Can aid money be made more effective?

Insecurity; lack of national capacity; unclear goals; blurred lines between military, humanitarian and development interventions; widespread corruption; and lack of coordination have reduced aid effectiveness in Afghanistan, experts say.



Research conducted by the independent international Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), suggests that in order to improve the impact of aid, donors must explore and implement innovative mechanisms.



Major donors such as the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) say their aid disbursements in Afghanistan are in line with the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, noting that those disbursements have led to tangible progress in the health and education sectors.



The World Bank told IRIN it had spent US$3.8 billion, and DFID said it had disbursed over $1.2 billion on various development projects over the past seven years.



“The results of programmes funded with international assistance have been commendable in many areas but have failed to meet public expectations,” Paul Sisk, a World Bank financial management specialist, told IRIN.



“The Paris Declaration’s principles alone are not enough to achieve aid effectiveness in Afghanistan,” according to AREU’s discussion paper Reflections on the Paris Declaration and Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan.



“The Declaration has led to a focus by the international community on the processes of managing aid rather than on the impact of aid,” it said.



“According to the latest figures, the level of aid that is fully coordinated and jointly managed by the donors fell from 43 percent to 40 percent, while the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] target is 66 percent,” said Matt Waldman, Oxfam’s policy and advocacy director in Kabul, adding that about half of the aid given by the USA was not fully coordinated with the Afghan government.

Photo: Akmal Dawi/IRIN

Donors say their programmes in Afghanistan are in line with the principles of Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness

Accountability



Donor accountability is poor. Between US$500 million and $1 billion was unaccounted for until 2008 due to poor coordination and reporting of resources, the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, told the Security Council  in March.



The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which Eide heads, has the mandate to ensure and enhance accountability, coordination and effectiveness in development and humanitarian assistance. Eide has repeatedly said he needs donors who want to be coordinated.



Accountability in aid disbursement and management - both from the government’s and the donors’ perspective - is believed to be critical for aid efficiency and public support, experts say.



“Mutual accountability improves the quality of aid, its value for money, the availability of information and people’s trust in the government and international community,” said another report by AREU on the impact of aid.



Difficult environment



The government says only about 30 percent of the international aid money had been channelled through it since 2002.



“Many groups - whether it’s the government, to donors, to the UN - would like to know what aid has come in to Afghanistan from a range of donors and agencies involved here, but there is not much clarity on it,” AREU director Paula Kantor, told IRIN.



Meanwhile, over 60 percent of respondents in a survey by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a Kabul-based organisation, said “there is corruption in aid”.



Insecurity, poor physical infrastructure and scarcity of technical resources pose serious challenges to donors as well as implementers of development programmes, experts say.



"The UK government recognises that Afghanistan is a high risk environment for delivering development assistance,” said Mike Hollis, DFID’s programme and strategy coordinator.



NGOs such as Oxfam say they face many of the challenges other donors face in Afghanistan but their programmes are community-based, coordinated with local actors and government priorities, and are designed to build capacity and reduce vulnerabilities.



aat/ad/at/cb