries. Jordanian health NGOs have grappled with these power dynamics since the 1990s when donor countries began pouring money into Jordan's private sector as part of structural adjustment. I use ethnographic data from a Jordanian HIV prevention NGO to analyze how Foucault’s (1978) theory of biopower applies to international NGO-donor relationships. I argue that the international aid chain transforms NGO staff and the populations they serve into biological subjects expected to adhere to norms set by American and European donors. Biopower manifests differently depending on donor approaches to project implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

Crises and disruptions: Educational reflections, (re)imaginings, and (re)vitalization

COVID-19 has illuminated and exacerbated inequities, yet, as a crisis, it is not exceptional in its effect on education. We start this critical essay by situating the crisis in its historical, economic, and political contexts, illustrating how crisis and violence intersect as structural conditions of late modernity, capitalism, and their education systems. Situating the current crisis contextually lays the foundation to analyse how it has been interpreted through three sets of policy imaginaries, characterised by the notions of learning loss and building back better and by solutions primarily based on techno-education. These concepts reflect and are reflective of the international aid and development paradigm during the pandemic. Building on this analysis, we present, in the final section, an alternative radical vision that calls on a sociology of possibilities and pedagogies of hope that we see to be central to a new people-centred education imaginary to disrupt current inequalities and provide a new way of doing rather than a return to a business-as-usual approach in and through education.

Intersections between Pacific leadership and international development

<p>As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations has a long-held commitment to universal primary education for all children. Aid donors in wealthy nations have taken up this call and international development programmes have subsequently been set up in recipient countries where education is not available to everyone. Despite this, an estimated 1.6 million school-aged children in the Pacific region do not currently have access to formal primary schooling. As the timeframe for achieving the Millennium Development Goals draws to a close it is now clear that this aspiration will not be realised in many parts of the Pacific and a generation of children will grow up without a primary education. This raises questions about the design, delivery and management of international aid programmes in the education sector that are often led by people who are not members of the Pacific communities that they seek to assist. This research explores the frustrations felt by recipients of education development programmes in two nations in the Pacific, Tonga and Fiji focusing on the relationship between international development in the Pacific and leadership styles and cultures in the education sector. A key problem that was articulated by aid recipients is that international aid relationships in the Pacific continue to be dominated by the discourses and priorities of donor nations and important opportunities to develop grassroots and local forms of leadership that respond directly and knowledgeably to the rapidly changing needs of Pacific communities have yet to be fully realised. At the same time, new forms of Pacific leadership are emerging as global economies increasingly affect the lives of people living in remote communities and there is a need to respond to these changes because they have a direct impact on schooling for children who live in those areas. Donor nations have not contributed significantly to local leadership development in the education domain and this is an ongoing source of tension for many people because there are so few formally trained indigenous leaders in the education field. The lack of local leaders in this area has an impact of the level of buy-in that Pacific communities give to educational aid projects. This thesis argues that if donor nations are serious about providing universal primary education, leadership development needs to be supported more comprehensively.</p>

Intersections between Pacific leadership and international development

<p>As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations has a long-held commitment to universal primary education for all children. Aid donors in wealthy nations have taken up this call and international development programmes have subsequently been set up in recipient countries where education is not available to everyone. Despite this, an estimated 1.6 million school-aged children in the Pacific region do not currently have access to formal primary schooling. As the timeframe for achieving the Millennium Development Goals draws to a close it is now clear that this aspiration will not be realised in many parts of the Pacific and a generation of children will grow up without a primary education. This raises questions about the design, delivery and management of international aid programmes in the education sector that are often led by people who are not members of the Pacific communities that they seek to assist. This research explores the frustrations felt by recipients of education development programmes in two nations in the Pacific, Tonga and Fiji focusing on the relationship between international development in the Pacific and leadership styles and cultures in the education sector. A key problem that was articulated by aid recipients is that international aid relationships in the Pacific continue to be dominated by the discourses and priorities of donor nations and important opportunities to develop grassroots and local forms of leadership that respond directly and knowledgeably to the rapidly changing needs of Pacific communities have yet to be fully realised. At the same time, new forms of Pacific leadership are emerging as global economies increasingly affect the lives of people living in remote communities and there is a need to respond to these changes because they have a direct impact on schooling for children who live in those areas. Donor nations have not contributed significantly to local leadership development in the education domain and this is an ongoing source of tension for many people because there are so few formally trained indigenous leaders in the education field. The lack of local leaders in this area has an impact of the level of buy-in that Pacific communities give to educational aid projects. This thesis argues that if donor nations are serious about providing universal primary education, leadership development needs to be supported more comprehensively.</p>

The humanitarian alibi: an overview and a redefinition

This paper explores and illustrates the diverse manifestations of the phenomenon of the ‘humanitarian alibi’, drawing upon historical and contemporary cases of violent conflict in order to identify substitutionary phenomena by governments and international actors. It affirms the existence of substitution process where humanitarian aid intervention substitutes for the prevention and resolution of violent conflict and the protection of civilian populations. The paper argues for expanding the humanitarian alibi, however, to take into account how international aid intervention compensates for both the systemic neglect of conflict related crises and for the systemic harm that exacerbates and perpetuates these crises. It also challenges the suggestion that the humanitarian alibi phenomenon is the product of a bygone era, and finds that the use of aid as a substitute for peacemaking can co-exist alongside the use of aid as a direct component of international intervention.