Politically exploitative humanitarian aid

In 1990, the UK Prime Minister was accused of using foreign aid to export dangerous pollution and acid rain to India while "strutting the world stage" telling the Third World it must abandon CFCs to save the ozone layer. In the early 1980s, three contracts for British companies to provide equipment and services for the world's largest power station complex in Rihand, India, were without competition and part of an aid pledge and trade deal against the UK's 1 billion aid budget to India. The coal-fired power station was built without the sulphur cleaning flues now being fitted to British power stations.

Under the Reagan administration, USA foreign aid was denied to health clinics which provided abortion facilities.