Putting help where their mouth is

Malta is slowly becoming an aid donor and the Foreign Ministry launched the country's first ever draft development policy a few days ago. The policy lists as Malta's priority areas for development aid the Horn of Africa, Palestinian territories and Sri Lanka. Rosanne Zammit spoke to Foreign Minister MICHAEL FRENDO about the draft policy.

The Foreign Minister told Parliament last October that one way of fighting illegal migration was by raising development aid to the countries which the migrants fled in search of a better life.

The minister still believes this is the way forward and the draft development aid policy lists the Horn of Africa as the first priority area.

"To deal with the root cause of illegal immigration, one has to solve the poverty issue," Dr Frendo said. For it is this which pushes people to want to leave a situation of hopelessness.

"Therefore it is very important that while we are strong in the issue of illegal immigration we should also do our best in helping in the development of countries including in Africa.

"It is not only an issue of money, it is also an issue of good governance.

"There are people who say that a lot of money has been put into Africa and yet the results are not very visible. That is also an issue of good governance," Dr Frendo said.

He said one should ask where the money being given as aid is going, how is it being used, if it has reached the people in need and what has been done with it.

The draft policy states that an essential component in the allocation of aid will be cooperation in the repatriation and reintegration of illegal immigrants in their country of origin. Does this point to conditionality in aid?

Dr Frendo argued that more than conditionality, the policy is proposing interlinkage. He has been on record saying that development aid to signatories of the Cotonou Agreement should be conditional to countries respecting this agreement.

The Cotonou Agreement is a 20-year deal signed in 2000 between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific states with its underlying objective being the fight against poverty.

Article 13 lays down that when a citizen of the signatories is found illegally in one of the EU states, the country of origin would accept him back without the need for any other agreement.

"When Malta started saying there should be conditionality between development aid given by the EU and respect to article 13, a few eyebrows were raised.

"We said this because in our view we have to ensure that the countries of origin of illegal immigration will also shoulder their responsibilities."

The Cotonou Agreement, the minister said, burdened all signatories with international obligations and one such obligation was that contained in article 13. These countries should seriously apply what they signed up to, he insists.

Dr Frendo said that although conditionality had not been achieved, the European Commission has started discussions on article 13 with some countries in order to stress the need to enforce its provisions.

The minister clarified that Malta had never said that any condition should be placed on the giving of humanitarian aid. "If there is a disaster, if there is famine, if there is a situation where a country desperately needs help, we never said there should be any conditionality to that."

The Maltese government, Dr Frendo said, is not even proposing conditionality on development aid.

"We are stressing interlinkage. Interlinkage can be many things. It can mean we'll give you more development aid if you collaborate..."

Some within the EU spoke about applying article 13 as incentive rather than as a condition. "That is something we think should be pursued," he said. However, it is also an issue of good governance.

"We have to tell the governments they must fight criminal organisations. Criminal organisations are using people as if they were in the slave trade. They are making people pay to risk their lives. They are denuding countries of origin of a human resource, sending people to be poor in Europe.

"We much prefer to be in a position where we can help these people to be earning a decent living in their own country..."

Even those who are opposed to conditionality should take a very serious look at interlinkage, the minister said. "There is already a level of interlinkage or conditionality on development aid in the EU on political issues...

"Part of the aid a country gets is on a performance basis. Countries are assessed by the Commission as to whether they would have performed in terms of good governance, human rights, torture. If they are seen not to have performed, they are given less. This is interlinkage...

"What Malta is saying is that the performance basis part of development aid should also include the issue of migration," Dr Frendo said.

And although the EU has not formally accepted these arguments, the Commission is discussing article 13 with individual countries. This is already a step forward, Dr Frendo said.

He said that although Malta did not get the conditionality it had asked for initially, it had not stopped there.

"The EU is part of a negotiation and consensus building programme but in our own development policy we are saying we should see an interlinkage," he said.

In 2004, Malta donated the equivalent of 0.18 per cent of its gross national product for development, marginally higher than the 0.17 per cent aimed for 2010.

But a report by the European Network On Debt And Development had claimed that Malta's aid in 2004 had been "deceptively doubled" by the inclusion of its spending on refugees. Will the money Malta spends on illegal immigrants be classified as development aid?

Dr Frendo criticised the report saying it had been very unfair to Malta since considering money spent on illegal immigrants as development aid was in accordance with the Development Assistance Committee rules.

Asked about the trade barriers the EU had with developing countries, denying them almost 14 times what they received in foreign aid annually, Dr Frendo said:

"This is a question of trade policy. In other words, how do you deal in a globalised world with trade policies which enable countries to develop?"

Dr Frendo said the Valletta Declaration reached during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta last November was quite a bold step in asking richer countries to take into account the fact that there had to be fair trade for states to be developed.

However, no one could expect the European Union, the US or others to immediately move away from systems they have had for years.

The Doha Round, which so far has been unsuccessful and may even collapse, is trying to redress this balance in order to enable countries to join the system of trade and open up trade.

Malta, the minister said, is very much on the side of an open economy... "this is also in our strategic interest so we are not really taking very defensive positions but one has to understand that this has to be a gradual process".

"Although there is no deal on the table at the moment, the EU is very development-conscious.

"The issue is how do we manage the change. In this regard we have to find the best ways to get fair trade and not only free trade for developing countries."

The draft policy makes no mention of the importance of fair trade. So will the Maltese government be giving this its due importance?

Fair trade, Dr Frendo said, was one point that had to be bolstered in Malta's development aid policy. What we have now is a discussion paper and not the final product, he stressed.

"Malta is very interested in the fair trade concept for, at the end of the day, one cannot beat poverty by throwing money at it but by enabling people to develop their economy...

"This comes from fair trade, foreign direct investment, good governance, rule of law and lack of corruption. All these are very important aspects of development and this is an integral part of our development," he said.

Feedback on the policy, which is already being received, will be dealt with by the Development Unit after the closing date on August 15.

A proper policy will then be developed, discussed and endorsed by Cabinet. This will be done by the end of this year.

The paper will be reviewed and adjusted periodically.