|
Organisations ridicule Aid Effectiveness conference |
|
|
|
|
Written by DJ Heavy D
|
|
Friday, 05 September 2008 |
 As representatives
of governments of developed and developing countries and selected civil
society organizations crack their brains at a high level forum on how
to make aid more effective for poor countries, a group
of civil society
organizations has put out pictorial expressions that ridicule the
entire conference. There were a total of eight pictures showing a human
pyramid tied with a red rope in a tangled manner with the one at the
top of the pyramid holding on to the knot tightly, preventing those at
the bottom from reaching the top and from freeing themselves. "The
acrobats in the pictures highlight how the Accra Third High Level Forum
(HLF3) is a 'show', with the appearance of negotiations taking place,
but with few progressive outcomes," a statement accompanying the
pictures said.
The statement said the human pyramid was a civil
society expression of the current aid architecture, adding that, as the
pictures demonstrated, the aid hierarchy tied developing countries in
knots, thereby threatening progress towards effective aid and
development. The pictures were taken by International Photo Journalists
Flint Duxfield.
Each of the pictures depicted how the aid effectiveness talks had
failed to deliver on the five main principles of the Paris Declaration.
The pictures variously demonstrated failed commitment to the principle
of ownership in particular, persistence of the complexities of tied aid
through donor conditionalities and the continuous victimization of
citizens of poor countries who are rather supposed to benefit from aid.
The statement noted that the current aid system was hierarchical and
the people at the bottom, whom aid is supposed to benefit, had little
or no ownership of aid programmes. The ropes, the statement noted,
represented the tied nature of aid, saying that the poor were bound by
conditions on the aid given to them, and they were subtly compelled to
cede control of much of their own development to donors at the top.
"The tangled nature of the ropes represents the complexity of the
current aid system, rendering the funds inaccessible by those who need
it the most," the statement said.
The civil society organizations therefore insisted that the aid system
could only succeed if it were a circle in which donors and
beneficiaries engaged on the same level. They argued that in order to
move the aid effectiveness talks forward, there was the need for the
tripartite, comprising donors, beneficiary countries and civil society
to unite and engage more closely on how to make aid benefit the actual
targeted group, the poor and most vulnerable.
 |
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 05 September 2008 )
|
Reverend Godfried
Bamfo, Koforidua District Minister of Presbyterian Church of Ghana
(PCG), has called on public servants to serve with sincerity...
Word that President Obama might pile comprehensive immigration
reform onto his already-full plate reignited calls from some for an
urgent overhaul...
