What is Aid?

Aid (noun):

“help, typically of a practical nature.”

— Oxford English Dictionary

Challenging Perspectives:

Take a minute to think about what Aid looks like in your head.

Are you picturing it?

I imagine that you are thinking of an image of poor children in Sub- Saharan Africa being filmed surrounding their village’s new water source, or maybe people in a refugee camp being given blankets, possibly even a food bank in the UK?

These are all examples of Aid, in one way or another, but these images aren’t always the heartwarming stories of lives being changed that we would expect after donating to the causes-

And sometimes it is.

There is a lot of complexity to the morals of giving aid, and is difficult to distinguish what is the best path to take when giving.

6 Types of Aid:

  • 1. Bilateral Aid

    - (also known as Tied Aid) Donor Countries give money for receiving ones to spend on the Donor’s goods and services

  • 2. Multilateral Aid

    Donor Countries send money through a larger international organisation, e.g. World Bank and the United Nations.

  • 3. Emergency Aid

    Resources sent immediately to a country during a disaster, usually earthquakes, tsunamis etc.

  • 4. Long Term Aid

    Continuous support sent to a country to help improve quality of life, e.g. infrastructure grants, education programmes.

  • 5. Debt Abolition

    When a donor country forgives a debt owed to them by a lower income country.

  • 6. Non-Governmental Aid

    Charities providing emergency aid or a good/service specific to the needs of the country.

Where does the UK’s Aid go?

Lazell, M. (2024) The Nationalisation of UK Aid and Development : The End of Aid? /. Cham : Springer Nature Switzerland :. .

Lazell, M. (2024) The Nationalisation of UK Aid and Development : The End of Aid? Springer Nature Switzerland. Fig 5.2

UK Government (2022) Statistics on International Development: Final UK Aid Spend 2022. Figure 19

ODA= Official Development Assistance

DAC= Development Assistance Committee

The UK’s extensive Aid budget is not evenly dispersed in its disbursement, consistently favouring East Africa and South and Central Asia to send mostly multilateral aid to.

Post Covid-19 pandemic the budget has decreased significantly going from 0.7% of the Gross National Income to 0.5%. It isn’t expected to rise again until the financial pressures felt across the UK have lifted significantly.

The countries most affected by this are in West Africa (Congo’s Aid decreased 99% in the 2021-22 budget) and Western Asia (Pakistan faced a 73% decrease in UK funding, a loss of £344 Million).

Here are some current examples:

  • Comic Relief

    Red Nose Day, a benefit programme for Comic Relief is a staple of UK based Aid. Relying on celebrity appearances, merchandise, and public donor interest, it is a middle ground between government-endorsed Aid budgets and citizen donations, with the Government-owned BBC producing the broadcast and a multimillion-pound- raising appeal. Comic relief focuses on using their funds to allocate to smaller charities in the UK and across the world, with many testimonials from recipients of medical care and education in Africa.

    Red Nose Day 2025

  • Israel-Palestine Conflict

    Charities, like Medical Aid for Palestinians provide medical care for displaced and remaining Palestinians in the West Bank and Lebanon. Individuals have documented and fundraised by using social media as a platform because of the lack of support from many governments. Bisan Owda and her videos "I am Bisan from Gaza and I am still alive.” documented the horrors taking place in real time, appealing to many peoples humanity, and platforms like GoFundMe have been used to give to people in need. This is an example of non governmental aid, and is driven mainly by public donor interest.

    Medical Aid for Palestinians

  • United Nations World Food Programme

    The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) is the World’s largest humanitarian organisation, operating on an international level to eradicate hunger in line with Sustainable Development Goal 2- no hunger. “On any given day, WFP has 5,000 trucks, 20 ships and about 80 aircraft on the move, delivering emergency assistance, relief and rehabilitation, development aid and special operations to people affected by conflict, droughts, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, crop failures, other disasters [and conflicts]”-UNWFP. This is an example of both governmental aid and public donor interest driven aid as it is managed by the UN.

    UNWFP

  • Russia-Ukraine War

    The UK has pledged a total of £12.8 Billion as of February 2025 in support of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict. This includes both military and non military funding, as well as taking in 219,400 Ukrainians as refugees into the UK. Many citizens of the UK also fundraised individually when war broke out in 2022, but the majority of funding is multilateral, coming from government support.

    UK Government Guidance

  • WaterAid

    WaterAid is a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) that focuses on the provision of clean, safe drinking water and hygiene facilities to people in countries experiencing water scarcity. These countries are mainly of hotter climates and in remote locations, where intervention is needed beyond the government “support”. WaterAid, while a larger charity, subsists on donations alone and has many appeals throughout the years in countries across the world, like the UK, Australia and the USA. This is an example of non governmental aid and relies directly on public donor interest.

    WaterAid

The Dark Side of Aid.

The Dark Side of Aid.

Aid seems like the most selfless thing people can do, and in a lot of cases, thats where its roots lie.

Oxfam, one of the largest humanitarian aid charities in the UK was formed by a group of people wanting to help Grecian people cope with famine after World War 2. Noble intentions, positive outcomes. As they continued to expand, it seemed that the good work was endless, but so are the appeals.

There is a certain amount of trust placed in the hands of any NGO (non government organisation) by the public to delegate the resources into the right places and help as much as possible. The ineffectiveness of some Aid, governmental or otherwise may be disheartening to many and can cause problems in the dispersion.

The problem is when a charity prioritises creating demand for donations over accurately representing the realities of the people who, in our eyes, need aid. When appealing becomes about manipulation of peoples empathy instead of allowing the truth to be enough for people to help.

Think of these pictures and videos, calling for donations, appealing to our humanity: starving children, disease ridden water sources, women scavenging a landfill.

These pictures, they create a mental image of people in the “undeveloped world” people who live primitive and limited lives and will only be saved by your money and support. This creates an air of “us” and “them” which is uncomfortable to investigate. Looking at other countries situations from a place of wealth and pitying them for not living like us.

Historically this is interesting because the stunted economic development shown can often be attributed to colonialism, which, needless to say the UK was more than complicit in. So to turn on our heels and insert into the rebuilding by demanding donations from the people most powerless to stop it happening in the first place feels backhanded at best.

The marketing of NGOs to garner support reflects this othering mindset, by orchestrating the most emotive images and placing statistics and testimonials overlaying them is an effective way to gain attention from the public. By reinforcing these ideas, are we perpetuating a stereotype in the interest of “selling sadness” to donors?

Even if this tactic is in the interest of helping people, where is the line of morality in manipulating situations to gain the means to do so.