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Fast Forward

How the European Commission can take the lead in providing high-quality budget support for education and health

Developing-country governments desperately need more long-term and predictable aid, given through their budgets, to finance the expansion of health care, education, and other vital social services. The European Commission (EC) is one of the biggest donors providing this kind of essential budget support, and has innovative plans to further improve and increase this aid. European Union (EU) member states must support these ambitious plans. The EC in turn must do more to improve on this good start, delinking this aid from harmful International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions, putting an end to unnecessary bureaucratic delays, and doing more to make its aid accountable to citizens in poor countries.

Download a PDF file (238K) of the full paper

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Summary

Around the world, access to basic health care and education is a distant dream for millions of people, mostly women. Every day, 72 million children, mostly girls, do not go to school. Every minute a women dies during pregnancy or in childbirth. Every three seconds a child dies, mainly due to diseases that could easily be prevented with access to a doctor. This lack of access to basic services causes needless suffering for millions and perpetuates the cycle of poverty.

Access to basic health care and education are human rights, and governments are responsible for delivering on these rights. Over the past decade, many developing-country governments have made extraordinary efforts to do so: countries such as Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi, for example, have made education free, allowing millions of children to go to school. However, many governments simply lack the resources to achieve these aims on their own. External aid is still needed to fill the gaps in their budgets for health and education.

Unfortunately, many rich countries not only fail to provide the level of aid that they have repeatedly promised to give, but they also fail to provide the right kind of aid. Developing-country governments need long-term and predictable support that becomes part of their annual budget: this is known as budget support. This they can use to finance their own plans to increase access to public services.