Building towards Busan
Australia supports small-scale activities of local and international NGOs that help meet basic needs of local communities and promote sustainable economic and social development . Photo: Kate Holt/Africa Practice
In 2005, the Paris Declaration set out five principles to fundamentally improve the way countries give and receive aid. This year, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4) in Busan will review global progress in implementing the principles and make new commitments to further the international aid effectiveness agenda.
ODE has prepared commentary on some of the key issues for HLF-4. We’ve brought our short briefs, case studies and interviews with leading experts together on this page. ODE explores:
- lessons learned since Paris: findings from the Paris Declaration Evaluation and some Australian experiences of working in partner country systems.
- some ongoing challenges for aid effectiveness: increasing aid transparency, coming to grips with mutual accountability and managing aid proliferation and fragmentation.
- the evolving development landscape: aid effectiveness in fragile states, and the rise of 'south-south' cooperation.
More information on HLF-4 is available on the HLF-4 website (external website).
Lessons learned
Building to Busan: What can we expect next week’s HLF on Aid Effectiveness in Busan to achieve? ODE Talks to Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution about how lessons learned from five years of implementing the Paris Declaration will feed into Busan’s outcomes.
Progress since Paris: Six years after the Paris Declaration was signed, has aid become more effective? In ODE’s interview with Bernard Wood, lead author of the Paris Declaration evaluation, ODE asks if international commitments are translating into results on the ground.
Working in partner country systems: The Government coordination and donor harmonisation improves service delivery in Vietnam case study demonstrates how taking a program-based approach delivers results. Over three years, the National Target Program 2 for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation provided 7.3 million households with access to latrines and 2.5 million people with access to water.
The Linking central reform to service delivery in Papua New Guinea case study describes the way PNG's National Economic and Fiscal Commission lead reform of the way provinces are funded, to better deliver essential services like health and education. It sets out lessons learned from Australian support for the Commission and demonstrates how demand-driven technical assistance contributes to results.
Ongoing challenges
Transparency: Making aid transparent is increasingly understood as the key to improving accountability and managing for results. ODE’s Spotlight on Transparency brief outlines how the transparency agenda has developed since Paris. And ODE Talks to Clare Short about the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Mutual accountability: Of the five Paris Declaration principles, least progress has been made in implementing mutual accountability. Getting Practical about Mutual Accountability looks at the principle in practice.
Fragmentation and scaling up: In the past decade, global aid flows have increased from 80 billion US dollars to 130 billion, but the average size of aid activities is shrinking. Internationally, the median size of donor projects is just USD70,000. Johannes Linn of the Brookings Institution explains how donors can grow small activities and bring them to scale, in order to reach more people and reduce burden on partner governments.
The evolving development landscape
Fragile states: No single low income fragile state has achieved any of the Millennium Development Goals. In this two-part interview on the World Development Report on Conflict, Violence and Security, team leader Nigel Roberts describes how donors can support institutional transformation and achieve results in fragile situations through community-based development, working with women and creating employment.
South-south cooperation: Emerging economies (and non-DAC members) like China and India are becoming significant donors in their own right. The Asia Foundation's Gordon Hein tells us about the priorities for this new group of donors emerging through a ground-breaking discussion series with China, India, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.
Last reviewed: 25 November, 2011