On balance, it is benificial to place political conditions on humanitarian aid.

I'll begin by attacking my opponents case, and then move on to rebuild my own. BOPMy opponent insists that we operate under as shared BoP since this resolution is similar to a PF resolution. Really, one of the biggest problems in PF is the idea of a shared BoP, as well as the idea that con can speak first. If this indeed was a PF debate, I would have specified in R1. I believe the best action is to leave it up to the voters to decide who has the BoP.Pro's Case Political conditions ensure that the disaster will not be repeated.It is pretty obvious that pro is talking about disasters caused by corrupt governments, rather than natural disasters. Recognize that humanitarian aid needed after natural disasters is relevant to this debate, and that this point obviously cannot solve for scenarios such as earthquakes and hurricanes. When evaluating this point, first look to the purpose of humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid is a short term type of aid, unlike developmental aid. After the aid goes away, there is nothing to make the country continue to follow the political conditions previously placed on the aid. This means that even if a country were to accept the political conditions attached to their aid, once the aid goes away, the government may go back to its corrupt ways. Given the levels of corruption that countries in need of humanitarian aid have, this scenario is probable. Another likely problem that will cause political conditions to be virtually useless is their low acceptance rate. As I showed in my constructive, less than half of all countries actually follow political conditions attached to their humanitarian aid, and this statistic doesn't even answer for countries who don't accept such conditions. For pro's point to stand, he must show examples of political conditions legitimately stopping such disasters from being repeated, or prove that political conditions are usually accepted and followed for a substantial amount of time.TheftPro begins by citing an article about stolen food aid in Somalia, assuming that political conditionality will fix this problem. Observe that this article is an example of nonunique evidence because it doesn't include any information relevant to this specific topic. Allow me to clarify; firstly, the article doesn't say whether this aid had political conditions attached to it or not. Pro makes a mistake by assuming that (a) political conditions don't exist in this situation and (b) political conditions will solve this problem. Placing political conditions on humanitarian aid is within the status quo, so it is likely that political conditions were placed on the aid, but the problem still continued to persist. Moreover, the article doesn't mention political conditions in it's list of potential solutions. Rather, the article notes that the problem stems from Somalia's military chief, as well as the flaws in the world food program. Even if this aid was unconditional, there is no way to ensure that political conditions will help, given the corruption in Somalia. Pro's second source has the exact same problem. Indeed, pro is correct in saying that this source shows a correlation between food aid and conflict, but the article presented (like the one before) says nothing to suggest that political conditions will solve this problem, rather the article suggests that countries be more selective about who they give aid to, which has nothing to do with political conditions. To put this in the form of a question: Is it really likely that countries with corrupt regimes that cause food aid to go to places it's not supposed to will accept and follow political conditions promoting good governance? I would think not.Both parties must benefit.I totally agree with the point pro is trying to make here, but pro provides no reasons behind the idea that political conditions actually help the donor, whereas I have provided multiple reasons as to why the donor is actually harmed when such conditions are added. Conditionality of a political nature causes conflict, loss of credibility (thus loss of diplomatic relations), and gives NGO's less leverage. Pro must prove that political conditionality has legitimate benefits for this point to mean anything.My CaseIneffective Conditions-Conditions that are not accepted: Pro explains that sending unconditional aid to North Korea in it's hostile state would be a bad idea. Perhaps sending aid is not the best plan of action, but if aid is going to be sent, it would be better for the aid to have no political conditions. When a donor attaches conditions of the nature that I explained in my constructive, the donor loses all neutrality and actually makes tensions worse. I got into this a bit more in my second contention by explaining how tensions between America and North Korea became worse after the conditions because their government perceived the conditions as an invasion of sovereignty. North Korea is a corrupt regime that oppresses it's citizens; obviously they won't accept political conditions that try to promote a kind of governance that they don't want, just so their citizens get more aid. There is really no point of trying to attach conditions to aid in a situation like that, given that (a) they won't be accepted and (b) they will cause conflict.-Conditions that are not followed: Pro starts out by conceding that this is a problem, saying that it must be allowed to persist. Note that this causes his impacts about the promotion of good governance insuring that political disasters don't happen again ultimately cannot stand. Every donor has a different idea of what political conditions are "reasonable and achievable" and in a corrupt regime, conditions won't be ignored because they can't be achieved, but rather because the government in such a country doesn't want to achieve them. So, even if conditions are set with good intentions, there is not way to ensure that the recipient will want to follow them, or will perceive them as "good." Pro explains that my brief pertaining to aid in Haiti only covers political conditionality on developmental aid. To quote another area of the document, "Aid then continued to be ineffective as a result of.... inappropriate conditionality (2)." Recognize that this part pertaining to the flaws of the donors is talking about both developmental and humanitarian aid. However, if you as a reader, do buy my opponent's criticisms of my source, look to my examples of aid in West Africa and Afghanistan. Remember that political conditions are not followed over 50% of the time, making them pointless and counter productive, given their obvious consequences.Well being of the DonorLet's look back at the accepted definition of political conditions: "The criteria which are applied to a specific situation regarding the behavior of the government" As a judge, don't take pro's claim that political conditions promoting "bad" governance or political conditions made to benefit the donor aren't real political conditions because they must be taken into consideration under the definition I have provided. Remember that political conditions have to be policy changes, which my opponent has also agreed to; things like requesting a recipient to be transparent are not examples of specifically political conditionality. If you as a reader, don't buy this, look again to the unlikliness of such a condition being accepted. To further this idea of conditions promoting good governance being a negative thing, observe that the political conditions placed on the humanitarian aid to North Korea weren't necessarily bad conditions; however, they were perceived as an invasion of sovereignty, thus causing more conflict. Of course, even if the proposed political conditions are promoting something that would ultimately help the recipient, attaching them is still harmful because it's not about how the donor views the conditions, it's about how the recipient views them. Donors have no real way of knowing how recipient's government will react to proposed political conditions, even when taking local politics into account. Pro's examples of good political conditions don't matter because he gives no empirical evidence to promote the idea that such conditions would be accepted or followed, and that such conditions would benefit the donor as well as the recipient. Looking at the idea of loss of credibility, it can be observed even with legitimate conditions (which do not necessarily have to be consistently applied) the donor will lose credibility because of the low acceptance rate pertaining to all conditions, as well as the lower quality aid (which I will address later) pertaining to the recipient. While it may not seem bad for the donor to be sidelined, this will decrease diplomatic relations for the donor which is obviously harmful. I'll go ahead and extend the idea of NGO's being harmed the most, as my opponent never adequately addressed this.Quality of AidPro explains that my first source is invalid because it deals with developmental aid. While I agree that developmental aid and conditionality is a different debate, the evidence I cited deals with the benefits of untying aid in terms of increasing the aid value and adding dignity to the process which pertains to both developmental and humanitarian aid. The aid value is clearly decreased with things such as trade concessions, which pro seems to agree with. The problem is that pro doesn't see this decrease in aid quality as something that pertains to a debate about benefits. My IPS card elaborates that in Guatemala, trade concessions literally decreased the aid quality by 90% (11). Political conditions often allow for similar behavior in perhaps less severe forms. Even if you buy pro's argument that this cut in the value of aid pertains more to justice than benefit when talking about the recipient, note that the recipient will likely retaliate, causing the conflict I have discussed throughout my whole argument.The res has been negated.