During the week of November 6th, CPDE representatives participated in a series of meetings in Brussels related to the multi-stakeholder Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment.
CPDE, along with the Government of Uganda and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, co-chairs this Task Team, which is composed of an equal number of CSO, provider and partner country representatives. The Task Team’s mandate is to monitor and promote progress in key Busan HighLevel Meeting commitments on CSO enabling environment and CSO development effectiveness.
In a preparatory meeting, CPDE participants focused on implementing the work plan for CPDE’s Working Group on Enabling Environment. The Working Group has launched, with CPDE regional secretariats, a call to nominate CPDE country focal points. They will coordinate the monitoring of indicator two (on CSO enabling environment) in the GPEDC’s monitoring framework at the country level.
The Working Group will be preparing a set of training programs in early 2018 for these focal points oriented towards the Third GPEDC Monitoring Round, which will be initiated by the GPEDC in April or May 2018.
Another important stream of work for the Working Group and its members in the next months will be gathering of country experiences relating to the impact of CSO enabling environment conditions on CSO engagement in Agenda 2030 at the country level.
The two-day meeting of the Task Team focused on renewing its principles for operation as a multistakeholder initiative: How are agreements on strategic directions established? What are the roles of the co-chairs in guiding the Task Team’s Secretariat? How do Task Team members effectively participate in ongoing work of the Task Team? What are the roles of the Secretariat in support of the Task Team?
The second focus for the Task Team meeting was its future strategic directions post-Nairobi. There was overall consensus by the three stakeholder groups that the Task Team would concentrate on facilitating country-level work related to its core mandate by working through the Global Partnership and supporting the third monitoring round in 2018 and by addressing the inclusion of CSOs in multi-stakeholder initiatives on the Sustainable Develepment Goals at the country level.
Finally, the Joint Support Team (JST) of the Global Partnership convened a one-day meeting of a multi-stakeholder Reference Group created to support the JST’s work on the revisions of Indicator Two. The JST took the proposals for revising indicator two that had been developed and submitted by CPDE’s Working Group on Enabling Environment.
These proposals were the starting point for the Reference Group’s discussions and contributions. The Reference Group offered detailed comments on each of the indicator two modules and questions. The JST will take onboard this commentary in its revisions for this indicator.
A small core group of the Reference Group, in which CPDE also participates, will work closely with the JST on these revisions in the coming weeks. Indicator two will form part of a revised monitoring framework to be approved by the GPEDC’s Steering Committee in March/April 2018.