Entre la vida de los niños y niñas de la escuela la Urama

In the literature, aid is discussed in its designation as official development assistance (ODA) extended to developing or underdeveloped countries by a developed country. This type of aid differs from emergency humanitarian aid, extended by the same developed country for another country regardless of its economic status in times of

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natural or man-made disasters. Lim (1985) identifies three reasons why developed countries give aid to other countries. First, is the humanitarian reason that richer countries feel obligated to share their wealth with lesser developed countries (LDC) and with those who are economically poor. Second, external aid is given for the political interest of the donor, especially if the poor countries are strategically positioned to the former. Regional and geographical security for the donor country can be enhanced if the recipient country and population appreciate the spirit in which aid is given, which in the long term may secure lasting friendship and cooperation. Third, aid is given for the economic gain of the donor country itself with no real concerns for the first two reasons.

The provision of external assistance or external aid by the more affluent countries and former colonialists to their former colonies or dependencies became prevalent during the post World War II (WWII) period. At first, the extension of economic assistance was based primarily on humanitarian reasons as the former colonialists could not continue the same degree of assistance for their former colonies. Assistance in the form of technical expertise for agriculture, education, health, human resources personnel maybe provided through external aid. Aid is not only used in recipient countries but a major portion of it could also be used in the donor country by providing educational scholarships or technical training and work experience.

The social and psychological basis and impacts of aid and its contribution to the success or failure of an external aid programme is also an important perspective in the review of literature. Moghaddam (1990) stated that psychological processes such as motivation, attitudes, attributions and perceptions are central to the experience of participants in a developmental project. Allen (1992) declared that no model, hypothesis, or theory of social change is worth much if it simply omits most aspects of human behaviour and makes no reference to how people feel and think about aid and development. Similarly, Carr, McAuliffe, & MacLachlan (1998) stated aid cannot be completely understood without an acknowledgement of the human factors involved in any aid project. The impact of aid on the human capacity, resources and recipients is

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multifaceted and requires discussion. Such impacts include feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness when local experts are overlooked for expatriates who may lack necessary basic knowledge, cultures of local countries and needs (Puamau, 2005; Thaman, 1993). In projects where local counterparts are appointed, the exorbitant fees and pay packages paid to expatriate consultants tend to create negative and hostile feelings from the local counterparts (Nabobo, 2003). Such psychological influences have the potential to determine the success or failure of an aid project (Carr, et al., 1998).

The moral foundation of external aid underpins the obligation developed countries have in the transfer of aid to those in the economically poor or underdeveloped countries. Opeskin (1996) identified four principal approaches to transferring resources across countries. First, the giving of aid is morally wrong as it tends to foster a culture of dependency on the part of the recipient. Moreover, giving of aid tends to discourage self-reliance and self- determination on the part of the recipient country. Many economies of the Pacific island countries are heavily dependent on aid (Luteru & Teasdale, 1993), and some countries chose to remain protectorates and colonies of developed countries because their dependence on the developed countries for resources (Bray, 1993). The effects of external aid in the Pacific were identified long ago by Luteru (1985), when he declared that aid was like a drug of addiction; the more one partakes of it, the more dependent one becomes. Twenty years later, the Pacific island countries have become so dependent on external aid that most of their economies cannot survive without it. Second, Opeskin (1996) states that:

The transfer of resources to developing states is not a matter of moral obligation at all but a matter of charity or benevolence. We do good to give but are not entirely blameworthy if we fail to do so (p. 23).

On the contrary, while many of the aid projects appeared to be acts of charity or benevolence towards the education system in Fiji, the primary beneficiaries were the foreign consultants and the universities they came from. A number of educational projects externally funded in Fiji were noted by Baba (1985) and Puamau (2005) to have been executed with the primary objective of benefitting the donor’s home

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institutions. Third, humanity as the basis of an obligation to give in order to relieve misery, suffering or distress requires the donor to give to the needy without great sacrifice. The fourth basis of the transfer is related to some concepts of social justice such as the maleficence of aid whereby aid is transferred from developed countries to developing countries in a masked objective of assisting the poor and underprivileged populations. In actual fact according to Hancock (1991) aid in any form promotes dependence, stifles progress, abilities and skills of locals and promotes corruption and a wasteful behaviour of the recipients. Hancock continues that aid tends to impose foreign solutions to local problems without consideration of the local context. In this context, aid is considered as morally wrong and is expected to cause more harm than good. Such a view finds support in accusations that aid to poor countries does little to improve the economic status of the country and the welfare of the people since the major portion of aid is siphoned off to corrupt officials, privileged consultants and aid agencies’ staffs (Opeskin, 1996, p. 23). Aristotle’s distributive and corrective justice is closely related to notions of exploitation and colonisation, such as the 1974 United Nations’ Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order which called for the rights of peoples of states and countries under foreign occupation, apartheid or colonial domination to full compensation and restitution of their environment, their natural resources and their socio-cultural systems.