Defending Aid : Max Lawson / EQUALS

Article shared by Robert Cohen

Good piece.
Robert

Max Lawson is the Head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam International and EQUALS podcast co-host. He is also the co-chair of the Global People’s Medicines Alliance.

Summary

Max Lawson argues that global aid is under threat, with right-wing governments cutting budgets and attacking its legitimacy, while even left-wing critics view it as a colonial relic. Despite these criticisms, he strongly defends aid as a life-saving necessity, citing successes like HIV/AIDS treatment programs funded by the Global Fund and PEPFAR. He emphasizes aid's role in reducing inequality through public health, education, and climate protection.

Lawson makes the case for reframing the conversation around aid, avoiding terms like "foreign aid" and emphasizing its relatively small cost to rich countries. He also advocates linking aid to broader structural issues such as tax justice and inequality, arguing that wealthier individuals and corporations should contribute more. While aid alone cannot solve global poverty, he insists that it remains essential. He warns that abandoning aid would make the world significantly worse and urges continued advocacy to protect it.


Quotes:

"I think the world could see an end to aid within a very short period of time, and I also think that this would be a truly terrible thing."

"Aid has always been an easy target for the right, but on the left too aid is not well liked... It also is seen to cover up and distract the world from more structural economic issues."

"We refuse to be forced to pit [poverty in rich nations] against those of other nations. This is a false choice."

"Overclaiming that aid on its own can end poverty, or that every penny of aid works, is not true and ends up backfiring."


"Now is not the time to give up hope, but to fight harder for the basic human idea that those who have should do all they can to support those who have not."


"The world will be a much worse place if [aid] was gone."