When corrupt regimes invest in natural disasters

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.

Srsly, we gotta start talking development

Its Spring Break and what am I doing with my down time? Working on my personal pet projects. I'm from THE spring break destination, Miami, so I don't have a whole lot of motivation to go back for my vacation. Plus, I'm a college student, and I'm too broke to go anywhere for spring break even if I wanted to. On to the blogging it is then!

Last semester, I did a project on poverty and violence, does one cause the other? I answered no, poverty does not cause violence (including terrorism). However, impoverished places provide a feeding ground for the violent. If you are poor, you are not more likely to be a terrorist, but your community is more likely to be plagued by violence because it does not have the structures available to protect it.

This article from Brookings about Weak States does well to note that the strenghtening of states such as Afghanistan and Iraq requires a lot more attention to development than is currently being given or even talked about. Here's my favorite bit highlighting the specific goals that should be kept in mind for strengthening these weak states:

" In its last year, the Bush administration can lay the foundation for a comprehensive strategy to shore up weak states and prevent them from sliding into failure. Important components of such a strategy include:

• Prioritizing poverty alleviation. There is a strong relationship between poverty and state weakness. Poorer countries tend to be weaker ones, in part because they are more vulnerable to conflict. The United States must complement the Millennium Challenge Account's focus on "good performers" with parallel strategies to reduce poverty in the world's most challenging states.

• Targeting performance gaps. The United States should tailor assistance to the specific vulnerabilities of individual states. In failing states, the immediate requirement is to couple increased security with swift economic, political and social progress. In less acutely vulnerable countries, we should target each nation's particular performance gaps.

• Expanding U.S. assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments. The United States should increase overall assistance levels to support a wider cohort of weak states and combine development assistance with democracy support, market access, peacekeeping and security sector reform.

• Strengthening our civilian agencies. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates observed last November, our nation cannot rely on the U.S. military alone to revive fragile and war-torn states. Beyond boots on the ground, we need the wingtips and Birkenstocks of diplomatic and development professionals. Congress should support the administration's request to increase the professional staff at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Establishing partnerships. The United States cannot by itself build weak states' capacities. We must join with our allies, international institutions and developing countries to craft and implement effective strategies to address one of this century's most pressing security challenges."

The bit about expanding US assistance and leveraging non-aid instruments I feel is a bit ambiguous. Tying aid to good political behavior can get dangerous, because often times, "good" behavior really means the behavior that best suits the stronger state(s) and not necessarily the people. We can all come up with great examples across the world over the past 50 or 60 years where the US has supported oppressive regimes because they were in our best interest for strategic purposes and economic as well. Pakistan and Iran are my personal favorites.