For interest.
Paul
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: International (World) - ActionAid and Oxfam report on
international aid
From: "db\(swa\)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, February 28, 2005 9:09 pm
To: <[log in to unmask]>
A joint report from ActionAid and Oxfam says just one fifth of aid
actually goes to the very poorest countries, and only half of this is
spent on basic services such as education and health where aid can make
a decisive difference in ending poverty.
Best wishes
Dave Burchell
Social Work Alliance
28/02/2005
Report available at:
http://oxfam.intelli-direct.com/e/d.dll?m=234
<http://oxfam.intelli-direct.com/e/d.dll?m=234&url=http://www.oxfam.org.
uk/what_we_do/issues/debt_aid/downloads/aid_millstone.pdf>
&url=http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/debt_aid/downloads/aid_mi
llstone.pdf
International aid agencies today rounded on the world’s wealthiest
nations for failing to reform an aid system they described as
“uncoordinated, self-serving and hypocritical”.
As International Development Ministers prepare to meet in Paris to try
to improve the quality of their aid, a joint report from ActionAid and
Oxfam [ Millstone or Milestone? What rich countries must do in Paris to
make aid work for poor people ]says just one fifth of aid actually goes
to the very poorest countries. And only half of this is spent on basic
services such as education and health where aid can make a decisive
difference in ending poverty.
ActionAid Policy Officer Patrick Watt said: “Our report tells a sorry
tale of muddle and hypocrisy, dithering and stalling, with the world’s
poor cast unwittingly in the role of fall guys. If ministers in Paris
fail to take the steps needed to make aid more effective, the UN’s
anti-poverty targets may end up as museum pieces in the Louvre.”
Oxfam’s Policy Advisor Max Lawson said: “You hear a lot of talk about
the need for ‘good governance’ and ‘accountability’ in developing
countries - it’s time rich countries applied the same strict standards
to themselves. There’s now wide agreement that aid needs to be urgently
increased, but we also need to know that every extra dollar is being
spent effectively on fighting poverty.”
The new report singles out the United States and Japan for special
criticism. It says failure to reform the international aid system will
undermine hopes of reaching the Millennium Development Goals, the
targets aimed at halving global poverty by 2015.
The agencies accuse rich countries of:
• Using aid to reward strategic allies and pet projects at the expense
of the neediest countries.
• “Tying” aid so developing countries are forced to spend it on
overpriced goods and services from the donor country, reducing its value
for money. Forty per cent of international aid is still tied in this
way.
• Perpetuating a bewildering and byzantine aid system in which a
plethora of at least 80 official agencies impose their own projects,
procedures, conditions, and often competing objectives on poor
countries. In 2002-2003 the Tanzanian government hosted 275 donor
missions.
The OECD meeting in Paris this week is the only meeting all year wholly
devoted to the quality of international aid. ActionAid and Oxfam are
calling on donors to submit to monitoring of their aid by the OECD using
a new set of quality benchmarks, backed up by an annual public review.
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