WUNRN
AID - DEVELOPMENT - WOMEN'S RIGHTS
& GENDER EQUALITY
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Women's Components - Is It
"Gender Blind?"
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IMPLEMENTING THE PARIS DECLARATION:
IMPLICATIONS FOR
THE PROMOTION OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS
& GENDER EQUALITY
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POLITICIZING AID IN CONFLICTS &
CRISES
The effectiveness
of international aid, both in meeting urgent needs and in tackling entrenched
poverty, is being undermined in some of the world’s poorest places.
While effective aid has helped save lives, protect rights and build
livelihoods, some donors’ military and security interests have skewed global
aid spending; and amidst conflict, disasters and political instability have too
often led to uncoordinated, unsustainable, expensive and even dangerous aid
projects.
Skewed aid policies and practices threaten to undermine a decade of government
donors’ international commitments to effective, needs-focussed international
aid. This paper sets out how these commitments are being disregarded, and how
this trend can be reversed.
Key recommendations
- To meet their existing commitments to development aid
effectiveness and principled humanitarian action, donors should
ensure that all aid – in conflicts, stable countries and within
countries themselves – has as its principal purpose the reduction
of either poverty or humanitarian needs.
- Donors should ensure
that the development projects they fund or plan in conflicts and stable
settings alike are responsive to the needs of communities, aligned where possible
with the policies of local and national administrations, and sustainable
after foreign development workers have left. Donors and aid agencies alike
must ensure that aid does not contribute to violations of international
human rights and humanitarian law.
- All armed forces should
adhere to existing, internationally agreed civil-military guidelines,
setting out the effective and appropriate roles of military and civilian
actors responding to humanitarian needs in conflicts and disasters. Their doctrines and
rules of engagement should prohibit the allocation or restriction of
humanitarian assistance for military or counter-terrorism objectives.
- Aid organizations
likewise need to ensure that their activities do not exacerbate or provide
resources for conflict. They should implement standards and guidelines to
ensure that humanitarian aid ‘does no harm’, and that development aid is
sensitive to conflict. They should refuse any donor funding which is
conditional on them cooperating with military forces or providing
information to them, or which requires them to distribute aid or allocate
development resources based on the political or military cooperation of
recipients.