Aid effectiveness in Malta's overseas development policy : trends and policy implications

Abstract

Renewed interest in ODA dynamics and effectiveness following the signing of the United Nations Millennium Declaration in September 2000, and the subsequent agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has brought with it a greater emphasis on transparency of disbursement procedures and the need to measure the impact of the allocated funds. This was further strengthened through the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, adopted at the end of the Fourth High-Level) Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in South Korea in 2011. This study provides an overview of the Overseas Development Aid scenario from the wider EU perspective, as a backdrop for its analysis of Malta's role and output as an emerging donor. The discussion focuses on the current challenges within the Maltese context, resulting in gaps hindering the formulation of a sound national development aid policy for the effective monitoring and measuring of the impact of disbursed funds. Having brought the existing difficulties to the fore, this dissertation seeks to assess how Malta's ODA Policy has integrated the principle of transparency as understood within the framework of the aid effectiveness field, and specifically looks into the allocation of funds for projects implemented by Maltese NGOs and other civil society organisations. lt presents an evaluation of the coherence of bilateral aid in general, and specifically of bilateral funds allocated to NGO projects with the central principles of the country's ODA policy, mainly in terms of geographic and thematic focus. It has sought to identify the existing lacunae in assessing and evaluating of the implementation of Maltese ODA policy.