Hi Karina.  Thanks for this comment.

Here is a link some may find useful to the community-based rehabilitation (CBR) guidelines mentioned by Karina. Please correct me if you know of a better link or source doc: (http://www.who.int/disabilities/cbr/guidelines/en/index.html).

The aid program must focus on the poorest people in both low and middle income countries. For effective investment in comprehensive programs for low and middle income country under-resourced communities, the aid program should support regional and national community-based rehabilitation initiatives in line with the Community-Based Rehabilitation Guidelines developed by WHO, UNESCO, ILO and IDDC.

Hi Kristy. Thanks very much for your comment and interesting perspectives and notes on two of Australia's principal bilateral aid recipient countries - Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

What views do people hold about the balance between aid focused to low (or LDC) and middle-income countries? Do you agree with Kristy that aid support for economies like PNG and Indonesia shouldn't be based solely on their income level? What of other considerations that Kristy mentions, like humanitarian and security or economic relations reasons - are there others you would mention?

Perhaps of interest also is a report on 'The new bottom billion' by Andy Sumner (UK's Institute for Development Studies) where he notes that 3/4 of today's 1.3 billion poor people live in what are now classified as middle-income countries. In a podcast he discusses with Claire Melamed (UK's Overseas Development Institute) what this new data tells us, and what it means for aid and development policy. 

The report and podcast are available at http://developmentdrums.org/407

Despite PNG and Indonesia not being classified as LDC economies, they are geographically Australia's closest neighours, and although different, both countries have development goals that are in Australia's national interest to support.

PNG faces humanitarian issues such as a high rate of HIV and AIDS and security issues from political tension while Indonesia's development is more focused on improved economic management and the improvement of governance.

Whether for security reasons, or for improving economic relations, aid support for economies (such as PNG and Indonesia) should not be reduced based solely on their status as a non-LDC economy.

Thanks Karina, Nicole and Sally for your comments here.

A couple of common themes seem to be: the call for Australia's leadership in disability inclusive development; and the need to focus on people with disabilities in order to address poverty.

What do you think? If you have some ideas on this area, please feel free to contribute here over the next few days, before public voting starts...

Australia's development assistance program is determined to support the achievement of the MDGs by reaching the most vulnerable people, therefore it is essential that disability inclusive development continues as a key strategy within Australia’s aid program.

If people with disabilities - who make up a large percentage of the poorest people living in developing countries - are actively included in development assistance programs, Australia is more likely to meet its goals.  

AusAID has rapidly established itself as a global leader in disability inclusive development, but there is much work still to be done. Australia must continue to show leadership on this issue, putting disability inclusive development into practice, and inspiring and assisting its development partners to do the same.  

An important post Karina!  This is a critical issue when you see how people with disabilities in the Asia Pacific are left out of the development gains of the rest of the community.  

Your statistics clearly show the scale of the problem!  If Australia Aid fails to focus on people with disabilities, we will never address poverty!  

Hi Karina, Thanks for this highlight from CBM-Nossal Institute's submission to the aid review. What do others think? Are there some key ideas that strike you as interesting in this summary?

The site 'Include Everybody' - on Disability and the MDGs - may be of interest to people, again here: (http://www.includeeverybody.org/)

Just one statement from this site: "Disability has been missed out of world leaders' plans to meet the millenium development goals, yet 1 in 5 of the world's poorest people are disabled."

Thank you, Marybeth, for your additional comments here, and sharing some interviewee statements.

Do others agree with one of DARA's recommendations, that...: 'Australia financially support and participate more actively in humanitarian accountability initiatives... [supported by] comments from the field... [indicating] the need for greater follow-up and accountability at the programming level'?

Can any Australian organisations respond to Marybeth's call...? DARA is very interested in hearing feedback and suggestions on how the Humanitarian Response Index can be useful to you. What feedback do you have for DARA on the HRI?

Please share your ideas and contributions here, over this final day pre voting.

Our recommendations to Australia focus on areas where it is can most improve compared to other donors. This year, the issues where Australia’s performance was relatively lower were all measured by indicators comprised of quantitative data on Australia’s humanitarian funding – not qualitative indicators from field surveys of Australia’s partners. Therefore, it is difficult to present perceptions of Australia’s partners on the recommendations we have made. However, one of the recommendations is for Australia to financially support and participate more actively in humanitarian accountability initiatives. The comments from the field also seem to indicate the need for greater follow-up and accountability at the programming level. For example, one interviewee explained that “Australia gave money to an organization and really had no idea what they were doing. We are more comfortable working with donors that are rigorous.” On a similar note, another said, “There’s not feedback. We send them information and don’t hear anything back.” Still another reported, “AusAid gives money to specific organizations without considering their performance.” It is interesting to note that this was reported in several different crises, not just one specific context.

In terms of the overall response to our assessment of Australia, due to the distance we have had little opportunity to engage with Australian civil society organizations to capture their reactions. However, we do know that the Australian Red Cross fully endorses the assessment of Australia and has incorporated our recommendations in its submission to the review panel. We would like to work more closely with Australian organisations in the future and are very interested in hearing their feedback and suggestions on how the Humanitarian Response Index can be useful to them.

Hi Marybeth, Thank you very much for sharing these new insights here. On a brief review of DARA's assessment, it seems "Australia, in comparison with other OECD/DAC donors, is an average donor in most of the 'pillars'".

What do others think about this? Does this match your view of how Australia does (or should) respond to conflicts and natural disasters worldwide?  

Please tell us what you think.

What would you suggest to the Review Panel on this topic, and on the recommendations that DARA makes? 

Thank you, Martin and Colin for your Vanuatu, Viet Nam and Cambodian stories and examples here. Thanks, too, John, for your views.

Do others have country-specific case studies you would like to share, even if brief? Or constructive ideas on what you have seen work to good effect in countering aid dependency?

Please consider posting your thoughts here. We'd welcome your contributions, and have a few more days before public voting starts.

As stated in other parts of this site.

• Aid is frustrating, difficult, risky but worthwhile, there is no other source of money for development
• the answer does not lie in soley bottom up or top down or middle out. different objectives require different tactics
• a lot of these points relate to politcal learning, education, including experience of things that work, this takes a very long time although it is getting much quicker, magna carta to universal sufferage took the brits 800 years, the Japanese 70, Guy fawkes was only a few hundred years ago, Libyans are only now contemplating whether it is better to blow up the houses of parliament or try and get elected to it to get their own way 
• I think there is room for much more sensitively applied conditionality at a high level between donor and recipient, 'ou do something and we will continue and increase', AusAid has been doing this in the Pacific, it is not easy and takes political will, and this is impossible from a middle level in either recipient or donor agencies   

Your experience in Vanuatu of corruption and wasted aid funding is not unique to that region I would suggest. The problem I believe, stems from the Australian Governments and other world powers desire to not offend the ruling clique of other countries. A classic example of this can be seen with what’s happening with the Middle East currently where international governments have supported these corrupt and despotic regimes ad infinitum.

International aid appears to be intensely focused on working from the TOP DOWN and this feature, although successfully avoiding friction with the authorities, makes aid donations particularly vulnerable to corruption and inefficiency.

My AVI experience in Viet Nam last year was a classic example, where my experience and advice went ultimately toward empowering the ruling gentry to exploit a river, newly flooded for irrigation purposes, for their own benefit. I will admit that there will likely be some flow on effect in possibly providing employment for the local population and in educating visitors in organic and sustainable building techniques, but by and large, the wealthy and powerful will profit from land that the local land holders have now lost.

I recently read The Road of Lost Innocence (2007, Virago press Great Britain) written by Somaly Mam, who escaped from sex slavery in Cambodia. She has become internationally famous for her work in rescuing and rehabilitating children from similar situations throughout SE Asia and elsewhere.

I read in her book (page 180), that their foundation is having trouble with finding adequate funding to continue rescuing, feeding and retraining their rescued charges and she is proposing that they set up some kind of a farming venture, where they could educate and feed the girls as well as possibly self funding their operation in order to lessen their dependence upon the often fickle supply of international aid money. She proposes that this would allow them to assist not only former prostitutes, but also orphans, ethnic minorities and the elderly. She has called it the Somaly Mam Foundation and I have located the website, see below:

http://www.somaly.org/whoweare

I also saw on SBS evening news on Saturday 26^th Feb that she is currently in Sydney doing talks at schools, trying to raise awareness and funds in order to continue her work, which certainly falls within the UN and Australian millennium development goals.

However, I would be most surprised if AusAid or any of the large foundations such as the Clinton foundation will in any way offer support this foundation. Why you might ask? Because it functions from a BOTTOM UP perspective. On reading this book it becomes clear that members of the Cambodian Government, police and military all have vested interests in the sex slavery and human trafficking business and the trouble with diplomats is that we wouldn’t want to offend the ruling gentry in any way would we? This I believe is the key to understanding why international aid will always be largely inefficient at assisting those most in need. The evidence seems crystal clear to me and I have no idea what the solution might be other than to leave the real on the ground effective work to the privately funded volunteer who is prepared to work in an unofficial capacity.

Hi Martin, Thanks for your ideas and your detailed, considered contribution here.

What do others think? Do you agree or disagree with some of these comments?

Do you have constructive suggestions on any of the topics raised... whether on aid dependency, small island states like Vanuatu, or practically, things you may have seen work in these sorts of situations?

Please feel free to share some of your views, too.

David, the clearest way to express this would be to remove the reference to delivering aid in "Australia's national interest" from AusAid's statest goals. It is extremely worrying to hear Bob McMullan explictly refer to aid as a tool to help advance Australia's economic and political interests, as he did in a recent post on the Lowy aid review blog. Developing countries can't expect an equal partnership when aid is posited as delivering economic benefits for the Australian community instead of focussing on alliveating poverty.,

Hi David, thanks for this discussion-starter.

You’ve raised some interesting, alternative viewpoints here. 

Are there other ideas on this? Would people agree or disagree with this idea that to move to a more authentic ‘development partnership’ Australia’s expectations should be clearer?

Interested to hear your thoughts…

While governments must be encouraged to increase their capacity to include people with disabilities and ensure that they equally benefit from services, until such time as capacity is established, it is necessary to support parallel services so that people with disabilities are not further marginalised.

Thanks, Lucy, for your new insights and contribution.  Here’s a re-phrasing of just 3 suggestions I see here. 

Could evaluation be improved through: 1. more open and formal responses to evaluations; 2. the better use of data (and its analysis); and 3. more follow-up on M&E plans?

What are some of your views…?

AusAID has a reasonable evaluation policy but it is not really implemented. I have, for example, never seen a formal management response to an evaluation - even though they are nominally required. Similarly, the design and resourcing of evaluations are almost always very limited and would not pass for a rigorous evaluation in other circumstances: there is often little formal data collection and less formal data analysis, for example. I would like to see greater accountability in AusAID that enables honest assessments and actual responses to those assessments... it all seems pretty opaque at the moment. 

I also have a real concern about aspects of the increasing internalisation of AusAID implementation - where programs are led by team leaders who are permanent staff on postings, for example. Obviously sometimes this works well, but there is generally much, much less accountability for performance compared to what would exist if someone was on contract for this job. Further, AusAID staff do tend to move on, and their postings are generally not tied to the needs of such a role so the changeovers can happen at very odd and unsuitable times. And overall - where is the accountability to honestly monitor and report? I have seen several cases of 'in house' M&E plans that are never actually implemented, and no-one ever challenges this or follows it up. If a contractor was behaving like this there would be hell to pay! How is this an improvement in implementation? 

Hi Hamish, thank you for sharing your viewpoints here.

Do others agree or disagree with these perspectives? Maybe you have other ideas you'd like to raise on this topic of whether Australians are 'generous' with our aid or not?

We have a few more days for posts and comments before public voting, so please feel free to have your say.

I am certainly no part of the majority of Australians that are happy with Australian aid contributions.  And I find it somewhat patronising to think of aid as reflective of our altruism or generosity.  Surely it is more fairly a representation of our humanity??

But my biggest gripe with the current aid program is that so much of the money recorded as aid actually ends up back in the Australian economy - payment to Australian-based consultants, or even used in supporting international students studying in Australia.  This may be money well spent, but please let us not pretent that it is aid.

www.globalhealthgateway.org.au 

Hi Karina.  These are interesting points you make, specific to disability inclusive development. Thanks.

Do some of these recommendations also apply equally (or more or less) to some other sectors, or initiatives others have seen?  

Could we improve on our 'lessons learned' through better integrating research with practice, for example?

In order to recognise and effectively include the most marginalised groups, it is necessary that AusAID have specific strategies. In the case of persons with disability, the Development for All: Towards a disability-inclusive Australian aid program 2009-2014 strategy is a useful tool in commencing the promotion of disability inclusion in all development activities. Recommendations to further strengthen the performance of the aid program to ensure effectiveness in disability inclusion are:

·         Research into effective disability inclusive development practice;

·         Disaggregated data capturing the inclusion of people with disabilities and lessons learned to be made available to all stakeholders;

·         Strengthening knowledge retention systems and capturing and disseminating learnings across sectors; and

·         People with disabilities in partner countries should be involved in the monitoring and evaluation design for the review.

Hi David – thanks for your post, and Peter – for your comment. 

What do others think of the suggestions to focus more on sub-national government, or to locate program offices in the provinces? The examples here mention Papua New Guinea’s national, provincial, district and ward levels.

Perhaps you have examples from PNG or elsewhere you could share, that tell a story about aid at a sub-national level?

David

I can understand the perspective: even subnational programs are often based out of Morseby. But I am aware that a very sizeable proportion of the program is sub-national: working at provincial, district and ward level and managed by provincial offices. This trend started a few years ago in response to the very concern you expressed.

Thanks, Megan for your comment and referral to the interesting link here.

Have others reviewed this, the second of three ACFID papers to the review?

A couple of things I noticed that referenced NGO work:

• ‘Recent studies indicate that upwards of 60 per cent of overseas humanitarian aid response in major emergencies is delivered through NGOs…’
• ‘…35% of funds donated by the Australian community to Australian NGOs were directed to programs in Africa, representing over $280 million.'

What are people’s views on these, or any other points of interest from this paper? It would be interesting to hear from you.

ACFID's submission to the review lists many interesting lessons learned from the point of view of Australian NGOs about how we can improve Australia's approach to aid effectiveness - see http://www.acfid.asn.au/what-we-do/independent-aid-review/what-we-do/independent-aid-review/Evidence%20Brief%202.%2010%20Steps%20to%20Development%20Effectiveness.pdf