Aid [nearly equal to] help.

DAVID SOGGE'S ARTICLE, "Aid [nearly equal to] Help" (Winter 2005-2006), exposed many little-known truths. In country after country in the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America citizens are forced to endure structural adjustment programs, free market policies and decentralized public sector systems, all in the name of moving these societies towards economic and social prosperity. Their own governments are preaching that these market-driven ideologies are surefire benefits that come with loan or grant programs from international aid agencies. The results of this aid have been far from beneficial. Structural adjustment has translated into massive layoffs and long-tenn unemployment for public sector workers.

Free market policies have killed domestic industries, flooding poor countries with both cheap and luxury imports. As job opportunities shrink, trained professionals in many sectors continue to leave these regions for better career opportunities in developed countries, contributing further to brain drain. A decentralized public sector has meant that--in the case of public health care in particular--many clinics and hospitals have been closed. As part of cost-sharing initiatives, citizens have to pay fees for health care where this was formerly flee. Some restrictions imposed by the Bush administration on US aid to reproductive health care programs in developing countries have outlawed beneficiary organizations from providing counseling about abortion or abortion services, even if these organizations provide these services with their own resources. The implications of these restrictions on national sovereignty are enough for the subject of another letter.

We need more discussion about this "aid with strings" issue. Policy planners and activists on both sides of this debate are often far removed from the experiences of people living with the consequences of foreign aid programs. It is these people who can develop the "critical masses" that Sogge asserts are required to move the new ideas needed to create an alternative economic and political doctrine.

I hope we hear more from the "beneficiaries" of foreign aid.

MARIAN STEWART TITUS

Bronx, New Fork

(The author is a CFFC board member)

IT IS DIFFICULT TO CHALLENGE David Sogge's central thesis that the effectiveness of bilateral aid in bringing about positive development outcomes has often been compromised, even negated, by the political agenda of donor governments.

However, I submit that it is not invariably the case. Clare Short, a former UK Secretary of State for International Development, took the bold step five years ago of untying British government aid. Such moves towards Sogge's slogan of "coherence and democratization" in Europe, where I am based, are further encouraged by the emergence of what one might call a "civil society conscience" concerning international development. A groundswell of public opinion has been able to exert significant pressure on governments in support of, for example, debt relief.

In addition to the development funding that flows directly from donor to recipient governments, substantial amounts of aid from official European sources goes to support nongovernmental organizations who work with poor and marginalized communities. My own organization, Interact Worldwide, with funding from the British government's Civil Society Challenge Fund, is currently collaborating with groups in Latin America to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights. I hope Sogge would agree that this is an area of work where the involvement of NGOS is appropriate and is enabling European aid funds to assist in the democratization process.

JUDY SKELTON Senior Program Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, Interact Worldwide London, UK