Some of you may be up on your "nature destroys some far away corner of Asia" news and know that a cyclone hit an already fragile Burma earlier this month. Since then, international aid has been pouring into the country but not distributed to its people. Meaning, somebody dun gone and hid all da monies under dey matress. Or something similar.
I'm not going to make light of something so serious as the needs of the disaster victims, but obviously the Burmese government and/or military are totally ridiculous. The misappropriation of aid is widespread amongst the world's poorer nations. So what can we do to make sure the aid we give actually helps?
For these answers, I turned to some old class readings. Here are the big basic ideas in reforming aid and getting it to where its needed:
-Country Selectivity: Only give good countries cookies.
"Donors should spend less time trying to write contracts that force an alignment of incentives and instead give more aid to countries that on their own demonstrate similar motivations and objectives. Some donors have begun to be more “selective,” including the World Bank in the allocation of its concessional IDA [international development assistance] funds, some European donors in terms of providing budget support, and the U.S. with its new Millennium Challenge Account. But since so much aid is allocated for political, security, and other foreign policy reasons, there are limits to how far donors are likely to go in this direction."
Steven Radelet, “A Primer on Foreign Aid,” Center for Global Development Working Paper #92, July 2006
"If development cooperation is to attack aid effectively it must...deliver aid in ways that intrude less on government functions, including greater use of sectorwide approaches and a movement away from old forms of aid and conditionality."
The World Bank, “Reforming Development Cooperation to Attack Poverty,” in World Development Report 2000-2001, Ch. 11
-Recipient Participation and Country Ownership: Peoples and their governments get to help make the cookies.
"The way donors and recipients interact strongly influences the effectiveness of development cooperation. Relationships have tended to follow the donor preferences of donor countries, leaving recipient countries with little sense of ownership of the aid financed activities."
The World Bank, “Reforming Development Cooperation to Attack Poverty,” in World Development Report 2000-2001, Ch. 11
"Many analysts argue that aid has been weakened by donor domination in setting priorities, designing programs and implementing projects, and push for either a more “country led” approach in which recipient governments take a stronger role, or a “participatory” approach in which various groups in recipient countries (government, NGOs, charities, the private sector) play a more active role. Note that country ownership and a broad participatory process are not the same thing: the former implies that recipient countries take the lead in setting priorities and programs; the latter implies that broad participation by the public (and not just the government) is required."
Steven Radelet, “A Primer on Foreign Aid,” Center for Global Development Working Paper #92, July 2006
Notice that there is no panacea for all nations, but each may be tailored to effectively meet people's needs. There is no one answer for Burma's crisis, there are many.
