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In 2000, the World Bank estimated that 2.8 billion people lived on incomes of less than $2.00 a day. Meanwhile about forty percent of the world's population endured conflict, most of them from the same subset. The implementation of foreign assistance to mitigate poverty and conflict is a key focus of politicians, bureaucrats and social scientists. The goal of this research is to discover relationships among foreign aid, conflict, and socio-economic development, and assess the implications. Other evaluations either approach this issue from a hedonistic, theoretical standpoint, or follow a stylized project evaluation method. This research is intended to create a bridge between the two approaches by: 1) proposing theoretical models of assistance and conflict accounting for current status quo, and 2) introducing novel empirical methods to analyze the causes and effects of development, intervention and conflict. The research begins with a comparative analysis of different schools of thought concerning foreign intervention, conflict and development. Contemporary philosophies and policies provide the basis for assumptions and inquiries addressed in the latter part of this dissertation. The review is followed by a critique of relevant data and their sources. A theoretical model of foreign assistance allocation and its possible impacts on conflict is proposed. The theoretical model is verified through an empirical examination using inductive casual inference methods. It is concluded that under current mandates and policies, aggregate foreign assistance has no effect on conflict and development in poor countries. Research is then directed toward analyzing the effect of foreign assistance on conflict, disaggregated by sector. Agricultural and food security assistance were identified as the most effective method of mitigating conflict. The next segments of research concentrate on agricultural development. A model of agricultural development is proposed that will promote food security and mitigate conflict. In the last analysis, a direct causal relationship is found between commodity prices and conflict. Findings are summarized in the conclusion, and recommendations are provided for policy re-evaluations.

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In cases involving the rescue of people in need of immediate medical care, it is often thought that the responsibility to save the lives of the imperilled falls to advanced professionals, such as paramedics, doctors, nurses, etc. This tells only part of the story, however, as in many cases the first point of contact for a person under duress is non-professional bystanders – average people with often little to no training in first aid or medicine. If the first point of contact is the bystander, do these bystanders have an obligation to help? Even if we assume that it is good to help people in need, the answer is not immediately obvious. Matters become more complicated when the bystander does have training that would make their intervention efficacious in helping the victim. Are they expected to help because they are trained and could presumably help more? This thesis seeks to examine this question and argue the following two conclusions: first, in terms of rescue cases, trained bystanders, whom I call informed rescuers, are morally required to act because of their training; and second, given the special role of knowledge in rescue, those who do not possess training in first aid can be held morally blameworthy for failing to know how to act in rescue cases. Because of this, everyone ought to learn basic first aid.

The international donor community led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has in the last decade or so intensified and consolidated its promotion of poverty reduction as the central focus of international aid. The two institutions claim that this new approach is radically different from the top-down structural adjustment policies of the preceding two decades. Drawing on the West African state of Ghana, this study interrogates the arguments, policies, practices, evolution and implementation of this new architecture of aid. Drawing on the critical social theory of Michel Foucault and postcolonial scholars, the study concludes that contemporary discourses about, and practices of, poverty reduction in Africa and elsewhere represent an attempt to discursively (re)produce the global South in ways that justify and legitimize Western interventions through the imposition of neoliberal reforms. I interrogate discontinuities and continuities in the new aid and development agenda in order to show that what is produced and maintained through the various interventions is, in fact, the dominance and influence of a neoliberal agenda in Africas postcolonies. This hegemony of neoliberal orthodoxy persists despite the rhetoric of a post-Washington Consensus development paradigm, which points to practices of consultation, civil society participation and local ownership as core principles that mark a difference from the earlier paradigm. More fundamentally, I show that, as with earlier structural adjustment policies, the poverty reduction strategy framework can be seen as a governing technology that reinscribes the status quo of western economic power and dominance. I argue that contrary to the claim that the poverty reduction strategy framework alters aid relationships by transferring power and influence from donors to aid recipient countries or even developing an equitable partnership, there is, in fact, continuity and intensification of disproportionate donor influence and even domination in the development policy making process

The objectives of foreign aid are closely associated with the global political and economic issues during the last 60 years. In recent years foreign aid flows have been considerably influenced by international terrorism. In this paper I attempt to investigate whether and how sectoral aid has affected international conflicts and intra-country violence. The analysis is initiated by case studies. I use graphical analysis to examine the rationale and disbursements of sectoral foreign aid to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to 2010. It is discovered that aid for agriculture and food are extremely low in these conflict areas. Then I use a comprehensive panel data to show the relationships between conflicts/violence and sectoral foreign aid covering 123 developing countries from 2002 to 2010. It shows that agricultural aid can significantly reduce conflict, and aid for food security can significantly mitigate violence. Aid for some sectors will increase conflict/violence. Finally I use directed acyclic graphs (DAG) to present preliminary results on the structure of causality among conflicts/violence and sectoral aid, showing that aid to government is positively associated with both conflict and violence.

Thesis (M.S. - Hydrology and Water Resources)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2006. / "Fall 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-180).

Thesis (M.D.) -- University of Adelaide, based on a study conducted in the Dept. of Social and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, 1973. / Appendix in back pocket.