OCFA, ADFD host roundtable on outcomes of Fourth High-Level Forum on aid effectiveness in Busan

The roundtable, held at ADFD headquarters in Abu Dhabi, was addressed by Talaat Abdel Malek, Chair of the Paris-based Working Party on Aid Effectiveness. Other speakers included the delegates from OCFA and ADFD who were part of the UAE delegation at the Fourth High-Level Forum (HLF-4) on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea, at the end of 2011.

Several major UAE humanitarian and developmental organizations attended the roundtable discussion, which reviewed events leading up to Busan, including the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness of 2005 and the Accra Agenda for Action of 2008. The meeting also explored the position of the Arab Coordination Group for the national and regional development organizations and discussed ways of reflecting the outcomes of Busan in the UAE donors' development programmes.

The most significant outcome of Busan was the shift from "aid effectiveness" to a focus on "development effectiveness" in the countries where aid is being delivered, whereby donors and partner countries are encouraged to work together to see that aid is having a positive impact on the country's sustainable development. To promote this approach, the Conference recommended a number of actions, including greater transparency in documentation and monitoring of programmes, more predictable, multi-year aid, and more efforts to reduce "fragmentation", where many different donors put pressure on the recipient country's resources by their demands for separate attention from the governments of these countries. Participants at Busan committed themselves to developing a new "Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation", in which all participants in development cooperation would be represented.

Commenting on the rationale for the roundtable discussion, Hazza Mohammed Al Qahtani, OCFA Director General, said, "At Busan, there was a clear call for the inclusion in international aid forums of new aid actors, that are playing an increasingly large role in the international aid landscape. This roundtable discussion focuses on ways in which UAE aid players can streamline their activities and forge international partnerships for progress towards true development effectiveness."

He added, "By sharing the outcomes from Busan with UAE aid players, OCFA hopes to help to improve the overall impact of the UAE's development programmes worldwide."

Reflecting on this event, Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Acting Director General of ADFD, said, "The roundtable has discussed several topics that will reach to the common vision about the effectiveness of development and the agenda for beyond Busan. We are facing lots of challenges but we are looking forward to overcome it. Through our human potentials by cooperating and coordinating together, we will achieve the millennium development goals which are adopted by the United Nations, especially eliminating poverty."

He added, "The UAE is always proactive in providing initiatives for adopting international efforts in different fields of development through its developmental and charities institutions."

Speaking at the event, Mr. Talaat Abdel Malik said, "It is essential that development partners refocus their thinking with respect to international aid, so that there is a far greater emphasis on the results of their work and the impact that they have on a country's development, and less on enumerating their own inputs. This can only be achieved through, among other things, much greater coordination among development partners in the countries where the aid is being delivered, and by encouraging recipient countries to assume the leadership in prioritizing their development cooperation needs and in harmonizing the contributions of different aid providers."