The Government defined Finland’s development policy for the first time in a report

Press Release 111/2014
8 May 2014

Development cooperation is the most effective when it gives people themselves the chance to improve their well-being and demand their rights, states the development policy report approved by the Government on 8 May.

During the term of the present Government, Finland’s development policy has undergone various reforms. Human rights and ownership by developing countries have been adopted as the points of departure in development policy, the aim being sustainable results and the cessation of developing countries’ dependency on aid. The work is described in the report on the effectiveness and coherence of development policy approved today by the Government.

The report, now drawn up for the first time, will be submitted next to Parliament for debate.

“Results should be expected from development cooperation, just as from all other activities for which public funds are used. We have a zero tolerance for misuse and all suspicions are investigated. Development policy, however, also involves broad-ranging influence on society, for instance the implementation of democracy, and this is not always easy to measure,” Minister for International Development Pekka Haavisto states.

Haavisto stresses the partner country’s ownership. “It means that the cooperation must depart from the wishes and needs of the partner country and its people. Change cannot be imported from the outside. This is the starting point for cooperation today.”

Results can be seen

During the past two decades, human development has advanced in the world as never before. For example, the share of people living in extreme poverty as well as maternal mortality have been halved and over two billion people have received access to clean water.

“The credit for development belongs especially to the countries themselves. For our part we have, however, been supporting this change. The development of taxation, for instance, is now topical, and in this we can be of assistance. In many of our traditional partner countries, there are ever increasing opportunities for commercial cooperation,” Haavisto says.

“Support is needed particularly in the poorest countries and so-called fragile states, in which Finland is now investing more than before.”

According to the report, development cooperation is the most effective when it gives the people in developing countries themselves the chance to improve their well-being and demand their rights from their own Governments.

This has been done, for example, in the water programme carried out in Ethiopia with support from Finland, which has enabled access to clean water for more than 2 million people. There, the responsibility for organizing the water supply and sewerage is decentralized to communities themselves. The operating model has been replicated throughout the country and at the same time, the capacity of the Ethiopian Government to ensure the availability of clean water in rural areas has improved.

Attention beyond development cooperation

Development cooperation alone is not enough to eliminate poverty from the world, the report states. Developing countries and emerging economies lose more funds for example through tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance than they receive in development aid.

“The old saying that things go wrong when the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing holds true here. There is a greater need for coherence and understanding of how different policy sectors affect development,” Haavisto continues.

Additional information: Director General Pekka Puustinen, Department for Development Policy, tel. +358 295 350 560, and Milma Kettunen, Press Attaché to Development Minister Haavisto, mobile tel. +358 40 522 9869