Aid Coordination Roundtable Meeting 09 July 2009 Accra Agenda of Action and The Paris Declaration

Aid Coordination Roundtable Meeting 09 July 2009 Accra Agenda of Action and The Paris Declaration

What is Accra HLF 3?  First of 3 major international aid conferences in 2008, for accelerating progress towards MDGs: the UN High Level Event on MDGs in New York, 25 Sept, and the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar, 29 November-2 December  Built on work of the two previous meetings, in Rome and Paris, stocktaking of Paris Declaration commitments and forward looking: 2011 and beyond  Was different from its predecessors: developing countries played active role in the preparations and the agenda: 80 developing countries took part in the regional preparatory events, 54 in the OECD’s 2008 Survey of progress against the Paris Declaration targets; globally, more than 300 civil society groups, including grass roots groups, involved in consultations in the lead-up to Accra

Main Objectives for the Accra HLF  Gauging progress on implementing the Paris Declaration  Reinforcing country leadership of aid, ownership, and building capacity  Learning from surveys, evaluations, and analytic work, and addressing shortfalls and challenges  Identify key actions to achieve better aid effectiveness  Promoting a new aid architecture – “new” donors, vertical funds, private foundations, the private sector, civil society organizations  Making the link to achieving development results  Inform how the international community might deal with current global priorities – e.g., the food price crisis, climate change, etc.

At Accra, September 2-4, 2008  On the first two days of the HLF-3, there was a series of nine Roundtables covering the key issues in aid effectiveness  On the third day of the Forum, ministers endorsed the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)  This ministerial statement was developed with support from a multi- national consensus group working under the auspices of the OECD’s Working Party on Aid Effectiveness  Attention focused on stepping up progress towards the commitments outlined in the Paris Declaration by committing signatories to accelerating the pace of change by focusing on key areas that should enable them to meet the 2010 targets agreed in Paris.

Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) Drawing on evidence from the latest evaluations, the 2006 and 2008 Surveys on Monitoring the Paris Declaration and on in-depth contributions from developing countries, the AAA identifies three main areas where progress towards reform is still too slow :  Country ownership - (use of country systems, demand-driven technical assistance, and South-South Cooperation): Developing Countries to take stronger leadership of their own development policies and engage further with their parliaments and citizens in shaping them. Donors must commit to respecting countries’ priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and further increasing the predictability of aid flows.

Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)  Building more effective and inclusive partnerships: Incorporate contributions of all development players—middle-income countries, global funds, the private sector, civil society organizations—into more inclusive partnerships. The aim is for all providers of aid to use the same principles and procedures, their efforts are coherent and have greater impact on reducing poverty.

Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)  Achieving development results—and openly accounting for them: Demonstration of impact must be placed more squarely at the heart of efforts to make aid more effective. Strong focus on helping developing countries to produce stronger national statistical and information systems to help them better monitor and evaluate impact. Developing countries commit to making their revenues, expenditures, budgets, procurements and audits public. Donors commit to disclosing regular and timely information on their aid flows

Accra Agenda for Action: the Syrian Context  Syria endorsed the Paris Declaration in 2007, and agreed to AAA in 2009  The 10 th 5 Year plan stressed the importance of international cooperation, based on high level political commitment to MDGs  International cooperation programs alignment with national priorities spearheaded by the gov for national ownership, in line with the AAA  UNDP on behalf of the UN system is supporting the gov in the implementation of the commitments oulined in the AAA to enhance aid effectiveness and donor coordination

3rd Accra High Level Forum on AID EFFECTIVENESS September 2-4, 2008, Accra - Ghana