ODA does not improve lives
However, IBON said that donor governments have failed not only to improve the quality of aid but also even to make progress towards delivering committed amounts.
On its official website, IBON said that as it is, donors avoided addressing key development issues in the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) adopted at the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), adding that they are also US$30 billion short of meeting aggregate programmed commitments for 2010.
“These underscore the limits of the global aid regime in addressing underdevelopment in the Third World,” the IBON statement read.
IBON pointed out that there are over two billion people worldwide living in deep poverty, a billion lacking even just access to safe drinking water, more than two billion lacking access to proper sanitation and some 800 million adults unable to read nor write.
“This situation is because people by and large have no sovereignty and control over their socioeconomic policies. The “free market” policy conditionalities attached to aid for instance have greatly contributed to the problem,” IBON added.
Commitments are off track
OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) statistics show that donors are off track at meeting declared commitments to scale up aid and that targets set for 2010 will not be met unless dramatic increases are forthcoming, explains IBON.
Net ODA flows from the 22 member countries of the OECD-DAC, the world’s major donors, fell for the second straight year in 2007 when they provided just US$104 billion in aid, IBON said.
IBON explained that the said amount is only 0.28 percent of their collective gross national income (GNI) compared to the US$104.4 billion or 0.31 percent of their GNI in 2006, adding that it is also an 8.4-percent drop in real terms from the year before.
The think-tank also revealed that the said amount is also just 56 percent of the total ODA commitment of 0.50 percent of their GNI by 2010.
“Donor countries will have to double their efforts in the next three years to make up for the shortfall—or an unprecedented 25 percent increase in ODA yearly in order to reach their commitment by 2010,” IBON declared.
Meanwhile, IBON also stated that the character of the global aid system will remain questionable as long as aid is of poor and even destructive quality and as long as the amounts provided are so limited. Fundamental reforms are needed if aid and the global aid regime are to cease being instruments of big power intervention and control, and if they are to deliver on the development promises so often made. (Bulatlat.com)
