The largest share of aid money is not used for treatments or activities in field - in other words does not arrive with those in need. It disappears by wasteful use of resources, massive overheads, corruption and inefficiencies of the participants along the road the money travels from donors to e.g. AIDS patients in country.
The proliferation of such waste has by now reached levels that even former president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates independently in their speeches at the 2010 AIDS conference in Vienna called to focus on efficiency and for reducing excessive bureaucracy, meetings, trips and reports.
On top of that comes dramatic mismanagement and not too few cases of profiteering by those entrusted by the donors with distributing the funds.
You are right that since a few years military assistance e.a. are now also included within so-called Official Development Aid (ODA) budgets to make the overall amounts look better.
Currently large parts of that "business" are as opaque as the international drugs or arms trade. In general the whole thing is full of special interest groups from geo-politics to business to power to organized crime. As a result from US$1,000 tax payers' funds often only US$100-200 arrive with the (officially) intended use.
What really is needed in that "industry" is transparency, accountability, proper management and donors like Bill Gates that go to quite some efforts to assure that the monies actually arrive with those in need.
The proliferation of such waste has by now reached levels that even former president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates independently in their speeches at the 2010 AIDS conference in Vienna called to focus on efficiency and for reducing excessive bureaucracy, meetings, trips and reports.
On top of that comes dramatic mismanagement and not too few cases of profiteering by those entrusted by the donors with distributing the funds.
You are right that since a few years military assistance e.a. are now also included within so-called Official Development Aid (ODA) budgets to make the overall amounts look better.
Currently large parts of that "business" are as opaque as the international drugs or arms trade. In general the whole thing is full of special interest groups from geo-politics to business to power to organized crime. As a result from US$1,000 tax payers' funds often only US$100-200 arrive with the (officially) intended use.
What really is needed in that "industry" is transparency, accountability, proper management and donors like Bill Gates that go to quite some efforts to assure that the monies actually arrive with those in need.