Improving the Paris Declaration in Busan

Beginning Nov. 30, dozens of foreign aid donors and recipients will meet in Busan for several days to review the implementation of their 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The declaration purports to structure donor-recipient partnerships based on five principles: ownership (recipient countries, not donors, should create and “own” their development plans); alignment (donors should align their aid with those plans); “mutual accountability” between donors and recipients; “managing the aid for results”; and “harmonization” among the donors and their aid, including division of labor, to minimize the burden on recipients and to avoid duplication. All very good in theory.

But in practice, while many of the donors are delinquent, the bigger problem is that many of the recipients do not and cannot meet either their obligations or, more important, the basic Paris Declaration standards. In theory, the donor commitments are to the “country” and its development, while in practice that means to their governments. But in too many cases, their governments are corrupt, represent narrow segments of the country, and are unaccountable to their citizens let alone the donors.

Many poor countries also suffer from internal armed conflict, making any kind of country-wide development almost impossible. The development plans of these countries are too often pieces of paper created for the donors by governments barely functioning or functioning on behalf of only part of the country, not expressions of serious policy or intent. Aligning donor assistance with such plans will not lead to meaningful development if only because the unrepresentative governments have no intention of implementing them seriously and equitably. Too much of the assistance will just disappear into private or sectarian pockets.

Just as the wealthier, better-run countries of Northern Europe have insisted that Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal take the reform measures that will better ensure their fiscal soundness before receiving a budget bailout, the donors should insist on sound policies, properly implemented as a minimum condition for non-humanitarian aid. They should neither co-own nor align their assistance with countries plagued by corruption and mismanagement through venal elites that entrench themselves in power and siphon off for themselves and their clients the resources of the country, including foreign aid.

South Korea is a member of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee under which the Paris Declaration was drafted and is supposed to be implemented. On behalf of the DAC, South Korea is the national host of the Busan meeting. South Korea is one of the new, “rising” powers and is becoming a much more active and important donor.

Not burdened by the accusations of recipient countries against the traditional donors, South Korea could lead a movement to reconsider the basic principles of the Paris Declaration, not just host another meeting to recount the many ways in which the donors ― but not the recipients ― fall short of their Paris Declaration commitments. Are these principles realistic? Why have they not been better implemented? Who really “owns” these development plans and why? Are they real? Who are their actual, not their theoretical, beneficiaries? Should donor resources be aligned with them? How can donors and recipients really be mutually accountable and what should be the mechanisms of that accountability? Do they, and will they, both actually manage for results and what does and will happen when the results fall short? Will there be important consequences? Is the Paris Declaration really a recipe for aid effectiveness and development or is too much of it a facade based on some idealistic but unrealistic conception of how foreign aid is given and used? Would the actual implementation of the Paris Declaration principles make aid more or less effective and development more or less likely?

No doubt there will be many accusations in Busan, especially by recipient governments against the donors. But without that more fundamental review, the danger is that South Korea will have played gracious and generous host to yet one more meeting for posturing and recrimination rather than real impact, and Busan will become the name of yet another meaningless exercise.

By Gerald F. Hyman

Gerald F. Hyman, a former officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He recently wrote a paper, “Bringing Realism to Paris in Busan: the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness,” which is on the CSIS website. ― Ed.