BetterAid - Busan getting closer

With the High Level Forum of Aid Effectiveness in Busan only a couple of months away, the work of the BetterAid platform has been gathering speed. Publication of the Draft Outcome Document for Busan triggered a lively discussion during the meeting of the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness in July in Paris and has resulted in publishing an elaborate statement of BetterAid after an intense exchange of perspectives within the platform.

The last half a year has been a busy time for the members of the BetterAid platform, including the TUDCN representatives. In March over 80 representatives of the Open Forum and BetterAid gathered at the CSO Strategy Meeting in Harnosand, Sweden to discuss common strategies for the upcoming HLF-4. You can read more about the meeting and its outputs at the Open Forum website. One of the most important outcomes of the meeting was the finalizing of the CSOs on the road to Busan: Key messages and proposals document, which calls for four core commitments (each broken down to more detailed asks) from the development partners:

A) To fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments
o Redress the failure to make progress on the Paris and Accra commitments – address reasons for underachievement, based on evidence from all stakeholders
o Strengthen the Paris and Accra commitments through democratic ownership
- Establish Democratic Ownership as the core aid and development principle – Citizens’ voices must be the basis for development plans and actions
- Give priority to inclusive multi-stakeholder dialogue – through regular country-level policy dialogues
- Use country systems as the first option – in line with the Accra commitments, to increase transparency and participation without limiting CSO involvement
- End policy conditionality – end all donor policy conditionality attached to aid negotiations and disbursement
- Fully untie all forms of aid – including food aid, technical assistance and preference to local and regional procurement
- Implement demand driven technical assistance – responsive to countries needs and preferences to indigenous expertise
- Address the unpredictability of aid flows – for long term development planning
- Orient Private sector development for self-sustaining livelihoods – private sector to endorse development standards; public funds need to prioritize livelihood development

o Implement full transparency to strengthen accountability and good governance
- Create clear and inclusive accountability frameworks – rooted in country led accountability processes and based on UN convention against corruption
- Implement the highest standards of openness and transparency by all aid actors – consistent with the International Aid Transparency Initiative standards

B) To strengthen development effectiveness through practices based on human rights standards
o Commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development – international human right standards as basis to eradicate the root causes of poverty and inequality while promoting democratic ownership
o Promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights – gender equality needs to be placed at the center of development effectiveness
o Implement the decent work agenda as cornerstone for socially inclusive and sustainable development strategies – recognize social and economic rights with inclusion, protection and dialogue

C) To support CSOs as independent development actors in their own right and commit to an enabling environment for their work in all countries
o Endorse the Istanbul Principles and Open Forum’s International Framework on CSO Development Effectiveness – Istanbul Principles need to be endorsed as assessment of CSO contributions to development
o Agree on minimum standards for government and donor policies, laws, regulations and practices that create and enabling environment for CSOs – work with and enable CSOs to achieve full potentials as development actors based on the Istanbul Principles and Human Rights standards

D) To promote equitable and just development cooperation architecture.
o Launch an inclusive Busan Compact at HLF4 bringing together time-bound commitments and fundamental reforms in the governance of development cooperation – ensure mandatory outcomes with accountability mechanisms
o Create an equitable and inclusive multilateral forum for policy dialogue and standard setting – as successor of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness this forum needs a clear mandate

Each of the areas is elaborated in more details in the document. The final version was published in April 2011, but BetterAid invites CSOs to keep contributing with comments that can serve the future revisions of the document. All CSOs, including the trade unions, are also encouraged to sign on to the Key Asks.

As a supplement to the Key messages, the International Civil Society Organisations (ICSOs) Advisory Group on (ICSOs) has developed a position paper on the issues of Accountability, Transparency and Verification. It stresses the importance of mutual accountability of donor and partner countries, with a more significant involvement of the citizens and civil society organisations holding their governments responsible in all aspects of development cooperation: from policy to delivery and monitoring. The position paper points out also the necessity of reaching for more transparency and independent verification, as the crucial factors in improving the accountability.
The WP-Eff meeting in July 2011 was focused around the newly published Draft Outcome Document of the HLF-4. Prior to the meeting, BetterAid issued a short statement calling the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-Eff), who drafted it, to:

• Produce a multi-stakeholder evidence-based outcome document;
• Go beyond “aid effectiveness plus” to genuine “development effectiveness”;
• Deepen and strengthen Paris and Accra;
• Put inclusive and democratic ownership at the heart of “development effectiveness”;
• Endorse the Istanbul Principles, acknowledge the International Framework and promote an enabling environment;
• Use aid for sustainable development, not as an engine of growth for the private sector.

The WP-Eff meeting triggered a further discussion, also within the BetterAid platform, which resulted is publishing a more detailed CSO response to Busan Outcome Document.