The DAC – part of the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) – is the group of 30
leading donor nations which set international aid rules,
known as Official Development Assistance (ODA).
As a result of UK leadership, donor countries at the DAC
meetings in Paris today agreed to work on a process which
could allow previous aid recipients to receive short-term
ODA support in the event of catastrophic humanitarian
crises, such as the recent hurricanes in the Caribbean,
even where their Gross National Income per capita would
normally rule them out of receiving ODA. This is a
significant decision.
Anguilla, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos are
all previous recipients of ODA. The DAC has also agreed
to work to create a new mechanism to re-admit countries
that had graduated from being eligible for ODA back to
the list of ODA-eligible countries, if their income per
capita falls low enough, for example as a result of a
catastrophic natural disaster or other crisis.
International Development Secretary said:
UK leadership has secured significant and important
progress in changing the international aid rules, as we
committed to in our manifesto. As a result of our
influence, we’ve made huge progress on ensuring
official development assistance can be used when
vulnerable nations are struck by crises or natural
disasters.
Today’s agreement is a real step forward. Progress on
this, and the other reforms we have confirmed today -
including boosting aid for UN peacekeeping missions -
show that by working patiently and constructively with
our partners we are able to drive through change and
modernise the rules.
This is significant and welcome progress and the head of
the OECD has backed the UK’s efforts on reform. The DAC
has also shown leadership and demonstrated that it can be
agile, politically-relevant and deliver for the most
vulnerable.
British leadership has today also delivered an important
set of wider reforms to the international aid rules –
including more than doubling the percentage of
contributions to UN peacekeeping missions that count as
aid, from 7% to 15%, and confirmation that 85% of UK core
funding to the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank will
count as aid. Together these changes mean that we have
confirmed over £100 million of aid spending this year can
be counted as aid and contribute to the 0.7 budget.
These successes are in addition to the important reforms
which were agreed last year, on making more security and
counter-extremism spending eligible to count as ODA.
Today has shown that reform of the ODA rules is possible
and demonstrates how the UK has driven through
much-needed change.
The UK is a firm champion of the rules-based
international system. As one of the few leading countries
to honour our promise to invest 0.7% of national income
as aid, it is in our interests to ensure that the
quality, poverty-focus and value for money of other
countries’ aid investments match our own high standards.
