When people talk of “aid effectiveness” they are often referring to the 2005 Paris Declaration on the issue – signed by donor countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) as well as developing countries and multilateral institutions.
Learn the lingo
That agreement focused on five principles:
Ownership – Developing countries must lead their own development policies and strategies.
Alignment – Donors must line up their aid firmly behind these country strategies. It should not be “tied” to donor objectives.
Harmonisation – Donor’s development work should be better coordinated.
Managing for Results – A focus on the end result of aid, the tangible difference it makes in poor people’s lives.
Mutual Accountability – Donors and recipients of aid being accountable to each other, to citizens and parliaments.
Offering an alternative
Civil society has also established its own Aid Effectiveness Forum, currently steered by 18 NGOs. They met in Ghana in August 2008, ahead of the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in September.
Funding from the Commonwealth Foundation ensured that participants from Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa could attend.
According to the Ghana Forum on Aid Effectiveness (and most other civil society forum members), the Paris Declaration is at best about reducing the costs of giving aid. It is weaker on women, youth, debt reduction, decent work, the environment and human rights – in short, the ingredients of pro-poor policy.
This chimes with other Commonwealth voices. As far back as 2006, in his letter to the G8 group of industrialised economies, then Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon warned, “The focus to date on implementing the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness has been more on improving the efficiency of aid and agency processes, and less on the substance of aid effectiveness such as gender equality and harmonisation of development co-operation with trade policies.”
Quantity as well as quality
For Commonwealth Finance Ministers meeting in St Lucia in October 2008, what was important about aid was its quality and quantity; they repeated the call for donors to fulfill their
commitments – to allocated 0.7% of income to aid, to double their aid by 2010 and to double their aid to Sub-Saharan Africa. Only
then will civil society be dissuaded...