Managing Post Conflict Aid How Not to Make Unity Attractive

St Antony’s WorkshopInternational Aid and the Two Sudans

6 February 2013

CPA and JAM

• January 2005 - John Garang and Ali Othman Taha sign CPA

• March 2005 - JG and AOT sign JAM– “to make unity attractive …” – Garang’s vision, not many others– to deliver a Peace Dividend: $8 billion, inc. $4

billion of aid– Donors to “re-engage in ways that are well

coordinated”

A Rare Post Conflict Opportunity

• A durable settlement between two parties capable of committing their constituencies

• In the SPLA/GoSS a partner who was truly grateful to the donors and aware of his lack of capacity

• A comprehensive and genuinely joint Joint Assessment Mission

The donors’ best ever opportunity They missed it

What a ‘pre-failed state’ needs

• Institutions: S. Sudan never had any

• Public Service Capacity: to build ‘entirely from scratch’

• Basic Services: Lowest school enrolment in the World, 45% child malnourishment, 1 in 4 dead by 5

• Infrastructure: No paved roads, no transport links in any direction, 1,500 km to sea

Statehood: ‘a conceptual vacuum’• ‘Supply’ State or ‘Facilitating’ State?

– Lack of capacity gap forced the answer• Citizen - State Relationship (Sovereignty)?• The standard answer:

– Direct relationship: individual to unitary State– Mediated by democracy & honest, capable bureaucracy

• The standard ‘neo-patrimonial’ analysis of state failure: – patron-client corruption rots bureaucracy & democracy

• Pre-failed states are different – Sovereignty is real but dispersed, indirect – Structured on ‘tribes’, ‘clans’, etc AND– Patron-client networks– Designed to manage (not resolve) conflict– Globalisation, geo-politics & aid causes them to fail

What S. Sudan Got• The promised peace dividend (2011):

– $4 billion aid; 30,000 classrooms and teachers; 4,000 water supplies; 2,800 nurses & doctors; trunk roads

– ‘neo patrimonial’ solutions to state failure

• The delivery– $3 billion to 2009 – Substantial support to basic services, at

unaffordable standards/unsustainable levels – 44 + 46 classrooms, 3,500 teachers – 67 km of tarmac (2012) – Weak, naive effort on state institutions

Relief or Development• The Two-Track Strategy

– Track1 - ‘development of core capacities’ [Development] – Track 2 - ‘delivery of essential services’ [Relief]

• Meaningless without ‘track switching plan’– There was no switching plan– Track 1 effort grossly under-estimated. – Lead Track 1 agency incompetent, disengaged– Majority of actors Track 2 ‘specialists’

• Result: Track 2 dominant, Track 1 put in ‘too difficult’ box

• A false dichotomy anyway

Coordination & Harmonisation NOT

• 2008 donor mapping: – 26 donors– 169 projects (reported) + ?? (unreported)– Only 25 projects submitted for Govt review– 37 projects in health alone– Average of 11 donors per sector– 13 donor missions in one month

• John Garang wanted trunk roads. Donors preferred ‘more media-friendly projects’

15

13

12 12

9 9

8

7

5

17

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Public Administration

Health

Accountability

Natural Resources

Education

Rule of Law

Security

Infrastructure

Social & Humanitarian

Economic Functions

Donors per Sector - 2008

8

9

6

1

2

1

1

8

9

7

9

20

20

9

1

2

1

4

17

37

25

33

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Netherlands

Norway

Denmark

UNDDR

AfDB

IFAD

Global Fund

MDTF

EC

USAID

UK

$10m

- $

50m

$50m

-$1

00m

Ab

ove

$10

0m

Projects

Sectors

Projects/Sectors By Donor

MDTF Supporters

Channels, Modalities & Narratives• From OLS on, S.Sudan has been a major theatre for

humanitarian aid

• Principal actors: UN agencies and INGOs

• The Post-Conflict dilemma: Withdraw, change or carry on regardless?

• Answer decides positioning along the “relief-recovery-development” spectrum

• Axiomatic that the pre-CPA actors were best qualified for the JAM

Carving up the JAM Cake

31% still classified as Emergency Relief The ‘Carry on Regardless’ option

‘Modalities’ in Theory • Multilateral-managed pooled funds

– MDTF: World Bank as expert in working with Governments [Track 1]

– CHF: UN as Humanitarian expert [Track 2]• Contractor-managed pooled fund

– Basic Services Fund to fill pre MDTF gap [Interim but Twin Track ]

• Bilateral Projects – Because donors wanted them

• The Joint Donor Team to– Oversee MDTF for donor partners – Coordinate donor partners’ bilateral projects

And in Practice• Evaluations rank MDTF bottom, UN close behind,

contractor-managed funds better, bilateral projects best• BUT management style and relations with GoSS apart

they are all the same: channels to pass funds to UN agencies and NGOs.

• In most cases, in small packages ($200,000 to $1 million), short term (12 to 24 mths)

• Severe diseconomies of scale and discontinuity• Even for Track 2 this was not efficient• Not even the best funds addressed the track switching

problem

“Rats in a Sack”• JAM signed March 2005• UN and World Bank immediately stalemated over

accounting / audit for MDTF• UN: submitting documents to Bank would “violate the

single audit principle”• October 2006 (!!!!) resolved under donor pressure

– Dutch Minister to Wolfowitz: “I do not understand how administrative quarrels can be allowed to put the reconstruction process at risk”

• Norwegian NGOs withdraw from bidding to train 6,000 teachers: ‘unrealistic’, contract procedures unsuitable for NGOs.

The Aid Capacity Gap: • A range of narratives about ‘modalities’, ‘relief versus

development’, and ‘development versus conflict prevention’ • These concealed a simpler failure: professional management • World Bank, and donors, completely under-estimated the

MDTF’s task• MDTF failure allowed other actors to ‘carry on regardless’:

– Minimal monitoring and evaluation– Loose accountability, oversight committees routinely conflicted – Basic operational requirements - bills of quantities, well drilling logs, etc - ignored– ‘Inclusive’, slow approach to strategic and technical issues– Short ‘humanitarian’ timescales and small packages– Diseconomies of scale and cascading overhead charges

A Darfur Coda• Similar

– Conceptual gap on what post-conflict Darfur might look like– Dominance of UN/NGO humanitarian complex– Mostly pooled funds, UN managed– Small package, short term approach

• Different– Donor ‘toxic’ fear of any close engagement– CPA type settlement improbable– Government in full control of MDTF

• Elements of a Viable Three-Tiered Strategy– Doha process (UN Joint Mediation Team)– Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation (UN)– Darfur Community Peace and Stability Fund (UN)

• BUT not integrated and without the capacity to do better

Conclusions• The aid community has let South Sudan shockingly

badly, given a relatively positive starting point and the urgent need to use the CPA period well

• If donors are not willing to make good on their commitment to coordination, and to put in the effort required, they should return to bilateral project aid

• The tendency to carry on in humanitarian mode needs to be resisted

• Standard neo-patrimonial ‘failed state’thinking does not help