Johannesburg. 24 May 2011. World leaders should use the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 50th anniversary forum to press for concrete improvements in sustainable development and fighting poverty, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation said as the two day summit opened today in Paris.
The 34-member institution should make clear that real improvements in poverty eradication depend on countries living up to aid commitments and the effectiveness of international aid, CIVICUS said.
"Rather than being an occasion for delegates to pat each other on the back and celebrate the amount of aid money that has been given to the world’s poorest countries, it is critical that OECD leaders assess the impact of their efforts and the policies being advanced by international financial institutions to tackle poverty and climate change," said Ingrid Srinath, Secretary General of CIVICUS.
The gap between commitments and aid pledges in 2011 has widened. In 2005, members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) collectively promised to commit 0.56 per cent of gross national income to aid. However, in 2010 aid has reached just 0.32 per cent.
"At current levels, there is little chance that more than a handful of countries will reach the agreed commitment of 0.7 per cent by 2015," Srinath said.
Discussing aid effectiveness, Srinath noted that it is being damaged by “inflated” budgets, a lack of transparency and the failure of several large countries - Germany, Italy and Spain - to honour commitments despite aid predictability being an important component of the Accra Agenda for Action.
"Beyond the quantum of aid and despite talk of new paradigms, there is still a large disconnect between donor programmes and the needs of communities on the ground," Srinath said. "Levels of inequality are rising across the world, both as a cause and a symptom of poverty even as resources labeled as aid are diverted towards goals of foreign policy, national security and trade rather than their stated goals of poverty alleviation, development and climate change."
CIVICUS' recent report, “Civil Society Organisations in Situations of Conflict” identified a growing disparity between the work civil society organisations believe is important in their context and the work donors are willing to fund. The report also found that the realignment of aid towards domestic goals of OECD countries is a significant barrier affecting development of the world’s poorest countries.
OECD members are increasingly tying overseas development aid to specific domestic and foreign policy goals. Countries are turning their development funds towards an alternative list of priorities with security and military operations having seriously skewed development assistance, with nearly 30 per cent of European aid flowing to embattled Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the report said.
“Achieving “value-for-money” development and the increasing emphasis on the impact of aid must not come at the cost of turning a blind eye to human rights violations”, said Adele Poskitt, co-author of the report and Policy Officer for CIVICUS. “We are witnessing a clampdown on democratic freedoms in a number of countries around the world whereby civil society groups and the political opposition are being deliberately excluded from decisions regarding the disbursement of aid.”
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is a global movement of civil society with members and partners in over a hundred countries.
For more information please contact CIVICUS:
Mandeep Tiwana ( ), Policy Manager or Rowena McNaughton ( , +27 768695293), Media Officer,
Office Tel: +27 11 833 5959