As I have said in my previous post, there are no universal recipes to guarantee the aid for development is used in a proper way. Nevertheless, there is a clear trend in international community for development. The Aid Effectiveness Agenda, as I said, clearly states that:
- Official Development Assistance (ODA) must be managed by recipient states. The recipients, when democratically elected, have the right to decide where to invest and how to use the funds from donors. It's called "Alignment" and "Ownership".
- Transparency (expressed by the concept of "Mutual accountability" within the Aid Effectiveness Agenda) guarantees a descendant rate of corruption. For this reason, evaluation and monitoring are a 'must' before, during and after the aid programmes are carried out.
As we can see, both "Alignment" and "Transparency" are needed, in order to increase aid effectiveness and good usage. Believe me or not, this approach is COMPULSORY for who of us which work in international development (at least, at the lower or middle level, such as within NGO or bilateral aid programmes). In practice: without having the official approval from the recipient government, the donor will never support (neither financially nor technically) certain aid programme.
Yet, it is hard to decide if we can use the aid for development without the approval from the recipient government. That should not be a decision made by donors. An example: Do you think Venezuela nowadays is a corrupted regime rather than a democratically elected government? No clear answer exists, as 50% of population thinks one thing, whereas the other 50% thinks the other way round. Democracy works like that: we assume that a population have the right to decide how to be governed - like it or not.
Moreover, another important point is related to "aid for trade". It's been a largely criticized WTO's strategy (besides the professor Mihir suggestions, listenings and readings, have also a look at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/mar/15/aid-for-trade-effective-reducing-poverty ). Despite the Aid Effectiveness Agenda clearly states that 'conditionalities' for aid should be eliminated and even should not exist anymore, the "aid for trade" seems to recover the idea of conditionalities. From my point ofview, the aid for trade is based on (at least) two controversial assumptions:
1) "Free trade is a conditio sine qua non of development". Surely we can say that trade is an engine of development, but it is not the only one; furthermore, we know that free trade, as it has been implemented up to now, causes lots of problems: very low salaries and slavery-like work conditions in developing countries, etc.
2) Aid for trade deeply interferes in domestic legal framework on trade: aid is given by donors in change of structural adjustments in return for liberalizing markets. It is clearly a "condition", and thus, it is desrespectful of the right of states of making decisions themselves about their own development strategies.
Surely, aid for trade might be seen as a "win-win strategy" (the recipients as well as the donors) strategy. But in practice, there are no clear mechanisms to establish how the benefits are equally shared between the parts. As a result, very often the biggest benefits are enjoyed by developed countries, whereas just a small portion are left for the recipients.
So, maybe we should ask ourselves again: why have such wonderful principles within the Aid Effectiveness Agenda been established, if governments do not respect them?