The aim of aid policy is now that it should benefit Sweden.
The basis of Swedish aid policy has turned completely around. What used to be goals and what used to be avoided have switched places with each other. In 2003, a unanimous Riksdag decided on Sweden’s Policy for Global Development (PGU). The idea was that global poverty reduction and justice would not only be in the foreground for Sida, but that all authorities would contribute to realizing the global goals. The authorities would also regularly report on how they complied with the PGU.
At the end of last year, the government adopted two documents that reversed the cuts. It is about “Aid for a new era – Freedom, empowerment and sustainable development” and about the new regulatory letter to Sida. The first document constitutes a new reform agenda for aid policy, which was drawn up in closed negotiations between the Tidö parties without the political opposition, authorities and relevant organizations being given the opportunity to express themselves. The contrast compared to the broad support that characterized PGU is striking. The regulatory letter is in turn a specification of the reform agenda, where it is stated, among other things, that aid to Cambodia, Mali, Burkina Faso and South Sudan is to be phased out and that aid to Palestine is to be reviewed.
Do the Tidö parties not know about the persecution of Muslim Uighurs in China or of the Muslim Rohingya who fled Burma?
A common message in both documents is that the aid should be used to “protect Swedish interests”. Previously, all Swedish politics would promote global development. Now the goal is that aid policy (other policy areas are not mentioned) should promote Sweden.
In the new reform agenda, it is specifically highlighted that the aid should not only take place in cooperation with “Swedish business life” but also “confirm the economic and capacity-related flows back to Sweden and the Swedish economy”. A particular goal will be to “identify sectors where the interests of development cooperation and business coincide”. What has attracted the most attention is that the aid is also to be used to support Sweden’s increasingly restrictive refugee policy. Concretely, this means that aid must be used to “strengthen the conditions for re-use” and “counteract the root causes of regular migration”.
The Tidö parties have already abolished the one percent target and cut the financial allocations for aid. In other words, the ambitions are reduced in a double sense, both in terms of kroner and ören and through the new wording of aid’s goals and objectives.
One change, which is mostly mentioned in passing in the documents, is that the so-called core support to multilateral organizations, within for example the UN, is to be “limited”. It must be readily admitted that several of these have been sluggish, but it does not become more effective when countries act on their own. A better approach would have been to work for improvements in the multilateral organizations. Now there is a lack of ambitions and ideas about how joint global aid should develop.
Formulations about EU aid are just as ill-intentioned and limited. A central point is that Swedish priorities should have greater impact within the EU, but only such a priority is developed, namely to “promote Swedish business’s opportunity to contribute to EU-joint projects and win international tenders”. Another point concerns that more Swedes should be employed within the EU’s institutions. So it continues. The allotment is, to say the least, pointless.
In the reform agenda, of course, there are also many proposals that are reasonable, such as support for Ukraine and investments in gender equality and sexual and reproductive health. The good formulations and proposals are, however, overshadowed by a high-profile and poorly substantiated signaling policy. To take three concrete examples:
- In order to create economic development in poor countries, it is required that the right to “inheritance” be maintained. Do the Tidö parties believe that inheritance taxation in extremely unequal countries would threaten development? And should this be a core point in the Swedish aid agenda?
- Within “business life” there is a “willingness to contribute to reduced poverty”. Does the Tidöpartiet believe that this applies to the entire Swedish business community? If the answer is yes, then why should the companies have a share of aid money? Shouldn’t they be able to pay more themselves?
- Freedom of religion must be promoted – the goal applies “especially to Christians”. It is justified by the fact that Christians “constitute a particularly persecuted religious group in the world”? Do the Tidö parties not know about the persecution of Muslim Uighurs in China or of the Muslim Rohingya who fled Burma? Or do the parties mean that these groups are significantly fewer in number than persecuted Christians? In such cases, please report the calculation.
It can also be noted what not is on the reform agenda. There is not a word about union and employee conditions, despite the great hopes for increased business and trade. Nor anything about large corporations that do not hesitate to cooperate with undemocratic regimes. And the glaring inequality in most of the world’s countries is not addressed, despite the fact that a more equal distribution would both reduce poverty and undermine some of the corruption.