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国际援助为非洲带去了什么(下)

 大梦未觉W 2017-03-03
  Aid and Politics
  援助与政治
  作者:Angus Deaton @ 2013-08-16
  译者:沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
  校对:辉格(@whigzhou)
  来源:Princeton University Press,http://press./chapters/s2_10054.pdf
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  (接上篇)
  One problem is that the donor governments and their constituents—the ultimate donors—can’t make the right calls because they do not experience the effects of aid on the ground. Even when the crunch comes, and the donors see what is happening, it is rarely in the interests of the donor countries to withhold aid, even in the face of egregious violations of agreements, however much they may have wished to do so in advance.
  困难之一是:援助国政府及其选民——也就是最终的援助者——并不能做出正确的决策,因为他们并没有亲自体验援助的影响。即便危机降临,援助者看清了正在发生的事,哪怕恶性违反协议的行为当面发生,暂停援助也很少会符合援助国的利益——无论事前他们是多么渴望这么做。
  It is the local people, not the donors, who have direct experience of the projects on which aid is spent and who are in a position to form a judgment. Such judgments will not always be well informed, and there will always be domestic debate on cause and effect and on the value of specific government activities; but the political process can mediate these normal divergences of views. For foreign donors or their constituents—who do not live in the recipient countries—there is no such feedback. They have no direct information on outcomes; they must rely on the reports of the agencies disbursing the aid, and so tend to focus on the volume of aid, not its effectiveness.
  只有当地人民,而不是援助者,才能直接体验援助款所支持的那些项目,也才有资格做出判断。这类判断并不总是信息周全的,对于特定政府活动的原因结果及其价值,国内也总是存在争议,但政治进程能够调和这类常规的观点分歧。然而对于外援国或他们的选民而言,由于他们并不生活在受援国,就不存在这种反馈。对于结果,他们没有直接的信息来源,他们必须依赖负责分配援助的各种机构所提供的报告,所以会倾向于更加关注援助的体量,而不是其效力。
  The aid agencies, in turn, are accountable to their ultimate donors, and there is no mechanism that holds them responsible if things go wrong for the recipients. I once asked an official of one of the most prominent non-governmental aid agencies in which part of the world she spent most of her time. “The West Coast”—which turned out not to be Africa, but the United States, where several of the agency’s largest donors lived. As we have already seen, World Bank officials have long moved on to other things by the time the effects of their handiwork become visible. There is no responsibility of donors to the recipients of their aid.
  而援助机构则是对最终援助者负责,如果受援者那里出了问题,并没有什么机制来追究援助机构的责任。我曾问过某著名非政府援助机构的一个官员,她在世界上什么地方呆的时间最长久。答案是“西海岸”——不是非洲西海岸,而是美国西海岸,该机构几位最大的援助者就住在那里。正如我们所见,早在他们的劳动效果显现之前很久,世界银行的官员们就已经忙别的事去了。援助者对于受援者并没有负什么责任。
  Sometimes the agencies know that aid is going wrong and are alarmed by what they see, but can do nothing about it. The director of one national aid agency gave me a bloodcurdling account of how aid funds had gone to gangs of murderers—people who had already carried out one massacre and were training and arming themselves to return to finish the job. I asked him why he continued to supply aid. Because, he replied, the citizens of this country believe that it is their duty to give and will accept no argument that aid is hurting people. The best that he could do was to try to limit the harm.
  有时候,援助机构知道援助已出了问题,并且已经对所见所闻感到忧虑,却什么也做不了。某国家援助机构的主任曾向我提供过一份令人毛骨悚然的记录:援助资金到了谋杀团伙的手里,这些人已经实施过一次大屠杀,现在正在加强训练和武装,准备杀回去把事情做个彻底。我问他为什么还要继续提供援助。他回答说,因为本国公民相信提供援助是他们的义务,并且拒不接受任何指出援助正在害人的观点。他能做的,只是尽力减少伤害。
  Even when donors know what conditions ought to be imposed, they will often be reluctant to penalize recipient governments who flout them. Donors may threaten punishment to induce good behavior, but when the good behavior is not forthcoming they may be reluctant to take action if the penalties harm themselves or their constituents.
  即便援助者知道应该施加何种限制条件,但当受援政府无视这些条件的时候,通常援助者也会对是否惩罚左右迟疑。援助者可能会以惩罚相威胁的方式来诱导良好的行为,但如果好行为迟迟不出现,且如果真正施加惩罚会伤及自身或本国选民,他们可能又会迟疑。
  This would hardly apply to the arming of murderers, but it can be a problem in lesser cases. In effect, aid conditionality is “time-inconsistent,” a favorite term of economists: what you want to do in advance is no longer in your interests after the fact. The governments who are receiving aid understand this very well; they can call the donor’s bluff and ignore the conditions with impunity.
  在武装谋杀犯问题上,这种情况当然不太可能发生,但在其他没那么严重的事情上,则可能成问题。实际上,援助的限制条款具有“时间不一致性”(这是经济学家爱用的一个词汇):在木已成舟的情况下,你原先想做的事已经不再符合你的利益。接受援助的各国政府深知这一点,他们面对援助者的虚张声势,会直接要他们摊牌,从而能无视限制条件而不受任何惩罚。
  Why the reluctance to enforce conditionality?
  为什么在执行限制条件上产生迟疑?
  The economist Ravi Kanbur was the World Bank representative in Ghana in 1992. He was called upon to enforce conditionality by withholding a tranche of a previously agreed loan in response to the government having violated the agreement by awarding an 80 percent pay increase to public-sector workers. The tranche was large, almost an eighth of Ghana’s annual import bill. Opposition to the cut-off came from many sources, not just the government of Ghana. Many innocent bystanders would be hurt, both Ghanaians and foreign contractors, who would likely not be paid.
  经济学家Ravi Kanbur曾于1992年担任世界银行驻加纳代表。由于加纳政府违反协定,给公共部门工作人员增加了80%的工资,Kanbur接到呼吁,要求他执行限制条款,暂停拨付贷款协议中的一笔款项。这笔款项数额巨大,大约是加纳年度进口额的八分之一。反对中断贷款的呼声此起彼伏,加纳政府只是其中之一。许多无辜旁人,包括加纳和外国的承包商,都有可能受到伤害,因为他们可能将收不到工程款。
  More fundamentally, the normal, good relations between the donors and the government would be disrupted, threatening not only the government but also the operations of the aid industry itself; “the donors control so much in the way of funds that to stop these, at any rate to stop them sharply, would cause major chaos in the economy.” In effect, it is the aid industry’s job to disburse funds, and its operatives are paid to do so and to maintain good relations with its client countries. A face-saving compromise was eventually reached, and the loan went ahead.
  更为根本的是,援助国与加纳政府的正常友好关系可能受到破坏,不仅会危及加纳政府,而且也会危及援助行业本身的运转。“援助者对资金运作有很大控制,以至于如果停止贷款,至少停贷过于突然,将会给经济造成重大混乱。”实际上,援助行业的任务就是分配资金,从业人员拿着薪水就是要做好这一本职工作,并与客户国维持良好关系。最终,双方保存体面,达成妥协,贷款得以继续发放。
  Kenya provides another example of the dance among donors, the president, and parliament. The donors periodically become exasperated by the corruption of the president and his cronies, and they turn off the flow of aid. Parliament meets and starts discussing how to raise the revenue required for the government to meet its obligations. The donors heave a huge sigh of relief—they too are under threat if the aid ceases to flow—and turn the taps back on; parliament is shuttered until the next time. Government ministers also sigh with relief and order up the latest-model Mercedes from Germany; the locals refer to these wealthy beneficiaries as the “WaBenzi.”
  关于援助者、总统和议会之间的这种委蛇周旋游戏,肯尼亚也是个例子。援助者总是会周期性地被总统及其党羽的腐败激怒,然后暂停援助。此时议会就会召开,开始商量如何增加政府收入,以满足政府履行义务的必需用度。援助者会大松一口气,然后又把水龙头打开——因为如果援助真正停止,他们也会面临威胁。于是,议会就可以关门歇业了,直到下次再发生类似事情。政府的部长们也会大松一口气,又开始从德国订购最新型号的奔驰汽车。当地人管这些富裕的受益者叫做“奔驰族”。
  The award for sheer creativity might go to Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, president of Mauritania from 1984 to 2005. He adopted a pro-Western stance and in 1991 abandoned his previous support for the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Even so, in the early 1990s, his domestic repression became too much for donors, and aid was withdrawn. Real political reforms were begun—at least until the president had the brilliant idea of becoming one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel. The aid taps were reopened and the reforms rescinded.
  绝对原创奖可能还是要颁给1984至2005年任毛里塔尼亚总统的马维亚·乌尔德·西德·艾哈迈德·塔亚。塔亚1991年采取了亲西方的立场,放弃支持伊拉克的萨达姆·侯赛因政权。即便如此,90年代初他在国内的镇压行动对援助者来说仍属过分,援助因此而撤销。此时,真正的政治改革拉开大幕,改革至少维持到了总统突发奇想,成为承认以色列的极少数阿拉伯国家之一。援助龙头重新打开,改革又被废止了。
  Domestic policies in the donor countries can also make it difficult to turn off aid. Government aid agencies are under pressure from their domestic constituencies to “do something” about global poverty —a pressure that is stoked by a well-intentioned but necessarily poorly informed domestic population—and this makes it hard for government agencies to cut back on aid even when their representatives on the ground know that it is doing harm. Politicians in both donor and recipient countries understand this process.
  援助国的国内政策也可能使停止援助面临阻碍。国内选民会向政府援助机构施加压力,要求他们为全球贫困“做点事”。这些国内民众虽然满怀好意,但在信息掌握上却总是非常缺乏。他们把这压力之火烧得通红,使得政府机构难以切断援助,即便它们在当地的代表知道援助正在害人。
  Recipient governments can use their own poor people as “hostages to extract aid from the donors.” In one of the worst such cases, government officials in Sierra Leone held a party to celebrate the fact that UNDP had, once again, classed their country as the worst in the world and thus guaranteed another year’s worth of aid.
  受援国政府能把自己的贫困人口当做“从援助国身上索取资金的人质”来使用。塞拉利昂的政府官员是此类案例最糟糕的表现之一,在联合国开发计划署再次将该国列为世界最差国家,因此保证了该国下一年度的援金之后,他们居然开了一个派对来庆祝。
  On the other side, donor politicians can give aid to buy political credibility at home when they are deeply unpopular for unrelated reasons; they too will oppose the cessation of aid, even when it is clearly being misused. When this happens—as it did with British aid during the Kenyan elections in 2001, when aid was used to subvert the elections and preserve the power of a corrupt elite—Africans suffer to burnish the tarnished reputations of Western politicians.
  另一方面,如果援助国的政客因为其他一些无关原因而非常不受欢迎,他们也可能通过提供援助来收买国内政治信用。因此即便援金明显遭到滥用,他们也会反对停止提供。比如英国在肯尼亚2001年大选期间提供的援助就是如此,当时援金就被用于颠覆选举,帮助腐败精英维持大权。此类事情发生时,相当于非洲人民为了擦洗西方政客的声名污点而受苦受难。
  Lyndon Johnson helped hype a largely nonexistent famine in India in order to distract attention from the Vietnam War, not to mention to gather support from American farmers by buying their crops. The givers and receivers of aid, the governments in both countries, are allied against their own peoples. All that has changed from colonial times is the nature of what is being extracted.
  为了把民众视线从越南战争上面引开,林登·约翰逊不仅帮助印度虚假宣传了一场基本上并不存在的大饥荒,还通过收购美国农民的农产品来收买支持。援助的提供者和接受者,即两国政府,联合起来欺瞒自己的人民。与殖民时代相比,唯一的变化只是它们索取的东西性质不同了。
  There are also practical reasons that restrict the ability of donors to enforce conditionality. Aid is fungible; a recipient can promise to spend aid on health care and do so with projects that would have been undertaken in any case, freeing up funds for nonapproved purposes. It is often difficult for donors to monitor such diversions. The aid industry is competitive, and if one country refuses to fund another will often step in, with a different set of priorities and conditions. The donor who tries to enforce conditions is then shut out and may lose political influence or commercial opportunities, with no compensating gain.
  也有一些实践上的原因会限制援助国执行限制条款的能力。援助具有可替代性;比如受援国可以先承诺将援助用于医疗保健,然后用即使没有援助本来就会实施的项目来履行承诺,从而腾挪资金用于未经授权的项目。援助者很难对这类腾挪实施监督。援助行业充满竞争,某国拒绝提供援助,另一国就会带着一套新的政策偏好和限制条款来插手。于是,试图执行限制条款的援助国会被拒之门外,可能会丧失其政治影响力或商业机会,而且得不到补偿。
  Aid agencies have recently tried to move away from conditionality, and their language has moved toward an emphasis on partnership. The recipient proposes a plan according to its own needs, and the donor decides what to finance. Of course, none of this disposes of the reality that the donors are responsible to their constituents in the rich world, and that the recipients, knowing this, will design plans that mimic just what they think the donors would have proposed on their own—a process that has been aptly described as “ventriloquism.” It is not clear what sort of partnership is sustainable when one side has all the money.
  近来,援助机构已在试图放弃限制条款,转而强调伙伴关系。受援国会根据自身需要提出一份计划,然后由援助国来决定向哪些提供资助。当然,这些都无法绕开援助者需对身处富裕世界的本国选民负责这一现实,受援者深知这一点,因此他们在提出计划时会刻意鹦鹉学舌,提出在他们的心目中援助国自身可能设想出的方案。这一过程已经被人恰当地称为“腹语术”。在一方拥有全部资金的情况下,我们想不出何种伙伴关系才是可持续的。
  Politics and politicians, doing what they regularly do, undermine aid effectiveness, but it works the other way too: aid flows undermine the effectiveness of politics. Donors decide matters that should be decided by recipients; even democratic politics in donor countries has no business deciding whether HIV/AIDS should be prioritized over antenatal care in Africa. Conditionality violates national sovereignty.
  政治和政治家的惯常行事准则会破坏援助的有效性,但事情也可能在相反方向上发生:援助资金会破坏政治的有效性。本应由受援者决定的事,变得由援助者来决定了。即便是援助国的民主政治也没有理由来决定非洲国家是否应将艾滋病优先于产前保健考虑。限制条款侵犯国家主权。
  Imagine a well-funded Swedish aid agency coming to Washington, D.C., and promising to pay off the national debt and fund Medicare for fifty years. The conditions are that the United States abolish capital punishment and fully legalize gay marriage. Perhaps some governments are so dysfunctional that such violations have little cost to their populations. But taking a country into foreign receivership is hardly a good start on building the kind of contract between government and governed that might support economic growth over the long haul. It is not possible to develop someone else’s country from the outside.
  试想,如果瑞典一家资金充裕的援助机构跑到华盛顿来,承诺帮我们清偿所有国家债务,并会援助国家医疗保险五十年,条件是美国废除死刑,并将同性结婚全面合法化。也许有些国家政府确实无能透顶,因而此类侵犯行为并不会对该国人民造成什么损害。但是,一国接受外国的托管,对于建立政府与人民之间的契约关系而言并不是什么好开头,而这种契约关系从长远来看可能有助于经济增长。不可能从外部来发展别国。
  We have already seen that it is difficult to give convincing evidence of the effects of aid on economic growth, and the same applies when we look at the effects of aid on democracy or on other institutions. Yet once again, we have the fact that small countries that get a lot of aid also tend to be less democratic; sub-Saharan Africa is the least democratic area of the world, and the one that receives the most aid. Countries that receive aid from their ex-colonists are not the most democratic. Perhaps most interesting is a counterpoint to Figures 1 and 2: there has been an upsurge not only in growth but also in democracy in Africa since the cut in aid that followed the end of the Cold War. As always, there are other possible explanations for these facts, but they are what we would expect if democracy were undermined by foreign aid.
  之前我们已经提到,关于援助对经济增长的效用,我们拿不出什么有说服力的证据。同样,援助对民主或其他制度的效用也是如此。不过,我们这里又有一个事实:接受大量援助的小国也趋向于更不民主;撒哈拉以南的非洲是全世界最不民主的地区,同时也是接受援助最多的地区。接受原殖民母国援助的国家并非最民主的。最有意思的可能是图1和图2【译注:原文无图,略】的对比:随着冷战结束后援助的减少,非洲不但出现了经济上升,而且出现了更多的民主政体。当然,对于这类事实,总是有其他可能的解释。但是如果民主会受到外援的破坏,这一事实就与我们的预期一致了。
  The antidemocratic aspects of foreign aid have been exacerbated by the long-held donors’ belief that aid—and economic development itself—is a technical issue, not a political one. In the hydraulic theory (recall, we are just fixing the plumbing), there can be no legitimate dispute over what needs to be done. This belief has led donors and advisers to ignore or be impatient with local politics.
  外援的反民主面向还被援助者长期持有的一种信念加剧了:他们相信援助和经济发展本身都只是技术问题,而非政治问题。在水力学理论(记住,我们不过是在修理水管)看来,关于我们需要做什么,没有什么值得争论的。这一信念导致援助者和建议者都对当地政治置之不理或毫无耐心。
  Worse still, the donors have often deeply misunderstood what people needed or wanted. Population control is the worst case; to the donors it was obvious that if there were fewer people each person would be better off, while to the recipients, the opposite was just as obviously (and correctly) true. Western-led population control, often with the assistance of nondemocratic or well-rewarded recipient governments, is the most egregious example of antidemocratic and oppressive aid. Effective democracy is the antidote to the tyranny of foreign good intentions.
  更糟的是,关于人民需要什么或渴望什么,援助者通常误解甚深。人口控制就是最糟糕的例子:在援助者看来,很显然人口更少则人均状况就会更好,但是在受援者看来,相反的看法【编注:即人口多没坏处】同样显而易见且真确无误。西方人推动的人口控制,通常伴随着非民主或受益丰厚的受援国政府的协助,是援助之反民主和压迫性的最恶劣例证。有效的民主是外国善心暴政的解毒剂。
  The anthropologist James Ferguson, in The Anti-Politics Machine, one of the greatest books about aid and economic development, describes a large Canadian-funded development project in Lesotho in the 1980s that was based on a profound misunderstanding of the way the economy functioned; what in reality was a reservoir of labor for the South African mines was reimagined as a textbook subsistence-farming economy.
  人类学家詹姆斯·弗格森在《反政治机器》这本有关援助和经济发展的杰作中,为我们描绘了1980年代在莱索托实施的一项由加拿大资助的发展项目,该项目从根本上就对经济运转方式存在深刻误解。该国经济模式实际本来应是南非矿业的劳动力储军,却被臆想为一种教科书式的自给农业经济。
  The agricultural investment projects designed for the imagined economy were about as likely to be successful as a project to grow flowers on the moon. The project administrators—busily fixing the plumbing—remained unaware of how the project was being manipulated by the ruling party for its own political purposes and against its political opponents. In the end, there was no development or poverty reduction, only an extension of the state’s monopoly of political control, an anti-politics machine that made an extractive elite even less responsive to its people.
  为这种想象的经济所设计出来的农业投资项目,其成功的可能性就跟在月球上栽花差不多。该项目被执政党操纵,以实现他们自身的政治意图,压制政治对手,而忙于修水管的项目管理人员自始至终对此毫不知情。最后,项目得到的并不是发展或贫困减少,而只是加强了国家对政治控制的垄断性质,催生了一种反政治的机器,这种机器使得榨取型精英对其人民甚至更加漠视。
  The technical, anti-political view of development assistance has survived the inconvenient fact that the apparently clear technical solutions kept changing—from industrialization, planning and the construction of infrastructure to macroeconomic structural adjustment, to health and education, and most recently back to infrastructure. That the ideas kept changing did nothing to imbue the developers with humility or uncertainty, nor did the sensitivity of the fashions to first-world politics appear to undercut the technical certainty of the aid industry. The antipoverty rhetoric of the World Bank when Lyndon Johnson was U.S. president was replaced by the “getting prices right” rhetoric when Ronald Reagan was president. “Our” politics seems to be a legitimate part of development thinking, while “their” politics is not.
  发展援助问题上的这种技术性、反政治的观点始终存在,尽管我们面临一个尴尬事实:看似显然的技术解决方案经常在变,从工业化、计划和基础设施建设变成宏观经济结构调整,又变成健康和教育,最近又回到基础设施。想法一直在变,但这并没能促使开发人员保持谦逊或心生犹疑,发生在第一世界政治领域中的潮流敏感似乎也没能减少援助行业的技术自信。林登·约翰逊担任美国总统期间由世界银行提出的反贫困辞藻在罗纳德·里根当政时期被“矫正价格”的辞藻所取代。“我们的”政事似乎在发展思考当中理所应当占据一席之地,而“他们的”政事则并不如此。
  Aid and aid-funded projects have undoubtedly done much good; the roads, dams, and clinics exist and would not have existed otherwise. But the negative forces are always present; even in good environments, aid compromises institutions, it contaminates local politics, and it undermines democracy. If poverty and underdevelopment are primarily consequences of poor institutions, then by weakening those institutions or stunting their development, large aid flows do exactly the opposite of what they are intended to do. It is hardly surprising then that, in spite of the direct effects of aid that are often positive, the record of aid shows no evidence of any overall beneficial effect.
  毫无疑问,援助和由援金所资助的项目助益良多;世上多出了许多公路、大坝和医院,没有援助是不可能的。但援助的负面影响始终存在;即便实施环境友好,援助也会损害制度、污染当地政治,且会破坏民主。如果说贫困和欠发达首先是因为制度糟糕,那么通过削弱此类制度或阻碍其正常发展,大规模援助资金的实际效果确实事与愿违。因此,尽管援助的直接效果通常都是正面的,但援助史上并没有证据表明它们总体上带来了有益效果,对此我们不必感到惊讶。
  The arguments about foreign aid and poverty reduction are quite different from the arguments about domestic aid to the poor. Those who oppose welfare benefits often argue that aid to the poor creates incentives for poor behavior that help to perpetuate poverty. These are not the arguments here. The concern with foreign aid is not about what it does to poor people around the world—indeed it touches them too rarely—but about what it does to governments in poor countries. The argument that foreign aid can make poverty worse is an argument that foreign aid makes governments less responsive to the needs of the poor, and thus does them harm.
  关于外国援助与减少贫困之间关系的论争,与关于针对穷人的国内援助的论争颇为不同。反对福利津贴的人通常论证说,援助穷人会激励穷人做出使得贫困得以长期维持的行为。我们这里的论证则与此不同。在外国援助问题上,我们所关注的并不是它们对世上的穷人起到了什么作用——实际上援助极少触及穷人——而是它们对贫穷国家的政府起到了什么作用。外国援助会使得贫困恶化这一论点说的是,外国援助会使得受援国政府更加漠视穷人的需求,从而对他们造成损害。
  The harm of aid—even in the presence of some good—poses difficult ethical problems. The philosopher Leif Wenar, criticizing Peter Singer’s vision, with which I began this chapter, notes that “poverty is no pond”; Singer’s analogy is not helpful. Those who advocate more aid need to explain how it can be given in a way that deals with the political constraints. They should also think hard about the parallels with the colonialism that came before the era of aid.
  援助的危害——即使也会有某些好处——提出了一些伦理难题。本章开头,我曾引用过哲学家彼得·辛格的设想【译注:本文是作者著作The Great Escape第7章的一小节。第7章开头数页,作者曾提到辛格的著名比喻:由于我们所需要付出都很小,拒绝援助非洲儿童的伦理错误就跟拒绝挽救池塘落水儿童一样。而我们离非洲较远、离落水儿童较近这一事实并不会造成什么伦理上的区别】。莱夫·韦纳对此提出批评,他说“贫困并非池塘”,辛格的比喻并没有什么用。鼓吹加大援助的人需要解释,援助如何以一种能够考虑政治约束的方式分发。他们也应该努力思考,援助与援助时代之前的殖民主义之间的对比。
  We now think of colonialism as bad, harming others to benefit ourselves, and aid as good, hurting us (albeit very mildly) to help others. But that view is too simple, too ignorant of history, and too self-congratulatory. The rhetoric of colonialism too was all about helping people, albeit about bringing civilization and enlightenment to people whose humanity was far from fully recognized. This may have been little more than a cover for theft and exploitation.
  我们现在觉得殖民主义是坏的,只是损人利己,而援助则是好的,是损己(尽管很轻微)利人。但这种观点过于简化,对历史过于无知,同时也过分自夸。殖民主义的论调一样说的全是帮助他人,虽然只是要把文明和启蒙带给其人性尊严远远还未被承认的人们。这种说法有可能仅仅只是偷盗或剥削的文过饰非。
  The preamble to the charter of the UN, with its ringing and inspiring rhetoric, was written by Jan Smuts, premier of South Africa, who saw the UN as the best hope of preserving the British Empire and the dominance of white “civilization.” Yet at its worst, decolonization installed leaders who differed little from those who preceded them, except for where they were born and the color of their skins.
  联合国宪章的序言部分用语响亮且令人振奋,其作者南非前总理杨·史末资可是将联合国视为维持大英帝国和白人“文明”统治地位的最大希望所在。然而,在最糟糕的情形中,殖民地独立后上台的领导人跟他们的前辈并没有什么不同,区别只在于出生地点和皮肤颜色。
  Even today, when our humanitarian rhetoric acts as a cover for our politicians to buy themselves virtue, and when aid is our way of meeting our moral obligations to deal with global poverty, we need to be sure that we are not doing harm. If we are, we are doing it for “us,” not for “them.”
  即便是在今天,当人道主义辞藻被我们的政客用来为自己购买德性名声时,当援助被我们当成是履行自己对于全球贫困所负道德义务的手段时,我们也需要明确,我们并没有在害人。如果我们确实在害人,那援助就只是为了“满足自己”,而不是为了“帮助他人”。
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  (编辑:辉格@whigzhou)
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  ——海德沙龙·翻译组,致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

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