As a preparatory step for the Doha Conference, the United Nations General Assembly organised its third High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development on the overall theme The Monterrey Consensus: status of implementation and tasks ahead on 23-24 October 2007, at the UN Headquarters in New York. That very same week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands convened an Experts Meeting in The Hague entitled Visions and Experiences of Southern Civil Society: Contributions to Improving the Aid Architecture, and I had the privilege to be invited to this meeting.  

The participants at the meeting in The Hague recognised the many problems associated with aid: that it is too little to solve the problems at hand; not well spread across sectors and regions, and not properly coordinated among the donors themselves, leading to a plethora of disconnected projects. Four questions tabled at the Experts meeting reveal the main preoccupations of the CSO community:  

1.   What has happened to the recommendation that donor countries allocate at least 0.7% of their Gross National Income (GNI) to Official Development Assistance (ODA)? ODA flows reached a record US$ 106.5 billion in 2005, equivalent to 0.33% of the GNI of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Projections based on aid commitments by DAC member countries indicate that the level of ODA by the year 2010 will be at US$ 130 billion, representing 0.35% of the GNI of DAC member countries. The propensity to include aspects such as remittances as part of the development aid was highlighted as dangerous and unacceptable and not to be used as an excuse for donor countries’ non-compliane with their historical commitments.

2.   What progress has been made on the principles of the Paris Declaration? The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, agreed in March 2005, establishes global commitments for donor and recipient countries to support more effective aid in the context of a significant scaling up of aid. However, one of the most important principles of the Declaration, namely the “local country ownership” seems not to be advancing and needs to be reframed as “democratic ownership”, so democratic participation of citizens is ensured and accountability of governments and donors is given priority.  As the 2006 Survey on Monitoring the Paris Declaration recommended, development strategies need to be “determined by each country’s priorities, pace and sequencing of reform”. If we go through the Survey, ownership is the indicator that gets the lowest ranking.

 3. What kind of alignment and harmonisation of aid is needed? If genuine ownership is to be achieved, alignment and harmonisation should not include conditionality and imposition of plans, but respect for human rights, for gender equality and for environmental sustainability. That can bring aboard another important principle of the Paris Declaration, mutual accountability: both donors and recipients must be accountable, and that is the only way to make aid effective and accountable. Mutual accountability in the context of highly unequal power between donors and aid dependent countries requires also a commitment to the reform of International Financial Institutions.

4.   How to monitor and evaluate the Paris Declaration and its impact and outcomes? Self-assessment of donors or World Bank data on certain indicators is not enough and the review of donor performance is apparently not happening. A more impartial assessment is seen to be needed. The monitoring and evaluation process cannot imply the introduction of conditionalities. Measurements are needed to evaluate if aid reaches those that need it most and the processes, from allocation to evaluation, must be characterised by transparency and openness.

One consensus was clear among the participants in The Hague: it is necessary to ensure the participation of civil society at all levels and in all segments of the road to the Accra High Level Forum. This participation is essential if the development goals for developing countries are to be realized and there must be clear mechanisms of participation and inclusion of diverse civil society organisations. Civil society organisations can participate most effectively in the determination of more appropriate indicators and measurements of aid effectiveness. 

Anabel Cruz
Chairperson, CIVICUS Board of Directors