Fortunately, the CNCD report on Belgian Development Aid [1] adds to the pile of studies that put pressure on those who still believe in the generosity of ODA donors to the so-called developing countries (DCs). Because behind this display of generosity - which is supposedly rising - lies a growing diversion of aid to the donor countries themselves for the implementation of restrictive migration policies that, incidently, violate international law. This aid diversion mechanism, which also works to the benefit of the private sector of the DAC’s western member countries, turns rich countries into the first recipients of their own aid, to the detriment of the populations of the poor countries that are supposed to be the first beneficiaries.

Global ODA reached $142.6 billion in 2016, but for whom?

A celebration of the OECD that must be qualified immediately in light of the figures, first and foremost because the poorest countries, called “least developed countries” (LDCs) in Western institutional jargon, do not benefit from this increase but instead register a decrease of 3.9% of the aid allocated to them between 2015 and 2016 [2]. Second, because the overall donor average of 0.32% of GNI remains far too low, representing less than half of the 0.7% of GNI target, an objective officially recognised by a UN resolution... in October 1970! Only five out of 29 countries have reached this milestone set more than forty-seven years ago [3]: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark, joined this year by Germany.

In addition, despite this increase in ODA, UNESCO warns that international aid for basic education, a first priority development, has decreased by 6% compared to 2010. Sub-Saharan Africa received half as much aid for basic education between 2002 and 2015, while the region accounts for almost half of all out-of-school children in the world.

Finally, note that erasures of debts are also recorded in ODA, but they do not correspond to a real transfer of resources but are simple accounting operations that allow donors to “inflate” ODA figures. In 2005 and 2006, debt relief for Iraq and Nigeria accounted for a large part of the increase in aid. In 2008, in service of the geostrategic stakes of the United States, the main recipients of aid were Iraq (12% of total ODA) and Afghanistan (4%) [4].

Reception expenses for asylum seekers accounted for in ODA

This rebound in ODA in 2016 is partly explained by a shift in aid that is increasingly mobilised to curb migration flows. Immigration flows from countries in crisis (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, many African countries beset by wars and famine [5] and other established dictatorships...), to which some of the largest contributors of ODA sell their weapons and send armed contingents, swell the ranks of asylum seekers, which results in an increase in “reception expenses”. However, a 1988 Development assistance committee rule authorises donor countries to record in the ODA certain expenditures on refugees during the first year following their arrival [6], such as expenses to ensure their transfer to the host country, reception centres for asylum seekers, emergency accommodation, social support services, food and training, even if these people are deported at the end of the process. Some states, like Greece, even include amounts allocated to control their borders!

Costs associated with taking care of asylum seekers increased by 27.5% between 2015 and 2016 to reach $15.4 billion, or 10.8% of total ODA in 2016. The share of aid to refugees thus averages 2.1% of net aid from DAC countries in 2008 to 10.8% in 2016 [7]. The explosion of these budgets, obviously spent in donor countries, turns the majority of European contributors into the first beneficiaries of their own aid. For eleven countries, migration management expenditure accounted for more than 10% of their ODA. Germany, Greece, Italy and Austria devoted more than 20%, still counted as ODA. For example, Germany, which in 2016 joined the club of countries that have reached the UN threshold of 0.7% of GNI, saw a doubling of the cost of refugees in the country compared to 2015, which artificially inflated its ODA budget. In Belgium, the “reception expenses” of asylum seekers included in ODA amounted to €349 million in 2016, or 17% of Belgian public aid as a whole. And this amount now exceeds the sub-total of government cooperation. With regard to France, the amount of definitive ODA declared to the DAC for the reception of refugees amounted to 422 million Euro in 2016 [8].

If the money mobilised does not contribute to the goal of poverty reduction and does not serve the development of the countries that ODA is supposed to help, the hardening of the asylum policy thus contributes towards artificially inflating the share of aid from the donor country. As the very height of cynicism, this deviation of aid benefits Western companies in the field of migration management, largely in the process of being privatised [9].

In comparison with other cash flows, this aid, which boasts of working towards development, represents very little. Despite the inconsistency of ODA in terms of migration policy, those who actually contribute more effectively to development, are the migrants who send three times more money than ODA to their country of origin. Indeed, despite a decrease for the second year in a row in money sent from migrants from developing countries to their countries of origin, this still reached $429 billion in 2016 (compared to $440 billion in 2015) [10], a sum 3 times larger than the ODA (142 billion). Without these contributions of migrants from Western countries to their families, the survival of a large part of the population of the developing countries would be even more compromised.

Jérôme Duval

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