On the road to Accra, via Canada and County Kerry

Abstract

A workshop was convened in February 2008 to identify the role of civil-society organisations (CSOs) in the post-Paris Declaration aid agenda, prior to the High-Level Forum to review progress towards achieving aid harmonisation that was held in Accra in September 2008. The article presents concerns about the focus on the mechanisms rather than the purpose or impacts of aid; the ways in which donors force through their own agendas; and the continuing gap between rhetoric and practice on issues such as gender equity and local ownership.

Keywords:

• Aid
• Civil Society
• Gender and Diversity
• Governance and Public Policy

Acknowledgement

A short version of this paper was published on the Open Democracy website in August 2008, in time for the Accra meeting. The issues raised, however, go far beyond that meeting and remain to be addressed well into the future.

Notes

The Paris Declaration, endorsed on 2 March 2005, is an international agreement which more 100 ministers, heads of agencies, and other senior officials approved, committing their countries and organisations to increase efforts in harmonisation, alignment, and managing aid for results, with a set of actions and indicators that could be monitored.

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV and AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015, form a blueprint agreed by many of the world's governments and leading development institutions. The MDGs have galvanised efforts to meet the needs of the world's poorest.

DBS is the new aid mechanism whereby donors support a country's national budget, rather than funding sectors or projects. Accountability for the use of funds going directly into national budgets is a challenge for donors, who try to address it through technical assistance and placing key people in line ministries, improving governments' monitoring and accounting mechanisms, and expecting CSOs to monitor spending and call their governments to account.

In September 2008, a High-Level Forum to review progress on the PD was convened in Accra by donors and governments. The criteria for assessment focused on the mechanisms rather than the impact of aid.

These issues are well documented by the International Committee of Women (ICW) and Alice Welbourn in ‘A War Against Women’, published on the Open Democracy website, 7 March 2008.