AUSTRIA

AUSTRIA POPULATION AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ASSISTANCE
OVERALL ASSESSMENT

Austria is currently a minor donor in the population field, but awareness of reproductive health issues is growing slowly among aid officials. To date, the bilateral aid program has done little to address population and reproductive health concerns. Although Austrian development cooperation policy has emphasized the role of women in development, the aid program has not yet recognized the linkages between the status of women and their reproductive rights and health.

The greatest potential to expand Austria’s support to population programs is through its role in multilateral organizations. The Austrian government has the potential to increase its small contribution to UNFPA. Austria will also have some influence over the priority given to ICPD goals by the European Commission (EC) aid program, when it assumes the rotating European Union (EU) presidency in late 1998. In addition, Austria’s recent EU membership has led to a number of positive developments that appear likely to improve the coherence of its bilateral aid program.

1 Development Assistance: Policy and Funding

Austria is one of the smaller European donors, ranking 16th out of the 21 major donor countries in 1997 in total aid volume. Austria’s development assistance in that year represented only 0.26 percent of GNP–significantly lower than the donor country average of 0.4 percent.

Development aid in Austria is fragmented both in its administration at home and its geographic and sectoral allocation overseas. Overall responsibility for development assistance lies with the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which also oversees most bilateral assistance and almost all UN activities. However, the Ministry of Finance is responsible for relations with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. To facilitate coordination between these different entities, the government has established two consultative councils within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which include government, political and NGO representatives.

Despite these efforts, Austrian development assistance has historically lacked a clear strategy in terms of both external policy and internal coordination among government agencies. Austrian development aid levels are also difficult to assess since they traditionally include domestic expenditures on refugees, scholarships for students from developing countries and export credits. Moreover, actual aid allocations to developing countries are distributed across many countries and sectors.

Austria concentrates its development aid on poverty alleviation, based on the rationale that ameliorating poverty has a positive impact on many other areas, including population, health, education, environment, gender equity, governance, and internal and external political stability. Austria dropped health as a priority sector several years ago, perceiving it has no special expertise to offer in this sector.

Priority countries for Austrian development assistance currently include Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Uganda. Development cooperation activities are also undertaken with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Recent changes in the Austrian aid program include restructuring of aid management and adoption of new sectoral priorities. Austria’s entry into the EU in 1995 prompted the government to reexamine many issues related to the development cooperation program. The bilateral aid budget has declined, in part owing to new financial obligations resulting from Austria’s EU membership. As an EU member, Austria also has obligations in the policy arena, including coordination of development assistance. Other changes include the concentration of aid in fewer recipient countries, and the development of a strategic approach to country programming for the first time.

2 The Policy Environment for International Population Assistance

Austria does not have an explicit policy on population assistance. Neither family planning nor reproductive health are official priorities, although in some cases Austrian support to women in development activities may deal peripherally with women’s health. NGOs in Austria report that the ICPD has resulted in increased interest in reproductive health within the aid bureaucracy, but this has not translated into changes in funding under the development cooperation program to date.

The main reproductive health NGO in Austria is Osterreich gesellschaft fur familienplanung (OGF)–the IPPF-affiliated national family planning association. OGF has conducted education and advocacy activities related to the ICPD with Austrian parliamentarians.

3 Trends in Funding for Population Assistance

Overall Funding Levels:

Austria is one of the smallest donors to population programs. Austrian funding for population programs has risen slowly since 1990, when the government allocated only $225,000 to these programs. In 1996, Austria reported $861,000 in population assistance through bilateral and multilateral channels. Austrian population assistance is low not only in absolute volume, but also in terms of the percentage of overall aid allocated to population assistance. In 1996, Austria gave only $4 per million dollars of GNP in population assistance, compared to $242 per million contributed by Sweden, which has a similar sized economy.

Until 1992, Austria allocated all its population assistance through multilateral channels. Since 1993, Austria’s reported contributions to bilateral and multilateral programs have been highly variable from year to year, suggesting inconsistencies in reporting and data quality. In 1994, Austria gave $1 million to UNFPA, but since then its contribution has fallen to approximately $545,000 in 1997. Austria also contributes to UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and the regional development banks, although these funds are not specifically earmarked for reproductive health.

Bilateral Funding:

Data gaps and inconsistencies in reporting make trends in Austria’s bilateral population assistance difficult to assess. Austria reported a large increase in bilateral assistance in 1995. In 1996, however, Austrian bilateral expenditures totaled only $90,000. Since Austria’s aid portfolio does not appear to include any explicit support for population or health-oriented projects, it seems likely that these funds reflect a very broad definition of population assistance and are spent primarily on projects to improve the status of women. Moreover, Austria has only reported bilateral population spending in 4 of the last 10 years.

Funding for NGOs:

There is little or no NGO involvement in the implementation of Austrian population assistance. Austria conducts its broader aid program with significant NGO collaboration. However, Austria does not contribute to IPPF or to other major international NGOs involved in reproductive health.