The road to Accra: Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness
Release Date: 14 March 2007
By Kumi Naidoo, CIVICUS Secretary-General
Dear e-CIVICUS Subscriber,
Last March 7, with other civil society organisations (CSO’s) from the South and the North, CIVICUS participated in a dialogue on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness at OECD Headquarters in Paris. Therefore, for this week’s column, I have asked my colleague, Henri Valot, CIVICUS MDG Campaign Manager, to share with you civil society perspectives on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
The Paris Declaration is the culmination of ten years of discussion on ways to improve aid effectiveness. The dialogue in Paris on the declaration was in the context of the preparations for the OECD High Level Ministerial Forum in September 2008 in Accra, Ghana. Clearly these consultations represent an important window of opportunity: we have a “foot in the door” and we shall push further to make our voice heard. So even though the OECD will not discuss the Paris Declaration's implementation before the next meeting in September in Accra, it should not stop civil society to start assessing now. Warm regards, Kumi Naidoo.
Aid is only then effective when it fosters development
By Henri Valot, CIVICUS MDG Campaign Manager
Last March 7, with other civil society organisations (CSO’s) from the South and the North, CIVICUS participated in a dialogue on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness at OECD Headquarters in Paris. The dialogue was in the context of the preparations for the OECD High Level Ministerial Forum in September 2008 in Accra, Ghana. Clearly these consultations represent an important window of opportunity: we have a “foot in the door” and we shall push further to make our voice heard. This column will present you with some of the key issues of this complex debate, but we invite our readers to get a complete picture by consulting the excellent websites listed at the bottom.
The Paris Declaration is the culmination of ten years of discussion on ways to improve aid effectiveness. Basically the Paris Declaration is an action oriented road-map for aid reform built on five main themes: ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability. The first assessment of the Paris Declaration implementation will be discussed at the next High level Meeting in Accra in 2008. But that should not stop civil society to start assessing now.
A civil society assessment of the Paris Declaration
While CSOs have welcomed many aspects of the Paris Declaration, they reiterated that the Declaration has very little to say on essential questions. The Paris Declaration actually ignores the role of citizens and CSOs as development actors in their own right, with and on behalf of the poor. There are roughly four areas that need to be addressed:
• The role of civil society as development actors related to efforts by the poor and marginalised to claim their right.
• Aligning donor approaches with a deeper understanding of aid modalities to support the poor
• Resolving the tension between local ownership and donor conditions.
• 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 requires participation from citizens over development policies. The Paris Declaration commits in several places partner countries to “encourage broad participation”. But we know that the public space for participation is never given and granted and requires strong political determination. We also note that the use of aid as a policy tool to impose economic policy, e.g. the structural adjustment programs, 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 a limited donor/recipient partnership made up of State officials cannot represent the interest consensus of any society. A static state-centred approach ignores and devaluates the critical importance of communities of poor and marginalized people. If aid modalities undermine autonomous and responsive aid support to civil society development actors, the Declaration will reduce the chances of achieving the MDGs. Much more needs to be done to improve knowledge, democratic organisation, and respectful North/South partnerships in civil society. If civil society organisations become mere sub-contractors to their own governments to access donor resources, these organisations will not be able to hold the same governments accountable for results.
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, it is just as much about addressing the political inequalities in donor/recipient relationships. Strengthening independent institutional monitoring of donors against clear and enforceable benchmarks for donor performance is thus essential. All CSO’s involved in the Aid Effectiveness debate agree that the principles and objectives of the Paris Declaration are to be applicable to all country-level development actors. Also, the declaration must acknowledge not only the notion that aid is as an important support to the development agenda. Surprisingly, in Paris, some donors stated that the purpose of the declaration was not to deliver development, but rather and only aid improved mechanisms. CSO’s united when they reiterated that aid takes his meaning and its role in the broader sustainable human development agenda that is agreed upon in the wider civil space and not just in state offices.
The issues within
Our involvement in this donor/recipient government’s dialogue poses some important questions for CSOs and obliges us to reflect on, and to develop our positions.
1. Firstly is the instrumental purpose of CSOs, by governments, as service-providers in the new aid agenda, or in other case by donors, when they keep supporting our programmes and use us as a means to say what they cannot or do not say to the partner government. This contributes to the resentment of governments towards civil society.
2. Secondly is that we all have advocated consistently for the return to the developmental state, capable on delivering on human rights. We should be satisfied that the new aid modalities affirm the same, through the programme-based approach, but we also denounce that they do not deliver in practice. Similarly, we criticize the core institutional support to our states but call for a same core institutional support for ourselves.
3. Thirdly, we sometimes contradict ourselves with the issue of conditionality. We lobby against it, but when our government is off track, we seek to use donor conditionality to put them back on track.
4. Fourthly, there is the question of our own alignment and harmonization. It is known that international CSO’s contributed US$ 11.3 billion in 2004 to international cooperation initiatives, equal to more than 20% of bilateral aid in that year. But are we exempt of the duplications and donor-driven initiatives we criticise? Just as the new aid terminology, we rather use between us the term “partners”, which cannot hide strong power inequalities.
5. Finally, how do we make sure that our organisations assume and embed the accountability principles that we publicly seek from donors and recipients governments? It is a common question, being tackled by CSO’s in several instances, notably by the Accountability Charter, but we also know that it is a recurrent one when engaging with Northern and Southern governments.
So, how to go from here to Accra?
Now that we have a “foot in the door”, let us seize the opportunity and contribute to the debate, by pushing our development agenda. What can we do?
• In Southern countries, we need to assess the multiple role in development of CSO’s, and to liaise and consult with Northern CSO’s present and work on joint policy positions;
• We can manage and contribute to wide national consultations on the aid effectiveness in order to prepare the regional workshops which will take place between August and October 2007.;
• We have to identify and contact our Paris Declaration National Coordinator and follow up on the monitoring of the Paris Declaration implementation. With the support of the analytical framework being prepared by Eurodad, we must produce our own monitoring and evidence-based national reports on the effectiveness of aid;
• Let us acknowledge that the Paris Declaration is not cast in stone. Therefore, we must lobby and seek support from local and national governments and advocate for a new comprehensive Declaration, to be adopted in Accra;
• You can also get involved by subscribing to the “aid effectiveness” listserv managed by the Reality of Aid. Also you can contact the “Ghana facilitation group”, which prepares the CSO inputs to the agenda and the communiqué of the High Level Forum in Ghana, and which will organize the parallel CSO forum parallel. (please contact: secretariat@realityofaid.org);
• Contribute to the Make Aid Work campaign, promoted by CIDSE and Caritas Internationalis, at www.make-aid-work.org;
• We need to build bridges between two parallel processes on aid effectiveness; the OECD/DAC process and the Financing For Development (FFD) process, starting at the Spring meeting of ECOSOC in April 2007 and culminating with the Follow up conference on FFD, to be held in Doha, Qatar during the second half of 2008;
• Finally, CIVICUS will support actively the overall consultation process towards the High Level Forum in Ghana and will co-convene with The Reality of Aid a workshop on CSOs and Aid effectiveness at its next World Assembly, on 23/27 May 2007 in Glasgow.
www.realityofaid.org, Please consult “Reality Check”, the last newsletter from “The Reality of Aid” (January 2007), a very valuable and accessible tool,
