Francis Kokutse
Aid is supposed to promote human rights. And human rights are supposed to make aid more effective. But what do you do when governments refuse to act?
Regimes that create conditions for aid to be blocked to their countries should be confronted by strengthening domestic civil societies who would challenge their bad ways, says Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada.
“It is important to improve the capacities of civil societies so that they become guarantors of good governance,” Fox said on the sidelines of the international aid effective conference.
“They need to become the checks and balances in their respective countries so that they can put pressure on their governments to ensure that human rights are respected.”
His comments highlight an issue that has concerned many of the 1,200 delegates at the Accra meet. While some have backed the cancellation of aid to countries with undemocratic and repressive regimes – such as Burma and Zimbabwe – others say such conditionalities end up hurting the innocent poor.
Internationally, human rights and democracy are seen as the cornerstones of attempts to promote good governance through aid.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – a grouping that includes all of the world’s leading donor countries – says human rights “represent agreed legal and moral standards against which development strategies, processes and results should be measured”.
The OECD sees rights and aid as complementing each other.
“The implementation of the Paris Declaration for increased aid effectiveness can help to achieve human rights. Equally, the application of human rights to development processes can strengthen the implementation of the Paris Declaration and help to attain its goals,” it says.
Fox said aid should be made transparent so that people could hold their rulers accountable: “This means negotiations on aid should not remain behind closed doors but become public, so that the people know what the aid is meant for.”
He said the growth of civil societies the world over has been a “remarkable” trend, adding: “It also showed that these organisations are becoming rooted in their communities and working as critics to oppose the bad use of aid.”
However, Nang Lao Liang Won, who is an advisor to the Thailand’s Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) said donor countries and agencies should devise ways to bring about political change in countries with repressive regimes.
“They must not be afraid to speak out on wrong governance. The time has come for aid to tackle politics as well,” she added.
She said donor silence has encouraged some regimes to take their people for granted: “Blocking aid alone is not enough because some of these regimes have gone on to arrest even their local people who want to help the people who suffer under these regimes.”
“We cannot be talking about development if we do not talk about change and this concerns politics as well,” she added.
