A $21 Billion Foreign Aid Gap

http://globalhealth.change.org/blog/view/a_21_billion_foreign_aid_gap


A $21 Billion Foreign Aid Gap
by Te-Ping Chen

Published February 18, 2010 @ 02:15PM PT

A gang of deadbeats. Okay, the latest report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development isn't titled anything quite so blunt, but the bottom line's about the same. In recent years, the OECD finds that the world's richest countries haven't troubled themselves to hand out some $21 billion promised in aid.

The story started five years ago, when a number of countries cozying up at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland decided to get inspired about the cause of reducing global poverty, especially in Africa. Wooed by the magic of Tony Blair and simultaneous appeals of rock stars like Bono, that year -- in tandem with a separate UN Millennium Development Goals summit -- countries stepped up to pledge an increased $48 billion in aid.

It was a heady moment, full of verve and champagne. It was the Year of Africa! Calls to "Make Poverty History" were urgent and everywhere. Now, though, the mood has fizzled, and countries from Germany to France to Japan are left awkwardly studying their (empty) hands.

The U.S., Canada, Australia, Norway and Switzerland are on track to meet their promises, and so is the U.K. But many are not, and their lackluster follow-through is hitting Africa hardest: the country is receiving less than half the $25 billion imagined so fondly at Gleneagles in 2005.

Maybe it's just a case of the economic downturn? Hardly, says the OECD -- reverses in economic fortune account for only $4 billion of the discrepancy. "It's basically a political decision," says Yasmin Ahmad, who heads the OECD's data collection unit:

It's easy to understand why countries behave this way -- there's no force to keep them accountable, and any mild opprobrium caused by reneging on such commitments barely registers as a political cost (even presuming the same party or officeholder is in place by the time bills come due). It's a trend all over. Take, for example, cases like Afghanistan, where a 2008 report found that just $15 billion out of $25 billion in promised aid had been spent (and a hefty 40% of that amount remained in donor countries, in the form of contractor profits and salaries). Or Haiti, which was promised some $402 million in a 2009 donor conference. (As of last month, fully 85% of those promised funds haven't been delivered.)

..more..