Advocacy

GOAL campaigns tirelessly against corrupt and brutal regimes. It calls for total transparency and accountability in the handling and distribution of overseas aid. GOAL lobbies governments and other powerful institutions to implement the changes needed to effectively tackle the widespread corruption and oppression that deprives the needy of aid. GOAL’s advocacy work is driven by a desire to give a voice to the voiceless by continually reminding the global community of its obligations and commitments to the world’s poor and oppressed.

A new approach to development aid

In response to corruption and human rights abuses, GOAL advocates the adoption by donor countries of a direct aid model that we believe would yield substantially more efficient outcomes for the poorest of the poor than is presently the case.

GOAL proposes an entrepreneurial approach where the Irish Government would implement programmes directly in a small number of carefully chosen countries. Irish government representatives would work with governments, not through them, filling in where state capacity is restricted and offering lifesaving basic services to the population.

Recipient countries would be selected on the basis of stringent demand-side considerations such as humanitarian need and, crucially, a government’s commitment to poverty reduction and the upholding of human rights. Supply-side issues would include the availability of adequate long-term funding and the personnel to make a substantial engagement.

After selection(s) had been made, Irish managers would then enter a country and directly implement already mutually agreed projects, taking full responsibility for all matters related to the use of funds, such as hiring, purchasing, paying of contractors and staff, and so on.

In essence, the Irish government would act in the same way as a multinational corporation that is setting up an operation in a foreign country, using local labour, building local skills (including government capacity) and offering important services to the local population.

The corporation (“Ireland Aid plc”) would utilise its own management on the ground and be answerable to its shareholders, the Irish people and representatives of other interested stakeholders, such as those offering oversight on the apposite use of funding within the terms of the original agreed contract.

Corruption in the Developing World – what the experts say

“Does corruption impede development…of course it does. In 2004 a survey tracked money released by the Ministry of Finance in Chad intended for rural health clinics. The survey had the extremely modest purpose of finding out how much money actually reached the clinics – not whether the clinics spent it well, or whether the staff of the clinics knew what they were doing, just where the money went. Amazingly, less than 1 per cent of it reached the clinics – 99 per cent failed to reach its destination.”

Paul Collier, Professor of Economics, Oxford University and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economics.

“After decades of mismanagement and corruption, most African states have become hollowed out. They are no longer instruments capable of serving the public good. Indeed, far from being able to provide aid and protection to their citizens, African governments and the vampire-like politicians in charge are regarded by the populations they rule as yet another burden they have to bear in the struggle for survival.”

Martin Meredith, journalist, biographer and historian who has written several books on history and politics in Africa.