Research Proposal on 'Development Aid and Governance' Essay

Research Proposal on 'Development Aid and Governance' - Essay Example Bibliography Background/Problem Statement The effectiveness or lack of aid has been a rather recurring issue/terminology in the glossary of the development aid industry in recent times. Contrastingly, two decades ago, development donors or aid donors would not hesitate to provide funding to governments and organisations for developmental purposes (De Haan, 2009). Among those who benefitted during this past period of improved donor and aid activities were third world and developing countries in regions such as Africa and Asia in which countries such as Zaire under Mobutu and Philippines under Marcos benefitted. With this level of funding, these beneficiary regimes started to mismanage these aids to hitherto unseen corruption levels. These high levels of bad governance and corruption have made donors such as financial institutions and industrial powers to refrain from funding development projects in excessively corrupt governments, countries, and groups (De Haan, 2009). Aid donors have since recognized and established that giving aids to governments with ineffective policies is a practice that is rather wasteful. Instead, more efforts and emphasis have been directed at countries and regions with sound domestic reform policies. Nonetheless, donors’ narrow political objectives still feature in most of the aid decisions in the contemporary society. There is, thus, the need for the official donor aid community to commit to the improvement of aid effectiveness by establishing more proficient and standardized coordination mechanisms. Fortunately, some forums such as the Aid Effectiveness High Level Forum (HLF) in Rome in 2003 and the Paris Declaration in the second HLF in 2005 were moves in the right direction for aid governance. Although these forums focused on donor coordination and harmonisation, the issues of governance, public management, and corruption also featured prominently during the deliberations (Stokke, 2009). In regard to aid management, the suppl y side featured prominently in relation to public finance management and country procurement systems. It was not only corruption, which was mentioned as a problem, but commitments were also made on transparency and accountability by both donors and recipients. Poor governance, corruption, and bad public management of finance and procurement are thus among the major challenges that the aid industry has encountered for quite some time and mechanisms and strategies to counter their influence are in order (Lancaster, 2006). Research Objectives This research, therefore, sets forth several objectives, including the need to address the rampant corruption and mismanagement that hamper the successful implementation and realization of donor aid projects. The research seeks solution to the derailing progress in realising mutual accountability by both donors and recipients in aid-project implementation. Addressing the issue of commitment by donors and recipients in the aid effectiveness agenda is the other objective of this research. An improvement on the wanting coordination capacity of recipient governments is the other objective of this research. Moreover, this research also seeks to emphasize the central role that commitment on transparency, in conjunction with sound governance and anticorruption, plays in the aid industry. Finally, this research aims at highlighting the effects of the failure by stakeholders to address the developmental aid problems associated with bad governance and corruption on aid management.

Equity and Trusts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 3

Equity and Trusts - Essay Example Jeremy Fanshawe, being a the trustee of the estate of his late father with sole beneficiary as his son, Kelvin as well as trustee of a small family trust or â€Å"joint trust† where the beneficiaries are his ex-wife Lydia and their adopted daughter Miriam, has a sensitive role in not only ensuring that the trusts are managed effectively but also beneficiaries received their share. As trustee, he has the fiduciary duty to enforce the agreed contents of the contract he has signed with his late father as well as the small family trust or joint trust2. Under the UK law, he is required a duty of care which is Part 1 of the Act wherein as trustee, Jeremy is expected to be reasonable3: (b) if he acts as trustee in the course of a business or profession, to any special knowledge or experience that it is reasonable to expect of a person acting in the course of that kind of business or profession†4. This would require Jeremy to have prior knowledge and sufficient effort exerted to determine the viability of conducting the business about purchase of art works by the artist Farrah Foster as an investment. Whilst his first purchase, a painting, indeed increased value from  £13,000 to  £26,000, the manner of which this â€Å"investment† has been undertaken without clear purpose and process.  £20,000 worth of money was transferred from the joint trust account to his personal current account. Section 2 of the Schedule specifies that â€Å"when exercising any corresponding power, however conferred† 5 under Compounding Liabilities. On Part II Investment Section 4, it was required under Standard investment criteria, the trustee upon exercising power of investment, whether arising under this Part or otherwise, the trustee must have expertise to the standard investment criteria6. On the same manner, The Act also provides that: â€Å"Application of duty of