Wen men of honor promise to do something, you can expect that they will. But when governments pledge money for international causes, unfortunately, there is no certainty that the funds will be forthcoming, even in part.
During yesterday’s tsunami aid summit in Jakarta, there was an awkward suspicion in the corridors that by no means all the vast amounts of governmental aid already promised might materialize. Nobody cared to articulate the concern publicly because there is a sense that because the devastation of the tsunami dwarfs any other modern disaster, the substantial sums of money promised will in fact arrive. If they do, it will be unusual. Many governments have a patchy record on honoring their pledges of money and aid, as the people of Afghanistan have discovered to their cost.
When rival Afghan groups met in Bonn in 2001 to agree to work together to overthrow the Taleban, Western governments promised generous development aid. With the Taleban’s ouster the following month the pledges began to roll in. Initially almost $4 billion was involved. In the event, a very little of that money has ever been seen by the Afghan government. It took three more years before Hamid Karzai, then interim president, was able to announce that as a result of new talks with donor nations, his country was slated to receive $8.2 billion in the three years to 2007. He had originally sought pledges of a minimum of $11 billion, perhaps on the wise basis that since only a fraction would be delivered, it would be better to aim high. It remains to be seen how much of the latest pledged aid materializes.
The problem is that politicians, whose every move and comment are now followed by the media, too often succumb to the temptation to make headline-grabbing announcements. Caught up in the mood of the moment, whether it is the euphoria of a country’s liberation or the horror at a catastrophe like the Asian tsunami, it is all too easy to make newsworthy pledges of aid. It is not as if their government will need to sit down and write out the check straight away. They know that the aid must be targeted and its disbursement overseen. Because of local disorganization, there may simply be insufficient legitimate projects to absorb the pledged funds. Until there are, the promises can remain not honored and as time moves on and the media focus slips away from the aid story, there will be less and less incentive for them to push for the projects on which their promised money will be spent.
Though it seems unthinkable at the moment, the Asian tsunami will in due time slip from the headlines. There will be other big projects with which politicians will want to be associated, promising to spend their taxpayers’ money. It was no doubt with this in mind that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan insisted yesterday in Jakarta that donors needed to start honoring their pledges by providing an immediate $1 billion in cash for urgent use. Maybe now is the time for the UN to open a proper accounting of all donor pledges and if all the money is not forthcoming in due time, ask why the promises have not been honored.
