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Brian Pratt, Executive Director, INTRAC
September 2007
I have been thinking about where the debate is drifting regarding the Paris Declaration (PD), in part prompted by my own involvement in the Sida conference in August, but also other meetings with a range of agencies, both official and NGO.
I have concluded that we are falling into the usual problem of confusing not clarifying what the issues actually are, and side agendas are for some emerging as central which may have minimal relevance to the original debate around the PD. In the following few points I have summarised the different positions:
1) Firstly it should still be possible to take the PD at face value as an agreement between donors to see if they can improve the efficiency of the administration of aid. If harmonisation of procedures reduces transaction costs for both donors and recipient governments then this is probably something most people can buy into as a positive move by the aid industry.
Some will also feel that alignment of policies again between donors and recipients can have some positive elements, although it might remove some leeway for innovation, experimentation. The other PD principles are a minimalist attempt to improve public administration, acceptable enough.
2) The first range of criticism of the PD was also clear enough and included: the failure to be politically aware of the pitfalls of knowing which recipient government to accept into such principles or not. And who is making the decisions on whether a government’s aid policy is a genuine reflection of a democratically generated and supported set of policies, or merely the reflection of an autocratic group of politicians or state employees?
The second critique was around what the PD does not say and what is implied around the roles of civil society. This included the assumption that civil society would be mainly a contractor to local government, except in fragile states, with some implied secondary role in keeping the state to account.
3) Then it appears that there are some “hidden” agendas which have been pointed out to me around issues such as international procurement, an excessive role for the World Bank to be arbiter of whether a recipient country has stuck by the PD or not and so on. Given the highly technical nature of many of the indicators which read like a World Bank manual this is perhaps not a surprise but can imply changes which are not made explicit.
4) A new wave of issues has started to emerge which is of worry. I observe different groups imputing changes onto the process of the PD which it was never intended to deal with. Thus we suddenly have discussions of why NGOs should adopt the principles of PD. Perhaps in some cases this might be appropriate, but in many ways it would clearly not be at all something to recommend. Given the key element of pluralism in civil society, independence of civil society groups we should neither expect nor promote alignment of policies either between civil society and NGO groups or automatically with state authorities.
It should be an option for NGOs to align with local government, should this be appropriate and in the best interests of all (around, for example, standards of health care in a certain technical area) and never obligatory, as this misses the point that CS groups will have a multitude of interests they represent, some of which may even be contradictory (two groups arguing for different spending priorities in health, for example).
5) We need to be wary of official agencies trying to divert attention from their own progress or otherwise by trying to place other issues centre stage. I had a strong feeling that in some recent discussions on the PD this sudden interest in CS/NGOs perhaps acts as a way of diverting attention form other issues. I would include in this the sudden interest in accountability which avoids the real discussions on accountability to who, and whether if we had decent approaches to learning through M&E, we would by default be improving our accountability. This line would be too challenging for many donor agencies as much as it would be for some NGOs.
6) There is a tendency to try and corral NGOs and CSOs into a small number of roles rather than recognise their pluralism and the fact that CS is not and should not be regarded as homogenous. Diversity should be seen as a positive attribute not something to restrict.
7) We are still faced with a situation whereby some people and agencies seem to regard the PD as a theory and policy for development instead of being a set of relatively modest improvements in public administration. We have debates framed as though the PD is the new development solution. This is very misleading, as it is clear to me that we could achieve all of the objectives of the PD which could improve the efficiency of aid, but would not necessarily improve the impact of international cooperation at all.
In other words there is no guaranteed causal link between improving public administration and achieving developmental goals such as the MDGs. Meanwhile the energy around the PD can be seen to distract from other important developmental issues and debates of substance.
8) A final issue seems to be that there is a challenge to CSOs to actually reaffirm what positive contribution they make in their own right. Civil society including NGOs is neither merely an adjunct of the state nor the development industry. They have their own rationale, and their own constituencies in many cases; some will be very specific (people with a specific disability) others will be general (association of women, peasant unions). Many NGOs come from a very strong faith basis for example, others have political or social visions. It is not always clear at the moment that this diversity is fully appreciated.
There is no harm in organisations showing the positive alternative to either a state-centred view of development or a purely market-led view. This means we need to reaffirm and celebrate what we do and what we have achieved, and not just be on the back foot and in a defensive position. We need to highlight positive solutions to the myriad of social/political/economic constraints on the poor.