AID TO ENSURE POVERTY REDUCTION...(mirror)

Story: Tim Dzamboe, Ho


The executive director of a national nongovernmental
organization(NGO), Development Institute, Mr Ken
Kinney has said the objective of Civil Society
Organisations(CSOs) on aid effectiveness to developing
countries is to ensure the sustained reduction of
poverty and inequality and its support of human
rights, democracy, environmental sustainability and
gender equality.
He said CSOs were promoting a deepening of the aid
effectiveness agenda so that it could address not just
the concerns of the donors and partner governments but
all stakeholders in the development process.
“CSOs are particularly concerned about the interest
and representation of groups which are often excluded
or marginalized, including women and women’s
movement”, he said.
Mr Kinney said this when he addressed a workshop for
representatives of CSOs , NGOs and District Assemblies
in the Ho Municipal, Kadjebi and Hohoe district
assemblies at Ho last weekend.
The workshop which was sponsored by ActionAid with the
collaboration of Ghana Aid Effectiveness Forum and
hosted by SEND Foundation was aimed at offering the
participants as recipients of aid to tell their
experiences to help in the preparation of a regional
report card for an international conference to be held
in Accra in September next year.
Mr Kinney argued that the five indicators on
ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing of
results and mutual accountability framed by donors
were considered narrow in favour of aid agencies in
view of the enormous power of aid in creating power
relationships between donors, governments and
citizens.
He said although donors continued to exert significant
power over aid recipients and imposed their priorities
and concerns there was no radical change to empower
recipients to make aid accountable to poor and
vulnerable people and effective at meeting their
needs.
He added that the Accra High Level Forum to be held
next year required recognition by all stakeholders
that the modalities and partnerships of aid must be
explicitly coherent with and accountable to United
Nations goals to achieve progress in poverty
reduction, equality and human rights.
On ownership, he said it is essential but must be
democratic adding that unless countries are able to
decide and direct their own development paths,
development will fail to be inclusive, sustainable or
effective.
“Democratic ownership of development means involving
citizens, including women’s organizations, in the
formulation and delivery of policy and programmes. It
also means establishing legitimate governance
mechanisms for decision making and accountability,
including parliaments and elected representatives”, he
said.
Mr Kinney said conditionality undermined democratic
ownership adding that the use of aid as a tool to
impose policy conditions had no place in an aid
paradigm rooted in a commitment to ownership.





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