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Abstract
Background and Objectives
The global architecture for providing development assistance for health (DAH) has become increasing complex in the last decade, with many new funding agencies entering the health sector. This study presents a detailed picture of European Union (EU) and EU member state originating DAH between 2006 and 2009; with a specific focus on assessing the extent of complementarity of development assistance sourced from the EU.
Design
We use a combination of internal EU reporting systems, OECD-DAC creditor reporting system data and other data sources to estimate DAH flows. Our method uses a line by line project assessment in order to identify and categorise DAH flows.
Results and conclusions
Our findings show a complex picture of DAH flows – from source, to channel of assistance, to channel of implementation – that is hard to track at the global level, and rarely comprehensively and regularly tracked at the country level. While the majority of EU DAH is focused on low and lower middle income countries there also remains much disparity between countries; and further analysis is required to better understand whether these imbalances are fair and efficient; or result in overlap. We also recommend investment in quality control of DAH tracking internally within donor agencies, and investment in the development of country based systems in order to enable countries and development partners better harmonise DAH flows.
This paper is part of the Special Issue Facets of Global Health: Globalisation, Equity, Impact, and Action. More papers from this issue can be found at http://www.globalhealthaction.net
This paper is part of the Special Issue Facets of Global Health: Globalisation, Equity, Impact, and Action. More papers from this issue can be found at http://www.globalhealthaction.net
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the European Union Delegations in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Egypt, Liberia, South Africa and Burkina Faso for assisting in the country studies. Finally we thank Cristina Torres, Walter Seidel and Marja Karjalainen from the European Commission.
Notes
This paper is part of the Special Issue Facets of Global Health: Globalisation, Equity, Impact, and Action. More papers from this issue can be found at http://www.globalhealthaction.net
2The EU's primary legislation (established in the EU's treaties) provides that the EU budgetary contributions to development aid are subject to exclusive EU legislative scrutiny and are implemented under the EU's own budgetary authority, with EU institutions ensuring coherence and control. Whereas the source of EU development aid is the EU budget – financed wholly from EU resources – the EU is a bilateral donor in its own right and not a recipient and disburser of funds of its Member States. On the contrary, the European Development Fund (EDF) is financed by extra-budgetary contributions of the EU Member States and can, as a consequence, be legally considerable as aid from the EU Member States. The two roles performed by the EU in the development context are intrinsically linked: the EU budget and the EDF together endow the EU development policy as defined by the EU institutions. In this light, the two-fold legal nature of the EU, as a bilateral donor in its own right on the one hand with a multilateral function regarding the European Development Fund on the other hand, has to be considered as sui generis and qualify the EU as a bilateral donor.
3The OECD list is derived from the World Bank-African Development Bank-Asian Development Bank harmonised list of fragile and post-conflict countries. It is not an official OECD-DAC list.
