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Harmonisation & democratisation / Comment

Nicaragua: a rude awakening for the Paris Declaration

21/11/2007 By Nils-Sjard Schulz

Photo by Robert Croma

Less than a year before the Third High Level Forum on aid effectiveness in Accra (Ghana), efforts to put the Paris Declaration [see full text of the agreement] into effect in Nicaragua have hit a wall, largely thanks to the new Sandinista government’s unwillingness to pursue constructive coordination with donors.

Its approach to ownership, which has authoritarian tendencies, has provoked concern among donors involved in the processes of harmonisation in this Central American country which, until late 2006, was considered an important testing ground for coordination.

These facts have come together with the withdrawal of Swedish aid - one of the precursors to the aid effectiveness agenda in Nicaragua – which has drawn strong criticisms from the political class in Managua.

This Comment article analyses the attitude of the Sandinista government and the significance of Sweden’s decision to withdraw, before presenting a set of preliminary findings that suggest some of the understandings of the aid effectiveness agenda may need to be reconsidered.

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Keywords

Aid effectiveness Donors Governance Harmonization Latin America & Caribbean Nicaragua

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Bio author: Nils-Sjard Schulz

Masters Degree in Social Sciences at the Humboldt University Berlin and specialization in International Relations at the Complutense University Madrid. Complementing his research on aid effectiveness, he works as an independent consultant. Recently, he collaborated with the Development Assistance Committee in the evaluation of the Paris Declaration (thematic study on aid effectiveness and development effectiveness), the 2008 Survey on Monitoring the Paris Declaration and the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.