The Co-Chairs
Richard Ssewakiryanga
Ssewakiryanga is the former Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum and a former co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). He is also a Policy Anthropologist who has helped formulate national poverty reduction strategies and shape international discussions of development cooperation and effectiveness.
Nurgul Dzhanaeva
Nurgul Dzhanaeva is the President of the Forum of Women’s NGOs of Kyrgyzstan, who has also served as sectoral representative and coordinator of the CPDE Feminist Group. In over a decade of involvement in aid and development effectiveness arenas, she has demonstrated strong engagement in the struggle for democratic ownership, adequate accountability, and feminist issues at local, regional, and global levels.
Aside from her long-term engagement with CPDE, she has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Asia Pacific Women Watch, the Regional Coordination Committee of the APRCEM, the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women, the Coordinating Committee of the Reality of Aid Asia-Pacific, and the Asia Pacific Research Network board. She is also an Organizing Partner of the Women’s Major Group for SDGs, and an initiator and member of the UNECE RCEM governing body.
Nurgul also holds more than 20 years of experience in women’s political participation, women’s economic rights advocacy against VAW, for SRHR, on building women’s movement in Kyrgyzstan, and strengthening capacity of women’s organizations. She is a trainer on women’s rights and served as a Global Trainer of the CSW/NGO Committee.
Biljana Spasovska
Biljana Spasovska is the Executive Director of the Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN), CPDE’s regional secretariat for the Europe region, whose action focuses on promoting an enabling environment for civil society, and effective development principles for ensuring sustainable and functioning democracies in the Balkans.
With more than 10 years of experience in the field of effective development cooperation, Biljana has proven expertise in research, monitoring, evaluation, policy and advocacy, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. She has designed and implemented international programmes related to empowering the civil society and advancing the development and the EU accession of the Western Balkans, working on collaborative projects with different stakeholders including notable regional, EU and global civil society organisations, international institutions, government agencies, and donors. As a lead representative of the Europe region for CPDE she has been actively involved in in various EU level events and international arenas including the 3rd GPEDC Monitoring round, the Belgrade Call to Action, and the organisation of the Global Civil Society Summit in 2019, and in 2022.
Luca De Fraia
Luca De Fraia is the Deputy Secretary General of ActionAid Italy, leading on institutional relationships. He has been an active member of CPDE since the Partnership’s inception, representing the ICSO sector and providing support for CPDE’s overall objectives especially in the area of policy and alliance building with other relevant CSO networks in the area of financing for development. He is also a member of the CPDE Coordination Committee, which represents civil society organisations on the Steering Committee of the GPEDC. In this capacity, he actively participated in the High-Level Meetings of the GPEDC, Mexico City (2014) and Nairobi (2016), and Geneva (2022).
Luca has been deeply committed to and involved in emerging, technical issues such as the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF). Since 2017, he heads the TOSSD (Total Official Support for Sustainable Development) Task Force of the DAC-CSO Reference Group, and is active in discussions around financing for development. He strives to utilize every available platform in his effort to raise awareness and peoples’ concerns on effective development cooperation issues.
Pedro Paulo Bocca
Pedro Paulo Bocca is the International Advocacy Advisor of the Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (ABONG), and a committed representative of the CPDE Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. He participated in the last two CPDE LAC Chapter Assemblies, held in Asuncion (2019) and Mexico City (2022), and in the Effective Cooperation Summit in Geneva (2022). Through his role at ABONG, he focused on global and regional CSO engagements for development effectiveness through networks and platforms (Forus, Mesa de Articulación, RePlong, CPDE, Processo de Articulação e Diálogo, among others); and participated in several conferences of the UN system, in particular the High-Level Political Forum (New York) and the Human Rights Council (Geneva). He also sustained relationship with international cooperation partners and investors, and developed strong expertise in project management, monitoring and evaluation, relationship with funding agencies and partners, and strategic planning.
Besides his political engagements with civil society groups at local, regional, and global levels, he has been a teacher of international relations and foreign policy for several public universities and academic institutions in Brazil.