Group items tagged

'Allocating aid through NGOs is traditionally seen as an attractive proposition for donors. This is predicated on the belief that NGOs are 'closer' to poor communities and so are able to make better use of funds. Furthermore commentators highlight that compared to official state aid the allocation of NGO funds are, in principle, less subject to political and commercial interests. However, in reality little is known about where NGO aid is spent, or how well-targeted it actually is. The authors of this paper assert that their study is the 'first comprehensive cross-country analysis of the driving forces of NGO aid'. They surveyed some 60 (of the largest) NGOs from various OECD countries and tested their research against the following hypotheses: * NGO aid is focused on the needy i.e. recipient countries with low per-capita income * NGOs are relatively strongly engaged in countries with weak institutions in order to exploit their comparative advantage of working in "difficult" environments * the preferences of donors affect the allocation of NGO aid * NGOs locate where other NGOs are active, leading to geographical clustering of NGO aid * NGOs are more strongly engaged in countries characterized by similarities with their own organization.'

'The concept of mutual accountability refers to the establishment of working relations based on respect, fulfilling commitments, being transparent about development objectives, and accounting for decisions, actions and results. This paper focusses on how mutual accountability in development aid is understood and how it works in practice in Afghanistan, while also examining the challenges involved in achieving mutual accountability in aid relationships. The paper concludes that mutual accountability can make development aid more effective by, for instance, increasing public support for development policies, increasing a government's legitimacy, increasing donor accountability, and contributing to anticorruption measures. Accountability mechanisms ensure greater transparency and help to control expectations. With these mechanisms there is more clarity on what will be delivered and on what systems are in place for people to access information and enable them to voice complaints or concerns.'

'International humanitarian aid provides relief to tens of millions of people each year: in 2007 to more than 43 million people through UN humanitarian appeals alone. However, it is also often too little, too late, and unpredictable, or inappropriate to the needs of communities, including specific groups such as women and girls. The UN-led reforms since 2005 to improve humanitarian aid have begun - but only begun - to make a difference to this variable performance. Oxfam International published its analysis of the successes and challenges facing humanitarian action in a major report, The Right to Survive, in April 2009. This note now considers one specific recent reform: the development of 'pooled funds'. This reform has coincided with increased competition for humanitarian resources - at the same time as the need for humanitarian aid is growing.'

A Case Study of Aid Effectiveness in Kenya: Volatility and Fragmentation of Foreign Aid, with a Focus on Health

Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference The sixth Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference & Exhibition - DIHAD - 2009 is taking place from the 7 - 9 April at the Dubai International Convention Centre, under the theme of 'Empowering Communities: From Disaster to Development'.

'This journal article presents a framework for assessing the effectiveness of education aid in fragile states which is derived from three key aspects of aid effectiveness identified in the Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States - coordination, state building, and 'do no harm'.'

'In this paper, Owen Barder raises fundamental questions about the purpose of aid transfers. For many donors the purpose is "poverty reduction" but in the relatively narrow sense of growth that reduces poverty. In fact poverty reduction has other dimensions, including enabling the poor to live better lives through long-term, redistributional transfers while their country is developing, even with programs that might not contribute to growth. Barder's key concern is that the focus on poverty reduction through growth ignores such key tradeoffs as that between reducing current and future poverty, and between addressing the causes and symptoms of poverty. The reality of these tradeoffs stares us in the face; this is an important paper for practitioners as well as students of the way the aid system works.'

The UNU-WIDER project 'Fragility and Development' explored state fragility and its relationship to household vulnerability, noting that there is a lack of research on the economic dimensions of conflict, aid, and development in fragile states. This Research Brief provides a summary of the various contributions made by this project, including case studies on Iraq, Kosovo, Palestine, and Somalia. It also addresses a number of pertinent questions such as; when are states fragile? What are the costs that fragile states impose on their people and the international community? Should the sovereignty of fragile states be reconsidered? And how can aid flows to fragile states be made more effective?

Rethinking capacity building Capacity building projects are often seen as a means of providing NGOs with the tools they need to effectively deliver programmes or services, and of ensuring the ability of recipients to demonstrate accountability for the financial aid received. However, insights from over fifty years of experience suggest that conventional types of capacity building have often failed to bring about improvements in organisational effectiveness, performance, and accountability.

The integration of human rights into the practice of development cooperation has been increasingly debated during the last decade, particularly thanks to Amartya Sen and UNDP work. However, while a consensus seems to exist around the core principles of an "appropriate" development process, there are still a number of different interpretations of how human rights and development relate, and what is meant by rights-based approaches. This paper addresses the idea that the concept of right to development, correctly understood as "the right to a process of development in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized", following the definition of Arjun Sengupta, can be a very useful tool to provide a common normative framework to this discussion. Little attention has been given to identifying the extent to which the concept of the right to development and a human rights-based approach to development differ. Whether the two paradigms have many common points, as the emphasis given to concepts like equality, freedom, participation and non discrimination, there are also some important differences. Expressed simply, the right to development is broader that the human rights-based approach, because it involves a critical examination of the overall development process, including financial allocation, and priorities in international development cooperation. Thus, the right to development cannot be equated with a rights-based approach to development, because it not only prescribes certain rules according to which development should be realized, but also defines development itself as a human right. This definition has important consequences not only in terms of theoretical debate, but also in its practical implications related to policy-making and international cooperation. The most important of these consequences is a shift, in the discourse of international development cooperation, from a context of need/charity/aid to a context of right/respons

'This paper highlights the fact that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) do not directly address the issue of adult basic education and literacy, in spite of these being essential for achieving the Millennium targets. It explores the potential of adult basic education with gender equality to be transformatory for individuals, and for groups working to address key issues, such as gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS. The role of governments and other key agencies in relation to gender equality and adult basic education is also explored. The paper concludes with a discussion of how to develop longer-term approaches to gender equality, adult basic education, and literacy.'

Learning for Change in ADB The rapidly changing-and, at times, excessively complex-nature of development work demands diverse competences from aid agencies such as the Asian Development Bank. The learning challenges these present require the ability to work more reflectively in a turbulent practice environment. Learning for Change in ADB broadly defines a learning organization as a collective undertaking, rooted in action, that builds and improves its own practice by consciously and continually devising and developing the means to draw learning from its own (and others') experience. It identifies the 10 challenges that ADB must overcome to develop as a learning organization and specifies practicable next steps to conquer each. It can help deliver the increased development effectiveness that Strategy 2020, ADB's long-term strategic framework for 2008-2020, seeks.

There are growing signs that the global economic crisis has reached both poor countries and poor people in those countries. In February, for example, the World Bank's forecast for Africa's growth in 2009 was revised downward from 6.8 percent to 3.5 percent. Another World Bank document suggests that the crisis has pushed more than 50 million people below the $1.25 per day poverty line. This type of evidence has convinced many world leaders that a problem exists: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called 2009 "a development emergency" and this past weekend the boards of the World Bank and the IMF both recognized that the global economic crisis had metastasized into a "human and development calamity." Full paper in PDF format; Number of pages: 10p

How to engage more effectively in fragile states is now a key concern in the international development community, and several new books outline different diagnoses and recommendations. Seth Kaplan presented his book: Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development, at a recent ODI public event, with ODI's David Booth as the discussant. Kaplan brings a fresh, if not entirely new, perspective to the discussion on fragile states that has, to a large extent, been missing in international development debates. He offers a critique of the existing aid paradigm in fragile states, and proposes an alternative strategy to bring security and development to such settings.