The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

Aid works best where it supports local activities and initiatives, is prompt and predictable, and builds local accountability for its use.  The Paris Declaration agreed at the Second High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 set out a growing consensus on what is necessary for aid to be most effective.   The G8 also committed to 'implement and be monitored on all commitments we made in the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, including enhancing efforts to untie aid; disbursing aid in a timely and predictable fashion, through partner country systems where possible'. The upcoming meeting in Accra is about delivering on those commitments, about making sure aid keeps contributing to successes such as two million people in Africa now receiving life-saving HIV treatment and recent sharp falls in malaria rates from increased distribution of anti-malarial drugs and bednets.

What is the "HLF-3"?

The Third High Level Forum (HLF3) brings together ministers and officials, civil society organisations and development experts to agree an Agenda for Action (AAA) on aid effectiveness.  It is the most high profile gathering in recent years aiming to improve the effectiveness of the US $ 100 billion spent each year on aid.  

Attending the HLF-3 meeting are development ministers and delegations from around 40 donor countries and 100 developing countries - and some that are now both aid donor and recipient, such as China and India.

The international development sector should be congratulated for establishing this aid effectiveness process, a unique mechanism for collective learning and self-regulation, across numerous actors, organisations and sectors.  Poor countries and experts have been calling for these changes for decades. 

Principles were agreed and clear objectives set in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, but recent monitoring shows that, so far, implementation has been limited.  In the meeting in Ghana, and reflected in the Accra Agenda for Action there need to be clear, time bound, specific actions set out, to realise the commitments in the Declaration.

The Civil Society Parallel Meeting

In the run up to the official meeting there will be a parallel Civil Society Parallel Process meeting (31^st Aug to 1^st Sept), attended by 400 CSOs.  

ONE's Recommendations for the HLF-3

ONE (www.ONE.org) - a global movement of more than two million people united in the fight against poverty - is asking donor governments to demonstrate leadership at the HLF, and deliver on the promises they signed up to in 2003 and which culminated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005.  

For ONE's analysis of G7 aid effectiveness performance, please see the 2008 DATA Report (http://www.one.org/report/)

Our recommendations to the participants as the HLF-3 are as follows:

1.  Focus of HLF-3 should be on donor behaviour.  Changes in donor behaviour should not be dependent on developing countries' actions.  In fact the less effective the institutions of a recipient country, the more effective donors need to be, to make sure their aid works. 

Donors should focus their attention in Accra in negotiating the final "AAA" on what they themselves can do to deliver on their Paris commitment, setting clear, time bound action plans for achieving them.

2.  Make tangible commitments to improve aid transparency.  Greater transparency is central to aid delivering on its promise - to empower people in the fight against poverty.  Aid transparency makes aid more accountable and responsive to the needs of people.  Citizens and their representatives in both recipient and donor countries must be involved in aid planning, tracking and evaluation.

While greater transparency alone will not result in better governance or enhanced development outcomes in recipient countries, it is fundamental to their success. Aid transparency is a necessary condition for country-led development to emerge.  Without transparency, other aid effectiveness gains cannot be easily achieved.

At Accra and beyond, donors need to make aid transparency a clear priority.  To do this all donor countries present should sign up to a process in Ghana that will implement the principles of the new global aid transparency campaign Publish What You Fund which will be launched at the Civil Society meeting on 1 September 2008.

3.  Invest in recipient country capacity to improve aid management and support country-led development.  Co-ordinating donors, aid agencies, sub-contractors, ministries and other actors requires leadership, vision and highly effective aid management systems.  At country level, recipients need to be supported to take on and better manage this key responsibility.  This requires both resourcing and commitment by donors to comply with agreed country-level aid policies and procedures.  

4.  Monitoring of Paris Declaration criteria should be mainstreamed into normal donor reporting. A clear commitment should be made at Accra to continue to report and monitor progress beyond the existing Paris monitoring framework which expires in 2010.  The most important indicators collected in the Paris Declaration surveys should be built into the normal donor reporting and peer review processes of the OECD Development Assistance Committee.  These should include information on donor commitments, disbursements, modalities and use of country systems.

Notes and Resources

Third Higher Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness:  www.accrahlf.net

The Civil Society Organisations Parallel Process to the High-Level Forum III: www.betteraid.org

The Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, signed by over 100 donors and recipients in 2005, set out a number of key principles to improve the impact of aid.  The Declaration's key commitments are to ownership by recipient countries of their development agenda, the need for alignment of donors to the host countries' systems and policies and capacity building in recipient systems, with a particular focus on procurement and public financial management systems. There are also commitments by donors to untying their aid, the harmonisation of their activities with each other and a focus on managing for results.  Within each of these areas of commitment are 21 targets to be achieved by 2010.

Publish What You Fund - www.publishwhatyoufund.org - will be launched at the Civil Society event in Accra on the 1^st September 2008, between 13.30 -15.30 at the West Africa College of Physicians Conference Centre in Accra.

The DATA Report 2008 considered ten aid effectiveness indicators across transparency and reporting, predictability, use of national systems and untying aid and local competitive procurement. Using these indicators, DATA has ranked countries in four groups from most effective ODA to least effective: the UK; Canada and Germany; France and Japan; Italy and the US.  For more detail see pp. 49 - 51, and pp. 54 -55 at www.one.org/report/en/development.