- A milestone in aid effectiveness, the high level forum calls it on its own web pages (read more here).  But it was not, states Norads’s magazine Bistandsaktuelt (Aid News), whose latest number names the many good intentions behind the Paris Declaration (read more here).

"It was meant to revolutionise aid – transfer political power from donor to recipient, coordinate donor activity and create an aid that could demonstrate clear results.  There should be an end to recipient countries having to write a thousand reports and receive hundreds of delegations from donor countries.  Instead development countries should spend their energies on specific work to reduce poverty.  The donors should rely on the recipients’ systems.  Aid should be more stable.  Recipients should simply decide over their own development.  All this was to happen by 2010.  The Top Meeting in Accra at the beginning of September should be the last check post before the finishing line."

The work for following up the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness (read more here) is, according to an introduction to development and aid activity produced by Ibon (Philippines), narrowly focused on the administration of aid.  In a common statement the international steering committee' of Civil Society Organisations points out that (read more here):

"We need to see specific commitments to positive reform.  When it comes down to it, the point of aid effectiveness is not effective aid or donor harmonisation but real progress towards viable development."

According to Dorte Kabell, who has evaluated the execution of the Paris Declaration for the Danish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (read more here), the problem is partly that the process has been left to the bureaucrats. To Bistandsaktuelt (the Norad magazine Aid News), she has said:

"This is a political plan of action, not just an aid plan. It touches on deep political processes both in the recipient and donor countries.  Therefore, it is vital that the Accra meeting is not just an arrangement for bureaucrats."

Representatives of foreign affairs committee of the Norwegian parliament have told Bistandsaktuelt that they know little of the process (read more here). However, it is the developing countries’ "ownership" of their own development - not ther ownership of the donors - that has been one of the stated intentions of the Paris Declaration. Practice has been quite different, many claim. In a letter to the Norwegian government before the G8 meeting last year Norwegian Church Aid wrote (read more here):

"Although the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness states that national priorities for combating poverty shall steer the use of aid funding, loans and debt annulment, the international financial institutions still force poor countries to privatise public services, liberalise trade and follow macroeconomic frameworks that prevent vital investments in the social sectors."

According to the developing countries’ think tank, The South Centre in Geneva, the present draft of the action plan from Accra will not change that.  In a commentary on the draft the South Centre writes (read more here):

"It suggests no inbuilt changes in the steering structure for the international aid system that remains donor-controlled and reflects the donors’ economic and political agendas."

In Accra today a book was launched, Ending Aid Dependence, written by South Centre director, Yash Tandon. In his foreword Tanzania’s former president, Banjamin W Mkapa writes (read more here):

"'The primary and long-term objective of this monograph is to initiate a debate on development aid, and to lay out a doable strategy for ending aid dependence. An exit strategy from aid dependence requires a radical shift both in the mindset and in the development strategy of countries dependent on aid, and a deeper and direct involvement of people in their own development. It also requires a radical and fundamental restructuring of the institutional aid architecture at the global level."

"A more immediate objective is to start a dialogue with the OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which forms the basis of a high level meeting in September 2008 in Accra, and to caution the developing countries against endorsing the Accra Action Agenda (the ‘Triple A’) offered by the OECD."

To what extent this will be achived we will probably know more by the end of this week.

Useful links:
(some links are in Norwegian only)

• Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (official web page)
• Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2-4 Sept., Accra), The South Centre
• Better Aid, civil society web page
• Paris Declaration, OECD
• Paris Declaration - new methods for aid effectiveness, SIDA
• The Paris Agendaen - How Effective for Gender Equality?, Norad 27.08.08 (Norwegian only)
• Evaluation of the implementation of the Paris Declaration, Cable Consulting ApS for Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 2008
• Primer on Development Aid and Effectiveness, Ibon/Reality of Aid Network, 2008
• Civil society calls for contrete commitment on aid effectiveness on OECD high level forum, 21.08.08
• Conditionality and ownership as seen from the South: More strings attached?, by Antonio Tujan, Jr. and Wim De Ceukelaire, Ibon, June 2008 
• Aid Effectiveness, theme number of Education for Development (EDM), Sept-Oct 2007
• Ending Aid Dependence, book launch Sept. 1st 2008, South Centre
• The Paris Declaration and aid effectiveness, by Yash Tandon (South Centre) at Pambazuka News 10.06.08
  The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness will be held this September in Accra. But is aid effectiveness a mirage? Yash Tandon dissects the Paris Declaration in relation to aid effectiveness and reaches the conclusion that "under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September." But all is not lost and he also offers a way out.
• Aid effectiveness after Accra: How to reform the 'Paris agenda'?. ODI Briefing Paper, July 2008
• Buraucrats decides aid, Bistandsaktuelt 06/08
• We ask parliamentarians about the Paris Agenda, Bistandsaktuelt 06/08
• National Owbership - a Reality?, Commentary by Marte Briseid og Agathe Schjetlein in Bistandsaktuelt 28.08.08
• Aid Effectiveness - can hit both ways? Commentary by Aksel Nærstad, Utviklingsfondet

See also:

• The Aid Debate 2007, current issues at rorg.no

As well as other relevant news at rorg.no:

• Development Policies in the Melting Pot, rorg.no 15.08.08
• This Summers Aid Debate, rorg.no 05.08.08
• The Course of Development Policy - and Rersults of Aid, rorg.no 29.11.07

• Statement and Debate on Development Policies, rorg.no 11.06.07