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Aid Effectiveness = Development?

This week ministers from over 100 countries along with representatives of international civil society assemble in Ghana’s capital Accra to discuss aid effectiveness.  This high level forum will be looking at progress after the 2005 Paris Declaration.  Here the argument is about how effective aid is, how much development aid results in and, not least, whose hands are on the steering wheel.

09.01.2008
Modified: 09.24.2008

- A milestone in aid effectiveness, the high level forum calls it on its own web pages (read more here).  But it was not, states Norads’s magazine Bistandsaktuelt (Aid News), whose latest number names the many good intentions behind the Paris Declaration (read more here).

"It was meant to revolutionise aid – transfer political power from donor to recipient, coordinate donor activity and create an aid that could demonstrate clear results.  There should be an end to recipient countries having to write a thousand reports and receive hundreds of delegations from donor countries.  Instead development countries should spend their energies on specific work to reduce poverty.  The donors should rely on the recipients’ systems.  Aid should be more stable.  Recipients should simply decide over their own development.  All this was to happen by 2010.  The Top Meeting in Accra at the beginning of September should be the last check post before the finishing line."

The work for following up the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness (read more here) is, according to an introduction to development and aid activity produced by Ibon (Philippines), narrowly focused on the administration of aid.  In a common statement the international steering committee' of Civil Society Organisations points out that (read more here):

"We need to see specific commitments to positive reform.  When it comes down to it, the point of aid effectiveness is not effective aid or donor harmonisation but real progress towards viable development."

According to Dorte Kabell, who has evaluated the execution of the Paris Declaration for the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (read more here), the problem is partly that the process has been left to the bureaucrats. To Bistandsaktuelt (the Norad magazine Aid News), she has said:

"This is a political plan of action, not just an aid plan. It touches on deep political processes both in the recipient and donor countries.  Therefore, it is vital that the Accra meeting is not just an arrangement for bureaucrats."

Representatives of foreign affairs committee of the Norwegian parliament have told Bistandsaktuelt that they know little of the process (read more here). However, it is the developing countries’ "ownership" of their own development - not ther ownership of the donors - that has been one of the stated intentions of the Paris Declaration. Practice has been quite different, many claim. In a letter to the Norwegian government before the G8 meeting last year Norwegian Church Aid wrote (read more here):

"Although the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness states that national priorities for combating poverty shall steer the use of aid funding, loans and debt annulment, the international financial institutions still force poor countries to privatise public services, liberalise trade and follow macroeconomic frameworks that prevent vital investments in the social sectors."

According to the developing countries’ think tank, The South Centre in Geneva, the present draft of the action plan from Accra will not change that.  In a commentary on the draft the South Centre writes (read more here):

"It suggests no inbuilt changes in the steering structure for the international aid system that remains donor-controlled and reflects the donors’ economic and political agendas."

In Accra today a book was launched, Ending Aid Dependence, written by South Centre director, Yash Tandon. In his foreword Tanzania’s former president, Banjamin W Mkapa writes (read more here):

"'The primary and long-term objective of this monograph is to initiate a debate on development aid, and to lay out a doable strategy for ending aid dependence. An exit strategy from aid dependence requires a radical shift both in the mindset and in the development strategy of countries dependent on aid, and a deeper and direct involvement of people in their own development. It also requires a radical and fundamental restructuring of the institutional aid architecture at the global level."

"A more immediate objective is to start a dialogue with the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which forms the basis of a high level meeting in September 2008 in Accra, and to caution the developing countries against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (the ‘Triple A’) offered by the OECD."

To what extent this will be achived we will probably know more by the end of this week.


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Norwegian Views on the Paris Declaration:


"Norway is working for the roles of the UN system and the international development banks to be clearer and for the division of labour and cooperation between them and other aid actors to be better.  Emphasis is on following up the ambitions of the Paris Declaration of 2005 for increased aid effectiveness both at international and national level.  This means that national ownership, the use of the recipient country’s systems, cooperation between donors, result-driven management and shared responsibility would be the guiding principles for Norwegian development cooperation."

The Government White Paper no. 1 (2007- 2008)

"Following up the Paris Declaration has probably led to better control for aid recipients. However, the work appears to have produced more red tape and administration for the donors with endless series of coordination meetings.  And, it seems in particular, that the intention of improving the division of labour at national level has failed in many countries.  Few donors like handing over influence in exciting sectors or countries, whether that means delegating funds to other donors or withdrawing completely.”

Hege Herzberg of the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) to the MFA Project Reflex

”Recipients are not ”an object” that aid can reform/develop but ” a subject” that will use aid for its own interests.  The Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness is built on this type of logic and is founded on the partners negotiating a common agreement on the contents of the policy.  Another foundation is the supposition that changed donor behaviour will lead stronger recipient ownership.  This is problematicised in a newly published book that examines Japanese and Norwegian aid in Asia (Jerve et al 2007)."

Alf Morten Jerve, CMI
to the MFA Project Reflex

"The Norwegian authorities have taken the lead for cancelling the debts of developing countries.  Before Christmas Prime Minister Stoltenberg said in connection with the purchase of s-called climate quotas,” It is not about buying indulgences but about settling an account”.  Is it imaginable that the aid budget will be rechristened “the budget for cancelling the debts of and paying damages to developing countries”?  Maybe the Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim can proclaim this at the conference in Ghana and challenge other industrial countries to follow suit?”

Aksel Nærstad of the Development Fund
(Norwegian NGO)

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Last update: 12. January
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