The development community has to adjust to constant changes in the objectives, principles, and instruments of development assistance. All too often, however, this is associated with what is trendy. The aim of this paper is to examine the trends in development assistance by analyzing the ethical basis for international aid. To this end, the paper analyzes a number of ethical questions. It also tries to demonstrate that the answers to these ethical dilemmas provide a relevant framework for understanding the interaction between various development paradigms. The paper uses this framework to review recent positions taken by the development community vis-??-vis the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).