【卫报12.1】China and India to join aid partnership on new terms

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China and India to join aid partnership on new terms                                                         

Relief at bringing emerging donors back on board marred by doubt at their willingness to stick to traditional donors' principles                                 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/dec/01/china-india-aid-partnership?newsfeed=true
                                                                                                                                                                                      
Britain's international development minister Andrew Mitchell said a global deal on aid effectiveness 'wouldn't have made sense without the involvement of China'. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images
                                       
China and India have agreed to join a global partnership on aid effectiveness but on vague terms that cast doubt on their willingness to stick by principles set by traditional donors.
After negotiations that went late into Thursday night, the key parties signed off on a final outcome document that bridged what seemed to be irreconcilable approaches between emerging donors and traditional aid givers from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Desperate to bring in China and India, the traditional donors bent over backwards to find a formula that would allow the fourth high-level forum on aid effectiveness to end on a high note.
The key paragraph in the 12-page document says effectively the emerging donors will be held to a lower standard than traditional donors as they remain developing countries and still face poverty at home.
"The principles, commitments and actions agreed in the outcome document in Busan shall be the reference for south-south partnerships on a voluntary basis," said the final draft, agreed to just before 1am on Friday.
OECD officials rejected the perception that China, which seemed to have walked away from the Busan talks on Monday, had been let off the hook.
"We have a broad partnership that has signed up, including China," said an OECD official who took part in the negotiations. "We have to recognise that they have to focus on their own poverty problems and it is precisely through dialogue that we will build bridges and they will need time to reach ownership of these principles."
The meeting in Busan, which brought together figures such as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, differed from past summits on aid effectiveness in Paris and Accra in that the focus was heavily political. Paris set out common principles such as country ownership of aid programmes, transparency and accountability. Accra brought in civil society into the equation. Busan was all about bringing China into the fold, overshadowing everything else.
"There is palpable relief China was shoehorned into an agreement but from the perspective of the low income countries there is scant progress on Paris and Accra," said Lucia Fry of ActionAid, part of the Better Aid coalition of NGOs.
The response from Britain was more upbeat. "It just wouldn't have made sense for a global deal on aid effectiveness to go ahead without the involvement of China and other major players in international development," said Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary.
"Not only has China got valuable experience to share – cutting the proportion of its people living below the poverty line from 84% to 16% in just 25 years – but it is also a major investor in Africa and the developing world. Their continued presence at the table, alongside other emerging economies, ensures this deal reflects the reality of today's development landscape."
Along with South Korea, which was understandably keen to claim Busan as a success, Mitchell can claim credit for salvaging what looked like a hopeless situation. The development secretary happened to be in Beijing for talks at a senior level on a new development partnership with China when he got the call from Busan that discussions with the Chinese had hit a brick wall. Mitchell coaxed the Chinese back into the talks through his discussions with Chen Deming, the Chinese minister of commerce.
"He said Busan was too much a conversation between traditional donors and poor countries and there was not enough room for emerging countries like us so we asked him what was the minimum to satisfy to them," said Mitchell. "I flew down here and chaired a meeting of like-minded groups. My feeling was that there was a less than 50% chance on an agreement, then during the night India and China said they liked the draft."
The draft outcome document takes into account that China, Brazil and India are newcomers to the development debate with their own approaches.
"The Paris declaration did not address the complexity of these new actors … At Busan, we now all form an integral part of a new and more inclusive development agenda, in which these actors participate on the basis of common goals, shared principles and differential commitments," said the document.
Mitchell said the importance of Busan lay in the acceptance of common goals and principles with "ships moving in the same direction albeit at different speeds."
Some countries, however, indicated their unhappiness at the kowtowing to China.
"True, there are important differences between north-south and south-south co-operation that we should keep in mind," Mexico said in a statement. "But this should not distract us from the fact that we are all in the same boat."
Asked whether China had the option not to abide those common principles, Michell said China was increasingly aware that its mercantile approach to aid – what Clinton referred to as its interest in exploiting resources rather than in promoting development – is meeting resistance.
"The Chinese are aware then unless their aid becomes more transparent someone is going to come along and have their lunch," he said.
Besides bringing China into the fold – and Busan sought to harmonise what has become a fragmented aid architecture – the conference saw an important commitment from the US to a transparency initiative and a "new deal" that will focus aid on building up security and justice systems in fragile states such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
But some of the key decisions – a common set of monitoring standards that apply to everyone, new and traditional donors, as well as poor countries receiving aid – will not be decided until June 2012.
"We'll know six months down the line whether there's any meat on the bones of this deal," said Oxfam's Greg Adams. "And we hope this is not going to be decided behind closed doors."
   
                                                                                                                                                                                                               
            

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