Following on from the previous post, it may be useful to duplicate here some of the discussion around Aid that I have extracted from the internet.
Much of the simplicity that exists in the reporting regarding the effectiveness of development aid is in fact promoted by many of the Aid Agencies themselves. Very few of them want too much scrutiny of their activities and as the following letter in The Irish Times of 21 June 2007, “Aid and Corruption in Africa”, amply demonstrates, continue with the rather unhelpful attitude that NGO’s and Aid organisations are fundamentally superior to national governments and inherently capable of providing a better service:
“Madam,
I feel compelled to respond to Hans Zomer's claim (June 15th) that in respect of aid and corruption in Africa I am, in essence, advocating "running away from the problems, abandoning the poor, and leaving the problem of corruption untouched".
This is a gross misrepresentation of my position, as anyone who has taken the time to read or listen to what I have actually been saying will be only too aware.
Mr Zomer writes that the "vast majority of corruption cases [in Africa] arise not from development aid, but in the interaction between private businesses". Not in my experience.
Where private business in Africa is concerned, most corruption takes the form of having to pay kickbacks, not to other companies but to a myriad of local and central government officials.
From his initial false premise, Mr Zomer goes on to argue for "donor countries and developing countries to work together to address both 'supply' and 'demand' sides of corruption". This is about as hopelessly naïve as it is possible to get.
Does he not realise that many of the governments that he suggests as partners in a battle against corruption are themselves profoundly corrupt? If he doesn't then, given his position as Director of Dóchas, he should. Sending a thief to catch a thief makes for a handy cliché but it doesn't quite work as a strategy in real life, and certainly not in the real life of Africa.
Some of the most corrupt regimes on that continent are being entrusted with large amounts of aid and only a percentage of this is finding its way to those of their citizens who are most in need. This is a fact.
It is these governments that concern me - more precisely, I am concerned about donors filtering aid through them when it is clear that the bulk of them have no interest whatsoever in the lives of their own people. Government to government aid, when the governments involved are either institutionally corrupt or have been brutalising their people, is of absolutely no value to those who need our aid most.
What I have been advocating for over 25 years is that, instead of allowing aid to be misappropriated and used to prop up corrupt regimes, wherever possible it should be filtered directly through missionaries and effective NGO’s and UN agencies. We have also argued that Western governments should adopt an entrepreneurial approach, acting as project managers to deliver the aid themselves so that greedy despots will not get their hands on the billions of taxpayers' funds.
Contrary to Mr Zomer's outrageous claim, I am in fact lobbying for maximum accountability so that we can ensure that aid is of maximum benefit to those who most require it. This should be of at least some concern to all of us.
Yours, etc,
John O'Shea, Goal, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.”
This letter itself makes a number of “false premises” and is itself “about as hopelessly naïve as it is possible to get.”
Corruption exits everywhere where there are large amounts of money available and few, if any controls over how it is spent. In other words pretty much the sort of environment in which NGO’s function.
In reality there are very few realistic alternatives other than for "donor countries and developing countries to work together to address both 'supply' and 'demand' sides of corruption."
Giving money directly to NGO’s, even in the rare instances that these NGO’s then do something truly helpful with it, invariably end up with the situation where these organisations then do what local governments are supposed to do, thus leaving these governments even less accountable to their people and more inclined to be corrupt.
The author claims that he is “concerned about donors filtering aid through (governments) when it is clear that the bulk of them have no interest whatsoever in the lives of their own people.”
It is equally true that the bulk of NGO’s likewise, have no interest whatsoever in the lives of these people. NGO’s have amply demonstrated over the last decades their own obsession with donors and with where their funds come from. This letter gives the impression that the author, if anything, simply resents having to compete with governments for a share of donor funds.
He claims that “wherever possible (funds) should be filtered directly through missionaries and effective NGO’s and UN agencies.”
The job of missionaries, who already have an abysmal record in Africa over the last three centuries, is not development. It is ultimately about the promotion of their own view of the world and of creating new converts. There is no need for donors to fund this.
Goal, the organisation that the author represents, is emphatically not an effective NGO. It is impossible to find any independent, rigorous and effective evaluations of what this organisation does and how it spends its funds. This organisation is just as inclined as the most corrupt government to cover up its failures and to misrepresent itself. There are in fact very, very few truly effective NGO’s. The history of Aid over the last three decades is that of an unmitigated failure. Who perpetuated this failure?
There are even fewer effective UN agencies. The UN at best occasionally gets simple things more or less right, such as distributing food. In the much more complicated development challenges, protecting human rights and representing the concerns of the vulnerable, they have failed hopelessly. Not even the most corrupt government in the world has yet achieved the same levels of unaccountability, fraud, waste and mendacity as the average UN agency. The bulk of UN officials arrive at work every day with one overriding concern. This concern is “How much money can I steal today?”
Talk about sending a thief to catch a thief.
Is Mr. O’Shea truly trying to convince the world that his motley collection of volunteers are doing, or could potentially do, more than national governments can?
There are many reasons why national governments often do not provide the services that they are supposed to provide. It is important to discuss these failures, important also to include these governments in these discussions. There are no simplistic solutions.
The world could conceivable do without the presence of NGO’s, it may arguably be a better world in many respects without them.
It is inconceivable to imagine a world without national governments.
Taking taxpayer money and giving it to NGO’s to do in foreign lands what governments there are supposed to be doing - even if these NGO’s end up actually doing something - is but a subtle form of colonialism.
Aid can only achieve “maximum accountability” and be of the “maximum benefit to those who most require it” when those recipients have an effective say over when, how and where it is spent. The most effective way in which people can express these desires are through their own institutions and their own governments. It is not helpful when international organisations arrive, often uninvited, to overwhelm and even destroy these institutions. Governments can only become accountable to their citizens when these governments rely upon its people for their vote, their labour and their taxes in order to provide basic services. It is often when Aid, through NGO’s, remove this impetuous to demand and thus the government need to provide basic services, that governments become even more corrupt and even more unaccountable.
The most coherent response to Mr. O’Shea’s argument is in fact on the internet already in “The Business of Aid: Making sure aid is effective” by Paul Cullen in The Irish Times of 15 November 2005 (as copied from Partners Ireland eForum 2005):
“Making sure aid is effective not so simple. The business of aid - how they spend it: Between now and 2012 Ireland will give 8 billion to the developing world, writes Paul Cullen As part of the Government's commitment to increase aid to UN target levels, spending will grow by massive increments over the next decade - starting with an increase of over 150 million next year and a similar rise in 2007. Nothing like this increase in Government spending has been seen before in any area but, remarkably, the decision to reach the target of 0.7 per cent of GNP has the support of all political parties and the approval, albeit grudging, of the Department of Finance. Increases of this magnitude throw up all sorts of challenges for those spending the money. There is no doubt that developing countries, with their chronic problems of poverty are in massive need of assistance, but how can we be sure that Irish aid will be effective? Or that it will get to the people who need it most? We may need to make changes to other areas of Government and EU policy if we are to get the greatest "bang for our buck" from development aid. Is there much point, for example, in throwing millions of euros in support at African farmers if at the same time the EU is blocking the exports of these same farmers? And shouldn't we be making more efforts to see whether Irish aid actually works, by reducing poverty in the countries and districts on which it is focused. According to Hans Zomer of Dóchas, the umbrella body for development NGO’s, accounting for where the money goes in aid and finding out whether it has been well spent is "the next big thing". "All NGO’s have to ensure that they can show clearly the impact the work they support has had," says Trócaire's head of communications Eamon Meehan. "This is an area we want to work on." The main international body for assessing the quality of aid is the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. In 1999, the committee gave Ireland's aid programme a positive write-up, though it suggested room for improvement in several areas. Its 2003 report was glowing; it said the programme "distinguished itself by its sharp focus on poverty reduction and its commitment to partnership principles". However, these reports are essentially peer reviews by other members of the aid donors' "club" rather than true external audits; they are also limited in their scope. Meanwhile, the work of the individual aid agencies is not generally subject to any external assessment by the OECD committee or any other body. The agencies aren't shy about telling us of their good works, but there is remarkably little scrutiny of their effectiveness. As in other areas, fashions come and go in the aid business. In the 1960s, when big infrastructural projects were all the rage, Western governments pumped billions of dollars into the construction of dams, roads and factories in some of the world's poorest countries. Much of the money was siphoned off by corrupt leaders and their bureaucracies, and much of what was actually built never worked. "In the past, aid was given as political handouts to friends and there wasn't much thought given to how it was used or where it went. Today, though, it's a more professional enterprise," says Meehan. These days, paternalistic models of aid rooted in colonial pasts have been replaced by more talk of partnership with developing countries. "It's true you need to build schools, but what use is a school without salaries for the teachers to work in them?" asks Zomer. The aid business went back to the drawing board, and came up with new ideas. Instead of supporting projects, the emphasis switched to funding for specific sectors, such as health or education. Development Co-operation Ireland, the State's aid programme, now provides a mix of these different types of supports, including budgetary support for governments, which has proved so controversial in Uganda. "We've learned that development is about people, helping them to lead productive lives," says Zomer. "By making sure they don't get sick, or that they get an education or can trade, we're making a real difference." There are almost as many ideas about how money should be spent as there are aid agencies. On the one hand, agencies like Goal argue for "nuts and bolts" expenditure targeted directly on the poorest sections of the community; they argue this is the best way of getting aid to those who need it without leakage along the way. Governments, responsible for much larger budgets, have to take a wider view and much of their support is channelled through local administrations in the developing world. Then there are organisations, for example Trócaire, which stress the need for consciousness-raising at home and in the developing world, and devote considerable resources to development education. Goal's founder John O'Shea has argued trenchantly that aid money should be given for disbursement to aid agencies and missionaries, which he characterises as lean and efficient compared to bureaucratic State funders. Even other agencies are loath to agree, however. Zomer describes this assertion as simplistic, arguing that states, with their larger budgets, can do things that small groups are unable to. The extra funding available has helped agencies plan further into the future. In the past, problems arose when funding was withdrawn suddenly, leaving the recipient high and dry and quite disillusioned. Now most of the larger agencies receive an annual block grant from Development Co-operation Ireland, payable for three years. A second such programme, which is expected to last five years, is being negotiated at present. New fundraising techniques, such as child sponsorship and face-to-face fundraising ("chugging") also provide the agencies with a more dependable stream of income than the annual or once-off appeal. Most of the aid agencies publish figures showing how much of their income goes on assistance to the poor, and how much is consumed by administration costs. Concern, for example, says it spends 1 per cent of income on management and administration (although another 12.4 per cent goes on fundraising). These figures need to be treated with caution, however. Staff and other significant costs incurred at home are frequently assigned to the field, thereby lowering the true cost of administration. Many agencies, for example, regularly pay for journalists to travel on assignment to developing countries, yet their costs are not listed separately in the annual accounts. In any case, Zomer says the issue of administration costs is a "red herring". "If you had 1 million to give, would you hand it to the person who would do the best work with it, or to someone claiming to have the lowest administration costs? If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Why do people assume NGO’s will work for free and still do a good job? "The days when people thought that anyone with a good heart would do a good job are surely over." He points to the recent tsunami as an example: "There we had loads of stupid ideas where people wanted to send stuff without asking what was needed. It might come from a good heart, but a good heart is not enough." Disasters pose a particular conundrum for the agencies. They might be good for raising money, but in reality there is often little the Government or medium-sized Irish agencies can do in an emergency situation beyond passing on money to those who are in a position to help. Earthquake survivors, for example, need sniffer dogs, helicopters and heavy moving equipment, and Ireland is unlikely ever to be able to supply these to far-flung places. Irish missionaries were providing assistance in Africa long before the Government started its aid programme or aid agencies came into being. Much of this help came from the initiatives of individual priests, brothers or nuns, funded by their home parishes or orders. Until recently, it was assumed that this tradition was dying out, due to the increasing age of missionaries and a lack of new vocations. Now, however, the thinking is that local communities will take up the baton from missionaries, helped by continuing support from Ireland. The Irish Missionary Resource Service, set up in 2004, now handles funding applications from 82 different religious congregations; last year it got a block grant of 12 million from Development Co-operation Ireland. "Up to now, there was funding for 'Sr Mary in Tanzania' or 'Fr Dan in Kenya'. Now we've brought all this work together and we're aiming to make a sustained impact over time," says Séamus O'Gorman of the service. This year, funding is being provided for over 630 missionaries. With dozens of donor countries and thousands of aid agencies, there is a lot of duplication in the business of helping the poor. Doubling up is especially problematic in emergencies, but it also arises in development. A few years ago, Tanzania, exhausted and tied up by the constant round of visitors from the West, imposed a six-month moratorium on aid visits. To alleviate this problem, Ireland often teams up with like-minded donors - the UK, Holland and some of the Scandinavian countries. Channelling all our aid centrally through the EU might seem desirable, but the EU's aid programme is seen as inefficient, wasteful and even corrupt.
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