Memorandum submitted by Brenda Killen,
Head of Aid Effectiveness Division, OECD-DAC
At the hearing on 7 May, I promised to share
whatever results were available from the 2008 Paris Declaration
Monitoring Survey. The headline results are set out below. Detailed
figures will not be available until the statisticians have finished
their analysis next week, but I thought the committee might find
the overall picture useful.
Brenda Killen
15 May 2008
2008 SURVEY—INITIAL
FINDINGS
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness,
endorsed in March 2005, is now recognised as a landmark international
agreement aimed at improving the quality of aid and its impact
on development. It lays out a road-map of practical commitments,
organised around five key principles of effective aid:
Alignment with countries' strategies, systems
and procedures
Harmonisation of donors' actions
Managing for results, and
Each has a set of indicators of achievement.
The Declaration also has built-in provisions for regular monitoring
and independent evaluation of how the commitments are being carried
out.
The following paragraphs summarises some still
tentative results from the second round of monitoring that was
undertaken in the first quarter of 2008 in 56 developing countries
(a first round was organised in 2006). The findings of the survey
will inform discussions at the Accra High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness
hosted by the Government of Ghana on 2-4 September 2008.
The conclusions that can be drawn from the 2008
survey analysis are alarming in respect of substantive progress
on the Paris Declaration commitments. The survey suggests a simple
message to the Accra High-Level Forum: the efforts currently being
made are not enough.
— The survey countries will meet the
ambitious targets that have been set in the areas of ownership
and results' orientation only if they make unprecedented break-throughs
in respect of strategy-budget linkages and embedding results'
orientation in governance systems. Consideration needs to be given
to whether the current focus on operational development strategies
and results-oriented frameworks is setting the right level and
kind of ambition.
— The most robust of the indicators
of aid alignment and harmonisation suggest a situation of "no
change" since 2005. Except for aid untying, there is no indication
that the incentives underlying donor and country practices have
altered significantly in response to the Paris Declaration commitments.
While a few countries have advanced in specific areas, it is not
clear that the Paris commitments are responsible. Other countries
have apparently slipped backwards. The survey suggests a simple
message to the Accra High-Level Forum: the efforts currently being
made are not enough.
— The findings from the World Bank
Aid Effectiveness Review suggest that a mutual accountability
that involves aid donors and recipients in a rigorously results-based
dialogue is a considerable way from being achieved. But simpler
and more realistic objectives need to be entertained. The progress
made in establishing specific monitoring arrangements for aid
partnership commitments remains to be assessed because the revision
of the country chapters of the survey report is not yet complete.
— The approximately 50 countries participating
in the 2008 survey include 10 countries with fragile states and
16 Middle Income Countries according to current World Bank definitions.
An encouraging finding on the former group is that on the most
robust alignment measure, it does no worse than the whole sample,
meaning that some donors are making special efforts to build up
country systems by using them. Alignment and harmonisation in
MICs present some distinctive challenges which may call for some
"localisation" of the Paris commitments. Continued monitoring
of the commitments in these different types of country situation
seems justified.
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