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Tracking Aid
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Accountability usually refers to an institution’s responsibility to its clients, as well as to its governing body. When it comes to official development assistance or ODA, which involves a publicly funded donor agency and a recipient government, accountability is complex and problematic. The donor agency must be responsible to a donor government or governments, and they in turn must be responsible to parliament and ultimately to their electors. The recipient government must be seen as responsible to donors, to the recipient community, to the parliament, and to the public at large. How do these multiple elements of accountability mesh together? Must a donor government or agency be held accountable if a recipient government or agency misuses aid? How can accountability be strengthened? These questions have been asked across the globe in the past few decades as so-called Third World countries, transformation economies, and nations recovering from war and natural disaster received multilateral and bilateral aid. Some have even come to rely on ODA for their very survival. Yet more recently, some former ODA recipients have been seeking to project a different image -- as donors rather than recipients. In Asia, for example, Japan has come to be known more as donor, rather than the nation in dire need of assistance right after World War II. Malaysia and Thailand are also now actively seeking recognition of their transition from recipients to donors, even though neighboring Singapore up until recently had been reluctant to be identified as a developed country and consequently be drawn into the donor community. In the case of humanitarian assistance -- as what poured into places devastated by the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami -- countries such as India in the beginning rejected foreign aid, and instead took on the role of a donor and provided assistance to other affected countries. Regardless of who is doing the giving and who is at the receiving end, queries about accountability remain. This is because as much as aid has helped alleviate suffering in lands devastated by calamities or by sheer poverty, it has also been misused and abused, with monies meant for development or immediate relief instead lining the pockets of the corrupt who come in all shapes and sizes, and in both donor and recipient nations. In the end, however, pointing fingers does little good. What seems more crucial in ensuring that aid is used the way it was intended – and for intentions to be untainted by self-serving motives to begin with – is to have systems and processes that have built-in transparency and accountability features. And so in 2006, in the Southeast Asian summer month of April, the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, with the support of the Friedrich Niemann Stiftung, gathered together parliamentarians, government and aid agency officials, academics, journalists, and members of civil society – from both donor nations and agencies and recipient countries -- in the historic Cambodian province of Siem Reap. For several days, they shared experiences and ideas regarding ODA and accountability, and came away with the realization that although the problems many of them face are complex, these are by no means without solutions. Some of the papers from that conference now appear in this book. A few friends of CALD also contributed papers that enhance what can be likened to a roundtable discussion about development aid and accountability. The way the papers are presented, however, do not follow the sequence in which they appeared during the conference. In fact, perhaps the only clue that this book came largely from a conference is the closing piece – actually the meeting’s synthesis, which was kept almost as is so that readers would have a glimpse of the kind of exchange experienced by those at Siem Riep. The first two pieces in the book look at development efforts and what these have wrought on supposed beneficiaries. Then comes a presentation of practices that promote mutual accountability. There are also several pieces that talk of aid and accountability from the donors’ point of view, followed by the experiences of some recipient countries. A contributor then takes the reader through the aid process in Taiwan, which has graduated from being an ODA recipient to an aid donor. This book includes as well a scrutiny of five countries that are said to be models of recipient-led aid management. Civil-society members also weigh in, stressing the importance of factoring in human rights – among them the right to information – in development assistance. A respected journalist even talks of how crucial it is for the media in Southeast Asia to use its power responsibly so that the public is armed with the necessary information that will help it monitor the flow of aid, as well as the delivery of promised goods and services. The variety in topics is intended because development and aid are hardly one-dimensional. Then again, nothing involving the well-being of people ever is. CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
A Word from the CALD Chairman
Introduction: Beyond Bean-Counting
CHAPTER 4: The EU’s Call to Order Published and distributed in the Philippines in 2007
by National Library Board (Singapore) Cataloguing in Publication Data September 11 & political freedom: Asian Perspectives / edited by Uwe Johannen, Alan Smith, James Gomez. ISBN 978-971-94005-0-9 Printed in the Philippines
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