The securitization of development has been a recurrent topic in literature in last decades. By framing South underdevelopment as dangerous, the North had armed an argument to justify greater interventionism in the name of development. The securitization of foreign aid is not an irreversible tendency, we can find two different criteria to find a good plan to overcome it. First, we can opt for a discursive criterion, considering the framing of the general approach to development, by looking into the official development discourse. Second, we can consider a material criterion, investigating the material aid that is given as development aid and how it may be differentiated from other types of transfers by looking at the Official Development Aid statistics and criteria. We can look at the case of Australia in the South Pacific, a country very linked to the securitization of aid dynamics in last decades, but that has carried out a good performance in the two lines of arguments that have been proposed in respect to its Pacific partners.
For decades, the policies applied by Australia in the South Pacific were contemplated as a clear case of a State linking its foreign aid to its security imperatives, especially, in the aftermaths of 9/11. The region an “arc of instability” that could become a ground for the proliferation of terrorists, migrants and crime. The clearest examples were Australian development policy in Papua New Guinea, where the Enhanced Cooperation Program, aimed to improve the management of Australian aid in the country, was criticized for trying to set PNG as a “frontline” to protect Australia from security threats. Also, in Solomon Islands, a military intervention took place with the aim of avoiding the transformation of Solomon Islands in a “Failed State”, followed by the increase of foreign aid to the country.
However, we can say that in last years Australia illustrate our two approaches for trying to break the security-development nexus. On the one hand, reframing development discourses and their relation with security so that the nexus between both concepts becomes less hierarchical and does not reflect one actor’s interests, and, on the other hand, delimiting what can be considered as development aid, differentiating it from other types of international transfers as the ones concerning traditional security.
The first point would be to argue for the necessary reframing of the development discourse considering the paradigms developed in the “Global South”, especially in terms of local needs for development. A development approach to a region must be constructed on the roots of the necessities of that region, not on how it may contribute to the security of one powerful actor.
Australia has followed this path in the way it has reframed its Development discourse towards the Pacific in last years. We can look into the discourse in the “Australia-Pacific Regional Development Partnership Plan 2025-2029” since it is the most complete one delivered by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In this document, there is no trace of considering the South Pacific as an “arc of instability”, a ground where security threats can grow and where Australia must intervene to make development grow. In this document, “Australia sees the Pacific as a family” (DFAT, 2024, p.1). Although Australia may still be conscious that it is part of the North, it frames the document as if it was approaching cooperation as a South partner, that shares “geography, history and culture” (Ibid, p.1). It considers that the development objectives are not something only applicable to Island nations, but something that “Australia shares with the Pacific” (Ibid, p.1), following an “effective, transparent, locally led and inclusive development” (Ibid, p.9).
This Development framing makes it much easier to attend South Pacific priorities and not just Australian security concerns. In fact, security is approached in the partnership document, but through Human Security lens, a conception that South Pacific Islands clearly prefer. The Australia-Pacific Partnership affirms to comply with the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, a Pacific Islands Forum document where Pacific Islands States pressured to set “an expanded concept of security inclusive of human security, humanitarian assistance, prioritising environmental security, and regional cooperation in building resilience to disasters and climate change” (PIF, 2018, p.6). In the Partnership document, climate change, gender equality and human and communitarian resilience are among the most mentioned topics. Therefore, we can consider that Australia has achieved a development framing where it has not set the rest of the Pacific as an underdeveloped space that must be securitized, but has neither expelled the concept of Security, it has adapted it to the visions of its development partners to transform the Development-Security nexus into a less hierarchical one.
The second point involves the delimitation of what should be materially monitored as development aid and what should not. In what concerns to specific material aid, it is necessary to delimit different types of resources to different types of purposes, because the reality is that, from the moment, traditional security concerns continue being very powerful and if ODA is not materially separated from security, a reconstruction of the Development-Security nexus will never be possible, since the urgency of national security will always prevail in the allocation of aid.
In this sense, Australia applies the criteria proposed by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to set what could be counted as ODA when it involves a peace and security dimension, criteria that has been revised in last years to make it more rigorous. The general criterium used by the DAC is that the main objective of ODA “needs to be the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries” and that “Development co-operation should not be used as a vehicle to promote the provider’s security interests” (OECD, n.d.). Then, the DAC sets specific criteria for security related activities to be counted. For example, military and police activities could only be counted if they are the only way to deliver development or humanitarian aid, or when they have civilian oversight or partner collaboration, but never in their use to protect property or people by force or counter civil disobedience or dissidence. The “Australia’s Official Development Assistance Statistical Summary 2023-24” is an appropriate example on how to apply the DAC rules to delimit the boundaries with security activities, stating it explicitly in the Appendix 2, where it sets the same criteria and exceptions the DAC does for military and police activities and adds a point where it states that Anti-terrorism is completely excluded from ODA (p.75), an important step considering the previously mentioned relation of Australia, development and terrorism. Therefore, Australia delimits what is counted as ODA to de-merge it from other security transfers with different purposes.
In conclusion, we consider that aid must not necessarily be attached to security concerns if our double logic, discursive and material, is followed. It is acknowledged the impossibility of disassociating the Development-Security nexus in the general framing of the development discourse, but it is also considered that it is possible to establish criteria to deliver different sorts of aid to different purposes. Therefore, Australia shows how the path to follow should be to materially differentiate ODA from international transfers dedicated to traditional security concerns, while discursive work is done to reconstruct the relation between development and security to make it more compatible with “Global South” views and move it away from powerful actors interests.
Abel Juan Agut Rabadán, Analista colaborador
References:
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2024). Australia’s Official Development Assistance. Statistical Summary 2023-2024. https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/australias-official-development-assistance-statistical-summary-2023-24.pdf
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2024). Australia-Pacific Regional. Development Partnership Plan 2025-2029. https://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/development/australia-pacific-regional-development-partnership-plan-2025-2029
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (n.d.). Peace and security expenditures in official development assistance (ODA). https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/oda-eligibility-and-conditions/peace-and-security-expenditures-in-official-development-assistance-oda.html
Pacific Islands Forum (2018). Boe Declaration. https://forumsec.org/publications/boe-declaration-regional-security
