Last year collectors raised £14.7 million which was used to support the charities work in more than 5 of the poorest countries in the world.

Its worth pointing out, to clear away any misconception, that Christian Aid in no way involves itself with missionary work of any kind. It is strictly an overseas development agency. Moreover, its one of the best around. Its campaigning and advocacy work is highly professional and well targeted. Its also produced a wealth of written material that represents an invaluable resource to campaigners, writers and activists everywhere.

This week Christian Aid released a new report, “Aid, death and dogma”, bringing home details of another glorious triumph for the hallowed “free market”.

“Unfettered free trade policies backed by the British government have led to a crisis in Indian agriculture, spiralling rural debt and an epidemic of suicide among poor farmers.

Shocking new research reveals that more than 4,000 farmers have killed themselves in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh since the ‘reforms’ of a hard-line liberalising regime, in part bankrolled by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID).

This support also involved funding the free market fundamentalist Adam Smith Institute to run a privatising scheme that cost some 45,000 Indian public sector workers their jobs.”

In Ghana the report shows how democratic institutions have been subverted by the demands of doctrinaire free market policies, where the International Monetary Fund (IMF), backed by the World Bank, effectively overturned a law to protect poor farmers.

In Jamaica it illustrates how increasing numbers of women have been driven to prostitution and drug smuggling by a continuing round of liberalisation that has wrecked their employment opportunities.

The Christian Aid report also scrutinises the last Labour government’s recent ‘U’ turn on development policy and liberalisation. Earlier this year, both DFID and the Africa Commission, set up by Tony Blair, said that countries should no longer be forced to liberalise and privatise in order to receive aid.

But the report makes clear that the UK’s development policy, along with that of the World Bank and the IMF, is still strongly based on liberalising principles. Legislation is urgently required to turn Mr Blair’s rhetoric into reality, it says.”

I wrote a few weeks ago about the gap between New Labour rhetoric on third world poverty and the rather less wholesome reality of the policies it pursues. ( http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk/2005/04/blair-pledges-to-heal-africaagain.html) Left to their own devices western governments will treat third world aid budgets strictly as means to pursue their own economic and strategic interests. Any genuine effort to Make Poverty History this year will require NGOs to drag those governments to the negotiating table and wring some firm and meaningful commitments out of them. Christian Aid are more than up to the task, and they’re worthy of your full support.

 http://www.christianaid.org.uk/give/index.htm
 http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/