Food Aid and Human Security

Edward Clay, Olav Schram Stokke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780714650845
• eBook ISBN: 9781136334559
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Food aid is historically a major element of development aid to support longer-term development, and the primary response to help countries and peoples in crisis. This examination of food aid focuses in particular on institutional questions.

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The Changing Role of Food Aid and
Finance for Food

EDWARD CLAY AND OLAV STOKKE

I. INTRODUCTION

1. A Changed Environment: The International System and Trends in Aid Policy

The last decade has seen fundamental changes taking place in international relations. The international system which is gradually replacing the bipolar system of the post-Second World War period is still in the making. Although important features may be identified, the emerging picture is complex and contains ambiguities. The situation is characterised by mounting globalisation, particularly in the economic field, driven by a revolution in technology and communications. Within some fields, military power in particular, the US hegemonic status has become more transparent and more widely recognised than before. Although a hegemony within this core area will have a spillover to other areas of international politics, this is the case only to a certain degree. Much of the so-called globalisation materialises within regional confines. An important characteristic of regionalism is that it tends to countervail global hegemony by a single power.

The end of the Cold War has not led to a more stable world system — removing tensions and violent conflicts. Indeed, to a certain degree, the opposite appears to have been the case. Although the old bipolar system tended to extend the East-West conflict to the South through the support provided by the superpowers to their clients, fuelling violent conflicts (often conflict by proxies), the opposite was also the case: because of the fear of escalation, conflicts were prevented from erupting into violence. With the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and its hegemonic power, old conflicts that had been contained within the bipolar system surfaced, often with a cultural basis (ethnic nationalism). ‘New’ conflict patterns have come to the fore: whereas previously conflicts between states attracted most attention, a large number of low-level conflicts within states, some of a high intensity, have become the focus of attention. Intra-state war is increasingly seen as a major threat to development and human security. As noted, experiences — in Europe and in the South — have demonstrated that violent conflicts may, in the course of weeks, destroy material resources that have taken generations to build, cause immense human suffering, make millions of innocent people refugees in their own or neighbouring countries, cause states to collapse and wreck societies [Stokke, 1997: 196].¹

Economically, aspects of globalisation include the continuing liberalisation of international trade and the rapid growth of global financial markets. All are underpinned by the minimally regulated communications system that permits 24-hour trading and quickly spreads news of extreme events — economic shock, natural disaster, political violence. The liberalisation process also involves a shift to more wholly market-based economic activity, with declining state intervention at the national level. These changes have been more far-reaching in many developing countries of the ‘South’ and the ‘economies in transition’ of the former Soviet bloc. Institutionally, the process of liberalisation has been given form in the ratification of the GATT Uruguay Round. That agreement resulted in the transformation of GATT into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which had its first meeting in Singapore in December 1996. The full implications of these changes are yet to become clear in terms of the breadth of the liberalisation process or the full impact on inter-state economic relationships.

Another trend is the search by Western industrial countries for greater policy coherence vis-à-vis the developing countries. These efforts go beyond the field of development co-operation; they include macroeconomic policies, trade, export credits, direct investments, agriculture, the environment, migration (including policy on refugees), the arms trade and drugs. The issue was put strongly on the agenda by the high-level meeting of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1991 [OECD, 1992: 31 ff]. However, centrifugal forces are also at play, related, in particular, to conflicting interests within and between states and regions [Forster and Stokke, 1999].

This transformation of the international system is also affecting aid policy in various important ways. One of the previous superpowers has disappeared as a provider of development assistance, with serious consequences for its clients in the South who, in addition, have lost both political support and a market for their exports. The disintegration of the USSR has transformed several of its component units into aid recipients, competing with the South for shrinking aid resources. As for the other superpower, an important component of its rationale for providing development assistance has disappeared: as noted, US aid had from the very beginning been driven by security interests [Griffin, 1991; Lancaster, 1993; Zimmerman and Hook, 1996]. This may explain the decline of US development assistance from a level that already in the 1980s was low compared with other OECD countries, in terms of official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of GNP. However, as argued elsewhere [Stokke, 1996], for some Western small and middle powers, developmental objectives have been, and still remain, the primary motive for providing aid. Such objectives are closely related to the humanitarian imperative, as expressed in relief operations. Consequently, their ODA has not declined to the same extent — if at all. However, ‘the ethical imperative’ has also always been an important basis for the remaining superpower in providing development assistance beyond its rhetoric. Nevertheless, the general trend in the 1990s has been one of declining total ODA — in absolute and relative terms.

In the 1990s, development assistance increasingly became an instrument for promoting policy reform in developing countries. To some extent, aid has always been used as an instrument for promoting the national interests of the donor country; as noted, this used to apply, in particular, to the major powers. In the 1980s, intervention in the domestic politics of developing countries, using aid as a tool, was no longer restricted to the major powers. Gradually the whole donor community adopted this approach, with particular reference to first generation conditionality: reform of economic policy was set, openly and transparent, as a condition for aid. The Bretton Woods institutions were in the driving seat. In the 1990s, triggered by the disintegration of ‘the Second World’, the scope has broadened. Second generation conditionality has brought systemic reforms as well as reforms within major policy areas to the fore as conditions for providing aid [Stokke, 1995]. This trend towards growing intervention in the internal policy of developing countries has been highly controversial from both normative and instrumental perspectives. However, although the parallel emphasis on ‘participation’ and ‘ownership’ may indicat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• EADI BOOK SERIES 24
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
• Introduction: Food Aid and Human Security
• 1. The Changing Role of Food Aid and Finance for Food
• 2. Food Prospects and Potential Imports of Low-income Countries in the Twenty-first Century
• 3. The Uruguay Round, the Marrakesh Decision and the Role of Food Aid
• 4. The Food Aid Convention: An Effective Safety Net?
• 5. Humanitarian Crises: Food Security and Conflict Prevention
• 6. Humanitarian Crisis and Conflict: Food Assistance and Nutritional Security Issues
• 7. Humanitarian Crises and Natural Disasters: A SADC Perspective
• 8. Food Aid for Development? A Review of the Evidence
• 9. The World Food Programme (WFP) and International Food Aid
• 10. Is There a Future for the WFP as a Development Agency? Or Does Food Aid Still Have a Comparative Advantage?
• 11. EU Food Aid and NGOs
• 12. Developing Codes of Conduct for Food Aid: Experience from the Sahel
• 13. Follow-up of the Code of Conduct of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
• 14. The Promotion of a Human Rights Perspective on Food Security: Highlights of an Evolving Process
• 15. Revisiting the Food Aid Debate: Taking a Closer Look at the Institutional Factor
• 16. Food and Human Security: Retrospective and an Agenda for Change
• Glossary
• Notes on Contributors
• Index