Is it practical for richer governments to take the responsibility of international aid?

I believe that developed countries should make more efforts to help developing countries to struggle against poverty and backwardness. This is not only a humanitarian problem, but also a process of civilization of all mankind, and every single person will get benefits from it, no matter where he/she is.

However, due to political characteristic, the governments of richer nations could only play a limited role in international aid.

A major limiting factor is domestic politics. Governments must be responsible for the benefits of its own citizens. Diverse individuals, groups, organizations and corporations always have various demands. Meeting and balancing all kinds of demands will not only restrict the government's choice of allocation of budget and resources for helping other countries, but also make it difficult to them to ensure the continuity of policies in such issues, especially in the field of trade.


Another important restrictive factor  comes from recipient countries. Due to respect of the sovereignty of a country, most of the government-led international aid should be implemented under the control of local governments of recipient countries. However , compared with the richer nations, the governments of poorer nations usually have more problems, suffering from bureaucracy and corruption, lack of prestige, sometimes violent domestic contradictions. To administer external assistance by local governments may  make these activities more complicated, even enhance  the cost of execution.

In fact, compared with governments, there are other organizations, such as multilateral organizations and experienced international NGOs, who are better qualified to administer international aid. Keeping away from politics, they can fulfill a fixed goal in a long period of time in those apolitical issues; they can also cooperate with local people and relevant low-level authorities directly and flexibly. In some unstable situations, these organizations cannot be replaced by governments.

Of cause, some forms of assistance need to be implemented by governments, such as reducing tariff rates, relieving international debt and so on. However, except these fields dominated by government, I believe it is unnecessary to require the governments of richer nations to take more responsibility for helping poorer nations.