How will the economic crisis affect international aid flows?

I was first alerted to the topic by this article, which warned in very strong terms against the risks of letting large aid recipients down.

And the prospects look bleak.

Beyond Official Development Assistance (ODA), which may shrink by 30%, we're also talking private donations (think Gates foundation, etc) as well as remittances from workers abroad.

The flow of money from expat nationals often supports a good part of the local population, and represents, interestingly, more than ODA and private foreign donations combined. We're talking a yearly flow of $ 300 bn.

Out of a dozen countries that receive at least 20% of their income from remittances, 9 are conflict/post-conflict locations: Lebanon, Burundi, Liberia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Moldova and Haiti.

And DDR projects (disarm, demobilise, reintegrate) are often contingent on financial benefits promised to those who lay their weapons - and they often don't lay them very far, despite best efforts to physically collect and destroy these weapons.

Add to this that some countries are planning on cutting expenses on UN Peacekeeping missions (which are normally financially stretched already - remember Rwanda 1994? At one point the whole UN mission had 2 functioning jeeps. 2.); further putting at risk the fragile peace situations where those missions operate. (and the Peacekeepers, for that matter).



International aid is often contingent on public approval and whims. A survey done in the US a few years back asking people about the percentage of their GDP that was allocated to foreign aid; responses had an average of 10-15%, some going as far as 40%.
The real answer is 0.15%. (Which is far below the OECD target of 0.7% of GDP).

Despite what seems to be a seriously interventionist new administration, I do not foresee US aid flows to increase any time soon. Nor anyone else's, given the current world mood of saving on 'unnecessary spending', despite the definition of 'unnecessary' being incredibly short-sighted.

The focus needs to be put on aid already pledged and not committed, and committed and not delivered.
This will bypass the need for new popular approval (in donor countries, that is) and has the benefit of having already been promised - a good argument for pressure.

Let me give you an example.
I started working in Palestine a few weeks after the December 2007 Paris conference where a whopping 7.2 billion dollars were supposedly pledged in assistance to the Palestinian territories. Which sounds awesome.
However:
about 0.8 billion of those pledges were ALREADY promised; the donor countries wanted to gain a little more publicity by passing them as new pledges. Grmbl, grmbl.

Of the remaining 6.4 bn, it is safe to assume that a third of that will never make it past the press declaration stage.
And of what will be signed in agreements with the Palestinians (a.k.a. "committed"), probably another third will never see the sunshine of the Levant.
So we're talking.. (counting on his fingers...) about 2.85 bn dollars. Let's say 3 bn. Be kind.
Reading the fine print of the Paris declaration and realising that the pledges are for 5 years, then we're talking less than $600 million per year.

Which is, well, significantly less impressive than $7.2 bn, isn't it.

What we need therefore is a good advocacy team on the recipient countries side to get rich countries to honour their pledges.