Media
Poor accountability: Aid often fails to promote rights-based development
Daily Times – Islamabad, August 19, 2008
Lack of accountability in governance generally leads to the external grants and loans’ failure to promote rights-based development, said Dr Aly Ercelan of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) on Monday.
“Since indirect taxes and public borrowing, whose major burden remains on the poor, are the government’s economic basis, all aid sustains old inequalities and produces new ones, he said while addressing a seminar on “Promoting Aid Effectiveness: Enabling Participatory Democracy”.
ActionAid, Pakistan, and Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) jointly organised the seminar.
`Dr Ercelan said most aid projects and programmes were irrelevant to poverty eradication. He said aid projects were unnecessarily costly.
He said that without serious progress in democratizing all decisions of state finances, aid could never be made more effective, especially at a time when the state had promised huge additional aid.
Muhammad Ali Shah of Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum (PFF) said aid was usually misperceived as grant. He said all types of financial aid were basically loan, which involved heavy interests.
“Aid is usually provided in the name of development but these projects have impacted negatively on the lives and livelihood of local communities especially the poor and marginalised ones,” he said.
He said aid projects had negative bearing on natural resources, agriculture and ecology, causing heavy migration and displacements.
This news item can also be viewed at: http://www.sdpi.org/