What’s in a definition?

Change in the OECD’s definition of official development assistance will influence how UN & World Bank think about aid

For countries like our own, which are amongst the largest recipients of international development aid, it is surprising to see no attention given to a recent shift in the very definition of what foreign aid should include. This change in the definition of what aid comprises has taken place within the grouping of 34 countries known as the organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes amongst it, the most influential and significant donors of international aid.

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee had recently been debating what should count as development aid. The committee's longstanding definition of what constituted aid included funds given for development and humanitarian purposes only. However, some of the major OECD partners had been trying to broaden the formal definition of aid to include some security and defence spending as well. Major donor countries like the UK have now succeeded in lobbing the OECD to allow using their overseas aid budgets to support the military and security-related expenses within fragile countries.

In accepting this changed definition, the OECD asserts that the guiding principle of the overseas aid system will remain unchanged, which is to support the economic development and welfare of developing countries. By broadening its definition of aid, however, OECD countries may now use aid money to tackle violent extremism, based on the argument that such efforts are also a development activity, given that more than 90 per cent of terrorist attacks occurring in states with weak governance and poor human rights records. Under the new rules, official aid by OECD member countries can also be used to support the military in fragile countries, especially for protecting human rights or prevention of sexual violence. The change in definition would further enable providing training to military staff concerning human and gender rights. Rich countries can now also use aid money to finance use of military helicopters for delivering aid, during the outbreak of a pandemic or other disasters, which would obviously improve logistical capabilities in emergency situations.

No development practitioner denies the need for preventing violent extremism, increasing transparency and training military personnel to avoid human rights abuses, or using military support in times of emergency. Instead, it is the financing of such activities through development aid budgets, whose essential goal is to lift people out of poverty, which is considered problematic.

Anti-poverty campaigners rightly fear that development aid will lose its focus if the definition is widened and it would globally shift commitments away from the primary principle of tackling extreme poverty and other human development concerns. This new definition of what constitutes international aid would even allow rich countries to achieve their global targets on aid spending, even if they use the money for furthering their own geostrategic purposes. Allowing rich governments to disguise some defence spending as foreign aid could thus lead to an erosion of the already limited overseas aid funds.

The fears of development practitioners are also justified given the vast amounts of money already being spent on international military campaigns in comparison to aid allocations. Think, for example, of the money poured into financing the war and trying to build the military capacity of the Afghan and Iraqi governments in comparison to the amount of aid provided to help them improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Pakistan too has received billions of dollars in military hardware and for other security purposes, since 9/11.

According to the Center for Global Development, between 2002 and 2009, only 30 per cent of US foreign assistance to Pakistan was allocated for economic-related needs, while the remaining 70 per cent of it was in the form of security-related assistance. The Kerry Lugar Bill authorised a tripling of US economic and development-related assistance to Pakistan, but even then, development aid is still not a majority of total US assistance to Pakistan.

As it is, developing countries like our own spend much of their own GDP on military spending every year, compared to only a fraction of it being used to finance health, education or provision of other essential social services. TDear EUobserver readerSubscribe now for unrestricted access to EUobserver.Sign up for 30 days' free trial, no obligation. Full subscription only 15 € / month or 150 € / year.The OECD’s definition of what constitutes official development assistance is significant since it is this same definition which will influence how multilateral providers of aid including the UN system, and the World Bank, also think about aid. Moreover, a change in OECD’s definition could also signal a shift in spending priorities of developing countries as well, who could also justify a further squeeze on social spending to already bloated defence budgets based on the argument that security needs are, in fact, a part of the development agenda as well.

Instead, powerful countries, and the countries which are recipients of aid, should be scrutinising their existing military budgets and diverting funds from within them to help achieve some of the development-related security goals mentioned above, rather than the other way around. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2016.

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