A ripple in development? - Channel Research

ecent evaluation of the implementation of the Declaration 22 pointed to
the need for better understanding by foreign field personnel of local
reality, while there is resistance to donor coordination, perceived as
“ganging up” on the government. On the other hand lack of confidence
in partner country systems leads to the fact that donors do not give them
a chance to grow.
More striking, however, in relation to the donor harmonisation
agenda, is the ongoing separation of the relief and recovery effort from
within the broader development aid effort. This was identified as a risk
by a recent DFID evaluation 23 , where support to humanitarian agencies
and to the MDF was treated as “recovery”, a temporary allocation with
little relevance to the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals.
This is also reflected in a French Ministry of Foreign Affairs evaluation
24 , which noted that humanitarian assistance and post-disaster
reconstruction loans were treated quite separately in the programme
portfolio.
This absence of linkage is also reflected on the partner country
side. In Sri Lanka, where the state is characterised by an informal ministerial
system, the tsunami response was separated from the departments
managing the regular governmental programmes. It follows that,
for instance, the monitoring and evaluation department within the Ministry
of Planning was not involved in the tsunami aid effort and is only
at the end of 2008 assimilating and incorporating the database developed
to track the tsunami aid response, into its systems.
Harmonisation was exercised to a greater extent in Indonesia with
the establishment of the MDF in support of primarily BRR. This did
not relate well to the country programmes, and according to BRR officials
however, it was the MDF that in practice proved most cumbersome
to work with out of all of its donors. 25
2.4 Decentralisation & subsidiarity
Decentralisation is designed in development policy (by the three states
but also by donors) to enhance the opportunities for participation by
placing more power and resources within reach of the population. In
environments with little participation it is viewed as an initial step in
developing opportunities for citizen-state interaction. In the three countries
was the intended role of decentralisation relatively well linked to
that of the agencies?
22
Evaluation of the Implementation of the Paris Declaration, Sri Lanka Case Study, July 2008, Kabell
Consulting, for Danida
23
Country Programmeme Evaluation, Chris Barnett et al. ITAD Ltd for DFID, 2007
24
Evaluation de la cooperation française avec l’Indonésie 1988–2007, Ernst & Young and Channel
Research, 2009
25
See Masyrafah, Mckeon, the Wolfensen Center for Development, Post-tsunami aid effectiveness in
Aceh, Brookings (2008)p.19
42