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UNDP calls on donors to clean up their act
Accra, Sept 4, Ghanadot/GNA - Mr. Olav Kjorven, Director of
the Bureau for Development Policy of the United Nation
Development Programme (UNDP), on Wednesday called on donor
nations and multilateral organizations to clean up their act
and desist from the excessive demand for regular detailed
reports on the application of aid from recipient countries
as a requirement for subsequent aid.
He told journalists at the Third High Level Forum (HLF3) on
Aid Effectiveness that donors had turned governments of poor
countries into their accountants demanding regular time
consuming detailed reports on meagre aid from them instead
of those governments spending their time working for the
betterment of their citizens.
"Governments of poor countries have become the accountants
of donor nations always filing reports to justify why they
deserve more aid instead of concentrating on building their
own internal structures to get their people out of poverty,"
he said.
Mr. Kjorven said as a result of the desperation of poor
countries for more aid, donors perceived them as clients who
need service and not as partners in development even though
the poor countries would want to believe that they were
partners with the donors.
"If poor countries do not demonstrate to donors that they
are willing to go on the path of empowering their citizens
as a matter of rule of law, donors would continue to see
poor countries as clients who need service and not as
partners in development," he said.
He noted for instance that it was as a result of donor
perception of poor countries as clients that donors tie
conditions to aid, deliver aid project by project in a
manner that defeated the purpose of reducing poverty.
Mr. Kjorven said it was high time poor countries realized
that no amount of aid would solve their problems without
putting in place a functional rule of law that ensures
property rights, labour rights and access to justice for the
poor.
He said the experience of the developed countries was ample
testimony to the fact that access to property ownership,
labour rights and justice were critical to poverty
reduction, wealth creation and overall economic
transformations.
"Poor countries need to concentrate on streamlining their
national policies to ensure that they have a functional rule
of law that makes it possible for their citizens to easily
acquire and own property else their effort at poverty
reduction through aid and handouts will remain a mirage," he
said.
Mr. Kjorven, said research by an international body called
the Commission for Legal Empowerment for the Poor (CLEP)
indicated that at least four billion people in the world
lack access to reasonable opportunities that only a
functional rule of law could deliver.
He said unless governments, civil society organizations and
institutions in less developed countries (LDCs) focused on
working to establish a framework that would make their
national laws friendly and allies of the poor no meaningful
progress would be achieved in the lives of the poor no
matter how much aid donors inject into poor countries.
"This is not an argument for aid to be cut, but an argument
for the poor to be empowered through functional rule of law
to solve their own problems," he said.
He said for instance that the lack of proper identification
system in poor countries made it difficult for development
planning to capture the most deprives communities and
peoples of poor countries.
Mr. Kjorven recalled a policy by the government of the
United States years back when about 15 per cent of freed
black slaves were provided with two acres of land and a mule
each, saying that those who benefited from that policy
constituted the wealthy few among African American today.
He argued that when the poor are made to benefit from
policies that gave them property rights, labour rights and
access to justice like the rich, they would be able to solve
their problems and eventual free themselves from dependency
on aid and handouts.
Mr. Kjorven said the UNDP in collaboration with the CLEP was
working with about 20 poor countries to focus on the rule of
law as tool for empowering the poor.
"We are trying to make them understand why the elite make
use of the law but the poor do not, and why for instance the
elite see the police as protectors but the poor almost
always try to avoid the police in their countries," he said.
Mr. Kjorven said in coming to the HLF3, the UNDP sought to
strengthen its role in assisting governments and civil
society organizations to properly manage the complex
relationship with donors and the so-called development
partners.
He expressed the hope that the Accra Agenda for Action
(AAA), expected to evolve from the HLF3, would position poor
countries strategically to be in the driving seat of their
own development.
The HLF3 will culminate in the 31 point AAA that is expected
to concretize the five main principles of ownership,
alignment, harmonization, mutual accountability and managing
for result, to which developed and developing countries
committed themselves in the 2005 Paris Declaration.
GNA
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