GPEDC to review mandate in light of new Sustainable Development Goals

Vienna, Austria, October 4, 2016. The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) needs to review its mandate in order to help accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals as outlined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It should also consider modernizing the Partnership’s monitoring framework to reflect the challenges for 2030 and to unleash the potential of development cooperation as a catalyst for public-private partnerships for development.

These were the main conclusions of a two-day GPEDC providers’ conference, hosted by the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) at its headquarters in Vienna, September 29–30. The outcome of the deliberations will be presented to the second high-level meeting of the GPEDC, which will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, November 28–December 1.

The conference was attended by a diverse group of over 40 development cooperation partners from members of the European Union, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, the Arab Coordination Group and OFID, and multilateral organizations.

In his opening remarks, OFID Director-General Suleiman J Al-Herbish highlighted the deep economic, social and political transformations taking place in partner countries. “It is important and timely that as providers, we take stock of these changes and understand commonalities and differences in this new context,” he stated. “We need to define what effective cooperation means for us and for our partner countries now that we have—in the SDGs—a reference framework for all.”

The conference included a presentation of the Partnership’s 2016 monitoring report, which looked at the degree to which development partners were implementing their commitments as agreed in 2011at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan. The monitoring exercise involved 81 countries and over 125 development partners. One of the key findings indicated that providers showed a good level of alignment to national priorities and a focus on results. However, it also showed that development partners needed to strengthen their work in other areas, such as predictability of assistance and use of country systems. They also had to provide support to further enable the contribution to development by the private sector and civil society.

Conference participants agreed that with the adoption of Agenda 2030, the GPEDC needed a new vision in order to re-galvanize collaboration by all actors to advance the effectiveness of development cooperation. The future success of the partnership would depend on its ability to further deepen the interplay between traditional development assistance, southern development actors, private investment, and civil society.

Participants also had the opportunity to discuss the draft outcome document of the Nairobi high-level meeting, as presented by Mr Macharia Kamau, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Kenya to the United Nations in New York and Chief Negotiator of the said document.

Emphasizing his belief in the validity of the GPEDC, Kamau reiterated the necessity of a new deal that would position the partnership effectively in the 2030 Agenda and ensure the transparency, accountability and predictability of both donors and recipients.