Dilma’s administration and the future of Brazilian international development cooperation

Iara Costa Leite*

ileite@iesp.uerj.br

For those who study or work with Brazilian development cooperation, the election of Dilma Rousseff for the presidency comes with a set of expectations. Expectations not only concerning the maintenance of initiatives launched during Lula’s administration but mainly related to a greater institutionalization of the issue in Brazil.

In this last year of the current administration, an important step in that direction was taken with the involvement of the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) in the collection of national data on Brazilian cooperation (it is estimated that the first report will be concluded and published by the end of the year). This is important since the first step for establishing any national policy is to raise public spending data, which enables us to explore the profile and evolution of disbursements by area and destination, and set goals.

Another necessary step, which still awaits final approval, is to confer the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) more autonomy. Today, the quality and the continuity of the agency’s work, despite great advances in recent years, still find themselves compromised by the high alternation of its employees (ABC doesn’t have its own specialized staff).

Secondly, we need wider debates about the growing engagement of Brazil in initiatives ranging from humanitarian aid and debt relief to the provision of technical cooperation to less developed countries. The figures recently raised by The Economist, which estimated that Brazilian cooperation disbursements would add to $ 4 billion a year, are beginning to echo in the Brazilian press. This means that it is going to be increasingly necessary that Brazilian government builds strong justifications for the using public funds to promote the development of other nations.

The official speech indicates the solidarian, non-profit character of Brazilian cooperation, something that has been recognized by the so-called "traditional donors" - international organizations and cooperation agencies from industrialized countries - as one reason for Brazilian prestige in the area. This solidarian character is certainly relevant in that it converges with a broad international consensus, built since the 70's, around the moral obligation of richer countries to forgo their short-term interests and effectively contribute to international development.

Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that, as the experience of countries that have international cooperation policies point, their sustainability was assured to a great extent by these policies’ alignment with national political and economic interests. Today we see a clear alignment between the cooperation offered by Brazil and the current administration’s purpose to include the country among the permanent members of the UN Security Council, but it is also necessary that state purposes, which may be sustained regardless of which party is in power, are established.

One possible avenue would be to trace the actions of cooperation in accordance with a policy to support the internationalization of Brazilian companies. By establishing partnerships, for example, for the installation of professional training centers in other developing countries, it would be important to take into account their location in regions which concentrate branches of Brazilian companies, whose expansion abroad is often limited by lack of trained labor.

Thirdly, it is necessary that Brazil develops a cooperation culture guided by monitoring and evaluation, so that it can improve its contribution to partners’ development. Brazilian government resists to the so-called "agenda of aid effectiveness" relying on purely defensive arguments which focus on Brazilian sovereignty vis-à-vis an agenda that was set by the OECD. But few government officials are technically qualified to judge the contents of this agenda, which is something natural given the fact Brazilian activism in the provision of international development cooperation is very recent.

This point seems to present a similar trajectory of environmental negotiations, in which we firstly took a reactive posture until we began a process of establishing national institutions and training technicians and diplomats – something that enabled us, three decades after the Stockholm Conference, to get to Johannesburg not only with important advances in terms of legislation and national institutions, but also with a propositive agenda for the advancement of the environmental regime.

As for the issue of development, the involvement of IPEA in national data collection points to the current administration’s political will to initiate a rationalization process that, once carried forward, may end up in the establishment of a national policy of cooperation and in a more proactive performance of Brazil in international norms related to development cooperation.

If the current administration and the coming one really consider Brazilian engagement in South-South cooperation as a state goal, it is necessary that they make the necessary decisions to ensure its sustainability in the long run. After all, we are a democracy and sooner or later the alternation of parties in power will come.

Iara Costa Leite is a doctorate student in Political Sciences at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and a substitute professor at the International Relations Institute of the University of Brasília (iRel/UnB)

This article was originally published at the Mundorama website. LEITE, Iara Costa. O governo Dilma e o futuro da cooperação brasileira para o Desenvolvimento Internacional. Mundorama, n.39, nov. 2010. Available at: http://mundorama.net/2010/11/03/o-governo-dilma-e-o-futuro-da-cooperacao-brasileira-para-o-desenvolvimento-internacional-por-iara-costa-leite/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog