Progress and pitfalls: the rocky road to Accra and implications for British NGOs
In
September, the Third High Level Forum, in Accra, will review the progress
made so far to implement the commitments set out in the Paris Declaration
on Aid Effectiveness in 2005. Dr Brian Pratt, Executive Director,
INTRAC, explains what implications he believes it will have for
British NGOs.
There are many ambiguities and confusions around the Paris Declaration and the 'road to Accra' which has not been helped by some of the civil society consultative processes, and indeed in some ways has been exacerbated by them. The consultations have been used to sidetrack other important debates and have shifted the debate away from what the Paris Declaration and the campaign on aid effectiveness actually implies for civil society groups. If we take the Declaration at face value then there are some very good and sensible principles in the declaration around the ownership of international assistance by recipient governments, and the attempts to reduce unnecessary procedures through harmonising aid programmes and policies. Less clear are the advantages of introducing more results-based management when this often entails the simplification of aid to a few technical inputs.
The problem for me, and an increasing number of NGOs, is not around these principles per se, but the exaggerated claims made for the Paris Declaration, which have turned it from being about important but limited improvements in the administration of aid into a new theory of development. Anything which treats development as merely an administrative or technical process can ignore real and difficult dilemmas around gender and socio-economic inequality, and can also depoliticise development.
The roles of civil society in the Paris Declaration process are also still imprecisely defined. Initially, civil society was left out of the debate and, at best, implied a role as providers of subcontracted services to the state. There have been attempts to improve the understanding of civil society by stressing that it should be engaged in the processes of national consultation and of monitoring the state. However, recent studies by IBIS and Alliance 2015 suggest that in-country consultation is still minimal.
Where can we go from here?
It seems to me that there are several choices.
1) It is possible to keep working to improve the operation of the Paris Declaration. This might include improved consultation and civil society–state engagement in developing countries. It could also include consistent pressure to remind delegates to Accra that there many other development issues which will not be resolved by this process. National recipient governments are keen to gain the advantages of simplified procedures and reduced transaction costs, but are not looking for new conditionalities, which some civil society groups would like to see in terms of better local civil society consultation and participation. Amongst donors it has been hard enough to achieve what they have in the present Declaration, to expect much more would be unrealistic. Therefore to expect further demands by civil society groups to make progress may well not be fruitful
2) It is also important that, as a sector, we ensure that the donor countries do not over sell the Paris Declaration to the detriment of other important policies and developmental needs. It could work perfectly and still not actually do a great deal for poor people.
3) Several groups such as IBIS and Eurodad have commissioned research into the implementation of the Paris Declaration. It is important that these studies are used to show the strengths and weaknesses of the Paris Declaration in operation and in practice, and this research needs to be shared widely.
4) Some NGOs have committed themselves to introduce a Paris Declaration-styled set of principles for civil society. This seems to represent a major diversion, but is being accepted by many NGOs as a priority activity. Although there are obvious needs to improve NGO accountability, it worries me that the Canadian-sponsored consultative group (Advisory Group on Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness), followed by CONCORD, seem to have decided to focus on this rather than continue to take a critical position regarding the official donors and the Paris Declaration. Thus, there are initiatives to ensure that NGOs also harmonise and align their assistance and seek programmes in the countries where they work, that are approved and owned by the local host governments. This move seems to ignore the crucial importance of pluralism as one of the main strengths of civil society. It also runs the danger of confirming the view increasingly common amongst some donors and governments that NGOs are indeed primarily not for profit service contractors to the local state or donors.
5) Alternatively, some NGOs have turned their back on both the circus of another summit1, and the move to force an unreal standardisation on NGOs. Their response has been to re-state their own values and goals, and to clarify what makes them different and distinctive2. These groups have seen the possible trap of engaging with official donors and local government on their own terms, instead of being absolutely clear what their own comparative advantages are as civil society organisations. They have understood that creating an illusion of harmonised assistance from civil society which fits neatly local government or donor interests is not in the longer term interests of civil society nor citizens.
Where should British NGOs be in relation to the road to Accra?
We should be wary of being co-opted into things with which fundamentally do not agree with or could compromise the autonomy of civil society in general and our own NGOs in particular. The poor of the world are better served by our diversity than our agreeing to standardise ourselves.
NGOs can maintain their independence and still engage in some of the specific areas of concern around the Paris Declaration, such as monitoring civil society participation in host country processes, and reminding donors that the Declaration is only a marginal element of much wider developmental process that is not solely related to the procedures of international assistance.
Dr Brian Pratt is Executive Director of INTRAC.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of BOND.
BOND & Aid Effectiveness
As a member of CONCORD, BOND contributes to the work of the CONCORD AidWatch group which has drafted CONCORD’s position on aid effectiveness (word) in preparation of the High Level Forum in Accra.
BOND is part of the Global Facilitation Group on CONCORD’s Civil Society Organisations Effectiveness process and will be facilitating a consultation process with members from May to July 2008. More information will be available in due course.
More information about the
Paris Declaration
More information about the High Level Forum
on Aid Effectiveness
Notes
- Readers are referred to the Pat Mooney article in Development Dialogue no. 47, June 2006 ’Stop the Stockholm Syndrome! Lessons from 30 years of UN summits’, where he casts doubts on the value of such summits in general.
- I understand that the Catholic agencies are engaged in such a process coordinated by Cidse.