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Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
Water: Multi-stakeholder dialogue does not take off
World Bank: Wolfowitz to succeed Wolfensohn
Donors delay aid for Sudan
Afghanistan: Still torn apart
EU parliament opposed to sugar reform
Indicators for more effective aid
Honour killings – an underestimated crime
Supachai Panitchpakdi to head UNCTAD?
IDA 14: More money for the poorest countries
Somalia: Government is looking for a residence
Haiti: Hopelessness
04/2005
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[ Harmonisation ]
Indicators for more effective aid
The “Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness” was the result of a symposium of more than 100 donor countries and international development organisations in the French capital in March. The document updates the so-called Rome Declaration of 2003, in which donors had promised to adapt their development cooperation to the strategies, institutions and structures of the partner countries (alignment) and to coordinate more closely with one another (harmonisation). The Paris Declaration reaffirms these goals and goes on to specify twelve indicators as measures of progress. These include, among others,
– the number of developing countries that have development strategies;
– the total of development aid payments that are reported on the partner countries’ national budgets;
– the sum of aid disbursed in accordance with agreed schedules;
– the level of programme-based aid and
– the percentage of joint donor missions and evaluations.
By the UN Millennium Conference in September, donor and developing countries want to reach an agreement on which goals to achieve by the year 2010 based on these indicators. According to the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau, the European Union and several partner countries had already wanted to prescribe binding standards, but they did not succeed because of the resistance shown by Japan and the USA.
The report of a study group at the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) indicates that there have been several encouraging approaches to organising development cooperation more effectively since the symposium in Rome in 2003. On the other hand, harmonising expenditure and aligning aid to the structures of the partner countries is still not common practice. The report, which was the working basis for the symposium in Paris, found fault in the fact that up to now, only a few donors have introduced processes to foster harmonisation and alignment. Germany has had an action plan for harmonisation in place since April 2003. The DAC report declared itself in favour of giving project staff in developing countries more decision-making powers and improving communication between them and the ministries in the donor countries. The paper also notes a risk of the “clutter” of various initiatives to increase effectiveness only producing ever more new discussion groups, “generating more ‘noise’ rather than positive impact at the country level”. (ell)
Further information:
http://www.aidharmonization.org
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