Peace & Stability Journal Peace & Stability Journal, Volume 6, Issue 3 | Page 16

Introduction At the November 4th Community of Practice on Aid Reduction and Local Civil Society workshop at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), experts from around the country and world gathered to discuss the impact of donor withdrawal on local civil society in states in transition. Understanding the impact of aid reduction and donor withdrawal is important to a wide variety of stakeholders, including donors planning for aid reduction, local civil society organizations adapting to drawdowns, and security personnel integrating civil society into their peacebuilding and stabilization efforts. The workshop highlighted the needs of all stakeholders for enhanced data on the scope, scale, and timing of aid reduction, and on civil society’s ability to adapt to reductions in aid. An expanded understanding of these data points can enable better planning processes for all affected parties, and facilitate the development of best practices for donors, civil society, and the security sector. There has been a noticeable pattern in foreign aid given to post conflict states; it is given rapidly and in large quantities in order to reduce violence, and then is noticeably reduced. Money seemingly flows into a country as a result of an initial reduction in violence, however investment dwindles over time, and is not apparently aligned to any metric, such as the continued reduction of violence or the success of post-conflict reconstruction. Foreign aid can cause more problems for the host nation by undermining local civil society. Afghanistan as an Exemplar Afghanistan is an example of the negative impacts of foreign aid and aid reduction. Immediately after 2001, Afghanistan received huge amounts of foreign aid, making it very dependent on external donors. Furthermore, corruption embedded within Afghan society made it difficult to track the actual utilization of foreign aid, and whether it was reaching its intended audience. The lack of structure and organization of Afghan civil society made it difficult for it to contribute to creating development and preserving peace. Civil society, which is a non-profit, non-governmental sphere of association and interaction, will help countries to maintain stability even after international aid is withdrawn by promoting sustainability, defining specific goals, and helping to maintain peace. Poor peacebuilding and reconstruction outcomes in Afghanistan made it susceptible to donor fatigue. In order to prevent host nations from becoming disorganized and dependent on foreign aid, and therefore prone to more issues like violence and corruption, these nations must build up their grassroots civil society organizations (CSOs), and maintain CSO and governmental transparency so that foreign donors will know exactly how their money is being used. This 14 will allow the host nation to preserve peace and continue development even after aid reduction. It is important to look to local civil society to facilitate this transition and prevent relapse into economic depression or conflict. A reduction of funding from aid programs forces local civil society to return to grassroots sources and become more self-sustaining. Causes of Aid Reduction The workshop participants divided into discussion groups to address issues related to aid reduction. The main groupings were: root causes of aid reduction, impact of decreasing aid and donor exit, and strategies for success. Within each group, there were smaller sub-groups in order to discuss particular issues in greater depth, as well as to gain more opinions from people of various backgrounds and expertise. Discussion of the root causes of aid reduction was divided into subcategories: internal public, external public, external private, and internal private. Public and internal causes of aid reduction include “flavor of the month” donor fashion, where a donor will frequently change where it distributes its aid depending on the areas in need at the time. Frequent changes of donor aid implies that aid will be retracted from one area or sector and sent to another based on the current trends of where aid is being sent. Withdrawal of military forces and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff can contribute to aid reduction. The lack of a military presence, particularly in a post conflict area, often causes a relapse into instability, which is a major security concern. Donors may retract aid from countries that cannot provide adequate military protection against direct threats to workers on the ground. If a country receiving aid meets or changes its development objectives, then the allocated funds may be rescinded in a particular sector, and never transferred to a different internal issue. Lastly, donor fatigue can lead to lessening in the amount of aid. Donor fatigue may be due to frustration in the lack of progress on a project, or the lack of significant change in the recipient country. The external and public causes of aid reduction were discussed in great detail, with a focus on absorptive capacity, macro geopolitics, and budget cuts. Donor’s perception of the country receiving aid contributes to aid reduction if the country appears to be wasting money, or if the government and CSOs are performi