Contributions from
the Column
Focus

No security without proactive
development policy

Poor performance on poverty eradication

The Arab world
demands coherence

Europe closes its doors

Too many voices


11/2004 		 

Poor performance on poverty eradication

At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders committed to eradicating poverty and promoting human dignity, equality, peace, democracy and environmental sustainability. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) emerged from this Declaration as eight specific and measurable goals to be achieved by humankind by 2015.


[ By Mirjam van Reisen ]

The input of donors is one of the essential steps to achieve the ultimately desired outcome. This fact is acknowledged by MDG 8. It states the aim of “Developing a global partnership for development,” and includes among others, the pledge for “more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.” Few studies have so far addressed the role of donor nations. This is possibly due to the complexity of results-oriented policy evaluation. Statistical tools and methodologies applied for evaluation of results or impact in poor countries cannot be used in the same way to evaluate whether policies of donors contribute to the Millennium Goals. Measurable and acceptable indicators are difficult to define and currently hardly exist.

It is, therefore, necessary to devise criteria to measure and compare the policy orientations of all relevant actors in respect to the MDGs and to determine the quality of their contribution. A group of European development NGOs, Alliance2015, has attempted to do just that. In its recent report ‘2015 Watch: The EU’s contribution to the Millennium Development Goals’ Alliance2015 presents a first endeavour to develop a systematic way of measuring the contribution of governments in the North to the MDGs. The methodology presented in the report is devised to be generally applicable and not only useful for assessing the EU’s role.

Termed ‘2015 Watch’, the methodology breaks the policy process down into four stages:
– the overall legal and financial framework,
– the more detailed sectoral allocation through the budget,
– the criteria used to plan and implement projects and programs, and finally
– the criteria for evaluing actual impact.
The identification of these policy phases provides an important tool to detect where deficiencies occur and how a donor’s contribution to the MDGs could be maximized. By using this division, our report analyses the EU’s policy towards the MDGs and examines whether it is satisfactory.

Considering the overall legal framework, the report finds that the present EC Treaty lacks a perspective on poverty eradication as the overarching goal of development cooperation. However, these deficiencies have been addressed in the new Constitutional Treaty, which has already been agreed by the European Council but is yet to be ratified by the member nations.

Regarding the financial framework, the report finds that the overall volume of aid given by member states is improving and moving towards the target of 0.7% ODA. Nonetheless, the overall budget does not reflect the MDG general commitment to eradicating poverty. This is particularly true in geographical terms. In the last decade, Community aid has become increasingly skewed away from Lower Income Countries towards Middle Income Countries. In 1999, the UK Department for International Development calculated that, per capita, Low Income Countries received 0.55 Dollars in European aid whereas Middle Income Countries and Central and Eastern Europe were given 1.20 Dollars and 5.74 Dollars respectively.

An analysis of the EU budget’s sectoral allocation found that there is much scope for improvement in the EU’s annual budget, both in terms of setting targets and in implementing these targets. The budget must place much greater emphasis on social sectors, particularly basic education and health, through targeted strategies, rather than general budget support, the impact of which is not traceable in these sectors. Clearer strategies are also required for crosscutting issues such as gender and environment.

Additionally it was found that the allocation of resources to social sectors and crosscutting issues is inadequate. Roughly ten percent of the world’s ODA is afforded by the EU as a Community and is not disbursed through national budgets. It turns out that, in 2002, the Community committed only 12.3% of its ODA to basic social services. More than half of this figure, (7.3%), related to food security programmes. With respect to basic education and basic health, the figures for 2002 were alarmingly low: 0.33% of the EU’s ODA was committed to basic education and only 1.53% was committed to basic health. The performance on gender and the environment in terms of real commitments also gives reason for concern. Only 0.22% of entire EU ODA was committed specifically and directly to gender and only 1.3% was allocated to general environmental protection.


Weak language

Concerning Programming and Implementation, 2015 Watch firstly analyses the Commission documents outlining the main criteria for Country Strategy Papers (CSP). These are documents produced by the European Commission, outlining the situation in a recipient country to identify priority areas for European development aid. Strikingly, poverty eradication is not defined as one of the main criteria in the drawing up of the CSP. Neither are there any exact references to basic education or health. Gender and environment are both explicitly included – but with very weak language.

Secondly, the report turns to an evaluation of National Indicative Programmes (NIP). These documents set out the range of programmes and projects identified in a particular country as part of the EU’s development actions and are produced as follow ups of Country Strategy Papers. In order to link the analysis of the implementation to the assessment of evaluation, the countries selected by 2015 Watch were those for which also a Country Strategy Evaluation was available. These evaluations are outsourced by the European Commission and conducted by independent experts with the aim of assessing the actual impact of the Community’s assistance in developing countries. Although the European Commission has been emphasising the importance of these evaluations since 2000, the number of available Country Strategy Evaluations for 2002 and 2003 is limited to only four: South Africa, Bangladesh, Malawi and Morocco. This number is alarmingly low and does not sufficiently incorporate an assessment of the effectiveness of the EU’s contribution to the MDGs. The Country Strategy Evaluations do not consistently assess MDG sectors, and where they do, the impact was generally considered to be poor.
The Alliance2015 report dedicates a specific section to Goal 6, the combating of HIV/AIDS. This focus is based on the realisation that this pandemic is a fundamental issue and is increasingly becoming an impediment to development, reversing gains made in many countries and drastically reducing the quality of people’s lives. Using the 2015 Watch methodology, the report found that the EU has a more serious orientation towards the fight against HIV/AIDS than in its stand on poverty in general. This reflects an adequate policy framework in relation to the disease. Even though the financial contribution to fight HIV/AIDS could and probably should be bigger, with its disbursement of Euro 120 million to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS the EU is living up to its own political commitments.

The weaker part of the EU’s performance on HIV/ AIDS is implementation. The NIPs reviewed do not adequately address the issue. The Community’s emphasis on the transport sector as a priority area for development co-operation should be revisited. This sector is particularly sensitive in terms of the promulgation of HIV/AIDS. There is increasing evidence that the construction of roads and transport infrastructure is accelerating the spread of the disease. Such programmes should therefore automatically include HIV/AIDS considerations.

Overall, the report makes ten recommendations:
1. The EU’s development policy should be revised to reflect the EU’s commitment to the MDGs and to make the eradication of poverty its primary aim.
2. The overall financial framework needs to be improved to firmly establish the focus on poverty eradication in the EU’s development programme.
3. The EU budget should include a heading with all Official Development Assistance to all developing countries. The EU should also achieve the UN target of allocating 20% of ODA to basic social services by setting concrete financial commitments and increasing the current levels of allocation.
4. The Commission’s guidelines for the design of CSPs should define the MDG focal sectors as clear criteria for their formulation.
5. Mid Term Reviews of CSPs must look at the results of EU cooperation in the MDG sectors.
6. The Commission should undertake many more country evaluations each year to measure progress in the implementation of the MDGs.
7. Much more work has to be done in order to define how gender equality relates to the other MDGs, and to identify adequate instruments to effectively mainstream the gender dimension of development.
8. The EU’s pledge to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS should be significantly increased and timely payments should be made in accordance with the recommendations of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
9. The Commission should considerably improve the implementation of the existing policies. Country Strategy Papers should include a careful assessment of the HIV/AIDS situation, and National Indicative Programmes must focus on adequate instruments to tackle the pandemic. The Commission’s guidelines for evaluation should further define HIV/AIDS as a sector that must be taken into account in the evaluations of country strategies.
10. A more precise definition of the principle of partnership that forms the basis of the MDGs is necessary. This would entail a clearer definition of Goal 8 with time-bound targets, which provides the framework for measuring the quality of the partnership between the North and the South. The upcoming review of progress on the MDGs 2005 will provide a perfect opportunity to do so.

The EU’s political commitment to the MDGs and poverty eradication has yet again been re-enforced by the agreement on the new Constitutional Treaty. The treaty provides an independent legal base for development policy and humanitarian aid and maintains a clear reference to the need for coherence between EU policies that impact on developing countries and the objective of poverty eradication. It is now important to translate this confirmation of the legal framework into actions on the ground. Forthcoming events and the acitivities of the new Commission must reflect the provisions of the Constitution. This is particularly important as the UNDP, in 2003, estimated that, under current circumstances, sub-Saharan Africa will only achieve the MDGs in 2165. While policy measures in the developing countries themselves remain essential, these will only be successful with adequate support from the rich world.



Further Information:
Alliance2015 (www.alliance2015.org) is an umbrella organisation of six European NGOs from different countries. The German member is Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action. The report ‘2015 Watch: The EU’s contribution to the Millennium Development Goals’ is posted on the web at:
http://www.welthungerhilfe.de/WHHDE/download/positionen/2015_watch_eu.pdf



Mirjam van Reisen
is Director of Europe External Policy Advisors (E.E.P.A.). She lives in Brussels.
mvreisen@eepa.be