Reverse decline, promote effective development cooperation
9 FFD4 QUESTIONS TO REVIVAL DEVELOPMENT EFFECTIVENESS
As a global civil society platform advocating for effective development cooperation (EDC) based on human rights, social justice and democratic accountability, the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) calls on governments and development actors to use FfD4 in Seville as an important milestone to revive the implementation of the efficiency agenda and address the challenges that undermine trust in the current aid system. CPDE calls for decisive action to align financing frameworks with people-centred, accountable and inclusive development cooperation.
The following key issues reflect CPDE’s commitment to equity in development finance and to revitalizing the effective development cooperation (EDC) agenda within the international development cooperation (IDC) architecture and the broader development finance agenda.
- Confirm the principles of development effectiveness. Strengthen global commitment to the four pillars of effective development cooperation—national ownership, results-based, inclusive partnerships, transparency and mutual accountability—as the fundamental principles of financing for development that leaves no one behind.
- Promote reform of the international development cooperation architecture. Launch an intergovernmental process to clarify mandates, roles and consistency among financial institutions. Focus this reform on the United Nations, ensuring that the global architecture for international development integrates and includes the voice of all development actors, including CSOs, and that it is rights-based and aligned with countries’ priorities. The architecture of local development cooperation should reflect these same principles. In the same spirit, we call on all institutions and actors – at regional, global and local levels – that are committed to greater effectiveness to urgently join forces to increase synergies, avoid duplication and address the growing challenges facing international development cooperation.
- Ensure adequate and equitable levels of assistance. Call on developed countries to meet the 0.7% of GNI official development assistance (ODA) commitments, address aid debt resulting from broken promises, and reverse the trend of declining ODA, especially in light of growing global inequality. While improving the effectiveness of development cooperation is important, it cannot compensate for aid cuts imposed by donors and cannot replace missing aid flows.
- Eliminate fragmentation and improve consistency. Promote harmonization and coherence at the country level by aligning aid with national strategies, improving coordination among donors and agencies, and ensuring complementarity between North-South and South-South cooperation.
- Strengthen countries’ democratic accountability. Institutionalize inclusive and participatory planning processes that enable civil society, especially marginalized communities in the global South, to influence development priorities and track progress.
- Promote accountability and evidence-based approaches. Commit to transparent, data-based monitoring of development cooperation at global and local levels, with active participation of civil society in accountability mechanisms such as the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) and its monitoring framework.
- Increase private sector accountability. Demand clear, binding standards for private sector participation in development cooperation to ensure compliance with human rights, environmental standards and principles of development effectiveness.
- Ensure civil society participation and provision of resources. Provide an enabling environment for CSOs through legal protections, inclusive dialogue mechanisms and predictable, flexible and long-term funding for their contributions to development and humanitarian work.
- Generate political will to revive EDC. Encourage national governments, donors and international organizations to re-center development effectiveness on the FfD agenda, recognizing it as key to getting the SDGs back on track and responding to global crises.