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Is this a good way to spend UK overseas aid?

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Post by Red Cat Woman Mon May 14, 2012 6:42 am

I was watch TV this morning and flicking though News channels and found this on Russian TV news. its a story that shocked me a great deal. its was about UK aid being used for forced female and Male forcibly sterilised with money given to India as Aid money. Do you believe this is a outrage and should stop? as this seems to be birth control of the poor and not the Rich?

Tens of millions of pounds in aid from the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised women and men in India.

Poor men and women have been “forced, duped and drugged” into the sterilisations, which are often carried out in unsafe and unhygienic conditions.
DfID said last year: “We condemn forced sterilisation and have taken steps to ensure that not a penny of UK aid could support it. The UK does not fund sterilisation centres anywhere.”

However, DfID has apparently overlooked concerns that aid money may be spent on stripping men and women of their reproductive rights and their safety: £166 million was earmarked for population control programmes in India.
Many women have died as a result of botched operations; others have suffered miscarriages, and yet more have been left bleeding and in pain without post-operative care.
Health rights activist Devika Biswas brought a Public Interest Litigation before India’s supreme court earlier this month, saying that “inhuman sterilisations, particularly in rural areas, continue with reckless disregard for the lives of poor women”.
She cited the case of a sterilisation camp in Araria district, Bihar; she was an eye-witness to one private doctor, working for an NGO, sterilizing 53 women in just two hours.

The operations took place in Kaparfora Government Middle School, without basic amenities such as running water and sterilising equipment.
The doctor, who did not wear a surgical gown or cap, and neither washed his hands nor changed his gloves, operated on the women at night, by torchlight, using school desks as operating tables. He was aided by unqualified staff, who lay the women out on paddy straw when their operations had been completed.
Biswas said that neither the NGO nor the surgeon conducted pre-operative tests to determine suitability of the women for sterilization.
“As a result of these operations, three women were left profusely bleeding. Another woman was operated, despite being three-month pregnant. She miscarried days after the procedure.
“The surgeon left immediately after operating 53 women between 8pm and 10 pm. After the surgeries, all 53 women were crying out in pain. Though they were in desperate need of medical care, no one came to assist them,” she said.
Throughout India, Biswas said, rural women are routinely dehumanised in similar camps. “Reports and fact-findings from Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh demonstrate that standards of hygiene, consent and care are routinely ignored in sterilisation camps.”
On April 9, 26-year-old Bala underwent sterilisation at just such a camp in Nagaur district, Rajasthan. She died, allegedly of vasovagal shock, after her emergency post-operative transfer to a community health centre.
On February 9, a 35-year-old mother of six, Rekha Wasnik, who was pregnant with twins, bled to death in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district.
She had been given no pre-operative check-up and sources in the district say she died of “sheer negligence”; her post-mortem report described “external and internal bleeding” in her uterus, from injuries caused by a sharp and pointed instrument as the cause of her death.

Dr Anita Parashar, who performed the operation, told the Times of India that she made the first incision and found that Wasnik was pregnant. “So I stitched her up and told her to undergo an abortion.”
Dr Parashar said that she received a call later to inform her that the woman was feeling “unwell”.

Both men and women are routinely offered lottery tickets, electrical goods and even cars in exchange for being sterilised; often, the promised goods do not materialise.
In Madhya Pradesh, men have even been offered gun licences in exchange for vasectomies, under a scheme launched in 2008.
After a survey found that most men refused vasectomies because they did not want to lose their “manliness,” the Government decided to offer a gun licence as a “bigger symbol of manliness”.
In 2012, poor Indians are still sometimes forced to accept sterilisation in return for medicine or vaccines, either for themselves (in the case of a 16-year-old boy with a fever), or for their children. Some have even been threatened with the loss of their state food rations if they do not agree to the procedure.

Still others have woken, confused, after being drugged and operated on, perhaps with a little money in their pocket as compensation.
NGOs and officials continue to meet their quotas by any means possible, whether to stave off penalties or to earn bonuses for themselves.

Woman leaving a school after forced sterilisation done with UK aid Money
RT NEWS REPORTIs this a good way to spend UK overseas aid? Images31
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Post by oftenwrong Mon May 14, 2012 9:49 am

The above appears to have come entirely from the "Russia Today" programme. Has anyone seen it substantiated elsewhere?
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Post by trevorw2539 Mon May 14, 2012 5:09 pm

Regarding above.
www.guardian.co.uk › News › World news › India
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Post by oftenwrong Mon May 14, 2012 5:43 pm

Thanks, Trevor. The Guardian article is a bit more informative:

"When it announced changes to aid for India last year, the DfID promised to improve the lives of more than 10 million poor women and girls. It said: "We condemn forced sterilisation and have taken steps to ensure that not a penny of UK aid could support it. The UK does not fund sterilisation centres anywhere.

"The coalition government has completely changed the way that aid is spent in India to focus on three of the poorest states, and our support for this programme is about to end as part of that change. Giving women access to family planning, no matter where they live or how poor they are, is a fundamental tenet of the coalition's international development policy."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/15/uk-aid-forced-sterilisation-india?INTCMP=SRCH
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Post by Shirina Mon May 14, 2012 7:07 pm

When it announced changes to aid for India last year, the DfID promised to improve the lives of more than 10 million poor women and girls.
Forced sterilization aside, I've never supported spending large sums of money to help only specific people - in this case, females. Men in India are just as poor as women. I believe charity should help everyone.

Yes, I know there are specific issues that can sometimes plague specific groups, but still ... you would never hear of a nation spending oodles of cash just to help men.
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Post by oftenwrong Mon May 14, 2012 7:32 pm

Irrespective of "good intentions", the concept of controlling birthrate on the Indian sub-continent equates to bailing out the sea with a teacup.

The Population of India in 2012 is estimated to be 1.22 billion. India's population has grown by 181 million people over the past decade.
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Post by Stox 16 Wed May 16, 2012 4:17 am

As i understand this issue its not so much where this story comes from, but the whole idea that ant such aid should be spend on such things in the first place. if this is right the answer is No. as this is not something that outside countries should be into at all.
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Post by Red Cat Woman Fri May 18, 2012 11:34 pm

Shirina wrote:
When it announced changes to aid for India last year, the DfID promised to improve the lives of more than 10 million poor women and girls.
Forced sterilization aside, I've never supported spending large sums of money to help only specific people - in this case, females. Men in India are just as poor as women. I believe charity should help everyone.

Yes, I know there are specific issues that can sometimes plague specific groups, but still ... you would never hear of a nation spending oodles of cash just to help men.

Hi Huni
Well there are two points to this issue. The first is that no charity who dream of supporting forced sterilization nor is this just about woman, as it clear its men as well. 2nd, If there is a need of aid and many believe that aid for say books for a school is fine. but its clear this not about this at all. nor does it really matter who published the main story.

Now no government from any country outside India should be doing this sort of thing. But what we are talking about is poor people being forced into a forced sterilization. while rich people are not facing at all? you forced sterilization is not what I would class as run of the mill state aid is it?

so this is not about some sort of family planning for the poor is it? its about power for the small rich elite to controling the poor? What do you think would happen if the poor start a forced sterilization of the rich 100,000 that run India? do you believe they would stand for this? me I think they would go mad? or could you even image say the US Rich elite having say have an outside aid program or Charity running a forced sterilization of poor and unemployed men and woman US people?

what do you think the US people as a whole we say about that? I am sorry but this is taking about people basic Human rights on the ground of some ones personal wealth. that to me just can never be right Shirina?

anyway always enjoy your posts on the US election.
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Post by Shirina Sat May 19, 2012 1:15 am

Hello, Red Cat:

My post was a bit off-topic and wasn't meant to be taken as me being against aid to these people. It's just that I see aid money going to improving the lives of millions of women and girls, but not men and boys. Does the sister get aid money while the brother just stands there with nothing? That's what my post was about since I certainly don't condone the kind of class warfare taking place in India. I think some folks haven't gotten rid of the caste system.

Heh, speaking of US elites ... many people who support the rich have actually suggested forced sterilization for women having too many children while on welfare. It seems we gain more ground on our race to the bottom every few days.
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Post by polyglide Tue May 22, 2012 2:33 pm

On a purely frivolous note the money would be better spent stirilizing all politicians


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Post by oftenwrong Tue May 22, 2012 5:45 pm

Frivolity can come from the most unexpected sources.
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Post by Red Cat Woman Thu May 24, 2012 8:38 am

Shirina wrote:Hello, Red Cat:

My post was a bit off-topic and wasn't meant to be taken as me being against aid to these people. It's just that I see aid money going to improving the lives of millions of women and girls, but not men and boys. Does the sister get aid money while the brother just stands there with nothing? That's what my post was about since I certainly don't condone the kind of class warfare taking place in India. I think some folks haven't gotten rid of the caste system.

Heh, speaking of US elites ... many people who support the rich have actually suggested forced sterilization for women having too many children while on welfare. It seems we gain more ground on our race to the bottom every few days.

Hello Huni
I am sorry my post sounded a bit hard on you Hun, but i just dislike the whole idea of governments telling poor woman or men this sort of thing or making them have this done. as you rightly say it is class warfare on the poor. OMG you mean there are people in the US who have suggested forced steriliszation on people on walfare? Well I just hope people like your good self hun fight this sort of thing? as these right wingers have no right at all to make anyone have this done on the ground of economics. us on the left must fight this attack on poor people in full in my view

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Post by blueturando Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:20 am

Now no government from any country outside India should be doing this sort of thing. But what we are talking about is poor people being forced into a forced sterilization. while rich people are not facing at all? you forced sterilization is not what I would class as run of the mill state aid is it?

so this is not about some sort of family planning for the poor is it? its about power for the small rich elite to controling the poor? What do you think would happen if the poor start a forced sterilization of the rich 100,000 that run India? do you believe they would stand for this? me I think they would go mad? or could you even image say the US Rich elite having say have an outside aid program or Charity running a forced sterilization of poor and unemployed men and woman US people?

I agree that UK aid should not be used in a program such as this, but on the flip side it's fair to say that the population in India and a few other coutries is running out of control. That's fine, but the same people complaining about forced sterilisation then expect us to help feed these many millions of people born into povety. In an ideal world people wouldnt have more children that they can afford to feed.

As for the US and the UK......Maybe stop all benefits past a maximum of 3 children. I don't see why I should help pay to feed other peoples many offspring when these parents know they cannot support their children themselves, but keep reproducing anyway

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Post by oftenwrong Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:47 am

"expect us to help feed these many millions of people born into povety. "

Do they REALLY expect us to feed them or is that something we have assigned to ourselves as part of The White Man's Burden?

Arrogance displays itself in many forms, and population control is perhaps the ultimate arrogance.
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Post by blueturando Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:17 pm

Do they REALLY expect us to feed them or is that something we have assigned to ourselves as part of The White Man's Burden?

No just the burden of everyone else...or we could just not help to feed them?

Arrogance displays itself in many forms, and population control is perhaps the ultimate arrogance..

7 Billion and counting has nothing to do with arrogance, just common sense knowing that our planet cannot sustain the current levels of population growth for too much longer.....but only time will tell on that one

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Post by Shirina Wed Jun 06, 2012 6:18 pm

Do they REALLY expect us to feed them or is that something we have assigned to ourselves as part of The White Man's Burden?
As an anecdote, I can tell you that no one that I knew ever expected foreigners to provide food. At least not in India. Being born into poverty is a strange thing. When you're in the midst of it, there's really no expectation of being saved from it. The impoverished people of India, to the best of my knowledge, are not sitting around thinking, "Where the hell is Britain's food? They should be feeding us!"
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Post by blueturando Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:03 am

Rising populations may be driving Earth towards a disastrous 'tipping point' where humanity starves itself out
If 50% of landscape has been altered by man, Earth may hit 'tipping point'
World is already at 43%

Warning from committee of 22 scientists
Some areas may already be so overpopulated as to be beyond hope
Effects on fish and farming could starve whole areas


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2155322/Rising-populations-driving-Earth-irreversible-tipping-point--scientists-global-government.html#ixzz1x3qdUhyq

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Post by oftenwrong Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:45 am

blueturando wrote:Rising populations may be driving Earth towards a disastrous 'tipping point' where humanity starves itself out
If 50% of landscape has been altered by man, Earth may hit 'tipping point'
World is already at 43%

Warning from committee of 22 scientists
Some areas may already be so overpopulated as to be beyond hope
Effects on fish and farming could starve whole areas


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2155322/Rising-populations-driving-Earth-irreversible-tipping-point--scientists-global-government.html#ixzz1x3qdUhyq

We have of course been here before. The topic has been under active discussion continuously for about six hundred years.

http://www.enotes.com/topic/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages
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Post by Red Cat Woman Sat Jun 16, 2012 9:13 am

Shirina wrote:
Do they REALLY expect us to feed them or is that something we have assigned to ourselves as part of The White Man's Burden?
As an anecdote, I can tell you that no one that I knew ever expected foreigners to provide food. At least not in India. Being born into poverty is a strange thing. When you're in the midst of it, there's really no expectation of being saved from it. The impoverished people of India, to the best of my knowledge, are not sitting around thinking, "Where the hell is Britain's food? They should be feeding us!"

Hi Huni
I could not agree more with that. food aid is very low down on your list when face with no food at all.
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Post by sickchip Sun Jun 17, 2012 8:36 am

I totally agree with everything that's been said.
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Post by oftenwrong Sun Jun 17, 2012 12:36 pm

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," said Jesus
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Post by Chas Peeps Tue Jan 27, 2015 10:54 pm

There has been enormous controversy over both the size of the Foreign Aid Budget at £11.5bn per year and over the effective closure in 2014 of the nationwide Remploy business that employed around 2,150 mainly disabled workers at a total cost of approximately £25,000 per employee per year.

This post is about the malignancy that blights our political ruling elite and about its lack of imagination. It is about my radical suggestion for using the foreign aid budget in a very different way, a way that will help to maximise the physical aid reaching those in greatest need overseas, minimise corrupt officials and individuals in countries receiving kick-backs or skim-offs from UK aid and one that will make a vast contribution to employment levels and the true regeneration of some of the UK’s most economically deprived communities.

Remploy was originally established under the terms of the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944, to directly employ disabled persons in specialised factories. It opened its first factory in 1946. Over the following decades it established a network of 83 factories across the UK making a wide variety of products. These were organised into a number of sub-businesses, such as Remploy e-cycle, which dealt with the safe disposal and re-cycling of electrical appliances. In the 2000’s it also moved into service businesses, such as monitoring CCTV images.

In the later years of Blair’s Labour Government, at the start of the 21st century, Remploy underwent a major change to its operation, and branched out into providing general employment assistance for disabled people, and others with barriers to employment. After the closure of most Remploy factories, the provision of these assistance services became Remploy’s principal purpose.

In 2009/10 Remploy placed over 10,500 people into jobs across a range of sectors. In 2009 Remploy was selected as a prime- and sub-contractor to deliver the then Government’s Flexible New Deal contract, which aimed to help the long term unemployed back into work. After the change in government, a year later, it became a sub contractor in the Coalition Government’s Work Programme.

Further Coalition Government changes resulted in the effective closure of the remaining factories. Remploy had employed 2150 people at a total annual cost of £25,000 per employee (most earning between £7000 and £8000). A substantial proportion of its former employees are now unemployed, on benefits and struggling to enter the mainstream employment market.

Throughout my career, I have worked on some of the most deprived areas of the country where unemployment is stubbornly high, household incomes very low and where the lack of hope provides the conditions for a variety of social problems to grow deep roots. I remember a well meaning Labour City Council borrowing money from the then Conservative government under the Estate Action Programme and carrying out some modernisation and repair work to its housing stock on the most deprived estate in the City. I remember thinking at the time that although repointing the ridge tiles was necessary repair work (and one that my profession involves me in), was that really the best use of new money on an estate with so many problems? I remember thinking at the time that the millions being spent may have been better utilised providing a factory right in the centre of the estate where local unemployed people are trained and given work on a living wage making (for example) artificial limbs for land mine victims in former war torn-countries. A number of the workers would be given the chance each year to visit the people who they have helped to see the positive difference their work had made to the lives of others. By using public funds to run the factory, the following would be achieved:

Local employment

Provide structure and purpose to the lives of the employees

Increase income levels in the locality

Transform the lives of the people receiving the artificial limbs

It is important at this stage for me to emphasise that I am in no way proposing that the whole or even largest part of the foreign aid budget is spent on subsidising related employment and production in the UK. I understand that a crucial function of foreign aid is to help people in need to help themselves so that they can prosper independently of future aid. However, it remains the case that a significant proportion of the foreign aid budget is used like a slush fund by our political ruling class to exert leverage on potential recipient countries as an extension of the UK’s foreign policy. This is an outrage to the principle of foreign aid and has no place in an honest effort to help the most needy people in the world. Equally, siphoning off money, food or materials, by corrupt officials, groups or individuals especially in conflict zones is deplorable and more effort should be made to design it out of our system of aid.

I am proposing that the whole basis of foreign aid distribution has a root and branch reform. A part of that should be to re-introduce a Remploy type manufacturing model drawing on the considerable skill and knowledge base that Remploy offered. It could be tasked with manufacturing emergency shelters, water wells, pumps, composting toilets and all manner of other items needed in crisis situations around the world. The business could support a logistic operation to move materials from the point of manufacture to the point of use overseas.

As an illustration, if 25% of the existing foreign aid budget was used in this way for UK based manufacturing employment, up to 115,000 jobs could be created in the centre of the UK’s areas of greatest deprivation. This could be a game changer and a way of providing a direct benefit to the donor countries most needy while helping needy people oversees.

This is only floated as a sketchy policy idea and hope that one day that it is examined in more detail by our political parties and put to work in some form. The benefits to our own people and those that need our help abroad could be huge.
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Post by Ivan Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:37 pm

The cost of keeping a prisoner in a UK jail exceeds £40,000 a year.

When Gordon Brown was PM, he proposed paying for a jail to be built in Nigeria so that any of its citizens sentenced to terms of imprisonment in the UK could be sent home to serve their sentences. The initial outlay for building the jail would soon have reaped substantial savings from not having to keep those criminals in UK prisons. The Tories howled at the idea, seeing it as a profligate misuse of taxpayers' money.

Now Cameron has come up with his 'original' plan to pay for a prison in Jamaica for the same purpose. He proposes to finance it from our overseas aid budget, money which was intended to help refugees, educate children and provide water facilities and food for desperate people. Is that a good use of overseas aid?
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Post by oftenwrong Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:55 pm

Last summer's refugee crisis was a blow to IS propaganda in that extremists hated seeing hundreds of thousands fleeing a "Muslim land" to go to what IS regard as the "land of the unbelievers".
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/freed-is-hostage-warns-against-bombing-syria/ar-AAfWXTl?li=AAaeUIW

Presumably the Isis/Deshai have regained some composure from the somewhat mixed Western "welcome" afforded to those refugees.
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Post by marcolucco Sun Dec 06, 2015 12:13 pm

We've sent vast amounts of money to Malawi, one of the world's poorest countries. It was heartening, therefore, to see a large contingent of V.I.Ps from Malawi during the London Olympics and, bless them, they managed to stay at one of London's top hotels. We were told in the seventies that Africa needed money; we had gigantic feed-the-world fund raising exercises and forty years on we hear exactly the same stories. Nothing has changed. Dictators have got richer, planes classier, weapons more numerous - and babies still die of hunger.
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Post by oftenwrong Sun Dec 06, 2015 12:55 pm

I may have misunderstood what some of the more blaring newspapers have been saying about events organised by FIFA stroke IAAF stroke Olympics Committee. The Press seem to think that Coca Cola, MacDonalds and Nike etcetera pick up the tab for foreign junkets.

Not the UK foreign aid programme, which largely funds the supply of armaments.
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Post by marcolucco Sun Dec 06, 2015 6:50 pm


oftenwrong wrote:Not the UK foreign aid programme, which largely funds the supply of armaments.

Yes, it was a surprise that the delegation didn't arrive in tanks.
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