Summary: "Human Security and Aid Effectiveness: The EU's Challenges" - Speech by European Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner (26 October : London)
Speech by Benita Ferrero-Waldner,European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy ; Human Security and Aid Effectiveness: The EU's challenges ; Overseas Development Institute, London.
Mr Chairman,
Honourable Members of Parliament
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First let me thank Simon Maxwell and John Battle, the Overseas Development Institute and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development (APGOOD) for this kind invitation to talk to you.
I am very pleased to participate in your series of meetings on "What's Next in International Development?". This is a very timely topic as we digest last year's successes in the development arena and focus our efforts on ensuring those commitments become a reality.
I'm also pleased that you have invited an External Relations Commissioner to come and talk to you. Some in the development and foreign policy worlds still believe there is a hard and fast distinction to be made between development and foreign policy, or foreign and domestic policy. The truth is these distinctions are losing their meaning. Or perhaps I should say, they have already lost their meaning.
That was the logic behind the Commission's paper on "Europe in the World" published in June this year. We are aware that improving our performance as both a donor and a political actor requires an improved level of coherence between our internal and external policies; our different policy instruments; and between the different EU institutions and member states.
Not only will that make us a more effective donor, it will also better achieve our political objectives. For, as the UN's 2005 summit recognised, development, security and human rights are inextricably interlinked and achieving progress on one means achieving progress on all. And vice versa.
That recognition is encapsulated for me by the notion of human security, an idea of security which places people at the heart of our policies. Different definitions of human security have developed since the early 1990s, from the UN's Commission on Human Security to the Canadian, Japanese and Swiss contributions. People converged on human security from different angles - development, protection, prevention. Crises like Bosnia were instrumental in provoking new thinking about the
international community's approach.
But despite the different routes which brought us here, and the difference of emphasis from one approach to another, opinion has converged around what for me is the clearest and most useful definition: the comprehensive security of people, not the security of states, encompassing both freedom from fear and freedom from want.
But definitions and policy thinking is one thing. The question for donors and political institutions is: how to turn this important policy concept into a reality?
Much is already being done. Our own peacekeepers and those we fund through, for example, the Africa Peace Facility, are diminishing the likelihood of conflict, and so creating an important space for reconstruction and development. Our democracy promotion and election monitoring programmes, bolstered by our work on human rights education and our recent communication on Governance in the European development consensus, foster the kinds of societies which allow conflict to be dealt with through
the political system instead of violence.
We focus on food security; universal access to health and to education; the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis (TB) and other communicable diseases; and conflict prevention activities around water, energy and transport. We also tackle other threats to individuals posed by land mines, small arms and lights weapons, and support security sector reform.
Through innovative approaches like the Temporary International Mechanism to support the Palestinian people we try to ensure humanitarian support for people even when working with their government is not possible. Hence also the decision not to suspend humanitarian aid to the people of North Korea.
These are certainly important contributions to the human security agenda. But perhaps they are viewed as distinct actions, rather than part of an overarching human security programme. That is something to focus on for the future. Maybe we need to be more explicit in giving them a "human security" label.
We also need to address several concrete policy challenges:
1) We need to ensure proper attention is paid to both the conflict prevention and crisis management agendas. As Kofi Annan put it, we need to move from the culture of reaction to the culture of prevention.
Integrating the human security approach into our crisis management activities would be an important starting point - one idea would be to train all staff who participate in civilian response teams under the EU's European Security and Defence policy (ESDP) in human security. This would be a major contribution to bridging the gap between short term humanitarian crisis interventions and long term prevention and development activities.
But this should not be at the expense of our long-term conflict prevention and post-conflict work. New conflicts are most likely to occur in countries that have recently emerged from previous conflicts. So breaking this vicious circle is imperative to addressing the world's principal security challenges. That takes long-term, patient work to set the institutions in place to ensure grievances are dealt with through the political system, not violence.
2) I would like to see us pay more attention to the nascent concept of humanitarian disarmament. In addition to conventional disarmament activities, like arms control and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the EU needs to focus more efforts on addressing the day to day threats faced by millions of people around the world. That means small arms and light weapons, land mines, and explosive remnants of war. It is these weapons which cause the most death and injury
to people across the globe, and promoting their destruction makes an enormous contribution to human security.
3) The international community also needs to do more to focus on the most vulnerable populations, especially women and children. The Commission has some experience of supporting women's participation in peacebuilding in countries like Afghanistan and Columbia, but women's voices are still rarely heard in peace making talks.
We are also stepping up our work to implement EU guidelines on children and armed conflict, with demarches in target countries, clearer mandates in crisis management operations and support for UNICEF.
We need to build on our current experience and ensure more resources are focused on vulnerable populations in the future.
4) Turning to the macro level, another important mission for the future is supporting international humanitarian law. Faced with massive violations and the apparently limited power of the international community to prevent this from happening, the protection of civilians during conflict is a matter of great concern.
And whilst the number of conflicts and battle casualties in the world has fallen dramatically since 1945, where conflicts do occur they have a disproportionate effect on civilians, particularly the most vulnerable.
We need to focus on strengthening respect for international law, through public pressure and diplomacy; fighting impunity; and ensuring there are effective oversight mechanisms. The European Union has a good track record of support for international mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court. We should build on that experience and turn our attention to this new challenge.
5) At the global level, we have to tackle a phenomenon which has perhaps more power than any other to devastate people's security. There is no longer any need to make the case for determined international action against climate change. Without climate security, it will become increasingly difficult to guarantee national and economic security. And we are particularly conscious of developing countries' vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change due to changing patters of
rainfall, food production and freshwater supplies.
The UK has been at the forefront of ensuring the threat of climate change is taken as seriously as it deserves. I look forward to discussing this important topic with Margaret Beckett when I meet her this afternoon. She and Prime Minister Blair have been powerful advocates of both the immediacy and sheer scale of the problem, and of the need for the foreign policy community to put it at the centre of our concerns.
The challenge is finding a global long-term solution which is technically feasible, economically affordable and morally just. The EU can make an important contribution, and its leaders committed themselves to doing just that at their Summit in Lahti last weekend. In the last two years we have engaged intensively with our partners around the world, bilaterally, regionally and multilaterally. We have a structured partnership on climate change with Russia, India and China, and yesterday saw the
inauguration of our formal dialogue with the United States. It features in our discussions with other regions around the world. And we will soon be launching bilateral discussions with South Africa, Brazil and South Korea.
We want to share our expertise on natural resource management, energy efficiency and the environment. And to work towards a post-Kyoto framework for addressing climate change at the multilateral level. Our forthcoming Green Paper on international climate policies is a step in this direction. We also want to step up cooperation with partners like China and India on energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, setting the global standards.
Because we believe the right global approach to climate change would help meet other challenges like security, migration, natural resources and food security.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The development community is clearly shifting towards a greater understanding of the complexity and inter-connectedness of the issues we face, and away from a narrow focus on levels of aid.
But development assistance - what form should it take, how much should there be, who gets it and how best to spend it - remains a vital issue.
The EU wields a major influence on development. It is the world's largest donor of official development assistance. European Commission aid alone now exceeds World Bank ODA. Altogether the EU will provide two-thirds of all aid by 2010. We are a serious development actor. But we want to go further, to maintain our reputation as world leaders in this field. So last year the EU committed itself to increase development aid to 0.56% of GDP by 2010, and to reach the recommended aid target of 0.7% by
2015.
I know there's a lively debate in the development community about the purpose of EU assistance and its relationship with poverty alleviation and meeting the millennium development goals.
There is no doubt about our commitment to the MDGs or to poverty alleviation. That is the primary objective of the European Consensus on Development. Over half of the EU's commitment to increase aid will go to Africa and we will continue to prioritise our support to the least developed and other low income countries.
But that's not the whole story of EU aid. Some EU assistance is not designed exclusively or primarily for poverty alleviation, such as our assistance for the enlargement countries, for the Western Balkans or for countries in our Neighbourhood. Why? Because our Member States have decided that assisting these countries is important for their political, economic and social development, and for the EU's own long term interests.
Other political realities also dictate spending - we need to respond to crises and challenges like Iraq and Afghanistan. That means making money available for reconstruction and rehabilitation. Our reconstruction programme in Iraq has been successful. And let's be clear, our Member States are asking us to do this.
It is also important to remember that assisting these countries does not stop us from addressing the needs of the poorest communities. As an example, as we programme our assistance for the Mediterranean countries we will be guided by the conclusions of last year's Euro-Mediterranean Summit, which prioritised the fundamental needs of the region as set out in UNDP's Arab Human Development report. The same basis was used for our EU Strategy for Africa.
Part of the solution is to be clearer about the purpose and destination of EU funds. We have tried to reflect this in the structure of our new financial instruments. The Stability Instrument is designed to address security and political challenges, alongside an increased CFSP budget. We've clearly ring-fenced the budget for middle income countries through the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument. The Development Cooperation Instrument and the European Development Fund provide a clearer
basis for promoting our development goals and a new system of resources, using a needs-based allocation of funding to ensure money goes to the right places.
Our next challenge is to improve the way we programme our assistance. If we want to improve our coherence and effectiveness, shouldn't we be coordinating our programming much more tightly? But that requires tough decisions from member states about programmes and national priorities, and tough choices about who gets visibility.
We are also ready for a constructive discussion about working with other mechanisms for example the European Investment Bank's loans programme for middle income countries.
But there again, our challenge is in setting clear priorities and sticking to them. Some Member States have been pushing the Commission to look for more imaginative ways of supporting middle income countries' development needs. This year we came up with a proposal to do just that, by extending the EIB's lending facilities to a broader group of countries including Latin America and the EU's neighbours. The response from Member States has not been wholehearted support, but I am hopeful with
Foreign Ministers' intervention we will reach an agreement that keeps the lending amounts at reasonable levels.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
To meet the challenges we face in the world, spanning the fields of human rights, security and development, the EU and the international system as a whole needs to better recognise the fact that we need cross-cutting, comprehensive approaches. Most importantly of all, we need to draw the operational conclusions to ensure that in our policy development and project implementation we fully respect this philosophy. And we need to ensure that the way we are spending, allocating and thinking about
aid matches the way in which we know the world works.
The additional coherence this will bring will improve our performance as both a political actor and a responsible donor.
And it will ensure that we face up to the tough decisions necessary to guarantee a sustainable future for all. As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises put it, "It may sometimes be expedient for a man to heat the stove with his furniture. But he should not delude himself by believing he has discovered a wonderful new method of heating his premises."!
I look forward to your comments and questions.
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