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Aid effectiveness
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==History== The historical themes of aid effectiveness are rather different for humanitarian aid and developmental aid, so these have been treated in different sections below. ===Development aid effectiveness (historical perspective)=== ==== 1945 β early 1970s: Post-war boom ==== Although US aid is widely credited with having hastened the reconstruction of western Europe after World War II, there have been doubts about the effectiveness of this aid. [[George Alexander Duncan|G. A. Duncan]] in 1950 deplored the governmental character of [[Marshall Plan|Marshall Aid]], arguing that private loans could have achieved the economic purposes more efficiently. He acknowledged that the provision of official aid also had other β political β purposes.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Duncan|first=G. A.|date=1950|title=Marshall Aid|journal=Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland|volume=18|pages=293}}</ref> When US economic aid shifted from Europe to poorer countries β as initially signalled by [[Harry S. Truman|President Truman]] in [[Point Four Program|Point Four]] of his 1949 inauguration speech β the strategic framework was one of building a "free world" in the face of communist threat. In the 1950s, official US development assistance was mobilized alongside military aid within the [[Mutual Security Act|Mutual Security Program]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Haviland|first=H. Field|date=1958|title=Foreign Aid and the Policy Process: 1957|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/foreign-aid-and-the-policy-process-1957/0AF9B1AF4123FFF21DF8E06791A51269|journal=American Political Science Review|language=en|volume=52|issue=3|pages=689β724|doi=10.2307/1951900|jstor=1951900 |s2cid=144564474 |issn=1537-5943|url-access=subscription}}</ref> A 1957 Senate Special Committee report admitted it was impossible to prove how effective US aid since World War II had been, but considered that, without it, several countries might have been lost to the [[Soviet Union|Soviet Union's]] sphere of influence.<ref>{{Cite book|last=US Senate Special Committee|title=Report of the special committee to study the foreign aid program|publisher=United States Government Printing Office|year=1957|pages=7β8}}</ref> For greater clarity in future, the committee attempted to distill the purposes of US aid into four: * The defense need: aid could persuade and enable other nations to be military allies (important for maintaining air bases in distant parts of the world). * The economic need: aid could bring more nations into a global system of commerce that would benefit the US. * The political need: aid could be one factor (among many others needed) for helping countries to make "long-range political progress toward freedom" rather than totalitarianism. * The humanitarian motive, which was seen in responding to "natural disasters or other unexpected conditions".<ref>{{Cite book|last=US Senate Special Committee|title=Report of the special committee to study the foreign aid program|publisher=United States Government Printing Office|year=1957|pages=8β10}}</ref> The first of these aid drivers could be seen, during the Cold War, as part of a competition with the Soviet Union to win influence.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Morgner|first=Aurelius|date=1967|title=The American Foreign Aid Program: Costs, Accomplishments, Alternatives?|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1405813|journal=The Review of Politics|volume=29|issue=1|pages=72β73|doi=10.1017/S0034670500023731 |jstor=1405813 |s2cid=145492668 |issn=0034-6705|url-access=subscription}}</ref> But aid was often observed to fail in this respect; for instance, in the 1950s and 1960s Egypt and Afghanistan took aid from both sides without making a decisive commitment either way, and large Russian support to China and Indonesia did not prevent those countries' leaders turning against their former patron.<ref name=":6" /> A more detailed theory about the kinds of effect and the causal paths through which aid could be effective was developed by [[Max Millikan]] and [[Walt Whitman Rostow|Walt Rostow]] in the mid- to late-1950s, expressed in [[iarchive:proposalkeytoeff0000mill|"A Proposal"]] of 1956. This propounded that aid in the form of investment funds could promote the "take-off" of economies into self-reliant growth. It further suggested that this economic transformation, channeled properly, could produce a free and democratic type of society by providing: a constructive outlet for nationalism; a social solvent by interesting the urban elites in a dynamic agricultural sector; a stimulus for the emergence of authentic leaders; incentives for the attitudes of political responsibility needed to support democratisation; and feelings of international solidarity.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Millikan|first=Max F|title=A proposal: Key to an effective foreign policy|publisher=Harper & Brothers|year=1957|location=New York}}</ref> Rostow later elaborated the "take-off" theory of development in his more famous work, [[iarchive:stagesofeconomic00rost|"The Stages of Economic Growth"]], in which he stated that greatly increased economic aid was needed in order to outrace the effects of population growth.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rostow|first=W. W.|title=The Stages of Economic Growth|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1962|pages=143}}</ref> In 1966, [[Hollis B. Chenery|Hollis Chenery]] and Alan Strout published a still more sophisticated and influential macro-economic model of the way aid could boost development.<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal|last1=Chenery|first1=Hollis B.|last2=Strout|first2=Alan M.|date=1966|title=Foreign Assistance and Economic Development|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1813524|journal=The American Economic Review|volume=56|issue=4|pages=679β733|jstor=1813524 |issn=0002-8282}}</ref> It involved identifying for each country whether the bottlenecks to economic growth lay in the availability of skills, domestic savings, or export earnings. In this way, an appropriate mix of technical assistance, grants or loans could be decided. The focus was on achieving a target level of [[Gross national income|GNP]] growth, which helped consolidate this as the prime indicator of aid effectiveness. At this time Chenery and Strout pointed to the Philippines, Taiwan, Greece and Israel as examples of countries that seemed to have achieved self-sustaining growth rates with the help of aid.<ref name=":7" /> ==== Early 1970s β mid-1990s: The rise of neoliberalism ==== The end of the [[PostβWorld War II economic expansion|post-war boom]] β marked particularly by the [[1973 oil crisis|oil crisis of 1973]] β was a watershed in attitudes to aid effectiveness, as it forced a reappraisal of the existing models.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Riddell|first=Roger|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/15630613|title=Foreign aid reconsidered|date=1987|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|isbn=0-8018-3546-1|location=Baltimore|pages=92β95|oclc=15630613}}</ref> In the 1980s and 1990s NGOs played a greater part in international aid.<ref>Lewis D. (2010) [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5b42/5f2c896991e5ab7fce43ccd1fb9b9c1bf439.pdf "Nongovernmental Organizations, Definition and History"] {{small|(PDF)}}. In: Anheier H.K., Toepler S. (eds) ''International Encyclopedia of Civil Society''. Springer, New York, NY.</ref> After the end of the Cold War, the declared focus of official aid began to move further towards the alleviation of poverty and the promotion of development. The countries that were in the most need and poverty became more of a priority. Once the Cold War ended, Western donors were able to enforce aid conditionality better because they no longer had geopolitical interests in recipient countries. This allowed donors to condition aid on the basis that recipient governments make economic changes as well as democratic changes.<ref>Dunning, Thad. "Conditioning the Effects of Aid: Cold War Politics, Donor Credibility, and Democracy in Africa." International Organization 58.02 (2004)</ref> It is against this background that the international aid effectiveness movement began taking shape in the late 1990s as donor governments and aid agencies began working together to improve effectiveness. ==== Late 1990s onward: Millennial partnerships ==== =====''The global "effectiveness" movement''===== {{Main|High level forums on aid effectiveness|Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation}} Aid effectiveness became more strongly recognized as a global multilateral objective in 2002 at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, which established the [[Monterrey Consensus]].<ref>{{cite web|title=International Conference on Financing for Development|url=https://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ffdconf|access-date=2012-12-26|publisher=Un.org}}</ref> There, the international community agreed to increase its funding for developmentβbut acknowledged that more money alone was not enough. Donors and developing countries alike wanted to know that aid would be used as effectively as possible. They wanted it to play its optimum role in helping poor countries achieve the [[Millennium Development Goals]], the set of targets agreed by 192 countries in 2000 which aimed to halve world poverty by 2015. Over the following nine years, a process punctuated by four [[high level forums on aid effectiveness]] (Rome 2003, Paris 2005, Accra 2008 and Busan 2011) consolidated a set of recognised good practices in aid effectiveness, and a framework for monitoring them. In 2011 the dominant global agenda on "aid effectiveness" was subsumed in a broader movement for "effective development cooperation". This was embodied in the [[Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation]] (GPEDC) mandated at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011. GPEDC endorsed the prior "aid effectiveness" principles and commitments, and added others more widely concerned with development cooperation. Another global partnership that follows the "effective development cooperation" approach is [https://www.uhc2030.org/ UHC2030] (the International Health Partnership for Universal Health Care 2030), formerly known simply as the [[International Health Partnership]] (or IHP+).<ref>{{Cite web|title=uhc2030: History|url=https://www.uhc2030.org/about-us/history/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-27|website=UHC2030|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001032849/https://www.uhc2030.org/about-us/history/ |archive-date=2017-10-01 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=IHP+ Strategic Directions 2016-17|url=https://www.uhc2030.org/fileadmin/uploads/ihp/Documents/About_IHP_/mgt_arrangemts___docs/Core_Team/IHP_Strategic_Approach_2016-2017.PDF|access-date=2021-02-27|website=uhc2030}}</ref> See below for more details of the aid effectiveness principles and practices advocated by this movement and its component partnerships. === Humanitarian aid effectiveness (historical perspective) === Widespread famine in [[Biafra]] during the [[Nigerian Civil War]] (1967β1970) led to greater [[Non-government organisation|NGO]] involvement in events like the [[Biafran airlift]] being attempted for the first time.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Omaka|first1=Arua Oko|date=1 June 2016|title=Humanitarian Action: The Joint Church Aid and Health Care Intervention in the Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967β1970|journal=Canadian Journal of History|volume=49|issue=3|pages=423β227|doi=10.3138/cjh.49.3.423}}</ref> The way in which aid was allocated during the [[1983β1985 famine in Ethiopia]] forever changed the way in which governments and NGOs respond to international emergencies taking place within conflict situations and raised disturbing questions about the relationship between humanitarian agencies and host governments.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Waal|first1=Alexander De|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RcVFXUwraxsC|title=Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia|date=1991|publisher=Human Rights Watch|isbn=9781564320384|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RcVFXUwraxsC/page/n268 2]}}</ref>
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