Commitment to foreign aid
With a general election only months away, one of the recurring themes in the prevailing political campaigns...
...is balancing the books with no diminution in compassion. So timing is all when something like foreign aid comes under the spotlight.
The revelation that some £3.6m is being paid to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) from the Department for International Development (DfID) the day before the Haiti earthquake struck is an unfortunate juxtaposition of publicity for the incumbent government. The earmarking of this money for ‘raising awareness of international development issues’ and the spending by DfID on non-government organisations in the UK generally does make Labour an easy target for castigation, however thoroughly the small print explains its thinking. If the cash is not getting directly to the stricken, this is not going to help deal with widespread cynicism over the moral obligation to sustain levels of foreign aid in an adverse economy.
The Tory party’s Conservative Agenda for International Development was published back in July 2009. This would commit the UK to the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income as aid by 2013, proposing an ‘Independent Aid Watchdog’ and increased taxpayer control of the aid budget ‘giving everyone in the UK a say over where and how some of our aid is spent’. Some of the sentiments in the document bear a remarkable resemblance to those articulated by Labour – in particular the economic case for maintaining levels of foreign aid. But neither party’s ability to tackle local corruption and enforce accountability is particularly convincing. This is what the voters want to see more of. ‘Kleptocracy diverts most of the aid long before it has the chance of reaching the deprived,’ observes one broadsheet blogger.
The waters have been muddied further by the Conservative policy paper, A Resilient Nation, where ‘scope for allocating some funding from the international aid budget’ to pay for military-backed stabilisation work is discussed as a possible national security measure. Oxfam is not impressed: ‘Removing aid from the poorest people and using it for military goals rather than tackling poverty would be a big step backwards and would undermine the UK’s leadership role on international development,’ says Kirsty Hughes, head of policy.
However, the important thing is that all three parties have committed to ring fence foreign aid expenditure – although questionable ‘diversions’ of funds cannot be ruled out. So it is all the more crucial that INGOs lead from the front when it comes to accountability and impact reporting – although impact is notoriously difficult to demonstrate in the short term. Organisations like Human Accountability Partnership, along with their HAP accountability standard are a huge step forward, but it appears more needs to be done to persuade the man on the Clapham omnibus that charity does not always begin at home.
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
There are no comments on this article. Be the first to comment.