The CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE joined the 2021 Busan Global Partnership Forum held in Seoul, South Korea last November 18 to 29, 2021.
Organised by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the event promotes development effectiveness amid Covid-19 as key to achieving the SDGs.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, a groundbreaking agreement that set out shared principles for development effectiveness and endorsed by a broad range of governments, civil society organisations, private sector and other actors. The Busan Partnership agreement led to the establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), a multi-stakeholder forum for driving progress on development effectiveness. CPDE represents civil society in the GPEDC.
Through the forum, GPEDC sought to achieve the following objectives:
- reflect on progress in implementing the Busan Partnership Agreement and explore the challenges of promoting development effectiveness in the context of Covid-19;
- showcase new ideas and exciting initiatives that are delivering results at country level; and
- contribute to the discussion on how GPEDC should evolve to respond to the current context and maximise its contribution to Agenda 2030.
Luca de Fraia, of the CPDE International CSOs sector and ActionAid Italy, served as a panelist at the session on Innovative and Inclusive Partnerships, which was heavily driven by discussions on innovation and digital technologies, along with Covid-19.
He explained how CPDE developed a conceptual framework reflecting on the importance of the effectiveness principles in a crisis like Covid-19. Last March, CPDE released its global, multistakeholder study on Covid response, using the lens of effective development cooperation.
Luca highlighted two areas in the conversation: alignment with country plans, and promotion of a human-rights based-approach:
“The best option to address this kind of situation is to make sure that the responses to a crisis like COVID-19 are aligned with country priorities, that such responses are embedded as much as possible in countries’ plans to realize SDGs- embedded in country frameworks and country systems. The partnerships we need to address a crisis like a Covid pandemic must be rooted in such a principle.”
He also said that duty-bearers must make sure that social distancing policies – one of the key measures in the Covid response – are implemented in way to safeguard most basic rights such as a freedom of association and speech.
Meanwhile, CPDE Co-Chair Beverly Longid is a panelist at the Development effectiveness in fragile contexts session, where she shared the platform’s work on the triple nexus. She said that CPDE believes in the potential of development partnerships to address the interrelated issues of peace, development and humanitarian crisis.
“Instead of providing ‘quick fix’ and stopgap measures, partnerships for sustainable development need to take into account the structural determinants of conflict and the unique challenges of development in fragile contexts. In the platform’s 2020-2023 Strategic Plan, nexus issues were identified as a policy objective that we will focus on,” she added.
Busan Global Partnership Forum Nov 18
Luca de Fraia [3:08 – 3:17] and Beverly Longid [6:00 – 6:12]
CPDE presents the following recommendations for upholding development effectiveness amid conflict and fragility:
- Understanding the Triple Nexus: Promote a common understanding of the Triple Nexus among actors in the three pillars, among multistakeholder platforms and across countries; this understanding and interpretation must be rooted in local contexts and concrete analysis of situations of conflict and fragility
- Addressing concerns: Ensure meaningful participation of civil society, especially in situations where governments are parties to conflict/s; special attention should also be given to empowering national minorities, LGBTQI, the disabled, and elderly to be able to participate in the process of design, implementation, and assessment of the Triple Nexus.
- Relating to the bigger political context: The nexus approach must be coupled with vibrant work of, and partnerships among, governments, private sectors and CSOs wherever possible to push for the recommendations arrived at in using the Triple Nexus as a frame of analysis and action.
- Relating to the global aid regime: Financing for the Triple Nexus should be scaled up, together with ODA allocated for this purpose. DE principles should be upheld; pursue the opportunities created by the discourse on the Triple Nexus to open up discussions on democratic governance of International Financial Institutions and an end to policy conditionality in relation to aid.
To learn more about the forum, visit this page on the GPEDC website.
