“International action” is something that everyone wants to resolve any major global problem. How well does it work in practice?
We gleaned one small insight from Chris Giles’ brilliant article in the FT on the international finance ministers’ get together in advance of the April G 20 summit. The resulting joint communiqué was a meaningless piece of diplomatic doublespeak, he said, which failed the “five tests of relevance and importance.”
These included the rigorous “not test,” the “new test” and the “was it worth it?” test. We wondered how some recent aid summit documents would fare when put to some of these same tests.
Many of the documents we examined failed Giles’ “not test.” This test checks whether it is possible to negate the statement and create a sentence that any sane person would utter in public. We apply it here by giving the NOT statement for each statement that we review. Apply it to a sentence from last year’s UN summit declaration on food security, at a time when there was a major hunger crisis:
We urge national governments, all financial institutions, donors and the entire international community to NOT have a people-centred policy framework supportive of the poor in rural, peri-urban and urban areas and people’s livelihoods in developing countries.
This same document, which was agreed upon only “after hours of bickering over language” according to press reports, has a conclusion to which we give the NOT equivalent:
We firmly resolve to NOT alleviate the suffering caused by the current crisis, to NOT stimulate food production and to NOT increase investment in agriculture, to NOT address obstacles to food access and to NOT use the planet’s resources sustainably, for present and future generations.
This likely also flunks the “was it worth it” test: the outcome was roundly condemned for failing to require concrete action on any of the most pressing issues.
This is far from being water under the bridge, as today’s FT reports that the hunger crisis continues to worsen, with the chronically hungry worldwide passing 1 billion. In response to the farce of the previous summit, the head of UN Food and Agriculture Organization Jacques Diouf calls for another summit in November 2009.
Another example was the UN conference on drugs concluded six days ago in Vienna, but apparently the final declaration was so contentious that it still has not been released in final form. The UNODC did give a statement. Here it is in NOT form:
[The declaration] recognizes that countries do NOT have a shared responsibility for solving the world drugs problem, that a ‘balanced and comprehensive approach’ is NOT called for and that human rights do NOT need to be recognized.
That one does poorly on the “new test” to boot: the director of the Open Society Institute’s Global Drug Policy Program called it a “watered-down political declaration” that “fails to acknowledge crucial lessons that have been learned over the last decade,” and an article on openDemocracy.net complained that “government representatives at the United Nations’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) have once again decided that the effluent empire of crime must be fought as it has always been.”
Just imagine how different these documents could be if they had to pass these simple tests. What if every “summit declaration” made an unambiguous statement that somebody could actually disagree with? And what if each “joint communiqué” had to require at least one of the parties to actually change their behavior in a concrete, measurable way?
3 Comments
I wish those officials would have rather adopted the “NOT statements.” Maybe my friends are right that I am insane.
“Just imagine how different these documents could be if they had to NOT pass these simple tests. What if every “summit declaration” made an unambiguous statement that somebody could actually NOT disagree with? And what if each “joint communiqué” had to require at least one of the parties to actually NOT change their behavior in a concrete, measurable way?
I take your point on the unbearable lightness of summits, but not your means of illustrating it. Your post, it seems, also fails the rigorous “not test” and, with that, the “was it worth it test?” test.
Aid Watch is the blog of William Easterly, the author of The White Man’s Burden : Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.(The book is summarized in this post So Much Ill and So Little Good.) He begins that book stating that there are two tragedies for the world’s poor.
First, that so many suffer because they lack access to existing inexpensive solutions and second, that the $2.3 trillion (that is $2,300,000,000,000 in cash money / 23 followed by eleven zeros or 2.3 thousand billion bucks!) spent on foreign aid over the last five decades has still not managed to get those existing inexpensive solutions to the poor. Indeed, foreign aid often makes the lives of the poor far worse.
This point of view is a far cry from the Jeff Sachs (see this post Sachs & Violence) school of “throw so much money at the third world that even the most rapacious elites can’t manage to steal it all … then maybe something good will happen … maybe – and if it doesn’t why heck, it sure is a fantastic little academic exercise.”. Or how about the Joseph Stiglitz school of just plain liking Meles personally because Meles so neatly parrots the scholar’s words and theories back at him (see this post Intellectuals and their Discontents).
Dambisa Moyo the author of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa has this to say about Africa in particular
the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.
The Easterly and Mayo books manage to actually judge and evaluate human reality and the results of aid, accountability, institutions and governance. Easterly and Mayo are the anti-cadres being heard increasingly more to the great dismay of the Lords of Poverty or the Ferenji Aid Raj who run the the multi-billion dollar Cadre Cola brand. The term Lords of Poverty comes from a book by Graham Hancock titled, The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business. The introduction and first sections of the Lords of Poverty is available on line.
It begins thus
This book is an attack on a group of rich and powerful bureaucracies that have hijacked our kindness. The bureaucracies I refer to are those that administer the West’s aid and then deliver it to the poor of the Third World in a process Bob Geldoff once described as ‘a perversion of the act of human generosity’.
…
Official aid also involves the transfer of very large sums of money – so large in fact, that the resources of the private sector look puny and insignificant by comparison. It would thus be sensible, at the very least, for the official agencies to be directly accountable to the public – to be ‘transparent’, open, and honest in their dealings.
This unfortunately is not the case. Indeed, critical study is sharply and effectively discouraged. Those of us, for example, who wish to evaluate the progress , effectiveness, or quality of development assistance will soon discover that the aid bureaucracies have already carried out all of the evaluations that they believe necessary, and are prepared to resist with armor plated resolve, – the ignorant or biased or hostile attentions of outsiders.
Even the few apparently independent studies have been financed by one or other of the aid agencies or by institutes set up with aid money.
Keep this last bit especially in mind for later on. Now finally let us pay a visit to the Easterly blog to see the poverty cadre in action. The story starts with this Aid Watch post Why Does British Foreign Aid Prefer Poor Governments Over Poor People?.
European donors are moving towards increasing direct budget support to governments of aid-receiving countries. Leading the charge is the UK, which gives the largest percentage of direct budget support of any bilateral or multilateral donor (although the World Bank, the European Commission, the US and France also give substantial budget support).
…
Of this list [of nations British aid flows to], only Ghana and India were classified as “free” by the annual Freedom House ratings on democracy (according to either the 2007 or 2008 rating). For the 11 other countries that did get British budget support, how much is there “country ownership” when the government is not democratically accountable to the “country”?
Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused some of these governments of serious human rights violations. Ethiopia’s autocratic government, which is inexplicably the largest recipient of UK budget support in Africa, won 99% of the vote in the last “election.” The government army is accused by HRW of war crimes in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Nor is this brand new — neither army officers nor civilian officials have been “held accountable for crimes against humanity that ENDF (Ethiopian National Defense Force) forces carried out against ethnic Anuak communities during a counterinsurgency campaign in Gambella region in late 2003 and 2004.”
HRW also notes that today: “Credible reports indicate that vital food aid to the drought-affected [Somali] region has been diverted and misused as a weapon to starve out rebel-held areas.” Ironically, Ethiopia’s autocratic ruler, Meles Zenawi, was the Africa representative at the recent G-20 meeting campaigning for more aid to Africa during the current crisis, because, among other reasons, Meles said “people who were getting some food would cease to get it and … would die” (from an article in Wednesday’s Financial Times.)
The good Professor has this wrong – there was no insurgency among the Anuak then and there never has been. The government just wanted the locals, who they had previously neglected to terrorize because of their remote location, to understand who was in charge and the price of even possible defiance that might interfere with drilling for oil. (See the post Blood, Oil and Ethnic Rule in Gambella.)
Back to the story at hand, the Addis Ababa-based director [chief cadre] of aidinfo.org (allegedly an initiative to accelerate poverty reduction by making aid more transparent. Aidinfo is part of Development Initiatives, a UK-based development consultancy) wasn’t having any of this. You see according to that wonderful Amharic expression Easterly is “touching his injera” i.e. “upsetting his gravy train” i.e. “narcing him out”.
After all how could he continue to pretend to monitor corruption in aid in Ethiopia if the corrupt government thought him disloyal for not responding to Easterly’s stubborn refusal to accept the party line? His more immediate bosses in Development Initiatives would also appreciate a stirring defense of their no doubt very profitable enterprise. The aid agencies who pay for the whole aid daisy chain would appreciate a strong defense too.
Hell, the chief cadre probably thought to himself, “if folks listen to the Easterly types of this world who are to proud to shut up and get on the short list for phat consultancies then I might just have to get a real job some day.” So he gamely put down his real human skull goblet (a gift from Meles himself), carefully lest a drop of that sweet nectar Cadre Cola spill, stiffened his spine in prospect of a horrid real job (insert dramatic shudder here) where results were actually expected and wrote to Easterly … his response was posted on Aid Watch.
The aid cadre had this to say in support of business as usual.
according to the official results of the 2005 election, the ruling party won 59.8% of the votes.
Note the absurdity of both parties even referring to ‘official results’ of an Ethiopian election with straight faces. Easterly’s response.
I guess we really left you with a poor impression if you think we can’t even count votes! We were referring to the local elections of April 2008 (the more recent, and hence ‘last’). Human Rights Watch (the source of our original assertion) found, during two weeks of field research in the lead up to the elections, “systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas.
HRW concluded that the 2008 elections “provided a stark illustration of the extent to which the government has successfully crippled organized opposition of any kind—the ruling party and its affiliates won more than 99 percent of all constituencies, and the vast majority of seats were uncontested.” An Associated Press article from April 20, 2008 told the same story: “opposition parties said a systematic campaign of beatings, arrests and intimidation forced out more than 17,000 of their candidates.”
The cadre went on to say
the UK does not give budget support to the Federal Government of Ethiopia. Through the Protection of Basic Services scheme, which was introduced after worries about the election, the UK Government provides finance to local government (albeit through the existing financial transfer mechanism via central government). As well as funding health and education, the project includes significant components to increase transparency and accountability of federal and regional parliaments.
The cadre must be going for a laugh here. But sadly probably not. He just doesn’t take the organizational mission statement ‘making aid more transparent’ that seriously does he? Well the founders probably don’t either – the whole thing is sounding like a fig leaf for the Lords of Poverty. We’ve written about this bit of nonsense wrapped in a fig leaf in the post It’s Not a Magic Solution. Our point was that paying off Mafia Capos Peter Clemenza or Salvadore Tessio and feeling all noble about not giving money directly to Don Corleone was not only dumb it was an obvious lie.
The fact that Transparency International views Ethiopia as one of the most corrupt nations on earth doesn’t matter to the cadre. Somehow the central government run by Meles just might be corrupt you see but such slander can’t be extended to even one mini-meles that Meles owns. Easterly responds
But wait, aren’t those the same local governments that just had the rigged elections? A recent article by Aalen and Tronvoll in the journal African Affairs points out that one of the reasons why the ruling party bothered to fix the local elections so thoroughly was precisely because international donors had cut off budget support to the federal government (in the political mayhem following the 2005 elections) and started channeling it to local government bodies instead. (Anyway, we never made any assertion about which level of government received budget support.)
You don’t think we developed our case enough that budget transfers to corrupt autocrats are bad. Fair enough, cases should always be developed more. But for now, which is more intuitive: your claim that aid to kleptocrats is “a way to make the government more accountable to its own citizens,” or our claim that aid money given directly to corrupt dictators is unlikely to reach poor people?
The cadre digs himself in deeper
The British Government’s approach of giving some aid in the form of budget support (too little, in my view) is motivated by evidence that in some circumstances this is an important way of building more effective, responsive and accountable institutions.
Easterly rubs it in
“Effective, responsive and accountable institutions”—wouldn’t that include democracy and freedom from corruption? The “evidence” you cite in your post is from a report commissioned by the donors to evaluate themselves. While self-evaluation raises suspicions of bias, even so the support for your claims from this report is a tad on the weak side: “Where a separate governance matrix has been developed, progress is slow…or donors are not satisfied with quality of dialogue…or implementation is weak.”
As for corruption, the same study said that “corruption, and anti-corruption measures, have featured explicitly in the performance matrices and prior actions linked to PGBS. Most often, prior actions related to legal measures, policy development and administrative actions, but, even when formally complied with, such measures have not been conspicuously effective.” Not too surprising—isn’t giving aid to corrupt officials for anti-corruption strategies kind of like giving aid to burglars to install burglar alarms?
The cadre signs off with this supposed to be withering finish
If Aid Watch want to be taken seriously as an aid watchdog, then (a) they’d better get their facts straight and (b) they need to do some proper analysis of the costs and benefits of different choices for aid delivery in different contexts, rather than simply asserting that it is wrong to give aid to and through governments of which they disapprove.
Easterly finishes off
Thanks for your helpful suggestions on how to ingratiate ourselves with the aid establishment by toning down our criticism of bad aid-receiving governments. However, what really matters to us is not whether WE disapprove of a country’s government but whether the CITIZENS of that country disapprove of their own government—and have the right to express it. Judging from recent election practices by the government of Ethiopia, most Ethiopians don’t have that right.
Right On Professor Easterly! He gets it doesn’t he? So why aren’t people like him running aid programs? Because all of the characteristics required to be a Lord of Poverty, though they are legion, do not include making conclusions from facts, telling the truth, not being deceitful or at least not so desperately internalizing deceit, and taking pride in what you actually accomplish.
Along with Legesse we know many of the aid crowd in Addis read this blog. Well, Nous Accusons! You are cadres. And note that it is not a nice thing to say about someone.
What you do, unless it is purely humanitarian aid, not only helps but is absolutely vital to keeping the dictatorship of Meles in business and to the formation of an Ethiopian civil contract that includes ferenjis and Meles but excludes Ethiopians.
Meles Inc. is inconceivable without the active complicity of otherwise absolutely decent people like you in public and private bureaucracies and think tanks and international organizations every where.
Just like sex tourists, many international aid cadres are people who obey the conventions of law, common sense, and morality at home but seem to lose touch with them all when they have a willing government(to them anyway), natives (who cares if they are willing or not?), and Biblical level poverty to which they can apply their pet theories (which always fail) while getting promoted, getting a fat expense account, and living like Lords in the Ferenji Aid Raj.
With absolutely no accountability.
They just seem to get an itch to just ‘try out and idea’ every now and then at the expense of relatively rich taxpayers who are hidden from the truth but who instinctively know it is all nonsense and poor natives who just need a healthy dose of good old fashioned capitalism and liberal democracy to do just fine and to no longer need aid.
Anyone anywhere who says different is really saying that they don’t want Ethiopians to have the very same opportunities that have let billions of lives on planet earth escape ‘poor nasty brutish and short’ fates in the span of even a generation.
It is that simple. In a just world it would be the Cadre Cola brand and not the Coca Cola brand that was in danger of leaving Ethiopia.