"New" Donors: A New Resource for Family Planning and Reproductive Health Financing?

Malea Hoepf Young

Recommendations and Implications for Reproductive Health

There are many potential benefits to having greater flows of funding provided by new donors, who bring different perspectives and experience from their own economic development. However, there is little evidence that emerging donor aid is currently helping to bolster lagging population funding. While funding for family planning and reproductive health is already difficult to track due to changing aid mechanisms, the most comprehensive source of data– UNFPA, UNAIDS, and NIDI’s Resource Flows Project– “does not include...funds contributed by developing countries to be expended in other developing countries.”⁷⁷ Many of the emerging donors have particularly interesting experience with voluntary family planning programs, as declines in fertility rates occurred alongside their economic development. For example, in Thailand, the total fertility rate fell from 3.76 in 1975 to 1.85 today, while per capita GNI grew from $350 in 1975 to $3,050 in 2006.^{78 79} Of course, coercive policies, such as China’s one-child policy, should not be exported. Still, many of the areas under the umbrella of reproductive health could be strengthened through Chinese investment and through lessons learned through the country’s experiences in improving girls’ education and maternal health.

The international community is still developing models of engagement with “new” donors like China and India, which can be used to promote investment in voluntary family planning and reproductive health. Multilateral engagement could take the shape of the World Food Programme’s successful involvement with new donors. They have been particularly successful in engaging non-DAC donors by publicizing their contributions as a way to improve the donor country’s image in the international press and their standing within the UN.⁸⁰ Another potential method is through trilateral exchange, in which a DAC donor, a non-DAC donor, and a recipient country collaborate to develop and implement a program, allowing the countries to pool resources and develop capacity. This has considerable potential for increasing investment in voluntary family planning and reproductive health programs, but a brief by the German Development Institute advises that such an approach is most beneficial for engaging non-DAC donors that have made strides towards DAC standards. In contrast, they urge that countries such as India and China, are better engaged in dialogue surrounding good donorship, including inviting their participation in peer reviews of DAC projects.⁸¹

As with most donors, such efforts must identify the benefits to the donor country for their investment in family planning and reproductive health funding. Multilateral contributions could increase these countries’ international profiles, and investments in voluntary family planning programs in other countries could also counteract negative opinions of their own domestic population programs (although coercive programs do not deserve to be seen in a positive light). It could also counter accusations that emerging donors’ aid programs are purely exploitative and profit driven. Regardless of the methods and motivations, as non-DAC country aid programs are likely to continue to grow and evolve in the coming years, it is important for the sexual and reproductive health community to engage with these donors to increase their funding for family planning and reproductive health programs, to build their capacity to implement programs, to challenge traditional donors to increase their funding, and contribute to improving the lives of women and their families in developing countries around the world.

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