2023 年 1 巻 p. 31-40
On July 6, 2021, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) adopted the DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society on Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance. The DAC’s Community of Practice on Civil Society and the OECD Secretariat are currently working on toolkits to implement the Recommendation. The first toolkit is on supporting local civil society organisations (CSOs) in partner countries. While drafting this toolkit, CSOs called for the “localisation” of official aid agencies’ support for CSOs and “decolonisation.” This paper focuses on the discussions around the “localisation” and “decolonisation” of the aid system. This paper analyses two CSO publications that influenced the toolkit process; “Strengthening Leadership of Civil Society in Partner Countries” by the DAC-CSO Reference Group’s Working Group on the DAC Recommendation (2022) and “Time to Decolonise Aid” by Peace Direct (2021). Both publications address the power imbalance between donors, including the international NGOs (INGOs) and the CSOs in the Global South. The Peace Direct report strongly addresses the “structural racism” in the current aid system. The recommendations in the two reports include changes in attitudes of the official donors and INGOs, transformation to the southern-led leadership in partnerships and establishment of funding mechanisms such as core and programme support for Southern CSOs. The paper concludes with the implications of the “localisation” and “decolonising” discussions for the Japanese CSO community.
