Just days before the convening of today's international donor conference in Islamabad, a resolution tabled by Pakistan at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) calling for the mobilisation of international support for the medium and long term needs of the quake-hit areas, received unanimous approval.
Co-sponsored by 133 countries from all parts of the world, the resolution welcomed the donor conference and, aside from governments, also invited international and regional financial institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, to address reconstruction needs of the affected areas.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is in Islamabad to attend the conference and lend his personal clout to Pakistan's funding efforts. Yet, from a careful reading of the barometer of the international community's mood anyone would conclude that the outcome may fall well short of Pakistan's request for $5.2 billion.
There are at least two reasons that compel lowering of expectations. One obvious reason, which has already manifested itself in the slow and niggardly donor response to the UN and Pakistan's appeals for relief operations, is donor fatigue caused by two earlier natural disasters, the Asian tsunami and hurricane Katrina in the US.
The other is the timing of the appeal, which was ineluctable, of course. By this time of the year governmental budgetary allocations have already been made while the corporate sector is in the final quarter of the fiscal year. Nonetheless, since the rehabilitation and reconstruction work is to take a long time, they can still make pledges and disburse the promised money in due course.
In fact, as Afghanistan's donor experience shows, one such conference is not enough, there is need for a series of conferences in order to keep the donor interest alive. Besides, it is hoped that the UN Secretary General will also accept the UNGA's request to appoint a special envoy, as its resolution put it, in order to sustain, among other things, the political will of the international community to support medium and long-term rehabilitation, reconstruction and risk reduction efforts.
Some reports suggest that part of the aid money will be channelled through the NGOs. Apparently, the idea behind the move is that NGOs are more effective than government departments both in terms of efficiency and curbing corruption. Indeed, some of the local NGOs have already been doing a great job in the quake affected areas, but there are also others in the field that have a tainted track record.
It is understood that only those NGOs will be given monetary support to carry on their activities that have a proven record of experience. Still, it is imperative to ensure transparency. They must, therefore, be required to place their funding and expense details on their respective web sites. Before that they must also provide the same information to the government, which should initiate some sort of a parliamentary oversight.
Understandably, international donors have already asked the government to formulate a 'corruption mitigation strategy'. In this regard they have suggested that the armed forces' rehabilitation and reconstruction activities also be put under the purview of the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) as part of the regular budget audit, instead of the military audit, which is not subject to any parliamentary scrutiny.
They have also argued, and quite rightly, that the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee suffers from a big time lag while the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority is very weak. Hence the trust gap needs to be improved by extending the AGP's jurisdiction to all agencies involved in recovery operations, in particular the military operations.
Still the donors would keep a close watch on the various risk factors, and issue six-monthly monitoring reports. President Musharraf has offered to accept third party audit and has asked the multilaterals to nominate a panel of auditors for selection by the government.
Audit is a post facto exercise and if it is to be ensured that the whole process is transparent to begin with, then the Public Procurement Rules 2004 should be applied with full force. That should keep both the donors and the general public satisfied that the aid money is being spent on things for which it is meant and in a transparent manner.
At this point, however, one needs to wait with cautious optimism to see how much money the international community is ready to pledge and deliver. Often the gap between pledges and actual delivery is too wide. To rebuild the lives of people devastated by a calamity which has no precedent in modern history, is an urgent humanitarian obligation and any delay in it would amount to another tragedy of unpredictable consequences.
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