Opinion Piece on the Future of Aid
Chris Roche, Oxfam Australia
There is growing, or perhaps renewed, recognition that the quality of Aid and International Co-operation is, to a large degree, shaped by domestic political processes in donor countries. The Evaluation of the Implementation of the Paris Declaration, for example, notes “if the work of implementing Paris remains just a ‘dialogue among technocrats’ and is not built on growing political trust, the uneven pace of change and ’aid effectiveness fatigue’ may begin to undermine and sap the effortâ€.
In the context of the global financial crisis, climate change and recent high profile critiques of aid the task of building and sustaining domestic constituencies for international cooperation, and not just aid, is arguably critical. Furthermore this constituency needs to be able to make the links between human development, human security and climate change, and push for progressive foreign policies which also take a holistic view of these issues.
This constituency building needs to be part of a strategy which explores ways to improve aid quality - by simultaneously removing the political obstacles in ‘donor’ countries which make it less than effective, as well as locating aid within a broader paradigm of international co-operation - and at the same time strengthens the ability of communities in ’recipient’ countries to hold their governments, aid agencies and private sector actors to account. This of course means recognising, and attempting to address at least in some way, the power relations inherent between different actors.
I believe that the growing use of social accountability mechanisms combined with the imaginative use of social networking tools, and the generation of peer-to-peer communications is starting to play a transformatory role in developing a new future for Aid. Not least because this approach offers the potential to build more effective linkages between civil society organisations and community groups in both donor and recipient countries, thus shortening the accountability chain between, in old parlance, ‘tax-payers’ and ‘beneficiaries’. and in so doing build stronger international networks for change.
There are an increasing number of examples, such as the work of Global Voices on-line, Witness, and Ushahidi which illustrate the possibilities of providing groups and communities with the ability to tell and communicate their stories, provide feedback on elections, publish evidence of human rights abuses, empower female activists, debate how they might act as part of a diaspora, or monitor the performance of governments and aid agencies, through participatory processes and on public fora such as the web. This, in some contexts, can provide men and women who are often the ‘objects’ of development with the ability to become its subjects and to publicly sanction poor behaviour and performance of aid organisations and their governments. This provides them with what Albert Hirschman described as the ‘voice’ option which they so often lack.
Such social accountability mechanisms could also be complemented, for example, by new forms of resource transfer (see Kiva for example, or through remittances ); more accountable reporting of development processes (like the Katine project); direct community to community exchanges from North to South, and also South-South, including facilitating direct online communication between communities in different countries (see for example the Refugee Realities Uganda/Australia link up); and Fair Trade trading and campaigning.
It is however clear that if the public and parliamentarians are really to be engaged then this will require mass involvement in the same way that the abolition of the slave trade or land mines required wide public support. As such innovative ways will be required to engage people who don’t traditionally associate with aid, development and international issues. This might involve behavioural change models such as Refugee Realities, which have been recently trialled here in Australia, and the creation of ‘unlikely alliances’, perhaps – although this will be anathema to many - with private sector corporations, to create more powerful communication tools, like the girl effect, cartoons, or TV companies producing soap operas with a message like Soul City, which can reach millions. Furthermore, the success of agencies like Water Aid suggest how a more targeted approach could mobilise specific interest groups - for example, women’s organisations, public sector health and education professionals, local government officials - to mutually support each other within specific domains.
It is imperative that these types of links start to build social relations and constituencies for international development that are based not only on compassion but, also on social and economic ties that are less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature, politics or the latest media story. In so doing we can then envisage a Future For Aid that is in fact a Future of International Co-operation, and is fundamentally about how, in an inter-dependent world, those interested in social justice and sustainability will need to work together, and learn from each other. It is a shift away from concepts of aid being about the rich world sending money to ‘them’ so they can become more like ‘us’. Rather it is a move towards respectful mutual learning and exchange, and joining up the struggles for transparency and accountability, as the basis for renewed forms of co-operation and development.