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AWID - http://www.awid.org

Association for Women's Rights in Development


No Aid Effectiveness without Development Effectiveness

By Kathambi Kinoti - AWID

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness may endeavour to ensure that aid
is disbursed and managed more efficiently, but it does not ensure that the
aid is effective. The Declaration aims to increase the impact that aid has
on reducing poverty and inequality and to accelerate the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals. In the whole document, however, gender
equality is only mentioned once, when it is weakly made a cross-cutting
issue. Since poverty is a feminized phenomenon [1] with the majority of the
world's poor being women, any attempt to reduce poverty and promote
development must first interrogate its gender dimensions. Women's rights
advocates say that the fact that the Paris Declaration ignores gender
concerns renders it fundamentally flawed, and illustrates the absence of
political will to make gender equality a reality. [2] They also argue that
'...overarching binding international agreements and mechanisms related to
women's rights and the right to development must be the foundation upon
which to build more recent commitments to the Millennium Development Goals
and the Paris Declaration.  Otherwise, there is a substantial risk that the
political and formal achievements of women's movements and human rights
advocates from past decades, and the responsibility of multilateral
institutions to these agreements could be undermined by more limited new
agendas and practices that do not take these rights into account.' [3]

The Paris Declaration sets out five principles to govern the relationship
between donor and recipient governments: ownership, alignment,
harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability. Analysts
have pointed out the shortcomings of these principles as tools for
development. Among other things they offer limited opportunities for
women's participation, and for women's needs to be addressed, particularly
if their governments are not committed to gender equality. They have also
criticized New Aid Modalities such as general budget support, sector wide
approaches, poverty reduction strategy papers, basket funding and joint
assistance strategies. Most of these have an overall effect of redirecting
aid away from individual projects and as a consequence, development work
directed at gender equality suffers. [4]

The Declaration has also been widely criticized for its 'nuts and bolts'[5]
approach to development; it takes a technical approach to aid management and
delivery and in the process pays less attention to the actual impact that
the aid has on achieving the goals of development. The approach that the
Declaration takes reflects the fact that 'the majority of policy makers
leading and managing the aid process are economists, administrators,
technocrats or planners.' [6] The voices of women and other sectors of
civil society have not been adequately represented. While there have been
limited opportunities for civil society participation in some processes,
women's organizations and networks have not been well represented.

 

UNIFEM, WIDE, & AWID Consultation on Aid Effectiveness

January 31-February 1, 2008.

 

The Consultation included 35 selected representatives of women's organizations and
networks from all over the world.  

 

The general goals of the Consultation:
- To contribute to the inclusion of women's rights organizations concerns
on Aid Effectiveness in the Accra Agenda for Action.
- To contribute with common recommendations and proposals on gender
equality and Aid Effectiveness to the Advisory Group for the 3rd High Level
Forum preparation and beyond Accra.
- To identify threats and opportunities, lessons learned and best practices
from the ground on Aid Effectiveness shared by women's rights organizations
and networks.

The specific goals of the Consultation:

-  To update women's organizations and networks on the debate status and
perspectives of ODA effectiveness and follow-up the Paris Declaration.
- To facilitate debate among women's organizations and networks to agree
common positions and share experiences and lessons learned.
- To promote the dissemination of the Aid Effectiveness debates and process
in the participant's networks and countries after the consultation and
promote their engagement in the road to Accra and beyond.
- Strategize between women's organizations and activists ahead toward the
Commission of the Status of Women, Doha and Accra processes.

The planned outputs of the Consultation:
- A set of proposals and recommendations on Aid Effectiveness and Gender
equality to the Accra Agenda for Action agreed by the participants.
- A better understanding of women's role as development actors in the aid
international agenda and the Paris Declaration implementation.
- An analysis of the threats and opportunities of the Paris Declaration
implementation from the gender equality perspective, based on lessons
learned shared by the participants of the consultation.
- Specific recommendations to strengthen women's rights organizations'
participation in the preparation to Accra and during the 3rd High Level
Forum to be held in Ghana.
- A better strategy between women's rights organizations, advocates and
movements to coordinate advocacy efforts toward the Commission of the
Status of Women, Doha and Accra processes.

If aid is to effectively impact development, women's voices must be central
to discussions on Aid Effectiveness and their participation in all processes
must be ensured.

Notes:
1. Alemany, C., Craviotto, N., Hopenhaym, F. (2008) 'Implementing the Paris
Declaration: Implications for the Promotion of Women's Rights and Gender
Equality.'
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. For more information on the issues and the processes of the Aid
Effectiveness agenda see AWID Primers at
http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=aid_effectiveness.
5. United Nations, Division for the Advancement of Women, Gaynor, C. (2007)
Quoted in [1].
6. See note 1.





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