2006年VOA标准英语-UN Calls for Marshall Plan for Africa

By Lisa Schlein
Geneva
21 September 2006

A U.N. development agency report says the current system of providing aid to Africa is not working, and calls for a Marshall Plan-style system to replace it.  
 

In its latest report, the  U.N. Conference on Trade and Development  does not have many good things to say about how the current system functions, though it does welcome the international community's promise to double official development aid to Africa to $50 billion by 2010.

But UNCTAD's special coordinator¹ for Africa, Kamran Kousari, says this alone will not be enough to lift Africa out of poverty.  He says the way aid is distributed must be changed.

"We find that the present aid system is unpredictable," Kousari says. "It is incoherent and it is politicized … the system as it stands pushes the preferences of donor² countries over the requirements, the development requirements of the recipient³ countries." 

The UNCTAD report says aid to African countries comes with a lot of conditions and the governments usually cannot decide for themselves how to spend the aid money.  The report says too many agencies are pushing development projects that sometimes compete with one another and often do not match the development goals of the country. 

Kousari says there needs to be reform of the existing multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary⁴ Fund, which link aid to policies the recipient governments may find unacceptable or confusing.

He says such policies often do more harm than good.  For instance, in the 1980's and 1990's, he notes, the financial institutions demanded that African countries adopt a standardized⁵ austerity measures regardless of the hardship they produced.  

The UNCTAD report proposes creating a U.N. aid fund specifically tailored for African development needs.  Kousari says the fund would make financial aid more effective.

"It would de-politicize this aid," Kousari says. "It would make it more predictable.  It would reduce substantially the cost of administering aid…It would make aid much more predictable by countries submitting four, five, six year plans for it to be funded by this fund and it would reduce existing…institutional arrangements on the ground." 

The report says a new plan for administering aid to Africa should be based, in principle, on the Marshall Plan that helped revitalize European economies after World War II.    That plan, which was paid for by the United States, allowed recipient countries to draw up their own long-term recovery plans with no outside interference.

UNCTAD economists⁶ say African countries would benefit from grants in which rules and conditions on the aid were applied⁷ in a similarly flexible manner.

1 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

2 donor   

n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体

参考例句：

• In these cases,the recipient usually takes care of the donor afterwards.在这类情况下，接受捐献者以后通常会照顾捐赠者。
• The Doctor transplanted the donor's heart to Mike's chest cavity.医生将捐赠者的心脏移植进麦克的胸腔。

3 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。

4 monetary   

adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的

参考例句：

• The monetary system of some countries used to be based on gold.过去有些国家的货币制度是金本位制的。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

5 standardized   

adj.标准化的

参考例句：

• We use standardized tests to measure scholastic achievement. 我们用标准化考试来衡量学生的学业成绩。
• The parts of an automobile are standardized. 汽车零件是标准化了的。

6 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。