EADI Seminar (24 April 2009)
European Perspectives on International Development - Report of seminar
Spanish partner organisations of EADI – FRIDE, Real Instituto Elcano, CIDOB and ICEI – hosted a seminar dealing with a wide variety of topics in international cooperation and development studies. The seminar investigated how the horizontal North-South logic behind the aid effectiveness agenda and the emerging global governance of aid might be transformed, reinforced or re-directed by the current international crisis.
The seminar, which took place following the annual EADI executive committee meeting, brought together around 40 researchers from Europe beyond the Pyrenees and some 50 Spanish researchers. A prominent role was also given to the Spanish aid planners, which revealed their new partnership frameworks, upcoming research strategy and priorities for the Spanish EU presidency in 2010.
A first plenary session was dedicated to the new partnership approach after Accra. Spanish official aid, presented by Gabriel Ferrero de Loma from MFA’s policy unit DGPOLDE, is moving towards a new instrument for in-country dialogue – the “partnership framework” – which is meant to supersede the inwards orientation of standard country strategy papers and provide a simpler, more flexible and long-term oriented mode to foster both political dialogue and transparency towards domestic audiences. Rather than generating administrative burdens and weighty documents, the partnership framework will make use of continuous consultation processes, deploy web-technology to add real time linkages to domestic planning processes, international goals and obligations and the Spanish contribution, and fully align with domestic planning cycles.
In September 2008, the Accra High Level Forum witnessed the launching of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), and its reflection in civil society, the Campaign Publish What You Fund (PWYF). Karin Christiansen, director of PWYF, presented recent developments. Both initiatives aim to set standards within the aid chain, which stretches from tax payers in the North, through numerous agency links, to citizens in the South. The ability to track each donor’s contribution in full and project it onto the government’s budget in real time would not only actively comply with the right to information, but also constitutes a prerequisite for public participation and engagement.
South-South cooperation and its impact on the aid relationship was presented in relation to the African context by Sven Grimm from the German Development Institute, and that of Latin America by Nils Schulz from FRIDE. One of the main messages was that while South-South cooperation opportunities are becoming increasingly relevant against a background of crisis and shifting global governance, it is paramount to generate more evidence and straightforward dialogue on its practices and impact. On the other hand, some DAC donors are attempting to develop strategies for trilateral cooperation – Germany’s anchor country strategy, the Spanish middle income countries’ doctrine and the European Commission’s efforts to foster regional cohesion. However, standards and working modalities also need to be defined for triangular cooperation.
Three working groups discussed recent shifts in the development debate. “Financing for development” addressed the financial flows of aid, direct investment, trade remittances and debt, and debated the vulnerabilities of developing countries and shifts in global power structures. “Migration and development” revealed negative and positive links between poverty reduction and international labour migration and its regulation and exposed the failure of European policy makers to deliver on the supposed synergies of co-development. “Gender and fragility” documented the shift towards state building in the response to fragility and recognised that outright gender blindness on the part of donors would have to be overcome in order to use transition processes as an opportunity for enhancing gender equality and women’s rights.
Research for development was the subject of the afternoon session. José Antonio Alonso from ICEI described the sector as not only methodologically challenging, given its assumptions of linearity and comparability in a complex scenario of context dependence and circular causalities, but also politically challenging, since Southern citizens do not have a stake in determining Northern research priorities. He then laid out the preconditions for sound research, insisting on the need for public support for development research, rigorous self-control in the research community and a failure-friendly application of development policy which would allow for lessons to be learnt. Sergio Tezanos from the Universidad de Cantabria presented four models of research financing and concluded with a recommendation for the formulation of a research strategy. Gabriel Ferrero from DGPOLDE then laid out the criteria for the next four year plan, highlighting the willingness of the Spanish government to take the lead in organising development studies as a discipline and to ensure both the quality of research and its uptake by linking research to implementation.
The Spanish EU presidency and the upcoming reform of the Commission’s aid delivery and foreign policy after the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty were the issues discussed at the final roundtable, presented by Juan-Francisco Montalbán from the Spanish Foreign Ministry and Luc Bagur from EuropeAid. It was acknowledged that the effects of the financial crisis are not only affecting achievements in poverty reduction, but could also menace hard won consensuses on the quality of aid. While the Spanish presidency at the beginning of 2010 faces a tight calendar for development policy, all the more so given the ever greater impact of the financial crisis, the pace of change in European institutions was predicted to be slow.
In exposing some of the most pressing issues of development and aid, this seminar also provided an opportunity to consider elements of the rapid Spanish aid reform within the context of the diversity in development studies and practices throughout Europe.
In collaboration with ICEI, HEGOA, CIDOB, Instituto Real Elcano.
More details and programme on FRIDE website.
