Norway’s monitoring of development aid and it’s results : a gut-feeling approach the case of Ukraine

2018

This thesis addresses the risk of corruption in development aid. The study investigates

whether the risk assessments and risk mitigating measures used by Norway’s Ministry of

Foreign Affairs (MFA) sufficiently prevent Norwegian aid from being wasted in fraud and

corruption. The methodology is a case study of Ukraine where qualitative data collected in

interviews and documents are triangulated by quantitative data collected in aid statistics.

MFA has a zero-tolerance policy for financial irregularities, corruption and misappropriation

of assets, including negligence in the management of aid to foreign countries. With respect to

Ukraine, MFA had solid information from several sources about the risk of corruption,

including the fact that Norwegian development aid to Ukraine could be exposed to the

problem. In this study I find there has been an increased effort to improve governance,

results-based management and anticorruption in MFA between 2014 and 2018, yet the

initiatives do not appear to reach aid-financed projects in Ukraine until 2016-2017.

Despite efforts to improve monitoring of aid, I find that MFA’s routines for risk analysis and

risk mitigation are inadequate. MFA did not request systematic corruption risk assessment

from project partners in grant applications, nor did they monitor how project partners perform

corruption risk mitigation. The most frequent response to how MFA and project partners have

analyzed and navigated corruption risk is some version of gut-feeling. The practices are

inadequate and insufficient given the strict requirements of The Norwegian Penal Code and

MFA’s own anticorruption guidelines.