Tracking External Donor Funding.pdf - NDC

2.3.4 The Question of Ownership in External Aid
Having reviewed the structures of external aid
coordination and the ways in which they have evolved
over time to nurture Palestinian ownership, the
following section reviews how Palestinians have taken
advantage of the changing themes of development. The
most pivotal points in this process were the
announcement of the Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness and the 2007 launch of the PRDP.
Though the debate over ownership had been going on in
Palestine for some time, only in the past few years have
local and international actors begun to turn the ideas of
‘ownership’ into a more concrete structural reality 28 .
‘In 2003, aid officials gathered in Rome for the
High Level Forum on Harmonization, where donor
countries agreed to better streamline and
coordinate their aid efforts in the developing
world. In the same year, the MoP drew up a Socio-
Economic Stabilization Plan (SESP) in an attempt
to steer donor assistance towards the deteriorating
social and economic environment. Until 2000, most
donor support was largely in the areas of
institution-building and reconstruction. (…)As the
Second Intifada extended into its third year, it
became clear that funding priorities were no
longer sustainable. The successive implementation
from one year to another of emergency and relief
plans, which are decoupled from development
needs, leads t o dependency and donor fatigue.
Through the SESP, the PA sought to regain the
leadership of its development agenda and enhance
the quality of its dialogue with the international
donor community by providing a framework for
foreign aid’ (MTDP, Forward).
Work on the Medium Term Development Plan 2005 –
2007 (MTDP) started in March 2004 and involved a core
group of staff from the Ministry of Planning (MoP) and a
wide range of counterparts from other line ministries of
the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Much like the SESP, the MTDP worked to transform the
relationship between the PA and donor institutions.
Despite the ongoing difficulties to development posed by
the occupation, the PA recognized its responsibility to
guide the development process 'within the limits of the
occupation' (MTDP, 2005-2007, Forward). The MTDP
attempts simultaneously to pursue relief efforts and
address development issues in a way that sustainably
addresses two of the WB&GS’s most prominent needs:
the reduction of poverty and the building of institutions
(ibid).
In 2005, representatives of over 100 countries and dozens
of international NGOs signed the Paris Declaration on
Aid Effectiveness. Unlike the Rome Declaration on
Harmonization, which focused on relations between
donors, the Paris Declaration laid out a framework for
relations between donors and recipients. The Declaration
is focused on five mutually reinforcing principles.
Paris Principles on Aid Effectiveness (2005)
• Ownership: Developing countries must lead their own development policies and strategies, and manage their own
development work on the ground. The target set in Paris was that 75% of developing countries would produce their own
national development strategies by 2010.
• Alignment: Donors must line up their aid firmly behind the priorities outlined in developing countries’ national development
strategies.
• Harmonization: Donors must coordinate their development work better amongst themselves to avoid duplication and high
transaction costs for poor countries. They agreed on a target of providing two-thirds of all their aid via so-called “programbased
approaches” by 2010.
• Managing for results: All parties in the aid relationship must place more focus on the end result of aid and must develop
better tools and systems to measure this impact.
• Mutual accountability: Donors and developing countries must account more transparently to each other for their use of aid
funds, and to their citizens and parliaments for the impact of their aid.
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For more information on early research in development initiatives, see: Abdelkarim 2005; Adullah 2005; and Al-Naqib 2003, 2004.
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