The increased financial commitment to Africa must be welcomed, not least because it is indicative of renewed political will to tackle global inequities. However, there is a missing link between the generous financial commitments, and the chance of the citizens of many countries around the world realizing the benefits of this commitment. This missing link is the state - or the governance arrangements that provide the policies and institutions necessary to provide services to citizens. Without functioning states, the legal environment, health and education services and security institutions cannot be provided on an inclusive and sustainable basis.
The responsibility to protect policy adopted by the UN recognizes that the state is the primary duty bearer of rights. It is laudable, and realistic, that where states cease to provide basic services to their citizens, non-governmental organizations and UN and other agencies step in to provide services to citizens for an emergency period. Understandably, such organizations cannot undertake to provide services to all citizens on an equitable basis across the country, in perpetuity. In reality, they are forced to provide services where they can, while the money lasts. Disbursement of aid through parallel organizations will, and should, continue to happen, where it is really needed. But use of such mechanisms must be seen as a short term solution, reserved for emergencies and crises. Where substitution for state services takes place, this must be done mindfully and explicitly, with clear exit strategies, and plans for creating state capacity to take over within specified periods of time.
Until there is a long-term view taken in each country as to which services should be provided by the state directly, which contracted out, and which delivered by community or religious or other organizations, policy will continue to be made by all on an ad hoc and unsustainable basis. As pointed out in the Sachs report, until a multi-year perspective is taken, the right investments to lift constraints in the delivery of services- such as teacher training to improve the quality of education- will not be taken. Investing in the state will not save a child’s life tomorrow, but it might be the best way of ensuring better lives for the children of hundreds of millions of citizens.
For more on this topic, read the ODI Opinion titled 'Closing the sovereignty gap: how to turn failed states into capable ones' written by Dr. Ashraf Ghani, Michael Carnahan and myself. The BBC website also recently ran a story that refers to a book Dr. Ghani and I are writing about how to rebuild failed states, with a focus on Afghanistan.
This blog post features the author's personal view and does not represent the view of ODI.
Comments
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re: Making poverty history - the state as the missing link @ Thursday, June 01, 2006 9:56 AM
Yesterday, May 31 2006, the BBC ran a fascinating report on the results of international aid in Afghanistan - fascinating and thoroughly depressing. There is no doubt that most of the aid, no matter how well-meaning (and it was surely exceptionally abundant ) did not achieve the intended goals. Why? It was repeatedly suggested in the report that the failure can be ascribed to BYPASSING the national authorities and delivering aid directly, relying on NGOs, the donor's private sector firms etc. Clearly, if the results were so poor (non-functional buildings, duplication of school-building in the same village etc), it is because there was no adequate monitoring and evaluation structure in place to control progress achieved.
Yet, even with effective M&E systems in place, there is a larger problem: by-passing national authorities undermines...their authority! It places the Afghan people in the hands of foreigners, be them the UN or NGOs or bilateral donors. Afghanistan is thus turned by international aid into an occupied state. With all that implies: weak government, poor public services, unchecked and uncheckable corruption (the first to fill their pockets are the foreigners...) Is that what we want, when we insist on "parallel mechanisms" for the delivery of aid?
Regards
Claude Forthomme
economist
