Is aid in crisis?

Are aid agencies addressing the causes of conflict in dysfunctional states? Can humanitarian assistance be neutral when aid is an instrument of foreign policy wielded by powerful donor states? In an era of disintegrating state authority are aid providers succeeding in attempts to make relief more development-oriented?

A book from the Overseas Development Institute looks at the role of development agencies in conflict management and post-war reconstruction. Analysis of a series of post-Cold War interventions suggests that the international aid system is floundering and unable to meet the challenges of quasi-statehood that characterise chronic political emergencies and their, often prolonged, aftermath.

Faced with the reality that the political conditions for delivery of assistance (a benign and competent state controlling its own territory) do not exist, the aid establishment searches for an elusive managerial fix. Concluding that rehabilitation aid is inherently unsustainable, the author calls for a fundamental review of aid strategies in complex political emergencies.

Case studies look at the role of the international community in restoring health services in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda. They highlight the confusions of public policy and lack of strategy in situations of post-conflict transition where statehood is contested and public institutions are weak. Fragmented assistance is unconditionally delivered, mostly via NGOs. Donors provide projects, but not policy. There is little investment in the human resource base or building of local institutional capacity.

Are aid actors living in the past? The paradigm that has governed aid for half a century seems to live on. Donors assume, despite repeated evidence to the contrary, that post-conflict states are willing or able to sustain the costs of rehabilitation. International aid agencies wield significantly greater resources than those available for public services. Showing insufficient respect for sovereignty, they often apportion blame to national authorities. Thus in Uganda and Cambodia the state was neither allowed, nor largely able, to take responsibility for donor-driven rehabilitation planning but was, nevertheless, held responsible for decisions taken.

The author argues that before the form, channels and systems of relief aid give way to those of development aid, three conditions must be satisfied.

• The question or juridical sovereignty must be resolved.
• Juridical sovereignty must be recognised internally and be seen to be legitimate by donor states.
• The recipient state must be able to function as a state and demonstrate its empirical sovereignty by making and executing public policy.

Aid actors are urged to coordinate and to:

• rigorously evaluate the performance and political impact of rehabilitation aid
• look beyond physical rehabilitation to boosting managerial and planning capacity
• help post-conflict states to end dependence on relief aid more speedily and help them qualify for developmental assistance.

Source(s):
‘Aiding recovery? The crisis of aid in chronic political emergencies’ by Joanna Macrae, Overseas Development Institute, Zed Books, 2001 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 29 November 2001

Further Information:
Joanna Macrae
Humanitarian Policy Group
Overseas Development Institute
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JD
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7922 0300
Fax: +44 (0)20 7922 0399
Contact the contributor: j.macrae@odi.org.uk

Humanitarian Policy Group, ODI, UK

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'Humanitarianism revisited? Aid vs politics in conflict '

'Sector wide coordination of aid: are SIPs shaping up?'

'Money makes the war go round - finance, war and peace'

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