> Accueil
The role of parliamentarians in the changing aid architecture - focus on South-South Cooperation
09 March 2010
By Nora Honkaniemi
Parliamentarians in democratic societies play a crucial role in ensuring budgetary oversight, budgets that in developing countries often consist of a high proportion of international development aid. By ensuring aid funds are accounted for and transparently spent to benefit those who are most in need, parliaments actively contribute to the realisation of the Paris Declaration principles of aid effectiveness and secure country ownership of poverty reduction strategies.
In the context of the emerging debate on South-South Cooperation (SSC) and the nascent discussions around a new aid architecture, The Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA) and the Spanish Senate hosted a seminar entitled 'Parliament and the MDGs in the context of the changing aid architecture, prioritising South-South Cooperation.” The Seminar, which took place at the Spanish Senate in Madrid on the 25th and 26th of February, facilitated an open discussion about the current state of the changing aid architecture, the important role of parliament therein, and the need to support and monitor positive developments in SSC.
The meeting was organised in order to kick start the dialogue between governments, parliamentarians and civil society on developing SSC as a complimentary alternative to traditional North-South development cooperation. The debate served as a preparatory platform for sharing ideas in advance of the High Level Event (HLE) on SSC to be held in Bogota at the end of March, towards which BetterAid and AWEPA are preparing a roundtable on multi-stakeholders' perspectives on SSC, focusing on the role of parliaments.
The seminar was widely attended by African regional Parliamentary bodies such as the East African Legislative Assembly, the Pan African Parliament, the NEPAD Secretariat and the SADC Parliamentary Forum. In addition, the seminar was attended by numerous civil society representatives and experts, as well as European and Congolese MPs and Spanish foreign ministry officials. The interesting and insightful sessions touched upon the role of civil society and parliamentary cooperation in improving aid effectiveness and SSC outcomes towards the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) to be held in Seoul in 2011, the role of parliamentarians in ensuring the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Chinese investment and lending in Africa, the role of emerging donors in the aid effectiveness debate as well as the importance of Regional Economic Communities as building blocks for growth.
Some of the constraints that parliamentarians face in their work in ensuring the implementation of the aid effectiveness agenda are a lack of resources and mechanisms available to them to hold the executive to account, a lack of available information on aid inflows, the fragmentation of European aid and the hypocrisy of ownership of aid administered by a plethora of bilateral aid agencies, and the limited capacity of many parliamentarians to deal with the complex nature of the aid industry and the role of “rubber stamp” institution that parliaments are often reduced to in the democratic process. The definition of “aid effectiveness” and its true measure, and the challenges of administering and managing aid conditional on the economic policies and values of donors were scrutinised.
Recommendations on how to overcome some of these enormous challenges included increasing technical assistance to parliaments to become a driving force for incorporating the achievement of MDGs in national poverty reduction strategies, focusing funds on improving the capacity of parliaments to deal with multiple and complex aid issues, increasing parliamentary contacts with CSOs and constituencies to reflect the needs of citizens in national development plans and actively supporting SSC initiatives and regional cooperation. “Although there are challenges that remain, the advantages of increased and deepened South-South Cooperation continue to offer the usable prospects for pursuing development and more effective engagement in the global economy.” (Hon. Mary Mugyenyi, MP, Second Vice President, PAP)