By Ashley Seager
Guardian
December 15, 2004
Charities and aid campaigners are sounding the alarm about a move by some of the world's rich countries to redefine spending on peacekeeping missions as development aid and thereby duck a pledge to increase aid commitments. Senior officials from members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development met in Paris at the end of last week for discussions about how to define overseas aid spending for purposes of international comparison.
Some countries, believed to be Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, argue that spending on peacekeeping operations or training of foreign armies should be allowed to be counted as aid spending. For example, the 18 million pounds committed by Britain to the peacekeeping mission in Darfur could be reclassified as overseas aid.
But 25 non-governmental organisations have signed a submission to the OECD saying the proposal runs counter to a pledge by many rich nations in 2000 to push up their aid spending to 0.7% of their gross national income. Ian Gray, policy adviser at the aid group World Vision, said: "Overseas aid given by the world's richest countries remains close to an all-time low and there is a real danger that these changes could allow governments to artificially boost their aid budgets with spending on military peacekeeping."
Gordon Brown, the chancellor, has made increasing developed countries' aid budgets to 0.7% of GNI a central plank of his "Marshall plan for Africa", which Britain will try to push through during its chairmanship of the G8 leading industrial countries next year. The 30-member OECD is involved because it sets agreed definitions, including those on overseas aid.
Richard Manning, chairman of the OECD's development assistance committee, which met last week, said it had agreed some relatively uncontroversial changes. "But some other areas are much trickier." Those were, in particular, peacekeeping missions, either by donors' own forces or when donor countries paid for peacekeeping forces sent, for example, by one African country to another.
