Harmonising aid efforts in Asia: the story so far
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Harmonising the efforts of donor agencies and bringing processes and procedures closer to partner governments is a major policy issue for the development community and aid-receiving countries. The facts are alarming. In Cambodia, for example, 90% of aid bypasses national systems. The Vietnam government receives some 400 missions each year from donor agencies. The Afghan Minister of Finance recently stated that he was forced to spend around two thirds of his time managing relations with donors.
Concerns about the effectiveness of aid in assisting a country’s development have resulted in the proclamation of two international declarations. The Rome Declaration on Harmonisation of February 2003 and the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of March 2005 were signed by representatives of recipient countries and a large number of bilateral and multilateral development institutions. They signalled a firm commitment to move away from abstract policy principles to substantive changes in the way in which assistance is provided by official development agencies.
Stimulated by a long lasting policy process and the more recent momentum leading to these declarations, various countries in the South have started to take ownership of aid processes and explore ways of making more effective use of the policy arena and operational space thus created. The planned changes include:
- harmonising donor procedures and operations;
- integrating donor procedures with those of partner governments;
- establishing mutual accountability systems;
- moving away from project assistance to programme and budgetary support.
This, in turn, has triggered a quest for new capacities on all sides, ranging from a pro-active management of the donor community to the facilitation of complex national policy processes.
This issue of Capacity.org takes a close look at some of these initiatives, how they are unfolding, and what type of capacity challenges are emerging in their wake. Niloy Banerjee, UNDP’s Regional Capacity Development Advisor in Asia and Coordinator of the Capacity 2015 initiative, discusses the topic from a capacity perspective in his opening article. This is followed by three contributions reflecting recent experiences with aid coordination in the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not purport to be the views of UNDP. As usual, Capacity.org provides access to a range of complementary documents which we have collected in the form of an extensive bibliography and uploaded on to the web.
This issue of Capacity.org also marks the end of a successful six-year contribution to the international policy debate on capacity development. In recognition of the value of Capacity.org, the Netherlands Development Organisation SNV and UNDP recently signed an agreement with ECDPM to produce an extended version of Capacity.org as of September 2005. The details of the new formula will be announced on the web in due course. |