I'll speak in English, if I may.
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to speak. I'd like to just talk for a few minutes, firstly, about the background to the situation in Afghanistan and then address briefly three issues--rural development, aid effectiveness, and peace-building at a local level.
I think it's clear there has been progress in Afghanistan in terms of development, but we need to recognize that it has been slow and that there is a long way to go. The current levels of development in Afghanistan are comparable to sub-Saharan Africa, and the progress that has been made is being jeopardized by increasing insecurity. Last year there were 8,000 deaths as a result of the conflict, which is double the number of the previous year. Violent incidents were up by about 30% to 35%.
So why are we in this situation? Well, I think there was probably a failure of the international community to appreciate the extent of the destruction caused by over two decades of war. Before the wars, Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries in the world. Afterwards, there was widespread and desperate poverty.
The response after the international intervention in 2001 was to provide a light footprint, relatively limited aid compared to other countries who have come through conflict, and a top-down approach where national institutions were created, but it was done from the top down. Communities have only recently seen results from the international intervention across the country.
I would like to address the key issue of rural development. We think this is the priority issue in Afghanistan today. It is clear when you go to communities that things still are very difficult in rural areas as opposed to urban areas, which have seen some progress. In one community I was in recently of 260 families, 45 children died over the winter due to preventable causes; 12 women died in pregnancy or childbirth.
So what should be done to address rural development? There needs to be sub-national governance reform. We need to build the state at a local level, because at a local level the state has very limited presence or no presence at all. There need to be more resources directed to communities themselves, who can then lead the development process, and we can build civil society at a local level as well.
To address aid effectiveness, very briefly, in terms of the volume of aid, it has been insufficient. According to the Afghan government, $25 billion of aid has been pledged and only $15 billion delivered. When we look at the comparison of military spending to development spending, we see that the American military alone is spending over $100 million a day, and aid spending has averaged about $7 million a day. Too much aid is supply-driven, prescriptive, rather than being needs-based and addressing demand. It's been centralized and urban and has not been evenly distributed. Indeed, we believe that's one of the reasons why insecurity has spread. Not enough aid has gone to build the government, particularly at local levels. Some major donors put the vast majority of their aid around the government, rather than trying to build the government, especially at local levels. Of course there are challenges of corruption, but there are means of dealing with those.
Efficiency is another major problem. A lot of the aid money is going to major contractors and to consultants. We accept that contractors and consultants will be required in the reconstruction process, but it's no reason not to rigorously assess whether they are providing value for money.
Finally, on transparency and accountability, there is not enough transparency. If there were, we could identify clearly the bad practices and try to put them right, which is why we are advocating for full transparency--indicators of aid effectiveness that apply to all donors and measure all the key aspects of aid, such as impact, efficiency, relevance, sustainability, accountability, and the use of Afghan resources. There is clearly a need for increased coordination as well. Finally, we believe that a commission should be established to measure aid effectiveness.
Turning to the last key issue, peace-building at the local level, most of the measures to bring peace to Afghanistan have either been military or they have been at a high level or target-limited. We believe that you cannot impose peace from above. It is essential to try to build it from below.
Insecurity in Afghanistan often has local causes. Indeed, Afghanistan is an incredibly local society, and very often development security depends on variations of circumstances at a local level. We think that community peace-building is an essential measure for achieving peace nationally, and where it has been undertaken in Afghanistan it has made a major difference to levels of security.
That concludes my short presentation. I think perhaps it's more productive for us to discuss the individual issues you'd like to raise.