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Indonesia Aid: New tool for diplomacy?
The public has raised questions about Indonesia Aid regarding the eligibility of this developing country, which is dealing with several domestic issues, to deliver such aid.
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Thatched roof houses, rural life on a sandy beach of South Tarawa atoll in Kiribati. (Shutterstock/maloff)
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ndonesia is still a recipient of development aid. Nonetheless the country has taken a step ahead, launching a foreign aid program to assist other developing countries. The public has raised questions about Indonesia Aid regarding the eligibility of this developing country, which is dealing with several domestic issues, to deliver such aid.
The foreign aid program has raised suspicions of political intent, as government watchdogs suspect the aid is aimed at dampening unwanted foreign involvement in Indonesia, particularly support from some Pacific nations for the separatist aspirations in Papua.
The emergence of a developing country as a donor is not unusual. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2017 showed that the share percentage of development aid from non Development Assistance Committee countries amounted to 14.2 percent globally.
Similarly, the Asia Foundation also suggested that while aid from traditional donors is declining, the volume of development cooperation from nontraditional donors is increasing, particularly from emerging players such as China and India.
In ASEAN, Singapore, for example, has pioneered the channeling of international assistance through capacity building and various other activities in the region. Under the Initiative for ASEAN Integration mechanism, Singapore established the Singapore Cooperation Centers to assist the integration of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) into the association through technical cooperation in a wide variety of fields, from the English language to economic development and public administration.
Thailand, another middle-income country in ASEAN, has been involved in channeling development aid to the CLMV and South Asian countries, primarily Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Thai aid has underlined some priorities, including technical assistance in public administration, public health, development of communication infrastructure, agriculture and education.
With the significant contributions of the Global South to development assistance, the dominant paradigm of North to South, Western, rich, developed to developing countries pattern of aid has been challenged. The scholar Emma Mawdsley in 2011 illustrated the geographical shift with some distinctive features of South-South development cooperation in a postcolonial world, such as the assertion of shared developing country identity and the rejection of classical, hierarchical relations between donors and recipient countries.
