By Melesse Zenebework
The three development documents have their own strength and weaknesses that, while some countries and donor organizations are in favor of them, others still find it difficult to deal with them. For instance, as most donor organizations and agencies are supporting the MDGs and started investing huge amount of finance on programs related to the millennium development goals throughout the developing countries, other donor organizations like the Netherland and UK preferred to stick to their own programs. They argue that, the MDGs are highly concentrated on health issues and neglected the other development sectors like infrastructure and capacity building. This is sometimes seen as a promotion of welfare and aid dependence over growth and self-reliance
Introduction
In the field of development, there is no perfect strategy which
can satisfy the needs of all the actors involved and solve the world poverty likewise.
All methodologies and approaches which have been implemented so far have their
own strength and weaknesses. However, what makes a development strategy “best”
is that it exerts potential capability to include most of the needs and
varieties of development obstacles from all sides (donors and recipient
countries) and strive to achieve better progress.
Various strategies were formulated
and implemented in different epoch since development became the global issue,
nevertheless, most of them failed to make happen the targeted goal in a given
period to our world. Various reasons can be raised for the failure of these
strategies, yet, their incompatibility with the nature and characteristics of
the real problems of each developing country is considered to be the main
factor. This problem still exists in the global development strategies like the
Millennium Development Goal, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the High
Forum for Aid Effectiveness.
The Millennium Development Goal is
considered to be one of the best among the other strategies which globally
implemented in order to realize better development. The goals appear to have
been more influential than most other attempts at international target setting
in the field of development, at least at the level of international discourse
(R. Manning, 2010, pp.1). With its eight major goal, 21 targets and 60
indicators, the millennium development goals are influencing the policies and
implementations of recipient and donor countries in different ways. However,
there are some groups which are strongly criticizing the nature and formation
of MDGs in the way that the goals potentially determined on specific areas of
development and neglected other parts concurrently.
Typically covering a three to five-year planning horizon,
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers have become the prime vehicle for both
providing priorities for public expenditure by the governments of developing
countries and delivering international aid for poverty reduction. According to
the World Bank, these strategy papers are primarily formulated in order to
bring about country driven (of the developing countries) development plans with
broad participation of people and civil societies. In spite of its influential
dimension and structure, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers have still faced
strong criticism from various individuals and development actors. They say, the
PRSPs are no different from the former Structural Adjustment Policies in the
sense that they are set by the donors and thrown on to the developing countries
so that Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPSs) must ensure the ownership (P.
Tharakan and M. McDonald, 2004).
The fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness is the
other global strategy which shifts the understanding of people on International
development. Taking place in Busan, South Korea, the forum gave much space,
compared to the previous ones, to the Civil Society Organizations and ensured
the importance of their involvement in development. Furthermore, the High Level
Forum brought the importance of accountability, transparency and ownership
based on mutual respect among the concerned development actors. This gave the
chance for all sides to enjoy a relatively high approval of development
strategies.
The three development documents have their own
strength and weaknesses that, while some countries and donor organizations are
in favor of them, others still find it difficult to deal with them. For
instance, as most donor organizations and agencies are supporting the MDGs and
started investing huge amount of finance on programs related to the millennium
development goals throughout the developing countries, other donor
organizations like the Netherland and UK preferred to stick to their own
programs. They argue that, the MDGs are highly concentrated on health issues
and neglected the other development sectors like infrastructure and capacity
building. This is sometimes seen as a
promotion of welfare and aid dependence over growth and self-reliance (R.
Manning, 2010).
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify
and explain the impact of the Millennium Development Goals, Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers and the 4th high Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness on
the policies and implementations of developing countries in general.
Impact of MDGs on the Recipient Countries
According to research findings, more and more developing
countries are getting inclined to and trying to customize their national
development programs in line with the Millennium development goals. It is now
becoming a trend to synchronize national
development plans in proportion to the MDGs. As a Japanese economist conducted
a research in forty-four developing countries, she found out that all of them
stated commitments to the MDGs, but that the focus was quite selective. In some
respects, this mirrored the approach of the donors (e.g. serious attention to
social sector spending, but little attention to hunger and nutrition, decent
work and technology transfer), and in others it differed significantly (a
greater focus on economic growth, little attention to democracy, freedom of the
media or human rights) (S. Fukuda-Parr, 2008).
The MDGs have given less attention to good governance, but contains overlapping ideas
which narrowed the scope of the document that it made it difficult for the
inclusion of other important ideas or goals in the document. The current MDGs
document has three health related goals (child mortality, maternal health, infectious diseases)
and these could be shrunken in to one general heath goal, so that it could
possibly give much space for more ideas. Similarly, the document contains two
overlapping targets which are “achieve universal primary education” and “gender
equality in education”. Such overlaps are unnecessary and unfair in such a way
that there are too many development issues the world need to abolish rather
than fixing on a few areas (J. Vandemoortele, 2009).
It is getting clear these days
that some developing countries find it very hard to achieve the Millennium
Development goals in the prearranged time frame. The reason for this failure
mainly related with the nature and approach of the MDGs document itself.
According Jan Vandemoortele, since the MDG document was prepared at the global
level, it is very hard to apply that directly at the national level. Unfortunately,
the MDG canons were turned into yardsticks for measuring and judging
performance at the national level in the developing world. In doing so, the MDG
debate suffers from misplaced concreteness. Their interpretation as “One-size-fits-all” targets abstracts
away the specific and historical background of each country, its political
system, its natural endowment, its geography, its internal divisions, and other
challenges it may face (J. Vandemoortele, 2009, pp.5).
Impact of PRSPs on Recipient countries
The same approach is visible on
the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers too.
Even though the strategy papers are prepared by the recipient countries
themselves, they still have to fulfill the requirements set by the WB and IMF
in order to receive the approval for concessional lending. Above all, the
already set requirements of the bank and the fund are based on generally agreed
ideas and principles, rather than giving space for the compromise of individual
countries’ interest, background history, politics and other exceptional
characteristics. Thus, some scholars describe PRSPs as “the other version of the Structural Adjustment Policies
(SAP)”.
The PRSPs often create challenges for the sovereignty of the
developing countries. Since the major economic powers like the United States, European Union and other
OECD member countries have fully endorsed the PRSP framework and agreed to base
their respective official aid programs to low income and crisis ridden
countries on the PRSP, it is almost impossible to have a deal with them without
fulfilling the PRSPs requirements. PRSPs have become the key policy instruments
through which the world’s major donors relate with low-income countries,
countries undergoing economic crises and those emerging from protracted periods
of conflict. Without a Bank-Fund approved PRSP, a low- income country can be
virtually cut off from international aid, trade and finance (J.J. Chavez
Malaluan and S. Guttal, 2003, pp. 5).
Having the scheme of
participation, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers generated a genuine image
for effective development strategy. However, this participation often clashes
with difficulties in many of the developing countries. As development scholars
mentioned, limitation of meaningful
participation is producing barriers to the effectiveness of development
programs. In the worst of cases, participation is undertaken under donor
pressure, is for a specific purpose and disjointed. Ethiopia and Niger are
cited as examples of this. Honduras’ experience suggests a lack of genuine
dialogue where civil society views were ignored. In Ethiopia there was little
policy debate, and its government is also seen to have conducted
‘participation’ under donor pressure (Atieno Ndomo, 2005, pp. 22).
The Impact of the 4th High Level Forum for Aid Effectiveness
on recipient countries
The fourth high level forum for
aid effectiveness has unique characteristics especially for the civic
societies. It is for the first time that the CSOs gained complete attention of the world that they were given
equal position with governments and donors for the success of world
development. This is good for the developing countries in a sense that the
civil societies are the ones that closely understand the problems of the
recipient nations on the ground. This gives recipient countries potential to be
heard in case of emergency.
Giving more concern on the
recipient countries, the forum also offered much emphasis on the value of money
invested in development so that development should be carried out with less
money and effective result. To achieve this, the forum provided the ownership of development priorities to
developing countries. This ownership is quite different from the ownership
stated in the PRSPs – which still requires the acceptance of the WB and IMF
prerequisites, that it is now the norm for aid recipients to discuss their
national development strategies with their parliaments and electorates
(ownership), and for donors to support these strategies (OECD, 2011, pp. 2).
Unlike from the other global
summits, the HLF-4 brought the focus on
result thought as one its core principles. This granted the recipient
countries less burden on the accountability for the failure and success of
programs supported by global aid. Most of the previous meetings gave the responsibility
of program results to the developing countries. Since investments and efforts
must have a lasting impact on eradicating poverty, focus on the result is very
important to work on (HLF-4, 2011, pp. 3).
The HLF-4 also brought a change on
the focus for accountability. It was a tradition that accountability on
development programs was highly inclined towards the recipient contraries. The donor countries and agencies used to stay
farther from the accountability of projects for a long time before. However,
the HLF-4 fetched a mutual
accountability and accountability to the intended beneficiaries as a core
principle. This lightened another burden loaded on the developing countries for
a long time (hlf-4, 2011, PP. 5).
Conclusion
The millennium development Goals,
the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the 4th high level Forum
for Development have their own distinct characteristics towards development. Even
though they provide much help to developing countries, they still set some
obstacles on poorer nations from freely enjoying the support. The MDGs force
the developing countries to customize their national development plans which
its goals so that they run through the global development stream. The PRSPs
force the poor countries to prepare their own development agendas, but must
follow some demands of the IMF and WB in order to go through world market and
development support. However, the HLF-4
compare to the other two, lightened the burden of developing nations. It
provides ownership primarily to the developing countries. This ownership is
unique from the other two in that it doesn't require prerequisites to further
dialogues. Moreover, the donor and civil society organizations also took
accountability on development programs like the recipient countries. It also
focuses on result that development barriers could be solved together with all
development actors.
Bibliography
Richard Manning, (2010). The Impact and Design of the MDGs:
Some Reflections, International Development Studies Bulletin Volume 41, Number.
Online Publication.
Ian Kinniburghl, (2005). Developing Countries and the
Millennium Development Goals: Draft prepared for the Technical Meeting.
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IMF, (2013). Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP): Fact
Sheet. Washington DC.
GRIPS, (2005). The Impact of PRSPs: Achievements, Challenges
and the Role of Aid (Policy Minutes No.20), Tokyo, Japan.
Innocent Fred Ejolu,
(2008). The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP): A Critical Analysis of the
Fundamental Limitations and a Conceptual Framework for Reform, Maastricht
University
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