Publications

Within days of its publication in the Oxford Analytica on 2 February, the title Results-based aid encounters difficulty was rushed to me three times by concerned colleagues from across the world.

The two-page article, which you can download for only US$ 150 from the Oxford Analytica website, is objectionable for a variety of reasons.

It argues that the current Results Based Management (RBM) approach is inflexible, cannot accommodate political and other exigencies, cannot capture the intellectual, analytical or research activities necessary for policy dialogue, and in any case overtaxes governments of developing countries that have little demand for RBM.

And so, I wonder, what else drives development programmes and aid other than the expectation of some sort of result? Who would prepare a national development plan, or finance it, without wanting to see concrete and measurable results? Everyone follows his or her results-guided strategies, and there must be some strategies that have proven to do better than others.

Evidently, the un-identified authors must have confused the application of results-based management principles with a project blueprint from the sixties. It is the same confusion that reigns among people who keep on harping about the discord between the Human Rights approach and their Weltanschauung.

The UNICEF-pioneered country programme approach combines, in theory and practice, results-based programme planning and management and a Human Rights-based approach as our standards of development cooperation, and works even in environments that demand flexibility and political consideration. Plans can change, principles don’t.

We are not done yet.

Obviously, not everything published is worth the cost of its memory on the worldwide web. And I am intrigued by those who can occupy discussion space, and – regardless the quality of their proclamations - can grab the attention of an audience which we don’t have. Our moral voice and authority is coming across loud and clear. But beyond our increasingly good ethically based media and advocacy work I haven’t seen many UNICEF policy papers – or policy critiques – being traded like hot buns. We surely have something to say, including on results-based-aid, but we don’t quite seem to get our ideas, evidence and theories into the public domain.

(18 February 2005)

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