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| UNCTAD proposal would restrict choice for developing countries |
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| Written by Alex Singleton | |
| Saturday, 23 September 2006 | |
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UNCTAD launched a remarkable report at the Commonwealth Club on Thursday calling for aid currently spent by agencies such as DFID, DANIDA, USAID and the World Bank to be spent through a single, monopoly UN body. I was a platform speaker at the press conference which was organised by the Royal African Sociey and the Royal Commonwealth Society, and I argued that the proposal would damage developing countries’ choices. The speaker from Christian Aid welcomed the report. There is an argument that dealing with too many donor organisations is a burden, but this is an exaggerated problem. By having multiple sources of funding, this gives developing countries the flexibility to reject agencies that are not on the same wavelength and work with others that are. In Kenya, I found a great deal of scepticism towards the World Bank but much more support for DFID, so they work more with the latter and less with the former. Imposing a monolithic, single aid agency would be bad news for developing country sovereignty. The author of the report, who is currently writing a book denouncing “market fundamentalism” dismissed the idea that developing countries would benefit from bottom up approaches to aid spending, criticising William Easterly’s support for “searchers” rather than “planners” in aid. He called for socialism in developing counties in order to create successful businesses, saying that private sector investment clearly does not work in poor countries. I called for less multilateral aid, not more, arguing that much of what is currently done by the World Bank should be taken over by national aid agencies such as DFID and the Bank should become a body funded by money raised on financial markets. The Guardian and the Independent both quote me in Friday’s papers. According to the Guardian: The London-based thinktank the Globalisation Institute, which accused the UN of having a “megalomaniac agenda”, said that instead of another “top down institution”, freedom should be given to aid recipients over sourcing their money.Simon Maxwell, Director of the Overseas Development Institute, also criticised the report, saying: “The UN must earn the right to a larger share of aid… [it] needs to show that it can perform as well or better than the World Bank, the regional development banks and the EU. It is not there yet.” A spokesman for Hilary Benn, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development, also attacked the report saying: “We do not agree that a new UN fund is needed or justified. Improving existing mechanisms will be a better way to deliver increasing aid.” |