Oxfam today hosted an event with the new Department for International Development (DFID) Minister, Andrew Mitchell. He set out the new coalition government’s priorities in front of a packed room at the Royal Society in London.
Oxfam CEO Barbara Stocking opened the event, talking about the new Oxfam policy paper, “21st Century Aid”. She praised the government’s commitments to stick to the 0.7% aid commitment as set out in the Queen’s Speech and she also welcomed the government’s commitment to transparency and accountability of aid. Echoing the main theme of the new Oxfam paper, she called on the UK government to play a leadership role when it came to how rich countries deliver their aid commitments – namely budget support for developing country health and education budgets.
Then the minister took the floor and very much continued the theme of transparency. What was interesting, in both the minister and Barbara’s approaches to transparency, is how they talk about both how developing countries spend aid money and how rich countries are transparent in how it is given.
Before I go into detail of what the minister said, I thought I’d show you a Word cloud from the DFID press release about the event:
The big announcement was the creation of a ‘UK aid watchdog’. This would start with “an independent evaluation of British aid” to see what results it has delivered for the world’s poorest people. I think that the more the government can demonstrate “value for the UK taxpayer” (another phrase that kept cropping up), the better. He also extended the ‘Big Society’ idea that the Conservative Party spoke of during the election, calling on a ‘big global society’ to ensure that aid is spent properly. To help achieve this DFID will open up its books online so people can see where the money has gone - another interesting and potentially important idea.
The minister also outlined some of the results that show why investing in aid is “great value”. In recent years UK aid money has delivered 7 million malaria proof bed nets, 5 million children’s schooling paid for. That’s the same number of primary children in the UK and at only 2.5% of the cost. It’s great that the government wants to “spend every penny wisely and well” as the government focuses on results and impact. No one can argue with this principle and if aid budgets are going to survive as other government budgets get cut during the age of austerity, then this is vital. But what it means in tough realities in some of the poorer and more chaotic parts of the word is difficult to work out at the moment. If a school fails then you don’t call for the end to the education system.
One of the other areas that I’d applaud was the focus on women’s health and achieving MDG 5. When acknowledging the myriad of problems that are faced by the poorest people in the poorest countries – the two that stood out for me were that 8 million children still die before their fifth birthday and that 500,000 women still die from pregnancy related complications. He rightly sees that empowering women to have control over their reproductive rights will make a difference to the poorest and most vulnerable communities. How they go about this will be interesting to hear when the specific policies get announced. He didn’t mention focusing on ending the user fees that mean many women can’t afford to see trained health workers when they are pregnant. He also didn’t mention the expansion of public health systems so that more women can get to a safe, clean hospital or health centre and be taken care of through pregnancy and childbirth. Think blogger Iris Gonzales wrote a very moving piece 'She gave birth. She died' that talks about some of these issues.
There were a lot of good things in the speech today and I hope that when we see more of the detail the UK will have a development policy that clearly delivers for the world’s poorest people.
A similar blog also appears on the Oxfam website.
I think it is worrysome that she feels the need to show that aid has an ‘economic value’. That way we will never change the world, I am afraid. Every one knows that what is important in development can not be measured, and has no direct economical impact but still a minsiter of aid and development needs to justify himself… Shouldn’t the economists justify themeselves in front of other experts instead, given the very high toll that consumer societies take on the world?
I agree that aid shouldn’t be seen in terms of economic value to the donor - it should be focused on poverty reduction.
However, I do think that what is important can be measured a lot of the time - children educated, people getting access to medecine and trained health workers, as well as shares of trade and the like…Why don’t you think the minister needs to justify his actions and ideas?
I mentionned this on another blog but I think it’s worth raising again here:
The only danger is that organisations may spend more time on evaluations, monitoring, transparancy than actually helping people. I agree that it’s important for donors to be confident that their money is well spent. But sometimes, people take it to extremes. “I want my money to help this particular child I saw on TV”. With the spread of mobile phones through developing countries, how long will it be before donors want to chat to the child their sponsering?
I think Oxfam is one of the most transparent NGO’s in the UK and I am very happy that this is the case. Dealing with donor’s money remains a sensitive issue and myself, as a person who donates to few places, I would like to know where my money goes, but also to decide wheater it is spent wisely. I am OK with money spend on gaining intelligence and monitoring. I do get frustrated when I see expensive viral campaigns (see the FAT campaign in the UK) with no involvement of social media professionals, hence doomed for failure (knowing how it must have happened and that with transparent creative process it could have been prevented).
As for Aid - yes, more monitoring, but also more openness to the public. Oxfam is leading here as well;)
Ian - Great to hear about what is happening in the UK, especially with women’s health
Clare, I agree that sometimes there is so much time and effort put into demonstrating the effectiveness of aid - that many project aims are lost in a cloud of baseline data and reporting. It’s a balance I guess.
Check out Australia’s AID/WATCH http://www.aidwatch.org.au/
Exactly Emily. There’s a balance between being effective and communicating with donors that we need to strive for.
@Claire and Emily - I know what you mean. it is a balance. After all, the question remains around who you are responsible to? yes, the government is responsible to tax payers so have to demonstrate how money is spent, but the main responsibility is to the people who you are trying to help. Sometimes I think we go too far in the direction of the former….
I agree Ian. Aid means very different things to different people and keeping all of the players happy is a challenge. Trouble is, I think the developing communities are at the bottom of the list of priorities.
Clare - I think often you’re right - look at how the USA gives their aid money for instance…Poverty reduction has to be at the heart of aid and aid money has to be spent (when possible) in the country is is intended for - not just consultants and the like.
If the public does their bit to keep the worlds poorest people at the heart of this discussion, then that will change the terms of debate (hopefully)