By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Oct 17 2004 (IPS)

Several civil society groups have come together at the European Social Forum to support a review of British development aid.

The British non-governmental organisation war on Want has been running a campaign that millions of dollars of supposed aid actually goes to ”privatisation consultants engaged to ‘advise’ developing countries on handing over their public services to the private sector,” the group said in a report.

The group’s campaign with support from other NGOs led the Department for International Development (DfID) to open a public consultation over its aid policy and budget. The public consultation is due to continue until the end of November.

Networking at the European Social Forum (ESF) with other NGOs will strengthen the campaign against ”making privatisation a conditionality of aid giving,” John Coventry from War on Want told IPS.

War on Want campaigned to make more beneficial aid a major them at the three-day ESF Oct. 15 to 17. The ESF, a European offshoot of the World Social Forum is the third such event in Europe after the first at Florence in 2002 and the second in Paris last year.

Strong support already to the campaign at the ESF ”proves that the ESF is right behind what we are doing,” Coventry said. The British NGO World Development Movement is among the groups supporting this campaign.

The War on Want report ‘Profiting from Poverty: Privatisation consultants, DFID and public services’ reveals how consultancy firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu have all won vast sums in ‘aid-funded business’ to direct the privatisation of water, rail, electricity and postal services in developing countries.

”Since 1997, the Department for International Development (DfID) has also paid over 34 million pounds (60 million dollars) from the aid budget to Thatcherite think-tank, the Adam Smith Institute,” the report says.

Report author John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, said in a statement: ”There is a solid body of evidence showing that privatisation of public services increases poverty in developing countries. DfID’s mission is to eradicate poverty, yet it has taken the lead in promoting the privatisation of public services worldwide.”

The British aid budget, he said, ”must only be used for genuine poverty reduction initiatives.”

The group is asking the government to establish ”an independent commission to take evidence on the impacts of public services privatisation in developing countries” and to ”refrain from awarding new privatisation contracts to consultants until this commission has reported its findings.”

DfID says it has already set out policy that recognises ”the need for developing countries to be in the driving seat of their own policies on poverty reduction, and reflects an important shift away from traditional approaches to conditionality.”

The War on Want campaign has forced DfID to look into its own backyard as it challenges the European Union (EU) over the use of the European budget for development aid.

International development minister Gareth Thomas called on the European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU and on other member states earlier this week to change the commission budget structure to ensure more focus on tackling poverty and in making aid more effective.

”Europe spends almost 6 billion pounds (10.8 billion dollars) on overseas development and assistance so it is vital it is directed where it will be most effective in eradicating poverty,” Thomas said in a statement.

”The EC must increase its aid to the poorest developing countries by refocusing EC budget resources on agreed EU policy objectives, especially the Millennium Development Goals, rather than pre-allocating funds to favoured geographical regions.”

The War on Want campaign, considerably strengthened with support from other non-governmental organisations through the ESF puts the focus on the aid component rather than on geographical regions.

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