Voices: A post-foreign aid world needs to be built on transformational tax and trade policies

People wait outside a food distribution site in Maban, South Sudan - (Guy Peterson/AFP via Getty Images)

The world’s governments will fly to New York this week for the 80th anniversary session of the United Nations against the backdrop of a world in chaos. For diplomats and humanitarians, one of the big questions on the agenda if whether the UN is on course to "reset" itself when it comes to humanitarian aid. Because even without geopolitical shifts we’ve witnessed in the last few months the sad truth is the current forms of international cooperation aren’t working.

Assembled delegates might like to reflect on the fact that for every dollar that flows into Africa in aid, four dollars flow out in debt repayments. That’s not development cooperation — it’s systemic neocolonial extraction. And in this era of political volatility and donor retreat, we must confront a hard truth: aid has long distracted from — and often sustained — the global economic architecture that keeps the Global South dependent and disempowered.