It has been so obvious, it seems, that we have never even been thinking about writing a specific policy or strategy on Decentralisation in Swedish development co-operation. And we do not have any experts on decentralisation at Sida or the Ministry. We have some experiences from working on this, however, and some views on what the problems are and how to work in order to promote development and democracy through decentralisation. I am going to present some of these views here. To combat poverty is the primary objective of Swedish development co-operation.
Poverty is the enemy of peace, democracy and development.
The fight against poverty requires participation of the poor themselves. We cannot reduce poverty, but we can promote conditions for the people to free themselves from poverty. This requires, in turn, that poor people s opportunities for influencing their situation be improved, i.e. that they can take greater part in political life and assert their rights. One way of improving these opportunities is decentralisation of political decision making and administration. It follows from this objective of our promotion of decentralisation that what we more and more try to support is processes of devolution or democratic decentralisation , rather than just de-concentration or administrative and fiscal decentralisation.