Development Initiatives

“Aid is about people” at the Lib Dems

We’re just back from a successful Fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats Party Conference in Bournemouth.

The Fringe was chaired by Olly Buston from ONE/Data. Olly reminded everyone of the importance of keeping Britain on target to achieve the 0.7% of GNI that it has repeatedly committed to set aside for development assistance. But he also pointed out that the qualitative aspects of aid delivery are just as important as the quantity of aid given.

Judith Randel, one of DI’s Directors, spoke eloquently on the need to keep the focus on ending poverty. She reminded us that poverty is multidimensional and inter-generational – and that communities remain trapped in poverty, “forcing people to make choices against their own self-interest”. For these people growth is not enough – they need access to the opportunities that growth supports. For this reason we need to do more than just support social protection measures – we need also to address the poverty traps that keep people poor, specifically by underwriting livelihoods, and ensuring that all people live in a climate of stability and security.

Michael Moore, MP, acknowledged that this is a critical phase in global development, and that the Liberal Democrats have always viewed development as fundamentally important to policy-making. Where there are people in poverty we have an obligation to deal with their development, while also working to influence governments to better look after their own. He noted that while it was good to have targets such as the MDGs and the 0.7%, “these are pretty modest in the scheme of things”. However, he stated that the Lib Dems acknowledge their responsibility “to keep the pressure on for the 0.7% and to ensure that when we get there, we stay there”.

Nick Perkins, Head of Communications at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), picked up on the common theme of aid being for people, wherever poverty exists. He said that “aid is not the solution – but it is part of the solution”, and welcomed “scrutiny on international development and whether it is working”. Nick noted that IDS research had discovered that “many people struggle to visualise what successful aid looks like”, a further barrier to wider support for aid. Fundamentally, we need to boost people’s capacity to resist shocks and look more closely at “how we are investing in vulnerability reduction”. Nick closed with a plea to integrate more comprehensive feedback loops into the evaluation of aid – using the example of exit interviews from clinics.

Karin Christiansen, Director of Publish What You Fund, led us through her life story, detailing how she became involved in the Transparency movement. She said that we are “not making the best of this very precious resource”, referring to aid and the need to incentivise donors and how they behave, in the quest to make aid work better. She highlighted the key relationship between transparency and managing aid resources in a more effective way.

Questions from the floor reflected the debate on making aid more effective, of greater impact for all those in poverty, no matter where they live. One questioner asked about whether aid to the likes of India and China was appropriate, given that those countries are now almost wealthy and are also themselves providing aid to other nations. Is this not rewarding bad behaviour towards one’s own citizens? Michael Moore responded that the “UK must decide how best to get our scarce resources to those who really need it” – and that in an imperfect world politics sometimes intervenes, meaning that even in a country like India, people remain desperately poor. Nick reinforced this, saying that even “rich countries have pockets of poverty” and “we need to distinguish the person from the state”. Judith added that “the user of aid has no voice” – and that we have a responsibility to address these pockets of poverty, wherever in the world they are.

Dr Michael Taylor, of Leeds University, outlined a recent piece of research that showed that female run businesses in India have more of a positive impact on eliminating poverty than those run by men. He said that “if we are going to have more effective aid, we’ve got to look at who it goes to”. There was also discussion of governance – aid has to go to individuals who are under stress, but to really make a difference we also need to address failed governance. Michael replied that it is often complicated to explain to constituents why their aid money is going to governments with reputations for poor governance – and that yes, we do need to work on governance. Judith followed up with a plea for increased transparency “how can we demand accountability (and thus better governance) from governments if we are not telling them how much (aid) money has been given nor what it has been given for”. Therefore “if we can publish transaction data about aid we create a powerful tool” to support work on governance and accountability.

And with that the meeting closed, and Jess, Izzi and I got back in our rental car for the long winding drive down the narrow lanes of Somerset, on the wrong side of the road, back to our base in Wells.