While outside of the official meetings some critical and forward-looking discussions took place among a wide range of experts on issues related to international development cooperation, the Summit itself did not provide much space for it. Consequently, the Pact for the Future offers little, in terms of content, on international development cooperation and risks muddying the waters with FfD4 just around the corner. 

The only reference to Official Development Assistance (ODA), or aid, was a welcome reaffirmation on meeting the 0.7 per cent global target set by rich countries back in 1970. This is quickly followed by a suggestion to “continue discussions on the modernization of measurements of official development assistance,” which has already concluded, at least for the time being. Given the problematic outcomes of this process for the quantity and quality of aid that developing countries receive, a more welcome and timely suggestion would have been a full independent review of the modernisation process, with a view to reversing many of its controversial reforms as they have diluted the meaning of aid.

Indeed, the ODA modernisation process is the perfect example of the limitations of the existing structures which govern and make decisions on aid, since the whole process took place behind closed doors with only a small group of countries in the room. For this reason, we will be calling on UN Member States to acknowledge these limitations and to call for a more representative governance housed in the United Nations. 

The need for international aid governance reform – to ensure a more representative and democratic system for making decisions on how development cooperation budgets are used and measured – also rings true in the context of the trend towards promoting a greater role of the private sector in development cooperation, including through the use of Private Sector Instruments (PSI). The Pact for the Future falls into these same machinations and is littered with references to the role of the private sector in delivering the sustainable development goals. We remain highly sceptical of the role of the private sector, especially as a target and beneficiary of development cooperation budgets as their motives and those of the sustainable development agenda remain at odds. Development cooperation budgets must be ring-fenced for purposes that directly address poverty and inequality. 

Reaffirming a 50-year old commitment without any signs of earnest intention to meet it rings hollow. Yet, the need is greater than ever. It calls for a different approach. These unmet commitments must be converted to a debt owed to the global south, a debt that easily equals the missing trillions needed for sustainable development. 

One thing we learned over the past few days is that there is a need to up the ambition and call for a transformative agenda. As we march towards FfD4 in 2025, a broad coalition of civil society actors will be demanding a new and transformative approach to international development cooperation. The cornerstone of this could be an agreement on a Framework Convention on international development cooperation that holds governments to account on their past commitments on the quality and quantity of their development cooperation. FfD4 is a critical opportunity to agree on establishing a new normative framework on development cooperation which secures a universally understood mandate for development cooperation and which brings all the actors, decision making and accountability frameworks under one roof. Anything less than that will be just business as usual.