Civil society urges leaders to make aid development effective

16 September 2010 00:00

Civil society organizations (CSOs)are calling onall governments to expand their commitments on aid’s development effectiveness beyond their pledges in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)Summit’s outcome document. Despite the many pledges on making aid work for development, donors have underperformed, and the current aid architecture continues to deliver aid in ways that impede its developmental impacts.

In a statement issued by the Reality of Aid, an advocacy network of hundreds of CSOs across the world focusing on the goals of poverty eradication and equality in the policies and practices in the international aid regime, donors have failed to reach the longstanding 0.7% of donors’ Gross National Income (GNI) target to support the Internationally Agreed Development Goals, including the MDGs.

In 2009, “Real Aid”—defined by Reality of Aid as official development assistance (ODA) minus debt cancellation and the costs of spending on Southern refugees and on students arriving in donor countries—stood at $112.7 billion, or only 0.29% of donors’ combined GNI.Furthermore, aid increases since 2000 also do not show a strong orientation towards poverty reduction and development for the poorest. Only 42.1% of new aid dollars—aid that donors had cumulatively disbursed by 2008 above what they had allocated in 2000—had gone to potential use for poverty reduction, MDGs and other development programs.

The current aid architecture also remains unfit for the purpose of development effectiveness.Several donors continue to provide ODA in the form of loans, further deepening the long-term debt of poor countries. Donors, especially international financial institutions, continue to impose conditionality, seriously diminishing country ownership of development policies and undermining development outcomes.Progress in untying bilateral aid has been slow. Too much aid is still tied to the purchase of goods and services provided by rich countries despite several agreements prohibiting the practice that Australian campaigners dub “boomerang aid”.

On the occasion of the UN High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the MDGs this September 20-22, theReality of Aid is joining with other CSO platforms to promote an international process to reform and increase the development effectiveness of the aid architecture through a binding convention on Development Effectiveness under the United Nations. CSOs, along with allies among governments, will explore the implications of a more binding framework that holds governments accountable for the commitments they make in various international meetings. A multilateral convention of Development Effectiveness could strengthen the coherence between these commitments and accountability to international human rights law which is the basis and standard for measuring development effectiveness.

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For more information and interviews, please contact:

Abby Mercado, Reality of Aid, +632 9277060 – 62 (Philippines) or

Notes to Editors:

  • For the full version of the Reality of Aid Statement on the occasion of the UN High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals, click
  • The Reality of Aid Network brings together hundreds of CSOs from regional and global networks from 56 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and in 21 donor countries working in development. The Reality of Aid Network aims to contribute to more effective strategies to eliminate poverty, based on principles of solidarity and equity, through advocacy and lobbying for changes in North/South systemic relationships and in aid practices. Visit to know more about how we work.