There are countries in the world which are economically developed and can afford a lot of things as compared to others. The disparity in development has led to the grouping of the world states in to two broad groups i.e. developed countries and developing countries.
Developing countries are faced by many challenges both economically and socially which makes most of the citizens to live below the poverty line. Due interrelations between states, some measures are being taken to ensure that the developing nations are also boosted in their economic endeavors.
Though international development has no unanimously accepted definition, attempts have been made to explain what it is. International development refers to steps being taken to ensure that developing countries raise the living standards of their citizens and to some extent alleviate the suffering that this people have to go through (Murray 2012).
It therefore holistically refers to the activities by the developed countries to developing countries that aim at enabling them to have long term self sustainability as far as economic development is concerned. It includes projects which are aimed at improving health, alleviating poverty, advancing education, infrastructure development, advocating for gender equality, disaster preparedness and human rights among others.
International development is different from humanitarian aid in that, while the later focuses on temporary solutions and alleviation of human suffering, international development looks at long-term solutions to these problems. In coherent with that, international development puts weight on capacity building, sustainability economic development, promotion of safety and rights based approach to economic problems (The economist 2012).
Basically the objective of international aid in international development is to place the recipient country in a position where it can be able to be self dependent in the end. On top of that, international development involves the funding of specific projects or a group of projects with a definite desired outcome and the monitoring of the said projects. According to the World Bank (2010), “The funds given for a particular project are supposed to be specifically for the designed purpose and can therefore not be reallocated”.
Several economic indicators can be used to measure international development, since the term is synonymous to human development but it is worth noting that the social aspect of development is a bit ambiguous to measure. The millennium development goals which were brought forward by the United Nations in the year 2000 may serve as yard sticks to checking the extent of development (Clark 2006).
Besides, there are various measures which can be used which include: National GDP, per capital income, infant mortality rates, poverty rates, literacy rates, unemployment rates etc. The social aspect can be measured by looking at various factors e.g. the level of democracy in a country, measuring the number of domestic violence cases reported over a given period and child labour preference rates (World Bank 2010).
Though much is done to alleviate extreme poverty and some forms of human suffering in developing countries, minimal or no efforts are made to ensure equality in wealth distribution in these countries.
Measuring development by applying the indicators nationally in many cases gives wrong information because the development might have taken place in a single part of the nation. Furthermore, some international aid comes with conditions to the recipient countries, who are to retaliate in one way or another which distorts the whole idea of international development (Horowitz 2011).
Each nation has natural resources which can enable its citizens lead a comfortable live, but due to lack of funds or technology these resources remain unutilized. Developed countries come in handy to help with the highly required inputs, which help the developing countries start off in their endeavors for self sustainability.
References
Clark, D. 2006, The Elgar Champanion to Development Studies, Edward Elgar, Northampton.
Horowitz, L. 2011, ‘Interpreting Industry’s Impacts: Micropolitical Ecologies of Divergent Community Responses’, Development and Change, vol. 42 no.6, pp. 1371-1391.
Wallis, W. 2012, ‘Move to Bring South Sudan Back to Talks’, Financial Times. Web.
The Economist 2012, ‘Global Public Goods’. Web.
World Bank 2010, World Development indicators, World Bank publications, Washington.