"Development" can be harmful, but still...

Development is a problematic field. It is originated to colonial strategies, so development workers can actually harm people who live in so called "developing countries." So should all the development workers quit working for development in developing countries?

It is the reality that the works for development in "developing countries" benefits donor countries than receiving countries. Besides, International aid is a good money making business. With the name of ODA spending, donor countries can expand their market share. Indeed, development workers can "advise" to promote certain products which benefits their countries or companies. Even when they "donate" money, receiving countries have to pay back the debt in the future anyway with interests. Despite the all the fruits that donor countries can gain, International aid often sounds good, and they can have better international reputation.

Donor countries also control the politics in receivers' countries. Development workers go to the countries to spread liberty, democratization, and gender equality. With those "honourable" missions, development workers actually can promote militarization, terrorism, or any armed forces. So by manipulating politics in "developing countries," donor countries are making profits.

NGOs and NPOs are often not related to one country's interests; however, development workers in NGOs and NPOs are not exception of doing harm to people in "developing countries." One significant and obvious harm is advertisement. In advertisement, NGOs and NPOs' workers often illustrate that "(all the ) Africans" are poor, helpless, and they need OUR HELP. Even when they avoid such stereotyped images, NGOs and NPOs picture people in "developing countries" as innocent, pure, nature friendly people. Both stereotyped images on advertisement are problematic in that they lead to Culture Talk, imposing systems and values on people, and etc etc etc.

I recently read an essay that criticize development workers on the point that how they are motivated to work in the filed. According to the essay, major motivations are; 1. they want to help and rescue people. 2. they want to work where they have much privilege. 3. they want to travel and know new culture. 4. they want to have challenging environment. I like the part that the author includes not only people who blindly believe that they are doing "good," but also people who realize the problematic elements of development and admit the self-centered motivations for their work. The article argues many interesting issues in various fields, so it is hard to summarize all the points here. But I think that main points the author criticizes are the fact that development workers go to "developing countries" because they arrogantly want to be "good," and/or they want benefits for themselves rather than for people in "developing countries."

So should all the development workers should stop working for development?

No, I do not think so.

If I only think of ideal solutions, we should change the social structure that causes poverty on certain people instead of having International aid or NGO and NPO support. May be capitalism, may be trade system. May be the way to capture histories. May be military situations. Those issues create the poverty and make people suffer. So rather than giving food and try local movements, we should change the ulternative causes of the poverty in order to have sustainable social stability.

But such approach is only the ideal and not practical. Even if we want to quit capitalism, we do not know an alternative way to manage the world economy. Even if we want to give up all the military forces from all the countries, we cannot abandon them at this moment. In the end, we are the human creatures who cannot use any magic to make a great change.

That is why I believe that some people still need to work on peace building in "developing countries." I know that peace, development, progress, better life, etc are very tricky words that we have to consider what they mean twice. But if there is an element that may threaten human life, why not working to take the element out?

Change is such a big word. For make a better change for the people living there, we have to make approaches with not only governments, but also citizens. And here is what NGOs and NPOs can contribute in.

When I read an interview article about the person working in Disarmament Demobilization and Reconciliation, those words of him hit my heart; it is true that spread democracy is merely the Western agony. But reality is that, without such Western benefits, no one wants to give money for projects. And at the field where we have to do things, people giving money are the top of hierarchy of course.

So what I think of development workers are that they have to know all the critics, issues, paradox, and everything in development work, and then they should be the negotiators between all the problematic donors' ideas and the real need of the people who themselves wish some outside supports. In other words, I think that development workers can alter a bit of negative impact from the donor government to better effects on the people. Indeed, Japanese government wants ODA spending in African countries just because the government wants their votes in the U.N. , and development workers can even use the selfish motivation of the government to persuade the government to have support programs in the countries.

International aid and support are already out there and hard to be withdrew now. When I went to Nepal, my friend there told me that NGO and NPO are the popular employers since they pay good salary. And he said that he welcomes outside supports as long as the workers do work for the benefits of the local people. So I think it is true that development workers can harm local people with their selfish-motivations. Still I believe that there is something, even so small things, that development workers have potential to do "good" for the people.

S.M.