Abstract. After many decades of perpetuated failures, the foreign aid policy requires a critical reexamination. Doubting the efficiency of the foreign aid under the current institutional frame does not have to be interpreted as abandoning the many and the poor (approximately two thirds of the world’s population, mainly in the underdeveloped countries). The goal itself is not the subject of our critique here, but the ways to address that goal, promoted up to now by developed countries and the UN.

Keywords: poverty trap; third world; foreign aid; economic development.