By Ruth Gidley
AlertnetJanuary 24, 2003
A London-based research group says governments are exerting greater influence over relief agencies, but this could also be a sign of growing professionalism in the humanitarian sector.
The researchers examined the perception in the aid community that donor governments had placed additional strings on funding in order to ensure that humanitarian action followed their own interests.
Their report, entitled "Uncertain power: the changing role of donors in humanitarian action", was presented in mid-January by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development Institute. "The Kosovo crisis (in 1999) saw an unprecedented level of donor involvement in the definition and organisation of the humanitarian response," it said.
The HPG researchers -- Margie Buchanan-Smith, Sarah Collinson, Adele Harmer, Joanna Macrae, Tasneem Mowjee, Nicola Reindorp and Anna Schmidt -- set out to examine whether this trend of "bilateralisation" was actually happening. They also studied the checks and balances on donors, and the implications of any changes.
The researchers defined bilateralisation as a shift away from supporting multilateral humanitarian action through U.N. agencies and towards NGOs, increased earmarking of funds and concentration on high-profile emergencies, increasing donor role in coordination, tougher contracts to scrutinise implementing partners and an increased donor presence in the field.
"There is increasing proximity of official donors to decision-making and operations," said Macrae at a seminar at the Overseas Development Institute in London. The report pointed out that individual donors had always exerted influence over the shape of humanitarian action.
The HPG researchers found that overall spending on humanitarian action had doubled between 1990 and 2000. They calculated that official humanitarian aid increased in real terms from $2.1 billion to $5.9 billion during this period.
The report made several observations about this increase. First, that a small number of donors accounted for the bulk of humanitarian aid, with about one third of 1998-2000 spending coming from the United States.
A FEW TOP DONORS
"The United States exceeds the others by three or four times in any year," Macrae said. As a result, small changes in a single donor's policies could have a large impact.
The other consistently large donors included Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain which, with the United States, account for 93 percent of official humanitarian aid. They also emphasised the importance of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), which was responsible for about 10 percent.
The HPG researchers found that U.N. agencies had actually continued to receive a constant share of funding, but that contributions were increasingly earmarked. They said many countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development included their internal spending on refugees during the first two years. Consequently, 38 percent of the total calculated spending for 2000 never left the shores of the donor countries, Macrae said.
Interpreting data is further complicated by the fact that not all countries calculate their spending this way. Britain, for example, did not include refugee spending in its totals.
Earmarking funds for specific regions or areas of work had increased, the researchers found. For example, some donors wanted to increase spending on Africa or encourage capacity-building projects. In other cases, earmarking financing appeared to make NGO funds less predictable and stable, especially when a major, visible crisis occurred.
In late 2001, donors increased their allocations for Afghanistan by reallocating resources that might otherwise have been earmarked for other regions, or left unearmarked, the report says. "Like a ship whose passengers run suddenly from one side to the other, such a 'system' is inherently unstable," it says. The HPG study found that the way donors disbursed funds had changed from grants, which had largely been replaced with contracts.
GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY
Although this might be resented as imports from managerial culture, it could also increase the appearance of professionalism, said Macrae. "It's becoming more like development assistance," she said. Maurice Herson, deputy humanitarian director of Oxfam GB, told AlertNet that NGOs placed similar demands on their partner agencies. "We're on two sides at the same time."
"On the one hand, donors are asking us to be accountable in various ways. On the other hand, we ourselves are a donor, with the money we receive from DFID (the British government's Department for International Development) or the general public, which we then hand on to other organisations, very often local organisations. We face the same set of issues. What are they going to do with he money? How can we make them accountable?"
He said that NGOs tended to respond to donors. "We're a reputable organisation with a proven track record and a set of systems that we think work, so please trust us. At the same time, we find it difficult when a local organisation says to us: 'Trust us, we know what we're doing'."
According to Macrae, recipients of aid had little say in decision-making. Herson said: "That's where the accountability really matters: whether the people at the end are getting what they need. All the rest should be in the service of that."
Framework agreements had become more common, which for some agencies consumed too much senior management time and were an intrusion into the organisation's independence. Macrae said that the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had placed a moratorium on framework agreements in November 2002 for this reason.
However, for NGOs it could make funding more predictable, although it might also lead to a select few agencies receiving funding with smaller organisations likely to be sidelined. Macrae said donors had increased their presence at the field level and that agencies such as ECHO and Britain's DFID had taken on more staff.
This helped inform their allocation of resources. She said many of the staff were civil servants or contract employees. The report said: "It is an important, but as yet unanswered, question whether donors' capacity to appraise and monitor contracts has expanded sufficiently."
However, she said independent evaluations were rare. The HPG researchers found that donors' objectives were often poorly defined, with no shared understanding between the donors and NGOs. In some cases, the HPG found that donors had sought to become more engaged in the coordination of humanitarian operations.
The researchers looked specifically at the Afghan Support Group and the Somalia Aid Coordination Body. Despite significant differences, they found that a number of lessons emerged. "Both groups were important in raising awareness among donors of the issues facing humanitarian organisations working in these difficult environments."
However, they found that the achievements were relatively modest and there was no connection between these aid-specific bodies and the political domain. The HPG concluded that some of the changes in funding had increased the potential for donor control, but could also lead to greater accountability of donors and support for NGOs in the field.
UNEASE WITH DONOR AGENDA The report said: "The unease around the apparent move towards increased donor involvement arises because agencies are concerned that they will become little more than executing bodies for donor states, which have multiple and complex agendas, particularly in conflict-related countries....
"It is inappropriate to concentrate... debate on the bilateralisation of funding flows per se. Instead we need to examine how the objectives of humanitarian aid are shifting, how the procedures by which such aid is managed are evolving and how good practice can be defined and monitored." Macrae said there needed to be a balance between accountability and control.
The report said: "Bilateralisation's pejorative ring... distracts from the fact that donor governments have an important and legitimate role in ensuring effective and accountable humanitarian response."
The researchers concluded that the most important principles for establishing an agreement to this effect would be a commitment to international humanitarian law, a commitment to needs-based programming, and predictable and adequate funding. "The issue is... not whether donors should be involved in humanitarian action, but why and how they choose to use their influence," the report said.
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