CSO INTERVENTION FOR ROUNDTABLE 1: DEMOCRATIC OWNERSHIP

Presented by Gigi Francisco
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)

September 2, 2008

OWNERSHIP

The Paris Declaration narrowly defines ownership as developing country governments exercising "effective leadership over their development policies and strategies." The draft Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) carries commitments by both donor and recipient countries to "broaden country-level policy dialogue and development" (para 13). This is clearly improved language, one that moves us forward in the practical elaboration of democratic ownership understood as a PROCESS which is empowering for all stakeholders.

However, taken as a whole the commitment to democratic ownership as found in the AAA continues to be flawed and unacceptable to CSOs, for the following reasons:
(1) it leaves untouched the top-down and externally imposed model of ownership which is based on World Bank analyses of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) (drafted and evaluated by donors);
(2) while there is a reference to country systems (para 14), there are no specific time-bound commitments for all donors to do so;
(3) there is little about how donors behavior can limit democratic ownership (e.g. donor control and transparency issues);
(4) the blanket reference to so-called "established' international standards and best practices" can be used by donors to impose reforms; and
(5) while we welcome para 9 that inequalities and social exclusion undermine development and that gender equality, respect for human rights and environmental sustainability are crucial for development results, we emphasize that these cannot be prescribed as further conditionalities.

For civil society organizations (CSOs), the main issue that we take forward here to the High Level Forum (HLF) is that democratic ownership needs to be realized within a comprehensive rights-based enabling environment where meaningful and genuine aid partnerships must work toward long term development for developing countries. In this regard, we challenge both the content and institutional ownership of the Paris Declaration (PD) targets and measurement instruments.

For us, it is critical for the PD to be harmonized with existing targets and measurements around core UN conventions and summit outcomes in the economic and social fields, such as on human rights, women's rights, labor standards and internationally agreed development goals which are already being monitored by diverse specialized agencies, The PD should give due regard to existing schemes and peer review mechanisms that are being discussed and developed by non DAC and emerging donors and through South-South cooperation and triangular modalities, as well as to innovative proposals including on debt exit strategies from experts and civil society organizations.

CONDITIONALITIES & INDICATORS

Social and political dialogue is key to the mutual transformations of development paradigms. As such, we should all work toward the promotion of mutual accountability, responsibility and criteria for human rights, security and development among all stakeholders and institutional sites. Our history is deplete with stories on how the use of power and resources to extract compliance in behavior, no matter how benevolent the intent was, have led to disastrous results, including extremely costly backlash reaction against social groups that were intended to benefit from conditionalities.

Having said so, CSOs in this HLF forward the following:

Efforts in capacity building toward realizing democratic ownership must not be limited to World Bank sponsored standards and competencies around the demands of a limited aid management modality but should focus on the competency requirements of a more comprehensive rights-based development planning, monitoring and evaluation, some of which have been developed by other UN specialized agencies and human rights advocates.

Moreover, while aid can play a catalytic role in development, creditor coordination is needed across the concerns for aid quality, quantity and effectiveness and in more inclusive multilateral platforms. We know that policy inter-linkages are crucial. The PD must not contravene commitments in the United Nations for domestic measures that enhance recipient countries' resilience in the macroeconomic and financial areas, including their ability to adopt counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies, employment policies and ensure public provision of services. Nor should the PD undermine creditor coordination toward reducing risks of debt overhang for developing countries.

OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors must explicitly commit to "use country systems in the disbursement of at least 80% of aid by 2010" and 'reduce the burden of conditionality by 2010 so that aid agreements are based on mutually agree objectives."

The AAA must commit to building capacities at country, including regional and multilateral levels to undertake monitoring and evaluation through sex-disaggregated data, supporting independent and citizen-led monitoring and evaluations systems, and agree to an inclusive evaluation process to assess the impact of PD on combating poverty, reducing inequalities, exiting from debt dependency, and promoting gender equality, human rights, labor rights and environmental sustainability



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