BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Much direct aid is simply recycled as debt servicing. A significant proportion (over 60%) of aid fl...

Much direct aid is simply recycled as debt servicing. A significant proportion (over 60%) of aid flowing into the poorest nations flows straight back out again to service interest (not even capital repayments) on debts incurred, often by dictatorial governments, during the 1970s and 80s. Payment of aid to NGOs would shift priorities, stimulating growth now and hence increasing tax revenue later. These can then be used to repay debts in the longer term, whilst allowing the country to develop at a faster rate once debts have been repaid.
NGOS are better at delivering aid. Governments in those nations most in need of aid are often the l...

NGOS are better at delivering aid. Governments in those nations most in need of aid are often the least able or willing to deliver that aid. This is particularly true in those states where the line-drawing of colonialism pitched ethnic groups against one another. For example, the government in Khartoum would not provide aid to Southern Sudan, the Somali government is unable to distribute aid and the Nigerian government has no credibility in the Niger Delta region. The same is true of African nations experiencing civil wars. The only option then would be to withdraw ODA from those nations. In contrast, charities have the credibility of not being associated with governments; they can cross national borders and have a presence in rebel controlled areas such as the enclaves of northern Sri Lanka. NGOs are simply more effective at aid delivery in many of the poorest nations.
Changing the way money is given will reduce corruption, embezzlement and manipulation. The centrali...

Advocates of government-to-government aid do not have to defend such an outdated concept of ODA. Since at least 2000, many DAC member nations have tied their aid entirely or in part to political, economic environmental reform. The burden is now on recipient nations to prove that the aid is not being squandered, creating a political culture that tackles corruption, as has been seen with the creation of an ‘anti-graft task force’ in Kenya in 2006. Linked aid promotes political stability, an environmentally conscious government and a consistent economic framework.\ Furthermore, there is no guarantee that charities and NGO’s will be any less corrupt. Large amounts of money are the corrupting factor and giving aid to multiple NGOs, many of which may not be governed by as strict accounting standards as those based in the UK or USA, creates a system in which it is far harder to monitor and prevent embezzlement.
Direct aid undermines local markets. Many economists believe that economic growth needs to occur at ...

Central spending growth is still very important. Whilst we can recognise the importance of local markets in development, they provide only half of the picture. NGO’s serve a different purpose to governments, developing local projects such as schools and wells. However, economic growth also requires central spending to develop infrastructure. Indian well-drilling efficacy has increased by 70% since the use of the national space programme to find water pockets. Brazil’s hydroelectric power scheme could never be achieved by NGOs working together. A national education policy could not be formulated by NGOs. To reduce government aid would be to remove the backbone of central spending needed for national development.
Direct aid creates dependence. ODA is entwined with foreign policy to the degree where aid is no lo...

For those countries which are aid-dependent, slashing the aid their governments receive would severely harm the nation’s survival and service provision. Israel, for instance, would arguably be unable to survive without its foreign aid from the USA. Similarly, those states such as Micronesia or Tokelau which are almost exclusively aid dependent are essentially protectorates of those states that aid them, giving them political independence and the ability to develop. The other incidence to bear in mind is that on truly developing nations. Between 45-50% of all foreign aid goes to nations such as Argentina, Botswana and Brazil (in fact we sanction many poverty-stricken nations such as Angola and Zimbabwe for political reasons). Reducing aid to these countries reduces certainty and sustainability in development. We should deliver the aid which we have promised, the results of which are now coming to fruition.
Direct Aid creates an international welfare trap. ODA creates an ‘incentive problem’ by making it i...

We should respect the sovereignty of these nations, regardless of their motives, particularly given that many have democratically elected governments. Reducing government aid prevents recipient governments from being able to allocate aid in accordance with their people’s wishes. Instead aid distribution is decided by foreign charities that may have different motives. NGO’s are, as a general rule undemocratic, unaccountable interest groups. Not only would we be unfairly taking control over development out of the hands of the people and giving it to NGOs who may have worse records than the government, but we are also sending out a contradictory message if we are attempting to encourage responsible, democratic governments in those nations.
Their Plan

The opening argument of the opposition’s case is a direct continuation of their rebuttal to our case. On the proposition we are happy that the opposition spent so much time contemplating it. In the very end, they reach the conclusion that people can consent to their freedoms and rights being limited. On the proposition we concede. For instance, as a society we allow taxation, because although it curtails our private property rights, the states need budgets to operate and administer themselves. But in doing so, we recognize that it is necessary and proportionate to our goal. But exactly the lack of necessity and proportionality to the aim is why we oppose anti-terrorism legislation in our case. It is not necessary, because we have other, better ways. It is not proportional, because the price that we pay (the loss of our liberties, the abuse of the state, discrimination that breeds terrorism) is just too much (and this was elaborated explicitly previously). The whole purpose of our case is not to prove that society cannot adopt anti-terror legislation (they have done that already), but to show that they should not – because what they forsake (their fundamental rights) is much more important than the benefits the legislation brings.
Our plan

Our substantive case will begin at point 1.- really we would like to open with it, but in the spirit of the format we shall start with some rebuttal. The first point that Opposition wish to raise in this against the Proposition case is one of practicality. Let it be noted that the Proposition concede from the outset the threat that terrorism poses. We on the Proposition would qualify the threat of terrorism as one that has the capability to not only place those in a nation in a mindset of fear, which prevents them from acting ‘freely’, but the possibility that a group of people who wish to antagonise the state shall come together to exercise another event similar to the devastating proportion of 9/11. The Proposition and Opposition also agree that the purpose of anti-terrorism legislation is to combat the threat of terrorism. However, the Proposition does not seem to explicitly state the grounds upon which they doubt the legislation’s efficacy, but instead use the supposed breach to “human justice” the anti-terrorism legislation commits as grounds to adopt the method of countering the threat of terrorism through “standard criminal procedures to punish terrorists”. The Opposition hope that the Proposition does not wish to suggest that any punishment delivered through current judicial systems could in fact compensate for the onslaught an actualised threat of terror would entail. It should surely be accepted that the optimal way to deal with terror threats is to make sure that the threats do not actually turn into action, and this is what qualifies anti-terrorism legislation, a means to preventing a dreaded end.
That the crux of this argument is merely a balance of risks

Here the opposition spends half of their argument proving that abuse of the state is not something we can say with 100% certainty. In the end they acknowledge that terrorism is also just a risk (also not 100% certain). We concede – life’s not a very certain thing. Then they move on to prove that their risk is more tangible. Here we want to refer to our own case which established that the risk can be dealt appropriately with ordinary measures. By doing so we would prevent the risk of abuse, which, as our examples have clearly shown, tends to actualize itself. Even if abuse is very unlikely (and we have showed that it likely and it happens), the anti-terrorism laws restricts liberties with 100% certainty. Furthermore, the opposition merely assert that they *believe* that terrorism is more likely than abuse of the state. Well, we believe vice-versa, because the acts of terrorism are infrequent, while the state agencies operate under anti-terrorist legislations every day, so the accumulated risk is very tangible and actualizes itself. Abolishing anti-terrorist legislations means not giving states the excuse to abuse human rights, and effectively reduce the use of discriminatory practices. Leaving the legislation in place means (hopefully?!) a bit more preventive capacity. But at what price! Abuses, convictions of innocent people, and disrespect for rule of law! But it should be realized that there is no way you could actually stop their acts 100%, just as we cannot stop ordinary crime 100%. Adopting extraordinary legislations does not even deal with the problem, just encourages it by separating societies (as is proven in our case). Humane treatment of every person and effort to understand the underlying motives of the terrorists and reach out to them is very important. Anti-terrorist legislation, on the other hand, does not recognize this and only perpetuates the conflict between societies.
Anti-terrorism legislation promotes abuse of the state

A synthesis of points two and three could be assumed in this rebuttal, for really we can see that the main way in which Proposition believe the legislation in question undermines ‘democracy’ lies in the government’s (the one who has the power to exercise the legislation) ability to use the legislation inappropriately and but still remain within the boundaries of the law. Therefore we look to understand when the legislation is used inappropriately. This is when the government exercises the searching of mail or the prolonged detention of an individual about whom there is not sufficient evidence to qualify as a terror threat, the case of Sri Lanka brought up by Prop to illustrate this. The rebuttal of this point is substantiated in the rebuttal below, where the Prop moves on to the explicit idea that discrimination in its entirety is in conflict with 'human equality', which is the implicit idea of this point.
Anti-terrorism legislation is a paragon of vagueness

The case of terrorism is clearly a special one, and as such needs to be dealt with with special measures. This is the reason that anti-terrorist legislation tends to and needs to accommodate broader situations- terrorist attcks are varied and unpredictable. This does not, however, as the Proposition suggest, lead to a removal of accountability. In democratic countries, accountability still remains with anti-terrorist LEGISLATION as it does with all law. The clue is in the name. Take the recent case of Binyam Mohamed, prosecuted under a similar branch of law who took his case to court. The vagueness of the legislation is in place to allow for its use dependent on case of emergency, but there'sa single and very clear end- to prevent a terrorist attack. Accountability works retrospectively. It will usually be clear if the measures taken by a governement were proportional, to some extent based on outcome. But propositions argument that vagueness makes it liable to be abused is weak on another ground. Governments who abuse liberties, will abuse liberties regardless of whether ther is legislation to allow them to do so or not. Such abuses as proposition depicts are a symptom of regime, not of the legislation they pass. They said: 'It has to be understood that sources of insecurity may not only be an external threat to the state. It may also be the threat to individuals stemming directly from the state in the form of unlawful actions. This is especially important in countries with little democratic traditions (like the Middle East and many African states) where anti-terrorism laws lead to torture[1], detention without trial[2], and discriminatory treatment of suspects[3]. We also showed cases where abuse takes place in democratic countries. The bottom-line is that real security means being able to act, speak, move without fear. This fear increases once the government increases the restrictions of such freedoms." But we need to draw a distinction between states 'with little democratic traditions' and mature democracies. The evidence they cite in the above paragraph attributes abuses of anti-terrorist legislation primarily to the former - this is not attributable to the legislation so much as the regimes which abuse it. Regimes like these, which habitually torture, discriminate, detain without trial etc. don't need to pass legislation to enable them to do so. And will continue to do so even if the legislation is repealed.
Anti-terrorism legislation is not how we should fight terrorism

The Opposition have already highlighted that anti-terrorism legislation is never the initial seed of resentment in a terrorist’s mind against a Western nation with such legislation. The legislation itself is retaliatory in nature, and was not instigated as an aggressive move of assault, but in reaction to the threats of terrorism and terrorist attacks suffered. Therefore listing it as “another incentive to commit terrorism” is unduly inflammatory, for really it is not an incentive at all. Proposition depict a world where this legislation has seen the government torture myriads of people on the grounds they are suspects of ‘terrorism’, breach the privacy of the people indiscriminately in order to acquire information for convictions, and has left all inhabitants of the state quaking in their boots. If anything, the picture of anti-terrorism legislation that Proposition wish to paint would surely be the best DETERRENT. On a second point of rebuttal, Side Opposition (having actually debated in favour of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in an earlier WODC round) recognise very well the promotion for diplomatic relations a move to end the wars in the Middle East may earn, however, there is no reason why we cannot do this whilst keeping our anti-terrorism legislation as a safeguard for national well-being.
Our plan

The intent of our satirical introduction to the debate is to show that there are actually striking similarities between the development in Nazi Germany and what is happening nowadays in our societies. The similarities are so striking, that we find it quite uncomfortable that current developments are so neglectful on fundamental liberties and criminal justice, just as it had been previously in the darkest moments of human history. On proposition’s side, we do not deny the threat of terrorism. We concede that the threat is very real. Nevertheless, we believe that current measures of countering terrorism are ill-considered and highly inappropriate. Broad discretionary power of enforcement agencies is incompatible with the acknowledgement of human rights and the general notion of human justice. We are abolishing anti-terrorism legislation. We define it as legislation which gives broad discretionary power to enforcement agencies, denies basic safeguards (access to lawyers) and contains ambiguously defined offences, all with the purpose of explicitly countering terrorism. Namely, we are abolishing anti-terrorism legislations which implicitly promote detention without trial, denial to legal defense, denial to independent and impartial court and other measures which are incompatible with the rule of law. We are abolishing laws which allow government agencies to intercept communication freely and read mails of the citizens for the sake of fighting terrorists. To make everything even more clearly, an example of a standard document that we are abolishing is the USA PATRIOT Act. Instead of using anti-terrorism legislation, terrorism shall be countered using the conventional measures to counter other public offences, relying on standard criminal procedures to punish terrorists. The underlying premise of our case is that extraordinary measures are not needed to counter terrorism, because of the harms that these extra measures create by undermining democracies (and their efficiency is doubtful).
Anti-terrorism legislation is not how we should fight terrorism

In dealing with most of the problems in our societies there are several ways how to actually tackle them. For instance, we can prohibit the use of drugs, but we can also educate people about the dangers of them (or obviously, some combination of these, or a third way). When it comes to fighting terrorism, the first option is to practically restrict the capabilities of terrorists. The second option is to decrease their motivation to commit the acts of terror. Obviously, restricting is fine – we acknowledge the importance of it. But we contend that maybe even more important should be to tackle the main roots of terrorism. Why is that so important? Well, once it’s gone, we won’t have to deal with it anymore. Diplomacy, dialogue and showing good intentions should be the core of the message that we are conveying to them. The problem with anti-terrorist legislation is that it does not display any good intentions, on the contrary, it merely illuminates that our main objective is to directly fight the terrorists. It allows discrimination (as was proven previously), so when these people see detentions without trial, tortures, or simply humiliating and degrading treatment of the people of their own (whose guiltiness is not proven and doubtful); this is going to send a grave message about our intentions. Yes, we might be preventing more acts, but on the other hand, we have more incentives to commit terrorism, so the final effect is far from clear. For instance, maybe Al-Qaeda wants revenge to the US at any cost. But once we withdraw from pre-emptive and fruitless wars with the Middle East, once we apologize for past mistakes (messing up with their countries for the last 50 years), once we try to establish diplomatic relationships, once we abolish discriminative laws (anti-terrorist legislation) then the tension and past mistakes will fade away. While we fight wars, while we discriminate their citizens in our countries, it is very easy for the people of Al-Qaeda to appeal to the general public with saying: “Look, they are occupying our land, they are discriminating our people”. If we show unambiguously good intentions, maybe Al-Qaeda will still want the revenge, but convincing the general public to support their actions, to join them, will become complex. The terrorist organizations will die internally.
That National Security is of comparable worth to Liberty

The government also likes how John Locke justified the existence of states and also recognizes the importance of security. However, we see that the opposition takes a very narrow view of security by looking only from the perspective of national security ("We think that there is a logical reason why national security must be the first objective of any state.“) We on the government side take a more holistic view: our referent of security is not a state but an individual. Why this matters? By applying human security view we can better evaluate benefits and harms of a certain policy to an individual. It has to be understood that sources of insecurity may not only be an external threat to the state. It may also be the threat to individuals stemming directly from the state in the form of unlawful actions. This is especially important in countries with little democratic traditions (like the Middle East and many African states) where anti-terrorism laws lead to torture [[http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/08/uganda-end-torture-anti-terror-unit]], detention without trial [[http://wadnerpierre.blogspot.com/2009/08/detention-without-trial-in-haiti.html]], and discriminatory treatment of suspects [[http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA28/006/2003/en/b6e1013a-d71f-11dd-b0cc-1f0860013475/asa280062003en.pdf]]. We also showed cases where abuse takes place in democratic countries. The bottom-line is that real security means being able to act, speak, move without fear. This fear increases once the government increases the restrictions of such freedoms. Therefore, what is achieved by counter-terrorism legislation is a reduction of individual security, for the sake of achieving national security. We claim that it is not an equal trade off (one sort of security exchanged to another). It‘s because national security is a very abstract term. Achieving national security does not necessarily mean acting in the interest of the state‘s citizens, but rather increasing the power of those in the ruling elites. On the other hand, criminal justice system and policies that strive to ensure security on individual level are more aligned to the interest of people, rather than the state.
Anti-terrorism legislation undermines democracies

A definition of ‘democracy’ would have been useful from the Proposition. If they take ‘democracy’ to mean the current system of representative democracy present in such places as the UK and USA, then surely the stability of our system of governance would be best supported by such legislation as the one Prop wishes to undo? However, we would guess that Prop are taking ‘democracy’ to mean the extent to which a citizen (one who is governed by a legislating body) is able to control their agency and the exact realms of that agency. Within ‘democracy’, Prop wish to establish the existence certain rights (realms of agency that are supposedly incontestable) such as “the right to privacy”, and the right to “identity”. Firstly, the Opposition would ask the Proposition to elucidate for us to what extent the nature of personal identity is threatened under anti-terror legislation. Having the government know whether you use the internet to such gay pornography is not the same as having your mother know you are doing so. Being in the knowledge that the government knows would probably not cause you to change your behaviour, unless what you were doing was something that was discredited on a public scale, such as racism. Secondly, one right we feel that they missed off their list is the familiar one of “free speech”. However, just as we don’t see “free speech” as an absolute (we recognises areas in which this freedom or ‘right’ is curtailed) there are times when the “right to privacy” must be curtailed, and this is no large leap. For example, companies often have to publicly publish their accounts to deter fraud. The difference is that today, unlike in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia, people are free to take part in debates (such as the one both Prop and Opp are currently engaged in) on the government’s jurisdiction to infringe on civil liberty and make appeals to the government if they do believe the government has overstepped their jurisdiction. We would argue, as Opp Side will elaborate on below, that as there are greater safeguards against the infringement on our (the citizen’s) liberty by the governing body than a terrorist body, safeguards which include our freedom to debate and our system of voting. The Opposition take note that it is the “powers” (the definition of which could also have been clarified), that the state have been granted which the Proposition find contentious, and it is the grounds on which they find this contentious we shall go on to explore.