KAZAKHSTAN AND AZERBAIJAN AS DONORS OF HUMANITARIAN AID. HAS THE DIVERSIFICATION OF AID CHANNELS AND DONORS REACHED SOUTHERN EURASIA?
Keywords:
humanitarian aid; emergency relief; non-OECD donors; (re-)emergent donors; U.N. system; Kazakhstan; Azerbaijan; international aid system; political economy of aid.Abstract
Over the last decade, Azerbaijan and especially Kazakhstan have become the largest individual donors after Russia of official humanitarian aid among the republics of the former U.S.S.R. This article examines the quantities, channels, and underlying dynamics and interests of this aid and compares it with the wider global trend of the emergence or reemergence of aid donors outside the dominant OECD bloc. Azerbaijan and especially Kazakhstan want to translate their new economic capacity into political clout and international and regional initiative, including different ways and channels of soft power like aid. They thereby eclectically use elements, policy concepts, and institutions of the international aid system and attach aid to a conditionality that is not related to governance, human rights, or democratization, but to diplomatic and economic returns.
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References
See: Portal of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—Caucasus and Central Asia, available at
[www.unocha.org/rocca/financing/humanitarian-financing].
See: Ibidem; Regionalniy obzor gumanitarnogo finansirovania—Kavkaz i Tsentral’naia Azia, No. 8 and No. 9, 2013,OCHA Relief web portal, available at [reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/2013%20overview_russian18022014.
df].
For a historical overview of power balances in international aid, see: P. Hjertholm, H. White, “Foreign Aid in His-torical Perspective,” in: F. Tarp, Foreign Aid and Development. Lessons Learnt and Directions for the Future, Routlegde,London, 2002, pp. 80-102.
See: Th. Monnerais, “Humanitaire : la voie des émergents,” Alternatives Internationales, № 59, 2013, p. 56.
There is quite some irony in the term “non-traditional donors” that is often used for non-OECD donors, for at once it reflects how OECD donors have traditionally dominated the contemporary aid landscape, while not a few non-OECD donors,for example the OPEC countries of the Arab-Persian Gulf, have been aid donors for far longer and are more lavish than sev-eral DCD-DAC members.
R. Manning, “Will ‘Emerging Donors’ Change the Face of International Co-Operation?” Development Policy Review,No. 24 (4), 2006, p. 372.
See: T. Chahoud, “Süd-Süd-Kooperation—Chancen und Herauseforderungen für die internationale Zusammenarbeit,”Analysen un Stellungnahmen, No. 9, 2007, Deutsches Institut für Etwicklungspolitik.
See: E. Mawdsley, From Recipients to Donors: Emerging Powers and the Changing Development Landscape, Zed Books, London, 2012 (see also thematic issue “Les nouveaux donateurs” of Courier de la Planète, No. 84, 2007, pp. 26-46,and A. Hammer, L. Coterell, “Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid,” Humanitarian Policy Group reports, No. 20, 2005, Overseas Development Institute.
For a more detailed overview of the humanitarian donors to southern Eurasia until 2012, see: B. de Cordier, “The EU’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Policy in Central Asia: Past Crises and Emergencies to Come,” EUCAM Policy Brief,No. 29, 2013, p. 2, EUCAM portal, available at [www.eucentralasia.eu/uploads/tx_icticontent/EUCAM-PB-29-EN-EU-Hu-manitarian-Aid.pdf].
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [www.internal-displacement.org] and World Bank Development Indicators database [data.worldbank.org].
For an examination of Russia as a donor of humanitarian aid and emergency relief, see: A. Brezhneva, D. Ukhova,
Russia as a Humanitarian Aid Donor,” Oxfam Discussion Paper series, Oxfam International, 2013, available at [www.oxfam.
rg/fr/node/32310]; P.A. Gray, “Looking ‘the Gift’ in the Mouth: Russia as Donor,” Anthropology Today, No. 27 (2), 2011,pp. 5-8.
The sudden, one-off surge in the category “other former U.S.S.R. republics” in the year 2005 is due to primarily bi-lateral relief aid donations from Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova to countries affected by the South Asian tsunami (see: OCHA Financial Tracking Service database, available at [fts.unocha.org]).
In the same line, Kazakhstan, together with Russia, established the Eurasian Development Bank in early 2006, and in 2012 it obtained donor status with the Asian Development Bank.
For an examination of this sector, see: R. Pomfret, “Kazakhstan’s Agriculture after Two Decades of Independence,”Central Asia Economic Paper, No. 6, 2013, Central Asia Program, George Washington University—Elliott School of Interna-tional Affairs.
The Central Emergency Response Fund or CERF was formed in early 2006 as a permanent facility to rapidly mo-bilize aid, in particular for under-funded emergencies and for specialized U.N. agencies who deliver emergency relief and humanitarian aid like UNHCR, the World Food Program, and FAO, for example. It is administered by OCHA and contains some $480 million, $30 million of which are a loan facility and the rest grant funds. OCHA’s Emergency Response Funds,by contrast, have been created since 1997 for specific contexts or emergencies such as the Haiti earthquake or the Somali refugees and the drought in Kenya, to meet unforeseen needs. There are currently 13 such funds. Their budgets, which mostly fund NGO activities, usually do not exceed $10 million per year.
Cf. Th. Monnerais, op. cit.
The International forces in Afghanistan have also purchased supplies and goods from companies from Kazakhstan,including for humanitarian purposes.
Kazakhstan’s aid to China after the Sichuan earthquake and to Mongolia during the winter storms in 2010 must also be seen in the context of its active economic interaction and also, but to a lesser extent, ethnogeographic ties (i.e. the presence of Kazakh minorities in Xinjiang and Bayan-Ölgii) with those countries.
See: D. Rowlands, “Les donateurs ‘émergents’ et l’architecture de l’aide internationale au développement,” in: “Le meilleur des mondes des donateurs ‘émergents’, ‘hors-CAD’ et leurs différences par rapport aux donateurs ‘traditionnels’,” La Lettre du NORRAG, No. 44, 2010, pp. 29-31.
For a contextualization and case studies, see: E. Lundsgaarde, The Domestic Politics of Foreign Aid, Routlegde,Abingdon, 2012, pp. 21-42 ff.
See, for instance: W. Warmerdam, A. de Haan, The Role of Aid in Politics: Putting China in Perspective, Interna-tional Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, 2011; O. Morrisey, “Foreign Aid in the Emerging Global Trade Environment,” in: F. Tarp, op. cit., pp. 375-391.
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