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A critical approach to the aid effectiveness agenda

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From Paris 2005 to Accra 2008: will aid become more accountable and effective?

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This position paper has been prepared by the International CSO  Steering Group (ISG) coordinating the “CSO Parallel Process to the Ghana High Level Forum Network”. The ISG coordinating CSO Parallel Process to the Ghana High Level Forum network brings together various local, national, regional and international NGOs who are engaged in development issues, particularly the aid architecture and the aid effectiveness agenda. This network is involved in a multi-stakeholder process of engagement leading towards the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in Accra, Ghana, in September 2008.

This paper is being presented to CSOs around the world for further edits and suggestions, as well as endorsement sign-on. This position paper will then be presented to the High Level Forum III where CSOs have requested to speak to the Ministerial meeting.  

The network is keen to develop awareness of the aid effectiveness agenda at the local, national and international level and sees the Ghana HLF as an important opportunity for bringing about discussion and debate and the engagement of CSOs on the said agenda. CSO concerns include among others, governance and accountability, ownership, effective aid delivery, tied aid and conditionality, at the same time ensuring that the core issues of gender equality, human rights and solidarity in the aid architecture are seriously addressed.

The list of current partner networks involved in this initiative include ActionAid International, Afrodad, Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), BOND (UK Aid Network), Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), CIVICUS, CONCORD (European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development), Eurodad, IBIS, IBON Foundation, Ghana CSO Aid Effectiveness Forum, SEND (Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa), Reality of Aid, Social Watch, Third World Network, Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE). The International CSO Steering Group is currently under the chairmanship of IBON for the Accra High Level Forum.

See also

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness from the right to development perspective

Roberto Bissio contributes to the Fourth session of the High Level Task Force on the implementation of the right to development, Working Group on the Right to Development, HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Eighth session (Geneva, 7-15 January 2008)

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PD) as a non-binding document on ways to disburse and manage ODA more effectively does not deal with any of the commitments spelled out in MDG8 (trade, finance, debt, increased aid) but it can be deemed to indirectly contribute to them if its goal of making aid more efficient is actually achieved. However, while relatively minor gains in efficiency could be obtained from avoiding duplications in delivery and simplifying reporting, the main causes of aid inefficiency (i.e. tied aid and unpredictability of aid income) are not properly addressed. There is a danger that the political momentum around the PD might deviate attention from the need of building global development partnerships around the still largely unmet commitments of MDG8.

The PD does not constitute in itself a partnership, as it brings together national and international actors in the aid cycle with extremely asymmetrical conditions and does not spell out corresponding rights and obligations. As a framework for bilateral partnerships between donors and creditors on the one hand and individual aid recipient countries on the other, the PD fails to provide institutional mechanisms to address the asymmetries in power. Institutional ownership of the PD process rests with the OECD DAC and the World Bank, where donors and creditors have exclusive or majority control, with little or no developing country voice or vote.

Human rights, including the Right to Development (RtD) are not mentioned in the PD. While some of its principles (national ownership and mutual accountability) can be supportive of the RtD, the practical implementation of the PD and the down to earth objectives, as spelled out in its indicators, can work in practice against RtD and erode national democratic processes.  

Those conclusions derive from an analysis of the PD and each of its indicators according to the criteria agreed by the Working Group on RtD.

 

Background

 

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is the culmination of ten years of donor discussion on ways to improve aid effectiveness. It was adopted in March 2005 at the High Level Ministerial Forum organized by the DAC of OECD. The Paris Declaration is commonly described by donors as “an unprecedented global consensus” for reforming the delivery and management of aid to improve its effectiveness. These reforms are intended to “increase the impact of aid… in reducing poverty and inequality, increasing growth, building capacity and accelerating achievement of the MDGs”.

Its origins lie in the declining aid levels and increasing disillusionment, among donors, with the impact of aid in the 1990s. It is an action oriented road-map for aid reform built on five main themes, with corresponding objectives:

  • Ownership: “Partners” (recipient) countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and coordinate development action
  • Alignment: Donors base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions and procedures
  • Harmonization: Donors’ actions are more harmonized and transparent
  • Managing for results: Countries have transparent and monitorable performance assessment frameworks for national development strategies
  • Mutual accountability: Donors and partners countries are accountable for development results.

A few months after the adoption of the Declaration, the DAC and the World Bank agreed on 12 indicators and measurable targets to be achieved by 2010. The first assessment of the Paris Declaration implementation will be discussed at the next High level Meeting in Ghana in 2008.

Key foundations of the Paris Declaration are:

  • The notion of “partnership” which replaces the traditional donor/recipient relationship. Donors and “aid partners” make a total of 56 “partnerships commitments across all five areas
  • The “Programme-based approach”: donors and partners governments have been increasingly critical of the “development project” as an effective aid delivery mechanism. Instead, they are now negotiating “Programme-based approaches”, in which a number of donors pool development resources in support for a defined development programme. It then takes two main forms: the sector-wide programme (programme coordinated by a sector Ministry) and the budget support (support to the central budget of the government to implement its Poverty Reduction Strategy).

The Paris Declaration implies that its principles and objectives are applicable to all country-level development actors, including civil society organizations. Nevertheless, to date, the aid effectiveness agenda is largely focused, as seen in the targets of the Paris Declaration, on the need for institutional reforms by donors and developing country governments. It should also be noted that, while a number of CSOs, notably The Reality of Aid and CCIC, are listed in the Appendix of the Declaration as “participating CSOs”, they never endorsed the Declaration. CSOs present in Paris provided critical feed-back on several issues. Similarly developing country representatives present provided often critical commentaries. The Declaration itself was set out by the DAC as an expression of consensus at the meeting but was never brought to a vote or sign on process.

 

CSOs as development actors

While CSOs have welcomed many aspects of the Paris Declaration, they reiterated that the Declaration has very little to say on essential questions: aid effectiveness for what purpose, for whom and as measured by whom? How much aid actually reaches the poor and mobilizes them to address their own problems? CSOs also assert that the purpose of the aid should be the true measure of its effectiveness.

The Paris Declaration actually sets out an unfinished and narrow agenda for reform. It ignores the role of citizens and CSOs as development actors in their own right who have a long history in organizing economic, social and political initiatives with and on behalf of the poor.

CSOs involved in the aid effectiveness debate propose change in four areas to achieve real impact on poverty with aid resources:

  • Understanding the role of civil society as development actors related to efforts by poor and marginalized peoples to claim their rights
  • Aligning donor approaches with a more complex understanding of aid modalities to support the poor
  • Resolving the tension between local ownership and donor conditionalities
  • Assuring independent assessments of progress for improved development results

On the principle of local ownership, we advocate for a real country, or democratic, ownership which require participation from citizens over development policies. The Paris Declaration commits in several places partner countries to “encourage broad participation of a range of national actors in setting development priorities”. But we know that the public space for participation is never given and granted and requires strong political determination. We also note that macro-economics associated with Structural Adjustment Programs remain a strong consensus among donors, and have remerged for debt cancellation, PRSPs, as well as in the coordinated donor programme-based approaches. The use of aid as a policy tool to impose economic policy and other conditions has no place in an aid paradigm rooted in a commitment to local ownership.

On the principles of alignment and harmonization, we affirm that these reforms rest on the untenable assumption that a limited donor/recipient partnership made up of State officials can represent the consensus interests of major development actors in any society. We have now a static state-centred approach that ignores and devaluates the critical importance of communities of poor and marginalized people, and their role in organizing local knowledge, and articulating local demands to respond to unique local conditions. Civil society efforts complement, but also sometimes challenge the directions of state policy. If the Paris Declaration aid modalities undermine autonomous and responsive aid support to civil society development actors, the Declaration will reduce the chances of achieving the MDGs.

Today, many Southern CSOs are capable and have the independence to challenge their local and national governments for state programs that enable benefits for poor people. If much more needs to be done to improve knowledge, democratic organization, and respectful North/South partnerships in civil society, this will not happen if resource transfers for these organizations are locked into donor-approved development “blue-prints” designed and managed through government offices. If civil society organizations become only sub-contractors to their own governments to access donor resources, these organisations will not be able to hold the same governments accountable for results. The limitations of the new aid paradigm are evident in the recent analysis of the mainstreaming gender issues in development practices. All in principle recognize the centrality of gender equality to making progress on poverty reduction. Nevertheless, national development strategies rarely mainstream gender benchmarks and donor alignment with national strategies is already resulting in “gender policy evaporation”.

Finally on the principle of mutual accountability, we call for a more comprehensive approach. Accountability is not just about technical and contractual relationships in aid spending, but also about addressing the political inequalities in donor/recipient relationships. Strengthening independent institutional monitoring of donors against clear and enforceable benchmarks for donor performance is essential.

All CSO involved in the Aid Effectiveness debate would agree that the principles and objectives of the Paris Declaration are to be applicable to all country-level development actors, if the Declaration acknowledges and includes clearly not only the role and responsibilities of all development actors but also aid as an important support to the development agenda. Surprisingly, we still hear from some donors that the purpose of the Paris Declaration is not to deliver development, but rather and only aid improved mechanisms. CSOs united reiterates that Aid takes his meaning and its role in the broader sustainable human development agenda, which includes Participatory Governance, Human-Rights, Gender Equality, Basic Services, Environment and Decent Work based approaches…

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