Donor support key to Sudan post-war reconstruction
Jan 18, 2006 (NAIROBI) — A year after the signing of a peace agreement that ended the 21-year civil war which ravaged southern Sudan, its fledgling government looks to donor support as a means of achieving real peace on the ground.
Of the US $4.7 billion requested by the United Nations for global humanitarian aid in 26 countries in 2006, some $1.5 billion is earmarked for Sudan alone. Funding the initial post-war recovery and development plan for Sudan, according to the Joint Assessment Mission (JAM), will cost an additional $7.8 billion.
Donors have started to pour large amounts of money into the country, and this gives them a substantial amount of leverage over the content of humanitarian and reconstruction programmes.
Increasingly, observers as well as donors note that good donorship goes beyond giving aid and extends to being an advocate for real change. Influential donors, they claim, should use that leverage to break cycles of civil war, violence or bad governance.
A major donor who requested to remain anonymous said that more coordinated and constructive pressure by the international community, in addition to financial support, was crucial to consolidate a sustainable peace in Sudan. Donors, he said, should use their political clout to influence the policies of countries they help.
“We are too soft, and we don’t attach enough conditions to our assistance,” the donor added. “I don’t see any progress with regard to objecting against and trying to reduce the demolitions and forced displacements around Khartoum, the lack of cooperation with the ICC [International Criminal Court] or the continued aggression in Darfur and lack of good faith towards reaching solutions there.”
“Politically, it was a disgrace that Darfur was neglected in 2003 in order to save the CPA. In 2004, the violence in the Shilluk Kingdom [in central Sudan] – described by some as being a mini-Darfur – continued to be ignored by and large for the same reasons,” he said.
Need for coordination, political pressure
Jan Eijkenaar, coordinator of the Southern Sudan Programme for the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Directorate General (ECHO), said that many factors compromise the effectiveness of post-war recovery efforts in Sudan. Because the donor community was heterogeneous, he said, coordinating the disparate sources of funding in a constructive way was one of the most significant challenges.
“Funding is not the main constraint in Sudan,” Eijkenaar observed. “It is a lack of implementing capacity, ongoing insecurity and the fragility of the CPA as well as real inclusive informed strategy and prioritisation setting.”
He said that the UN Work Plan 2005 for Sudan had tried to develop a common framework for all kinds of funding that would set priorities and allow for centralised decision-making.
A lack of consultation with Sudanese stakeholders, however, had resulted in a disconnect between plans, realistic funding support and the actual feasibility to deliver and implement the plans, he said.
Because of Sudan’s unresolved, fragile political context, donors were hesitant to fully address needs, prioritise activities, recognise the risks and have contingency plans in place.
“Organisations can’t deal with the multiple, ongoing big emergencies in Sudan as a whole,” Eijkenaar noted. “The Darfur emergency, for instance, is dealt with almost separately from the other regions. As a result, approaches to the variety of issues and emergencies in this same country, Sudan, tend to get compartmentalised.”
This compartmentalisation can pose a risk to additional humanitarian emergencies. The transitional areas between north and south Sudan got very little attention as a result and the same was true for the Beja area in the northeast. At the same time, little preparation was taking place to respond to a potential outbreak of war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
In addition, Sudan’s reconstruction agenda kept on being delayed by political wrangling over the implementation of the CPA, the death of John Garang, and by the fact that the new national and southern governments had only started to operate a few months ago.
“Of course there are all kinds of problems in the first year [after the signing of the CPA]. It is an incredibly complicated environment; probably more complicated than any other,” said Ishac Diwan, World Bank country director for Ethiopia and Sudan.
Multiple donors and funds
Sudan is not a poor country. Diwan noted that its 37 million population had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of around $32 billion, compared to a GDP of only $8 billion for the 35 million people of Ethiopia. This translates into a GDP of $800-$900 per capita, but it is very unevenly distributed.
More donor pressure on the Sudanese authorities was needed to address this imbalance, he said.
David Gressly, the UN deputy resident and humanitarian coordinator for southern Sudan, said donors had made some progress towards coordinating the new channels of both humanitarian and development funding.
Two Multi Donor Trust Funds (MDTFs), which pool resources from various donors into a common fund, provide harmonised development funding for programmes identified by the government of national unity and the government of southern Sudan.
A Basic Social Services Fund had been designed as an interim mechanism to ensure the support of social services during the implementation period of the MDTF.
The newly established Common Humanitarian Fund puts the money of participating donors under the direct control of the humanitarian coordinator.
“This will allow the HC [humanitarian coordinator] to allocate funds as the needs on the ground require and ensure there is an equitable distribution of assistance,” Gressly noted.
“The fund will avoid donors funding specific slices, rather than the whole cake and it will ensure a regional balance in assistance,” he added. “It is an equivalent of the MDTF for humanitarian assistance, but it will be able to disburse funds much faster.”
The Common Humanitarian Fund had been established specifically for Sudan and could serve as a model for other countries, he said.
Other innovations include the establishment of an Emergency Response Fund, which can issue funding commitments within 24 hours of a humanitarian emergency.
The Capacity Building Trust Fund administered by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), supports the operating expenses of the southern government as its new institutions are being established.
“Each of these tools has different capabilities. It is important to have multiple approaches, both short-term and long-term, to be able to cover the full extent of activities and programmes,” Gressly observed.
According to Gressly, the Sudan Consortium, comprising all major stakeholders in Sudan, will be the prime umbrella mechanism for donor coordination and the establishment of a national consensus on strategic priorities for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction.
However, the the Consortium was still in its formative stages, he added.
“It is a forum for transparency that will discuss security, humanitarian, development, and political issues and name and shame those parties that don’t deliver on what they agreed to do,” Diwan said.
“What will be crucial is the emergence of internal voices for change and accountability, in particular civil society organisations, the private sector, and political opposition parties,” he noted.
“You want to see gradual change in the political environment in the north and a good beginning in the south,” Diwan added. “We’ve been doing some of that, but we should do much more.”
(IRIN)