Aid review to focus on policy

Date: 07/12/1995

By Elizabeth Wise

GOVERNMENTS must stop substituting humanitarian aid for policy, the European Commission and aid organisations will declare when they emerge from next week's humanitarian aid summit in Madrid.

The organisers will argue that the disasters in Bosnia and Rwanda are examples of the growing habit of politicians to wait too long, losing the opportunity for preventive diplomacy and forcing them to react afterwards.

“When a politician cannot get enough will to master a crisis through diplomatic or political or military means, he feels he can always get out a chequebook,” said a Commission official. “There are crises which have not been solved and that's why we are there. Humanitarian aid should be the end of the line, not something you resort to.”

Crises on an unprecedented scale have caused emergency aid to become a thriving business for some organisations, and a crippling budget burden for governments. Such highly-publicised disasters have also diverted aid from areas such as Afghanistan, Liberia and Sudan, which have a lower media profile.

The EU, which is the world's biggest aid donor, wants to rethink the way it hands out the aid that is the sole means of survival for some 50 million people around the world.

During the summit on 14 December led by Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino, international aid agencies and non-governmental organisations will consider the problem, with the aim of drawing up a common declaration of principles that should underpin humanitarian action in the next decade.

Joining Bonino will be Brian Atwood, director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and leaders of UNICEF, the World Food Programme, Médecins Sans Frontières and other non-governmental organisations.

The so-called 'Madrid declaration' will state that humanitarian aid should not differentiate between the victims of natural and man-made disasters. It will also call for more preventive measures - such as better preparation for natural disasters and preventive diplomacy for political or ethnic conflicts.

The declaration will also focus on how to combat 'donor fatigue' on the part of aid providers.

“Needs and aid have exploded in the past four years,” said a Commission official. “If, as we predict, demand remains steady or even increases, we will have a real problem.”

The number of refugees and displaced persons grows daily. In addition, wars affect more civilians than ever before: they account for 80&percent; of war casualties now as opposed to 5&percent; at the turn of the century, according to Commission sources.

The growing financial burden of helping the world's poor and developing nations is weighing heavily on donor countries, and provoking nations and organisations to collaborate on projects.

With their aid budget severely cut in recent years, US officials have been pushing hard for cooperation with the EU.

During the EU-US summit last weekend (3 December), both sides agreed to “coordinate, cooperate and act jointly” in development and humanitarian aid.

US President Bill Clinton, Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and Commission President Jacques Santer announced the creation of a high-level consultative group on development cooperation and humanitarian assistance to assess policies and priorities as well as review progress in current projects.

The two sides also pledged to coordinate health policies, develop a strategy for food security and consider joint missions “wherever possible”, starting in Northern Iraq, Liberia and Angola.

In September, the European Commission and USAID launched a “permanent consulting mechanism” which would also include the US State Department.

Atwood says the growing financial burden of aiding the world's poor and developing nations is weighing heavily on donor countries.

Insisting EU-US collaboration is crucial, he warns: “We cannot afford to waste a single dollar.”

The consultations are not intended to establish joint projects, but to make European and American programmes complementary. The two sides hope to share analyses of aid needs and strategies for beginning and ending money flows.

EU and US aid combined accounts for nearly three-quarters of all assistance to the developing world.

The EU will have spent 29.3 billion ecu on development aid by the end of 1995, a figure which does not include half a billion ecu in food aid.

The European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) alone spent 764 million ecu in 65 countries last year. US development spending will amount to 10.4 billion ecu this year, falling to some 9.2 billion ecu in 1996.

Washington and Brussels already collaborate in the field of humanitarian aid. ECHO and the American Office for Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) exchange information in training for disaster management.