Swiss coherence watchdog needed

Gilles Carbonnier, how do you assess Switzerland's contribution to promoting the millennium goals?
Gilles Carbonnier: There are three dimensions: the financial contribution, the quality of development aid and the coherence of the overall policy. Financially, Switzerland is indeed spending more today on development assistance. Yet a closer look reveals that this is not primarily advancing the millennium goals. The increase is due mainly to the fact that assistance to asylum seekers within Switzerland and debt relief measures are being computed as aid. Switzerland needs to make a special effort in this regard. As a first step, it should increase its assistance to 0.5 per cent of gross national income, at the same time ensuring that the additional funds are in fact being used to promote the millennium goals.

Is the quality of its development assistance what it should be?
The quality of Swiss assistance is relatively good. For example, it has rightly continued its programmes in agriculture, whilst other donor countries are neglecting them. Switzerland's bilateral aid has specific strengths that should be preserved. What is mainly under discussion today is the share that should go towards multilateral cooperation. It is clear to me that the major global challenges must be tackled multilaterally. It seems artificial to me to want to cap the share of multilateral aid.

The picture is not as bright when it comes to coherence in Switzerland's policies.
As is the case with other donor countries, much needs to be done in this regard. For the effectiveness of aid is highly dependent on what is being done in other policy areas that impact the poor countries. Take the example of agricultural policy: however massive the support given to agriculture in poor countries, it is all but pointless if their farmers are unable to export their products or, if on account of export subsidies in the industrialized countries, they are unable to obtain reasonable prices in their own countries.

Do you see Switzerland's greatest coherence problem in its agricultural policy?
No. There are various areas in which policy is contradictory and at odds with the aims of development policy, and poverty reduction in particular. Agricultural policy and agricultural trade policy are important. But I do not have background information needed to be able to say that they are more significant than Switzerland's policy on migration, patent protection, global warming, weapons exports, the financial centre or any other area. There are studies showing that problems of coherence do exist. So far however, there has been no in-depth research rigorously showing the consequences of this or that policy.
Despite awareness of these contradictions, little has happened so far.
In 1994 Switzerland played a pioneering role on the international stage with the approval of the North-South Guidelines. In it, the Federal Cabinet laid out the framework for a development policy that would encompass not just development assistance but the totality of relations with the South. One could be justifiably proud of the country at the time. But Switzerland then went to sleep whilst other mostly northern European countries took concrete steps to improve coherence.

Why?
Perhaps it has to do with the political system and its many consultation mechanisms within the administration and the government. We discuss the problem more at a technical level, among specialists. In Holland, Norway or Sweden the topic of coherence is discussed systematically at the policy level.
Yet another problem: those affected, those who would benefit from greater coherence do not have the vote in Switzerland and cannot express themselves directly, in contrast to other interest groups such as the private sector or farmers. Development organizations like Alliance Sud have an important role to play in this regard – they must channel the voice of the poor.
It is also important to put specific mechanisms in place to improve coherence.

Have you specific suggestions?
In Switzerland there is hardly any clarity within the entities concerned as to how coherence should be improved and who should do it. Things are different in the European countries mentioned earlier. They have an office or a commission that monitors development policy coherence during legislative discussions and in political decision-making. But that also calls for practical expertise: what is the best way to influence policy, how can development interests be brought into the picture? The official development agencies have hardly bothered about this in the past, it was not in their genes, as it were.

This could be a challenge for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
Let us take migration policy, where the problems of coherence are complex. It is encouraging that the SDC now has a global migration programme. This will enable it to improve its expertise and its understanding of the connection between migration and development and work towards a Swiss migration policy that is fairer to poor countries. One does have to wonder though, whether we do not need an additional body that would be responsible for issues of coherence. It would need to have a strong position vis-à-vis the various offices in the administration.

A kind of watchdog that would systematically scrutinize Swiss policy on the South for its «development compatibility»?
It would have to analyse the developmental consequences of new laws, ordinances and mandates in international negotiations and explain them to the parliament. That would open the way for a genuine public debate on the problems of coherence. Sweden and Germany recently introduced such a mechanism. In Switzerland we have something similar for the EU in that every new law is scrutinized for its compatibility with the EU-policy. Why not introduce the same thing for «development impact»?

Interview by Michèle Laubscher and Pepo Hofstetter, Alliance Sud
More on Gilles Carbonnier

Interview published in: Alliacne Sud News No. 64, Summer 2010

Box

How many ways to the coherence

Development policy coherence can be improved by means of various mechanisms. In 2006, Norway appointed an independent commission to analyse conflicting objectives in various policy areas and make recommendations. Since 2002 an office in the Dutch Foreign Ministry has been examining how the country's policies and those of the EU impact developing countries and jointly with other ministries has been working out the Dutch positions for negotiations within and outside the EU.
Sweden has gone the furthest, passing a law in 2003 making all ministries responsible for coherence. It is incumbent on them to ensure that their policies contribute to the development of poor countries and to find solutions for conflicting objectives. Every year the government gives an account to parliament of the progress made and sets the priorities for the future.

Michèle Laubscher, Alliance Sud