Select Committee on International Development Third Report

4   Inquiries into Departmental actions

Afghanistan

28. We began an inquiry into Afghanistan in the autumn of 2007. Afghanistan is off-track on all the Millennium Development Goals, including poverty reduction. Increasing insecurity, particularly in the south, is exacerbating the situation. We visited Afghanistan at the end of October, spending seven days in the country. In addition to meeting a wide range of key players in Kabul, including President Karzai, we split into two groups to visit Helmand province in the South and Balkh province in the North. We were able to see a number of development projects in communities both in the capital and in the provinces and to talk to local people about development and how they saw the future of Afghanistan. We were pleased, on our return to the UK, to have the opportunity to meet, jointly with our colleagues on the Defence Committee, a group of members of the Afghan National Assembly.

29. We had intended to take evidence from the Secretary of State for International Development early in December. However, the Prime Minister announced in the debate on the Queen's Speech at the beginning of November that he planned to make a statement on Afghanistan before Christmas.[18] This meant that our oral evidence session had to be postponed until early in the new year. We therefore took the slightly unusual step of writing to the Secretary of State to highlight the issues which had struck us during our visit as key to the UK's policy on development in Afghanistan. These included: women's rights; donor co-ordination and interaction with the Government of Afghanistan; counter-narcotics; security, particularly the role of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police; justice reform; and civil-military relations. The letter was made public in a press release.[19]

30. We hope to publish our report in February and we cannot prejudge its conclusions. But we have already made it clear that we believe that it is right for the UK to be involved in Afghanistan and that this should be a long-term commitment.

Development Assistance and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

31. The aim of our inquiry was to assess what had happened in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2004 when our predecessors reported on the development situation there, particularly in the context of the Hamas election victory in January 2006. Our conclusion was that, at the beginning of 2007, the situation politically, economically and socially, was worse than it was in 2004 and that the international community was in danger of preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

32. Following the formation of the Hamas-led government in 2006, the Government of Israel began withholding tax and customs revenues which it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. At the same time, the Quartet, composed of the EU, the UN, Russia and the USA, declared that they could not work with the Hamas-led government unless it met three conditions: to renounce violence, to recognise Israel and to adhere to previous agreements. In the absence of this, many donors, including the UK, took the decision to stop all direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

33. We found that the combined effect of the withholding of revenues and budget support was to place the Palestinian Authority under severe fiscal pressure. It had also increased poverty and hardship amongst most Palestinians. In an attempt to mitigate the worst effects of the situation, the European Union created a Temporary International Mechanism as a means of funding the continuation of essential services. Our assessment was that the Temporary International Mechanism was a timely response to the crisis but that it was insufficient to cope with it.

34. Our conclusion was that increasing donor assistance was not the answer to the problems facing the Palestinians given that the OPTs were already the largest per capita recipients of aid in the world. But under conditions of occupation their development prospects were being eroded, largely by the actions of the Government of Israel. These actions, which included the expansion of settlements on occupied territory and the accompanying security infrastructure, were justified by Israel on the grounds of security. We accepted that every state has a duty to protect its citizens and that Israel has genuine security concerns. However, we questioned the proportionality of many of the measures it takes, their human cost and their effectiveness in achieving the long-term peace and security that the peoples of Israel and Palestine deserve.

35. Our view was that the first step towards improving the development prospects for the Palestinians should be the implementation of the Agreement on Movement and Access signed in November 2005 and that, in addition, Israel should also stop withholding revenues due to the Palestinian Authority. Whilst we understood the reasons for the international community's policy of isolating a democratically elected government we doubted whether it was the most effective response.

36. The report was debated in Westminster Hall on 5 July 2007. Two members of the Committee visited Sweden in June to discuss the report's findings with Swedish parliamentarians and this meeting was the lead item on Swedish television news that day. We have continued to follow developments in the region closely. We held informal meetings with the Head of Mission of the EU Co-ordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support in March and with John Ging, Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza in November.

Vietnam

37. We welcomed the opportunity, when we travelled to Vietnam in May, to observe a DFID country programme which was working extremely well. The Department's budget in Vietnam has more than tripled in the last five years. While this is a sharp increase, we believe that it is a worthwhile investment: UK development assistance to Vietnam is having a positive impact there and has helped to lift millions of people in Vietnam out of poverty.

38. Vietnam has achieved remarkable economic development in recent years and has a good track record on reducing poverty. Much of DFID's programme in Vietnam is delivered through a grant to the Government's budget. We concluded that this was an effective way to support Vietnam's ownership of its poverty reduction strategy. It also allows DFID to influence government policy in line with its own strategic objectives on poverty reduction. But we cautioned DFID against relying too heavily on this mechanism and recommended that it actively and systematically consider other options, such as funding civil society, where these are equally or more effective. A strong civil society needs to be developed so that it can fulfil an essential role in the next phase of Vietnam's development.

39. Vietnam is likely to graduate from low- to middle-income country status in 2010. This will mean a decline in aid receipts. Challenges will, however, remain and we believed DFID should continue to have a role in addressing these. We pointed out that the development relationship with Vietnam will need to change—moving away from large grants and towards providing more advice. DFID has a good record in Vietnam of doing innovative work which informs research-based policy advice to the Government, and we concluded that this should be central to its new relationship with Vietnam.

40. Governance is rightly a priority for DFID's future programme in Vietnam and we highlighted that the challenges here are significant. We recommended that DFID should also prioritise work supporting the creation of a responsive and sustainable social security system and the off-track Millennium Development Goal targets on HIV/AIDS and sanitation. We also recommended that the gender dimensions of DFID's work in Vietnam should be re-examined to ensure that women's empowerment was supported at the local and project level as well as at the policy level.

Peace Process in Northern Uganda

41. As a follow up to our 2006 report on Conflict and Development[20] we decided to carry out a short inquiry into the Prospects for Sustainable Peace in Northern Uganda.[21] Since our visit in 2005, the Juba peace talks had begun between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). These talks were progressing well but concerns had been raised about the possible incompatibility of peace talks with the outstanding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the leadership of the LRA. We found that there was no inherent contradiction between these two processes—in fact the arrest warrants may have helped to bring the LRA to the negotiating table.

42. The Government of Uganda has created a Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for the north. We supported this initiative but emphasised the need to ensure that there was proper consultation with local people and that the Plan was sufficiently resourced. Our report argued that sustainable peace for Uganda would only be possible if the economic devastation caused by the 25-year conflict was reversed.

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18   The statement was made on 12 December, see HC Deb, 12 December 2007, cols 303-321 Back

19   International Development Committee Announcement 20 November 2007 available on the Committee's website at www.parliament.uk/indcom Back

20   Sixth Report of Session 2005-06, Conflict and Development: Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Reconstruction, HC 923 Back

21   Ninth Report of Session 2006-07, Prospects for Sustainable Peace in Northern Uganda, HC 853 Back

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Prepared 24 January 2008