Aid Effectiveness: What S What with Preparations for the Accra High Level Forum

Eurodad Aid effectiveness update: February 2008

Background

In Paris in March 2005 over 100 governments from north and south as well as international and multilateral agencies and regional development banks signed up to the Paris Declaration on Aid effectiveness. This declaration is meant to change the way aid is delivered by shifting the power imbalances and centring on five key principles for delivering aid namely ownership, mutual accountability, harmonisation, alignment and management for results. More information can be found in the Eurodad briefing on the aid effectiveness agenda.

Whilst interpreted by some donors in a very technocratic manner, the principles of the Paris declaration could help to shift the very unequal power balance in the aid system. Governments have made a number of concrete commitments against which we must hold them to account. And the HLF is an opportunity to push some European donors in particular to take stronger stances on issues such as tied aid, conditionality, accountability etc.

Current political opportunities

The Accra High Level Forum (HLF) will take place on September 2nd – 5th 2008 in Accra, Ghana. An International Steering committee (ISC), which is an intergovernmental body, has been set up to provide advice on content and process of the HLF. It is chaired by Jan Cedergren (Sweden) with the World Bank (Chris Hall) and Government of Ghana as vice-chairs. The OECD has now started publishing the minutes from the ISC meetings on their website where you can also see who participates in these meetings from your country.

The ISC is now drafting the so-called Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) which will essentially be the communiqué from the meeting. A first draft of this document will be completed by the 15th March. A full draft (version 1) will be ready by the April meeting of the ISC. This will then be modified and the Full draft (version 2) will be discussed at the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness meeting on the 2nd/3rd July. The Final draft will subsequently go to Accra in September.

Consultations of AAA

 A number of regional consultations run by the regional development Banks will be held in April/May 2008. o The African Development Bank will hold a regional consultation in Kigali in the last week of April (dates are still to be confirmed) o The Asian Development Bank will host four sub-regional events in Asia between from the first week of April to the first week of May. o The IADB will hold a Latin American consultation in Washington D.C on the 22nd and 23rd April.

 Draft versions of the AAA should be available on the OECD website. Eurodad will provide inputs to the AAA through both the CSO International Steering Group and through the European Aidwatch process, and will coordinate member inputs where relevant.

 The AAA will also be presented and discussed at the ECOSOC Development Cooperation Forum in July in New York. It is likely to be a key item on the agenda.

There will be 9 roundtables in Accra. The work done by these roundtables over the next few months will also feed into the AAA, although not the discussions that are had at the roundtables in Accra itself (this will be too late). Roundtables will be co-chaired by one donor and one partner country. These are not all confirmed as yet:

More info contact Lucy: [email protected] 1 Roundtables to Accra Chairs (unconfirmed) 1. Country Ownership Switzerland and Colombia 2. Alignment EC and ? 3. Harmonisation Germany and ? 4. Managing for Results and Development The OECD Joint Venture group and South Africa Impact 5. Mutual Accountability Ireland and Tanzania 6. Role of Civil Society Canada and Ghana 7. Fragile States and Conflict Situations France and DRC 8. Sectoral Application of the Paris Sweden and Honduras Declaration 9. Implication of New Aid Architecture World Bank and ?

Developing country governments presented their six priorities for Accra in December. These are: 1. Conditionality 2. Capacity development 3. Incentives for good performance (for donor agencies) 4. Division of labour/ complementarity (but on their terms) 5. Predictability 6. Untying. The government of Ghana has engaged Ky Amoako as a special envoy to support developing countries’ negotiations.

At a European level, the EU will negotiate and agree a collective statement on financing for development. This statement will be drafted in the first quarter of 2008 and negotiated and agreed by the GAERC meeting of Development Ministers on the 28th May. This will be the EU’s collective input for both the Accra aid effectiveness and the Doha FFD meetings. It is likely to focus on the division of labour, predictability and potentially conditionality. CSOs believe that the EU position should show leadership in the global arena on delivering better aid. CSOs have developed a position paper laying our key priorities (see below), which include making progress on tied aid.

The Nordic plus group (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands and UK) may agree a common position. They are at least joining forces within the OECD on aid effectiveness discussions.

In Accra in September 2008

The HLF will be divided into three parts. There will be a market-place rather like a trade fair. Each country/ donor agency will be allowed one single poster. There will be nine roundtables on the second day and a Ministerial meeting on the final day.

The ISC have confirmed that there will be space for 80 CSO participants in the HLF. It is unclear how many CSOs however will be able to participate in the Ministerial meeting, although there is a commitment that there will be more than were present in Paris and that participation will be there as participants, not just observers.

The Ghana CSO Forum supported by the CSO International Steering Group will organise a large parallel conference in Accra on aid effectiveness. This conference will bring together 300 participants and it will take place on the 30th August to the 1st September.

Main CSO demands on aid effectiveness

Two key CSO position papers to Accra have been produced. Eurodad has been involved in producing both:

More info contact Lucy: [email protected] 2 - The CSO International Steering Group paper. The policy paper is available here and more information can be found at www.betteraid.org. - The CONCORD EU position paper which calls on the EU to take a leadership role in making aid deliver better results: http://www.eurodad.org/whatsnew/articles.aspx? id=2088

International CSO demands:

- Recognise the centrality of poverty reduction, gender equality, human rights and social justice. - End all donor-imposed policy conditionality. - Donors and Southern governments must adhere to the highest standards of openness and transparency. - Donors should support reforms to make procurement systems more accountable, not more liberalised. - Create an effective and relevant independent monitoring and evaluation system for the Paris Declaration and its impact on development outcomes. - Introduce mutually agreed, transparent and binding contracts to govern aid relationships. - Create new multi-stakeholder mechanisms for holding governments and donors to account. - Establish an equitable multilateral governance system for ODA in which to negotiate future agreements on the reform of aid. - At Accra, donors should commit to expanding the agreement on untying aid to all countries, and all aid modalities (including food aid and technical assistance) - Targets on improving technical assistance should be strengthened; including making sure that 100% of technical assistance is demand-driven and aligned to national strategies. - Donors should agree new targets in Accra to make multi-year, predictable and guaranteed aid commitments based on clear and transparent criteria.

Demands to EU:

1. The EU should respect real democratic ownership of the development process, and allow partner countries to be in the driving seat by:  Untying all EU aid to all countries;  Phasing out economic policy conditionality. 2. The EU should radically improve its accountability, particularly to developing countries and their citizens by:  making monitoring and evaluation of aid truly independent;  establishing a complaints mechanism open to aid recipients;  supporting in-country mechanisms for holding donors to account. 3. The EU should commit to good practice standards of openness and transparency of their aid budgets and activities. 4. The EU should agree new, more ambitious targets to make multi-year, predictable and guaranteed aid commitments based on clear and transparent criteria. 5. The EU should reform its technical assistance – money spent on consultants, research and training - to respond to national priorities and build genuine capacity in partner countries.

European targets: The EU agreed additional targets on aid effectiveness under the revised EU commitments made in May 2005 by the European Council of Ministers. Some of these targets are more ambitious than the Paris Declaration ones (e.g. on untying, Technical assistance, use of country systems). There has been very little information about what progress has been made on these.

Key links:

1. www.betteraid.org – Collaborative site where you can find all the latest relevant documents and information about events in the lead up to the Accra High Level Forum 2. www.betteraid.org/blog - Latest news and inside stories on aid quality and Accra process 3. OECD site on Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. This includes minutes from the steering group meetings and draft versions of the AAA should be posted here. 4. OECD general site on Aid effectiveness: www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness (Includes results from OECD monitoring survey on aid effectiveness

More info contact Lucy: [email protected] 3 More info contact Lucy: [email protected] 4