That was the general consensus among participants at a WSF panel discussing the issue of paternalism in the context of development cooperation at Bamako yesterday. No easy or ready answers emerged from the discussion but Raffaella Bolini of the Association of Recreation and Culture in Italy (ARCI) gave an example of how donors did not always mean well. She said the European Union (EU) recently gave North African countries money to militarise their borders, which are the gateways to Europe. Ostensibly, this was to help the countries secure their borders. "On the face it, this might be seen as cooperation funds, but the real reason Europe was funding border security was to stop Africans from entering their countries (in Europe)." "The EU is basically implementing its military programme using the North African countries. These governments should not have accepted this kind of aid as it is basically just meant to kill their fellow Africans caught trying to get into Europe." Bolini, whose organisation works closely with human rights groups in North Africa, said the WSF must denounce this type "poisoned chalice" from the EU and others that use poor countries to push their own agendas. Mahmoud Lamant from Western Sahara had a similar tale about the EU. He said the organisation had signed a development cooperation treaty for fishing rights with both the Polisario Front, which is fighting for independence for Western Sahara, and the Moroccan government, which lays claim to the territory. "The EU is aware of the problems between Western Sahara and Morocco and is playing us against each other. What they cannot get from us, they try to get through other means, in this case going to Morocco to get fishing rights, which it does not have to give in the first place." Njoki Njoroge Njehu from Africa Jubilee South in Kenya said development aid should be seen in the context of the call for justice. "We should get assistance or cooperation because it is our right, not something given to us through another country’s largesse. It should never be what other people think we deserve. It is not negotiable and it should be without the loss of dignity." Nhjehu, who is also executive director of Daughter of Mumbi, a network of NGOs, says it is particularly offensive that development aid is sometimes really "second hand aid". She gives the example of how some of the roads and other infrastructure built by Northern aid agencies or governments are done shabbily. "In the North you will not see substandard roads or buildings. So why when they come to the South do they give us such shoddy work? It’s because we do not question, and accept things like beggars."