The Impact of Millennium Development Goals, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and 4th High Level Forum on Developing Countries

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, pp.8).   

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, pp. 5).

Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the impact of the Millennium Development Goals, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the 4^th 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 4^th 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 4^th 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

BOJÖ, J. and REDDY, R.C., 2002. Poverty reduction strategies and environment. A review of, 40.

BRITAIN, G., 2006. Trade, development and environment: the role of DFID; tenth report of session 2005-06; report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence. Stationery Office.

EJOLU, I.F., 2008. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP): A Critical Analysis of the Fundamental Limitations and A Conceptual Framework for Reform.

GAKUSI, A. and SINDZINGRE, A.N., Challenges and Opportunities of Evaluation in Fostering Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

HULME, D., 2009. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): A short history of the world’s biggest promise.

KAPINDU, R.E., 2004. The role of poverty reduction strategies in advancing economic and social rights: Malawian and Ugandan experiences.

MANNING, R., 2010. The impact and design of the MDGs: some reflections. IDS bulletin, 41(1), pp. 7-14.