South-South and Triangular Cooperation and Aid Effectiveness
Source: AFRODAD
With over 140 participants representing governments, multilateral organizations, aid agencies, civil society, private sector and academia, a two-day High-Level Symposium entitled 'Trends in development cooperation: South-South and Triangular Cooperation and Aid Effectiveness' took place in Cairo, Egypt from the 19 January to the 20 January 2008. The Symposium is part of the preparations for the first bi-ennial Development Cooperation Forum (DCF), which is due to take place in July 2008 in New York.They explored means to promote results-oriented development cooperation in pursuing national priorities. The debate provided an opportunity to further strengthen the voice of developing countries in the global dialogue on the promotion of greater effectiveness through stronger national ownership and leadership of development. It is also expected to influence follow-up to the Monterrey Consensus at the upcoming Doha Conference on Financing for Development in December 2008.
Three central issues were at the centre of debate in Cairo on how to achieve a more equitable and productive aid relationship between donors and programme countries, namely conditionality, aid quality framework and South-South and tri-angular cooperation.
On conditionality, NORAD said that if 'it helps us to attain human rights, the rule of law and good governance, without which aid is ineffective, then we may have to use it'. Others argued that conditionality supplants domestic policy making. It was also pointed out that conditionality thrives best in project approaches rather than where program-based approaches are used. Another speaker said that conditionality could be a useful part of development but all depends on how it is interpreted and presented. Participants expressed concern regarding the need to make conditionalities support rather than bind policy reform. This should be linked to clear benchmarks and help achieve given objectives. There was emphasis that conditionalities should be developed through stakeholder dialogue rather than imposed unilaterally.
On South-South cooperation, a number of points were made including
- The Doha Development Agenda, its problems and the need to have all development concerns included.
- He also pointed out the new and emerging trends where there is reverse lending in the sense that the South is now lending to the North.
- New generation of globalization: More TNCs arising from the South compelling Northern countries to develop a new form of protectionism in the area of investments and the traditional investment in trade.
- There is the proliferation of regional trade agreements and their impact is crucial for our analysis.
- The emergence of concern over corporate goods - climate change, water management as well as health care among others
- The proliferation of independent corruption networks
- Delivery of the donors’ system
- Migration and movement of national persons from the South which leads to brain drain
- He noted that the South-South cooperation is been driven mostly by China, Brazil, South Africa and India.
- The impact of oil price increases was also worth looking at
Click here to read the full report