|
Civil society ridicules Aid Effectiveness
conference
Accra, Sept.4, Ghanadot/GNA As
representatives of governments of developed and developing
countries and selected civil society organizations crack
their brains at a high level forum on how to make aid more
effective for poor countries, a group of civil society
organizations has put out pictorial expressions that
ridicule the entire conference.
There were a total of eight pictures showing a human pyramid
tied with a red rope in a tangled manner with the one at the
top of the pyramid holding on to the knot tightly,
preventing those at the bottom from reaching the top and
from freeing themselves.
The acrobats in the pictures highlight how the Accra Third
High Level Forum (HLF3) is a show, with the appearance of
negotiations taking place, but with few progressive
outcomes, a statement accompanying the pictures said.
The statement said the human pyramid was a civil society
expression of the current aid architecture, adding that, as
the pictures demonstrated, the aid hierarchy tied developing
countries in knots, thereby threatening progress towards
effective aid and development.
The pictures were taken by International Photo Journalists
Flint Duxfield.
Each of the pictures depicted how the aid effectiveness
talks had failed to deliver on the five main principles of
the Paris Declaration.
The pictures variously demonstrated failed commitment to the
principle of ownership in particular, persistence of the
complexities of tied aid through donor conditionalities and
the continuous victimization of citizens of poor countries
who are rather supposed to benefit from aid.
The statement noted that the current aid system was
hierarchical and the people at the bottom, whom aid is
supposed to benefit, had little or no ownership of aid
programmes.
The ropes, the statement noted, represented the tied nature
of aid, saying that the poor were bound by conditions on the
aid given to them, and they were subtly compelled to cede
control of much of their own development to donors at the
top.
The tangled nature of the ropes represents the complexity
of the current aid system, rendering the funds inaccessible
by those who need it the most, the statement said.
The civil society organizations therefore insisted that the
aid system could only succeed if it were a circle in which
donors and beneficiaries engaged on the same level.
They argued that in order to move the aid effectiveness
talks forward, there was the need for the tripartite,
comprising donors, beneficiary countries and civil society
to unite and engage more closely on how to make aid benefit
the actual targeted group, the poor and most vulnerable.
GNA
|
