The much anticipated Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF3) was held in Accra, Ghana last week from September 2 to 4, 2008. Just prior to the meeting a Civil Society (CSO) Parallel Forum brought together hundreds of people to discuss how to input into the HLF3 and into its outcome document, the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). A day before the CSO Parallel Forum, over two hundred women’s rights experts, activists and representatives of women’s organizations met to strategize around the issues from a women’s rights perspective.

Women Call for Development Effectiveness

Delegates to the Accra International Women’s Forum reiterated the assertion that since most of the 1.4 billion people living in abject poverty are women and girls, gender equality and women’s empowerment must be central to development. They also criticised the persistent reliance on the neo-liberal model of economics which they said ‘is clearly failing to deliver the promised results of growth for all, bringing instead, discrimination, social exclusion, injustice and more inequalities.’[1] The Women’s Forum made several key recommendations to enable aid to spur real, fair and people-centred development.

Some of the gender equality-specific recommendations were as follows:

• Treatment of gender equality, environmental sustainability and respect for human rights – which are cornerstones for development- as sectors with progress indicators and specific resources allocated in national budgets;
• Alignment of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (PD) with internationally agreed development goals on human rights, gender equality, decent work and environmental sustainability;
• Availability of special funds for women’s rights organizations;
• Recognition of the importance of UN Security Council Resolution 1820 and the allocation of resources for the mobilization of communities and the protection of women’s rights and their organizations;
• Integration of a strategic plan for financing gender equality and women’s empowerment into the implementation monitoring system of the PD;
• Establishment of clear mechanisms for the participation of women’s rights organizations, and particularly those representing women from excluded groups, as part of civil society in all national development planning processes and aid planning, programming, management, monitoring and evaluation;
• Assured substantial, predictable and multi-year core funding for women’s organizations;
• Increased support to national women’s machineries in terms to support and monitor governments and parliaments;
• Recognition that economic policy conditionalities have a negative impact on people and women in particular, and a removal of all economic policy conditionalities that undermine the principle of ownership. This includes conditionalities related to gender equality and so called ‘positive conditionalities;’
• Use of existing reporting and monitoring systems for human rights compliance, such as CEDAW, the MDGs and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 to measure development results within the PD framework;
• Measurement of outcomes on gender mainstreaming and gender specific action such as access to health and education, changes in women’s employment and income, incidence of gender based violence, right to reparation, right to inheritance, property, land use and women’s participation in decision-making;
• Special attention to the needs and rights of victimized women in fragile states and in communities experiencing localized conflicts and xenophobic attacks by both involving women in peace-building and channelling development assistance to address these needs and rights;
• Use of a mix of funding mechanisms to ensure progress on women’s rights and empowerment.[2]

CSOs call for Better Aid

More than 600 representatives from 325 civil society organizations in 88 countries attended the Civil Society Parallel Forum that was held prior to the HLF3. Of this number, only 80 CSO representatives could attend the official HLF3.

The CSO statement stressed that ‘development aid is only one part of the equation, and has to be analysed in the broader context of its interactions with trade, debt, domestic and international resource mobilisation and the international governance system.’[3] The CSO representatives called for new targets and indicators to be set and for donors to set out detailed plans and individual targets showing how they will meet their commitments. In their statement, they said that the Accra Agenda for Action (the HLF3 outcome document) should at the very minimum make the following commitments:

• A broader definition of ownership that puts citizens, CSOs and elected officials at the centre of the aid process at all levels;
• An end to short term aid by 2010;
• A reduction of the burden of conditionality by 2010;
• An end to tied aid by 2010;
• The implementation of new standards of transparency by 2009;
• Support for independent and citizen-led monitoring and evaluation systems.

The CSO representatives expressed disappointment that drafts of the AAA had not taken their views into account. Generally, spaces for civil society participation and input into the HLF3 were limited. The Women’s and Civil Society Statements were delivered during a ministerial dinner. Accredited CSO representatives had the opportunity to participate at Round Tables and attend some side events. However they were not accorded space to participate in ministerial plenaries.

Accra’s Challenges and Opportunities

Hamida Maalim Harrison of the organization NETRIGHT says that within the family of CSOs, women remain marginal and that gender equality and women’s empowerment should have been more central to the CSO Parallel Forum deliberations and statement. Nevertheless, the AAA does reflect some steps, however limited, in the right direction. It recognizes the importance of gender equality and women’s empowerment as a cornerstone for development and the need to integrate them in specific areas such as mutual accountability or policy and practice for fragile states. On the other hand it fails to demand concrete work plans and indicators.

The AAA promises that governments will deepen their engagement with CSOs and provide an enabling environment that maximizes CSO contributions to development. It also promises increased accountability to citizens and increased medium-term predictability of aid.

Development experts argue that conditionalities undermine the right to development. [4] The AAA does not commit to eliminating conditionalities, but commits to changing their nature by involving developing countries in setting conditionalities based on national development plans. Tied aid and conditionalities have been major points of contention with some countries such as the United States opposing efforts to do away with them. This is reflective of the political nature of the aid effectiveness agenda. According to the civil society statement,

‘When donors and governments met in Paris three years ago, technical debates masked deeper political differences around the broader vision for aid. Some donors wanted to hand a lot more power, a lot more quickly to developing country governments. Other donors didn’t. What was achieved was a compromise and has been criticised for its narrow technical approach.’[5]

The challenge for women’s rights advocates remains how to become a more formidable force in the political spaces where decisions are made. Harrison urges women’s organizations to mobilize early and demand equitable representation in any future arrangement within the Aid Effectiveness process. It is also urgent to explore alternatives to the neo-liberal economic model which only serves to perpetuate inequalities.

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Notes:

1 Women’s Forum Statement: Recommendations for Action for Development Effectiveness in Accra and Beyond. August 31, 2008. http://awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Issues-and-Analysis/Recommendations-for-Action-on-Development-Effectiveness-in-Accra-and-beyond
2 Ibid.
3 Civil Society Statement: Civil Society Statement in Accra warns urgency for Action on Aid. September 1, 2008.
4 AWID, DAWN, IGTN, and WIDE presented a paper at the CSO Parallel Forum analyzing the impact of conditionalities on the right to development from a women’s rights perspective.
5 See note 4.