Charles Mutasa
4 September 2008
opinion
The issue of development cooperation especially aid can be traced back to the United Nations resolution 2626 of 1970 on the international development strategy for the second United Nations development decade where rich countries pledged to give 0.7% of their gross national products as development assistance after recognising the role that aid could play in fostering development in developing countries. The next 30 years that followed saw aid being manipulated and used to meet political ends such as recruiting and rewarding southern allies during the Cold War. The question of aid for development seems to have taken a lull in this period and only surfaced again after the signing of the Millennium Declaration.
The financing for development conference held in Monterrey in 2002 that followed sought to examine the internationally agreed development goals adopted during the past development decade, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that originated from the 2000 Millennium declaration, for their financial implications and to indicate ways of mobilising the financial resources needed to achieve them. The outcome of the conference on financing for development was a turning point in international economic cooperation. The adoption of the Monterrey consensus at the summit level on 22 March 2002 not only signalled a new partnership in international economic relations but also reaffirmed the advantages of the new approach toward consensus building taken by the international community.
In February 2003, leaders of the major multilateral development banks and international and bilateral organisations, donor and recipient country representatives gathered in Rome for the high level forum on harmonisation. They committed to take action to improve the management and effectiveness of aid and to take stock of concrete progress, before meeting again in early 2005. The high level forum concluding statement, the Rome declaration on harmonisation, sets out an ambitious programme of activities, which includes among other things agreements to streamline donor procedures and practices, ensure that donor assistance is aligned with the development recipient's priorities and most importantly to implement the good practices principles and standards formulated by the development community as the foundation for harmonisation.
The Paris Declaration of March 2005 represents a landmark achievement that brings together a number of key principles and commitments in a coherent way. It also includes a framework for mutual accountability, and identifies a number of indicators for tracking progress. There is a general recognition that the Paris declaration is a crucial component of a larger aid effectiveness agenda that could engage parliament, gender groups, civil society actors, new lenders, global funds and foundations in a more direct manner. In the Paris declaration, donors and partners committed themselves to monitoring their progress in improving aid effectiveness against 56 specific actions, from which 12 indicators were established and targets set for 2010 (OECD 2007).
Although the international post Paris process has represented a significant amount of work (in terms of surveys, analysis, consultation process, evaluation of the Paris declaration etc), there still remains the need to ensure that the Accra agenda for action is more ambitious, securing strong input and impact, reaffirming the Paris commitments, reflect on the midterm review of the Paris commitments, and include guidance on areas where further progress is needed.
THE PARIS DECLARATION
The purpose of the 2005 Paris declaration on aid effectiveness is to improve aid delivery in a way that best supports the achievement of the MDGs by 2015.
It highlighted the importance of predictable, well aligned, programmed, and coordinated aid to achieve results. See Paris declaration on aid effectiveness, ownership, harmonisation, alignment, results and mutual accountability. One of its five key principles is mutual accountability in which donors and developing countries pledged that they would hold each other mutually accountable for development based on the other four principles of ownership, alignment, harmonisation, and management for results. The Paris declaration emphasises accountability in relation to parliament and other domestic stakeholders, which can only be feasible with effective structures for dialogue (Tjonneland 2006). Although these commitments build on the content of previous agreements, notably that which is expressed in the Rome declaration of February 2003, the Paris declaration is more comprehensive and reflects a broader consensus.
The Paris Declaration flags CSOs (civil society organisations) as potential participants in the identification of priorities and the monitoring of development programmes. However, it does not recognise CSOs as development actors in their own right, with their own priorities, programmes, and partnership arrangements. By taking a narrow view of CSOs' roles, the Paris declaration fails to take into account the rich diversity of social interveners in a democratic society and fails to recognise the full range of roles played by CSOs as development actors and change agents. CSOs are often particularly effective at reaching the poor and socially excluded, mobilising community efforts, speaking up for human rights and gender equality, and helping to empower particular constituencies. Their strength lies not in their representation of society as a whole, but in their very diversity and capacity for innovation, and in the different perspectives that they bring to the issues when engaging in policy dialogue (OECD 2008). CSOs operate on the basis of shared values, beliefs, and objectives with the people they serve or represent.
This responsiveness to different primary constituencies explains the extensive diversity of CSOs in terms of values, goals, activities, and structure. It also explains the particular emphasis on human rights and social justice, including women's, children's, and indigenous people's rights, which many CSOs take as a starting point for their development work. As the commission of European communities (2008) noted civil society were the 'missing link' of the Paris declaration. Civil society is a fully fledged player in development. It has to be included in the process and supported in its efforts to define its own principles of aid effectiveness. The same applies to parliament, local authorities, gender groups and others who are increasingly vocal in their wish to become stakeholders and actors in development.
Overall, human rights principles and standards should be upheld and promoted through results achieved and strategies used to achieve Paris declaration targets and indicators. Synergies between the human rights and aid effectiveness agendas should be sought and further developed in the ongoing roll-out of 'Paris' if other cross cutting policy issues such as gender equality and environmental sustainability are to be considered at the Accra third high level forum on aid effectiveness (OECD 2006). There is much potential for the international human rights framework and the Paris declaration to reinforce and benefit from each other. The application of the principles and partnership commitments of the declaration can help advance human rights in a changing context of more aligned and harmonised aid and new aid modalities.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND AID EFFECTIVENESS
Accountability is now a buzzword in contemporary development discourse. When accountability works, citizens are able to make demands on powerful institutions and ensure that those demands are met. [IDS (2006) 'Making accountability count' IDS policy briefing No. 33] The concept of accountability describes the rights and responsibilities that exist between people and the institutions that affect their lives, including governments, civil society and market actors. International financial institutions and donors have been consistently criticised for using aid to further their own interests. The current patterns of accountability in which donor agencies hold recipients accountable, and are in turn accountable to their own taxpayers must change. Donors continue to use unfair, undemocratic and inappropriate policy conditionality, in a way that skews recipient accountability away from the citizens of poor countries. The civil society message has been loud and clear that this 'one way' accountability should be replaced by a system of genuine mutual accountability, which balances the legitimate interests of donors, recipients and, most importantly, poor people. In this regard, civil society continues to monitor whether international financial institutions and donors use aid for their own purposes or for primarily reducing poverty and promoting development.
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