Improving the International Development Architecture

The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the next millennium was characterized by an extraordinary burst of international cooperation on development. At the core of this cooperation was the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 and the related agreement to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The U4 played a role both in the run-up to the MDG agreement and in linking the achievement of the MDG objective of ending poverty to collaborative efforts between donor and recipient, with partners in the driver’s seat setting their own priorities. This chapter starts with a discussion of the agreement to establish the MDGs at the UN and its implications for development. Then it turns to the perennial question of how much aid developed countries should commit to provide to developing countries, and what donors and recipients must do to make aid more effective, two central issues of the Monterrey Conference on Finance for Development in 2002. The last part discusses the special U4 and international community efforts to achieve universal primary education and to battle HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Aid Effectiveness

This chapter starts with a description of some of the specific steps the Utstein group took to streamline their aid procedures in order to reduce the burdens imposed on partner countries and increase effectiveness in the implementation of their bilateral assistance programmes. This is followed by a similar discussion of U4 efforts to help improve the effectiveness of EU aid in which three of the four ministers were involved. The chapter then turns to a discussion of the U4 aid to Tanzania which four of them visited in 2000 as a showcase of what they had been advocating. They spread their message about a new approach to development cooperation in which the partner country is in the driver’s seat by organizing so called ‘Big Tables’ with African leaders (including Ministers of Finance) that permitted a frank exchange of views on ways to make aid more effective in achieving poverty reduction. The final part of the chapter reviews U4’s support to fragile states, focusing on their joint efforts in several countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Sudan.

Aid Effectiveness

The collaboration the U4 launched at Utstein covered a wide variety of development issues handled by different international institutions. This involved in the first place coordination of their positions at the World Bank and the IMF, and the UN and its funds, programmes, and agencies. The World/Bank IMF were very important both because of the size and extent of their own programmes but also for helping developing countries manage the overall poverty reduction strategies within which all bilateral aid was supposed to fit. Increasing the effectiveness of bilateral aid could only succeed if it were part of a consistent overarching multilateral effort. This chapter starts with a discussion of U4 efforts to ensure that the poverty reduction strategies developed with the help of the World Bank/IMF in connection with debt relief actually reflected developing country priorities. It then moves on to U4’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of UN programmes which tended to be characterized by fragmentation and inefficiencies. The last part addresses the problem of coherence and collaboration between the IMF and the World Bank—the international financial institutions, on the one hand, and the UN and its agencies, on the other.

Utstein

Following several months of extensive informal collaboration over the winter of 1998–9 culminating in the spring 1999 Development Committee meetings and the May OECD/DAC High Level Meeting, the four ministers decided to intensify their collaboration by organizing a formal ministerial meeting. Johnson offered to host the meeting at the Utstein Abbey on 25–6 July 1999. Subsequent ministerial meetings were organized by the other members of the group on an annual basis. This chapter discusses in detail the main topics addressed in their first ministerial meeting and the key principles guiding the Utstein group, including their emphasis on a partnership approach, with the partner government showing programme ownership; programmes of budget support utilizing partner country systems; and increasing the volume and improving the quality of aid. The chapter then describes U4 efforts to spread their message to other likeminded countries through existing and new institutional networks.

Organizing Collaboration

The story of Eveline Herfkens, Hilde F. Johnson, Clare Short and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, all of whom, with different titles became ministers in charge of development cooperation in the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and Germany in 1997–8, and what they did together to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality in the war against global poverty, starts with a short discussion of their background. This is followed by a discussion of the political situation and the different government arrangements that determined development policy in their countries at the time. The last part of the chapter reviews the beginnings of their collaboration which focused on ensuring that the debt relief provided to highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) in programmes supported by the World Bank and the IMF resulted in actually lifting people out of poverty.

A Coherence Deficit

Policy coherence for development involves the systematic establishment of mutually reinforcing policy action across government departments and agencies to promote poverty reduction and sustainable development. Coherence was a central theme of the U4 from the very beginning of their collaboration. This chapter discusses U4 efforts to promote policy coherence to deal with three issues: first, it addresses conflicts between aid objectives and developed country trade policy. Subsidized agricultural exports from the USA and Europe wreaked havoc on assistance programmes trying to increase production and incomes of poor farmers in Africa. Second, it discusses U4 efforts to ensure that poor countries were able to use aid money to buy goods or services from the least expensive source and were not forced to buy only from the donor—whose producers may not have been competitive. The final section discusses coherence between environment and development concerns as they emerged in the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.

The Legacy in Troubled Times

The deep crisis which afflicted the developed countries in 2008 ushered in a new era with complex impacts on development cooperation. In 2015 the UN was able to celebrate the achievement of substantial progress in meeting the MDGs and to set up a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be achieved by 2030. But the crisis resulted in tight budgets in several European countries and led to reductions in their aid flows as well as changing attitudes towards economic assistance. Developing country needs also changed with emerging powers needing less aid and fragile states receiving greater international attention. The combination led to a variety of new aid practices and forms of collaboration which affected aid effectiveness, some adversely. This chapter reviews international cooperation for development as well as the U4 aid programmes during the past decade in order to gauge the relevance of the U4 legacy to the continuing challenges of eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development.

The Long Transition

Herfkens and Short left their cabinet positions in 2002–3, the former because of a government change, the latter over disagreement with the government’s policy in the Iraq War. But Johnson stayed in office until 2005 and Wieczorek-Zeul until 2009, pushing for implementation of the U4 agenda in different contexts and with different partners. They continued to collaborate with each other, the UK, and the Nordics, on specific issues. Thus, while a systemic and fully fledged U4 cooperation never re-emerged at the political and ministerial level, there was a transition over time. The U4 did not disappear from the international scene as much as they faded away as a ministerial group. This chapter reviews this transition roughly over the period 2003–8, discussing key aspects of international cooperation for development: the Rome–Paris–Accra accords on Aid Effectiveness, the UN 2005 Millennium Development Goals Review, the Doha Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations; changes in HIPC, the Doha Review Conference on Financing for Development, and other aspects of international cooperation over this period.

The Future

Much has changed since the Utstein Four burst onto the international scene twenty years ago: a resurgent nationalism and xenophobia are undermining efforts to address global problems. Yet, the world today in many respects is a better place than it was twenty years ago: the share of the global population living in absolute poverty is the lowest in human history; people are better educated and nourished, and live longer and healthier lives. Many challenges remain: while global inequality has declined, within country inequality has increased; women still fare worse than men in practically all aspects of the human condition; and climate change is inexorably marching on, threatening the very existence of humankind. Still, it has been said that a peaceful earth inhabited by about ten billion people without anyone suffering poverty is not a wild fantasy. It is feasible. That is what the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are about. Among the many things the U4 were credited with was their contribution to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. The last chapter tries to draw lessons from the U4 experience of twenty years ago that can be useful in addressing the future challenges humanity faces in achieving the SDGs.

Poverty has a Woman’s face

The global impact of four women Ministers of Development on empowering women and eradicating their poverty was varied, multidimensional, and substantial but difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy. Their very existence and actions as a group had an important demonstration effect in empowering women in developing countries. Though they did not launch a joint ‘gender’ initiative as such, they each took many initiatives in their national development policies to raise the profile of gender issues, increase women’s empowerment, and reduce their poverty. They also worked together to support international undertakings aimed at improving women’s access to education and health care, and empowering them on issues of family planning. More broadly they supported initiatives on women’s rights and strengthening their status in society. This chapter starts with a short review of their efforts to empower women before they became ministers. It then presents examples of their efforts as Development Ministers at the national level as well as in support of global initiatives in which one or more of them were involved.