Wednesday, July 22, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
DEVELOPMENT: Vision Exists, Reality Doesn’t
Thalif Deen
- The implementation of internationally agreed development goals (IADGs) – including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 – is being increasingly hampered by lack of coordination and coherence both among rich and poor nations, and also within the United Nations.
“The vision exists,” says Louis Michel, European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid.
But the international community is not doing enough to make it a reality – “and that goes for both developed and developing countries,” he complains.
Addressing the inaugural meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) last week, he said the implementation of IADGs, which includes the promotion of gender equality and the achievement of universal primary education, could be more effective if there was a broader integration of the development agenda.
This includes, among other things, a division of labour; targeted and sectoral assistance; results-based management; removal of conditions on aid; and predictability of aid.
The global aid architecture has become nearly inscrutable “even to us donors, as donors turned to ever more baroque methods of aid allocation, either out of fear of doing, or appearing to do, the wrong thing,” Michel said.
Launched last year in Geneva, and created in 2005 at the World Summit in New York, the DCF is expected to be the principal venue for global dialogue and policy review on the effectiveness of aid and coherence of international development cooperation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the inaugural session of DCF, which included the participation of parliamentarians, local governments and civil society, brought together key partners to help implement the development agenda.
He said development assistance does not always go where it is most needed because “some countries enjoy the attention of the international community, while others find it harder to attract funding.”
Currently, some of the biggest aid recipients are countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, primarily for political or military reasons, while sub-Saharan Africa remains the most neglected.
Although he did not name names, the secretary-general said that some countries now receive less aid than would be expected on the basis of their needs or performance.
So far, only five countries have consistently met – and gone beyond – the target set by the U.N. General Assembly in 1970 to set aside 0.7 percent of gross national income for overseas development aid (ODA).
The five countries are Denmark (1.06 percent), Netherlands (0.82 percent), Sweden (0.81 percent), Norway (0.80 percent) and Luxembourg (0.7 percent).
The percentage of national incomes given to help the poor has always been the test of the generosity of nations, and donor countries have consistently failed to match promises with action.
Addressing reporters last week, Jean-Louis Schiltz, Luxembourg’s minister for development cooperation and humanitarian affairs, said all five countries are committed to reaching 1.0 percent in the future.
While encouraging other donors to join the “0.7 club”, Schiltz said that Ireland, Belgium and Spain “seemed quite on track to do so”.
But he pointed out that last year’s ODA figures were much lower than those for the previous year, a trend that was not in line with international development commitments.
Total ODA from the world’s 22 rich nations amounted to 103.7 billion dollars in 2007 compared with 104.4 billion dollars in 2006.
The secretary-general said aid also continues to be burdened with conditionalities, “which undermine national autonomy, lead to distortion in aid allocations, and have a poor record in improving economic performance.”
The DCF is expected help improve the impact, coherence and effectiveness of international development cooperation.
Ban said the inauguration of DCF coincides with “worrying trends” – including the rise in food and energy prices, a deepening credit crisis and volatile capital markets – which could affect the implementation of the global development agenda.
But he expressed confidence that “the voice of the Forum will have a special legitimacy, anchored, as it will be, in a rich set of views and perspectives of the range of actors in development cooperation.”
Meanwhile, even in the U.N. system, there has been a longstanding demand for coordination and coherence in the development agenda.
Currently, there are several U.N. bodies with multiple mandates involved in the area of trade: the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva has mandates overlapping with the International Trade Centre and the U.N. Regional Commissions in various capitals.
There is also duplication between UNCTAD and the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in New York.
There are overlaps and redundencies in sustainable development and human settlements involving at least five U.N. entities: DESA, U.N.-Habitat, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the Secretariat of various conventions, including biodiversity, climate change and desertification.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, assistant secretary-general for economic development, said that throughout the remainder of the year, the United Nations would be involved in a number of activities aimed at stimulating the international development agenda.
At least three major conferences are scheduled to take place before the end of this year: the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, Ghana Sep. 2-4; the U.N.’s high-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals in New York Sep. 25; and the Review Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar Nov. 29-Dec. 2.
Sundaram said the Forum’s continued success as a venue for dialogue, policy review and mutual accountability in development cooperation would also depend on its unifying theme as the focus of its work for each biennial session. The next meeting of the Forum is scheduled to take place in 2010.
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