Paris in Bogotá: Applying the Aid Effectiveness Agenda in Colombia

Abstract

About IDSThe Institute of Development Studies is one of the world's leading charities for research, teaching and communications on international development. Founded in 1966, the Institute enjoys an international reputation based on the quality of its work and the rigour with which it applies academic skills to real world challenges. Its purpose is to understand and explain the world, and to try to change it -to influence as well as to inform.IDS hosts five dynamic research programmes, five popular postgraduate courses, and a family of worldclass web-based knowledge services. These three spheres are integrated in a unique combination -as a development knowledge hub, IDS is connected into and is a convenor of networks throughout the world.The Institute is home to approximately 80 researchers, 50 knowledge services staff, 50 support staff and about 150 students at any one time. But the IDS community extends far beyond, encompassing an extensive network of partners, former staff and students across the development community worldwide. This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for teaching or non-profit purposes, but not for resale. Formal permission is required for all such uses, but normally will be granted immediately. For copying in any other circumstances, or for re-use in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher and a fee may be payable. SummaryRecent research in the field of development aid persuasively problematises aid relationships and begins to reveal their significance for the real-life application and effectiveness of international development cooperation. Until insights from such research percolate through aid machineries such as the OECD DAC and its workings, the country-level consequences of universal aid frameworks and prescriptions will continue to be insufficiently foreseen, and in some cases unexpectedly problematic.This paper is about an in-depth, qualitative study of the application of the Paris Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness in Colombia. This middle-income, nonaid-dependent country with a prolonged and complex internal armed conflict and a poor human rights record, hitherto on the margins of international aid circles, has fast assumed a high-profile role in them via its adoption of the PD. The study stemmed from a conviction that PD application in Colombia has unanticipated consequences, with under-appreciated impacts on the strategies of donors and social actors. Donors are subject to an attempt to push them (back) into a technocratic corner. In this politically complex context where donors' presence owes at least as much to concerns over Colombia's international human rights performance as to classic aid donor concerns with widespread extreme poverty, this is worrying and undesirable.It also has serious implications for the tripartite aid dialogue process established in 2003, involving Government, donors and social actors. This, for all its flaws and frustrations, is unique ...