Ecoblogi – A Blog by Daniel Elkama

This year, Finland is giving development aid of only about 0.36% of its GNI, or gross national income. The minimum proposed by the UN should be at least 0.7%. The fact that we are allowed to keep 99.64% and give only 0.36% to the world’s most vulnerable is pure greed and selfishness.

On average, a Finn donates only €40 a year to charity, and most of this goes to health and sports organizations. Development aid funding cannot be based on volunteerism. Finns’ voluntary donations to all charities per year are about 200 million, while, for example, development cooperation funds during the last government period were about 1.2 trillion a year. And that was far too little.

Now, development aid has been cut in many other countries as well, due to far-right governments. Hard values ​​and opposition to humanism and empathy have become fashionable. Trump has already cut 90% of USAID funding and intends to cut it off completely. Trump is a greedy despot who hates all “improving the world”, leftist, green, cooperation, solidarity and global. USAID is responsible for all US government development assistance. Since Trump cut USAID, it has been estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have already died as a result of Trump’s decision. This is truly sad. People are dying, people are suffering. I was in Uganda last summer volunteering and saw how sad the situation has become because of Trump. There are 2 million refugees in Uganda, for example, whose conditions are poor due to lack of resources. Trump’s decision has also closed thousands of schools.

When development assistance is cut, people die, children cannot go to school and the sick cannot receive treatment.

The goal of development aid is not economic growth in the recipient country (of course, that is also desirable), but rather the goal itself is that people have access to food, clean water, medicine and school supplies. We can save people from personal tragedy and suffering. The greatest are people who want to reduce suffering in the world. And we can certainly afford this. We could even increase development aid tenfold. It is wrong that we live in abundance and others have nothing. Even a distant neighbor is still a neighbor. We have a moral responsibility for the well-being of all people in the world.

John Rawls presented his social philosophical theory from the veil of ignorance (A Theory of Justice, 1971): if we were negotiating before the world was born what kind of society we would create and did not know our future part and role in it, what kind of world would we want. Every reasonable person would support well-being and a good society for everyone. Everyone would be guaranteed basic freedoms and differences in well-being would only be allowed if they also benefit the most vulnerable.

In the global village, the most vulnerable are refugees and poor people in developing countries. Our duty and humanitarian responsibility is to protect and help them. The whole world is common and humanity is one. The global demand affects everyone.

Climate change can turn large areas into deserts and up to a billion people in Africa and Asia can run out of water. When a billion people become refugees, they no longer ask permission to enter the country under the threat of death, but they come. We still have the possibility of preventing the worst refugee crisis by helping the countries of origin of the refugees. It is certain that climate change will cause the largest refugee flow in history, but we can still reduce it by, for example, a third.

I have myself helped refugees in Finland and Greece, and worked on development aid in Africa. I have taught children, taken footballs, school supplies and toys to refugees and orphans, planted trees and built a well. I have financed many families’ small businesses with ”start-up money”. I have give financial aid to renovate refugee houses and built a house for a poor family. Below are pictures from Uganda and Greece. We can make a lot of change as individuals, everyone can at least donate to charity. In Africa, every euro is a lot of money. And you can vote for political decision-makers who want to help the world’s poor and vulnerable. This is perhaps the most significant way to get help.

Daniel Elkama