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Can the UN Development Cooperation Forum replace the OECD DAC as the place for global aid negotiations?
17 July 2008
Report by Eurodad’s Nuria Molina, who attended the recent DCF meeting in New York
The first United Nations Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) took place in the first week of July in New York. It was preceded by preparatory meetings in January 2008 in Cairo, and in mid-June in Rome. The main topic was reforming aid. Can it deliver where other institutions have struggled?
The 2005 UN World Summit decided “to convene a biennial high-level Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) that would review trends in international development cooperation, including strategies, policies and financing; promote greater coherence among the development activities of different development partners and strengthen the normative and operational link in the work of the United Nations.” Behind the establishment of the DCF, there was the desire of developing countries to address development cooperation matters within a global forum in which they would have a greater voice and ownership. The main impetus for the forum was provided by the G77, originally founded by seventy-seven developing countries and which today brings together hundred and twenty-nine countries. Currently, these debates take place within the OECD Development Assistance Committee, or the World Bank and its Development Committee – structures where developing countries have little say.
Preparatory meetings leading up to the first DCF in New York already showed that developing countries feel a greater ownership over this forum and, thus, raise points more assertively than elsewhere. This was clearly the case in the Cairo meetings, where conditionality was a major issue on the agenda. Developing countries very candidly expressed their concerns on the conditions attached to the development grants and loans they receive and the lack of progress in streamlining conditionality – as donors promised in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
The DCF could provide a forum where developing countries have a greater voice and feel they are on a more equal footing with donor governments than is the case in the OECD DAC. This proposal is already hinted at in the “Official Summary” that the ECOSOC President released after the meeting. This is a strong reason why the G77 and several NGOs are calling upon governments to hold intergovernmental negotiations on aid at the DCF rather than the OECD DAC, as
proposed by Ramesh Singh
– Chief Executive of ActionAid International – in his speech at the DCF on 1st July: “the emerging recommendation from civil society (is) that it would make sense for the UN, rather than the OECD, to host the next High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011.” A possible incremental – and more feasible – step could be that the DAC and the DCF co-host the 2011 High Level Forum (HLF) on Aid Effectiveness – to follow this year’s one in Accra.
However, there are key challenges to this move. Needless to say, political feasibility is the first challenge. It is unlikely that donor governments will want to give up an institutional framework that they fully control – OECD DAC – to get themselves into another one – the DCF – where they have less. Moreover, transferring these debates to the UN would implicitly mean politicising the aid effectiveness negotiations, which so far donors have tried to keep very “technical” in tone. (They prefer talking about intermediate aid implementation targets, such as coordination or harmonisation, rather than more structural issues such as the power imbalances governing the aid relationships).
Beyond political feasibility, there are reasonable questions about how an underfunded and understaffed UN organisation could take up roles on monitoring and analysing aid trends – currently done by the OECD. Further clarity and discussions would be needed on what roles the UN could and should take up. A potential way forward could be to transfer political negotiations, while analytical capacities remain within other organisations which already have the capacity. The downside is that analysis and research is never neutral, and if biased it undermines the basis for well-informed political negotiations. But beyond this, there are also challenges facing the institutional dynamics of the UN – an institution where negotiations are mostly conducted by diplomats which do not necessarily always have the right expertise to engage in in-depth aid discussions. This could also be addressed by setting up committees attended by experts where substantive issues would be negotiated, complemented by higher-level ministerial forums.
Challenges can be addressed if the political will to reform the aid architecture is in place. However, the first DCF in New York was still dominated by a general sense of uncertainty about what the future holds for the DCF. If some aspects of the current international aid architecture need to be reformed by 2011 to better engage developing countries in aid effectiveness debates, governments need to take action now. A decision should be taken – or at least thoroughly discussed – in Accra and the necessary steps forward should follow soon after so in 2009 the DCF is already equipped with the necessary resources to undertake a good preparatory process for the 2011 HLF. If the sequence is delayed, it may be too late for 2011, and eventually the idea of the DCF may just fall between the cracks, as many other UN processes have done. Before we fail once again, we need to remember that seventy-seven developing countries are seriously backing this initiative and have strong expectations. OECD DAC counts on only twenty-three. If democracy is to prevail, we had better start getting our maths right.