[afro-nets] Food for an unrealized Parisian thought

Human Rights Reader 202

*IN THE SPIRIT OF THE PARIS DECLARATION ON DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION, THE
IMPROVEMENT OF FOREIGN AID IS NOT SEEN PURELY AS A TECHNICAL MATTER OF
BETTER HARMONIZATION, BUT AS A POLITICAL QUEST TO MORE DECISIVELY FOCUS
DEVELOPMENT ON HUMAN RIGHTS.*

1. Although the title of this Reader is more often than not forgotten, it is transparently clear. But after Paris, reforms are just not working; they have failed to tackle the root problem to make health a human rights (HR) matter. Harmonization gets all the limelight --although it is not working either…There are simply too many aid agencies for all of them to understand and be convinced that they have to heed the political aspects called-for by the Paris Declaration*.

*: There are 46 government-run bilateral foreign aid programs; 233 multilateral development agencies; thousands of INGOs, tens of thousands of developing countries' NGOs; hundreds of thousands of community-based organizations.

2. The Paris Declaration has actually increased the cost of administering development cooperation, has led to a new planning euphoria among agencies as donors seek a common denominator among their diverse interests…and HR are still neglected in that common denominator.

3. Conventional wisdom is that technical cooperation is expensive, but not very useful **. In this view, a sizeable amount of Western aid is as good as wasted; it is well known that of every U$10 allocated in foreign aid bills, close to U$8 return to the donor country: there is thus very little actual transfer of aid monies to the recipient countries.

**: Often, cash transfers are a better option than the delivery of supplies or of technical assistance; it is easier and more transparent to give money than to provide food, for example. But cash transfers should not be conditional since most conditionalities have a ring of paternalism and lend themselves to clientelism. (International Poverty Center, Brasil, 2008)

4. Noteworthy is the fact that practically no donor agency ever exits the system because of its inefficiency or lack of effectiveness, nor do the best donor agencies get additional resources to expand. The majority of these agencies active in health lack real accountability as relates to the right to health (or any other?) impact of their work: …after all there is safety in numbers…and they can hide behind statistics. They feel no pain from their failure either (if they even perceive it). But, in all fairness, they definitely should bear accountability for their neglect of HR, not just for the achievement or non-achievement of their often restricted, individual project objectives.

5. This is why to debunk current foreign aid and to reorient it, HR work needs: An agreed joint agenda, a division of tasks and constant HR-based monitoring work on the agenda. Unfortunately, in the HR community, we do not have either.

The time has come to act on these. Any suggestions? Any takers?

Adapted from D+C 35:2, Feb 2008.

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.69&gt;\]

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org