We are interested in hearing how you are promoting the Busan Principles. Tell us about the activities you are carrying out or how you are supporting partner countries in implementing the Busan Principles. If you are a partner country government, please share your experience in making the Busan Principles a reality and what lessons you have learned in the process.

2 Mar 2014 - 4 May 2015

Comments (3)

Shasha Azri

The following questions from the online consultation proposed by the Monitoring Advisory Group of the GPEDC process guided our responses:

 1. Relevance: Do the indicators adequately reflect / measure meaningful progress on the ground? Are the indicators relevant to / in the spirit of the Busan commitments and principles?

No, firstly, the indicators do not entirely measure actual behavioral changes on the ground especially measuring the kind and quality of services delivered towards citizens. The GPEDC should be citizen-driven process and not just something limited to institutional multi-stakeholder dialogue if it wants to improve on the 2030 Agenda development landscape. THE GPEDC should be able to measure citizen’s engagement in the entire monitoring process and so therefore the indictors should be citizen-driven than government-driven. For instance, GPEDC Indicator 2 regarding civil society operates within an environment which maximizes its engagement in and contribution to development.  A true measure for tracking progress regarding the enabling environment for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) can be easily gathered through the creation and operationalization of a new set of citizen-driven indicators  thus :

  • Existing laws that guarantee free association, free speech and free public gathering for citizens as pre-conditions for effective civic participation and engagement with government.
  • Existing fiscal incentives or laws that ease fundraising for civil society entities.
  • Existing dialogue platforms between the government and CSOs.
  • The quality of collaboration between the government and CSOs.
  • The quality of collaboration between civil society and the development cooperation providers.
  • The quality of collaboration between civil society and the private sector.

 

Secondly, the GPEDC should focus on encouraging dialogue amongst stakeholders rather than being a data-driven process in tracking the implementation and quality of services in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal landscape.. It should focus on fostering sustainable open dialogue with stakeholders and create a reporting mechanism on this regarding best practices, lessons learnt and knowledge sharing amongst stakeholders. THE GPEDC should understand that development is domestically driven process and should have a roadmap for tracking private sector contribution in development.  For instance, concerning indicator 3, engagement and contribution of the private sector to development can be measured by fixing an entirely new set of indicators thus:

  • Existing government-private sector dialogue platforms.
  • The quality of collaboration between the government and the private sector.
  • Domestic private sector financial flow into development.
  • Private Foreign Direct Investment financial flow into development.
  • Timeline for the creation of a new business.
  • Number of decent jobs created by the private sector.
  • Accessing business capital by private sector actors.

 


     2. Efficiency: Can the indicators be measured efficiently and over time or is the data collection process prohibitively complex / time consuming? Do the indicators encourage multi-stakeholder engagement in the collection of data and in the verification of findings (as applicable)?

The data collection process is too burdensome and less cost-efficient. It takes time and resources to gather data to inform the GPEDC process. It is more data-driven than collecting quality interventions regarding behavioral changes on the ground with respect to stakeholders. GPEDC should be more dialogue focused than being data-driven for it to truly drive significant behavioral changes across stakeholders especially with developing countries confronted by endemic corruption and governance related issues.

 

The GPEDC indicators do not necessarily encourage multi-stakeholders dialogue in the data collection process. It has simply created a situation whereby every stakeholder wants to protect its “niche” within the entire GPEDC process especially the government. The GPEDC process should be citizen-driven in order to guarantee behavioral changes for genuine developmental impact and transformations in the future.  The GPEDC has rather over-empowered the government at the detriment of other stakeholders. It is very important to make reporting an inclusive process for all with each stakeholder playing an equal role in the process. Appointing a national government coordinator makes the government overbearing on other stakeholders. THE GPEDC should not be a government-driven process because some governments do not even bother to organize joint validation dialogue meetings in order to approbate the final report submitted to the GPEDC process by CSOs like the case study of the Republic of Cameroon, conducted by a consortium of CSOs dubbed “Investment Watch”.

 

In Cameroon, according to Investment Watch’s findings regarding Cameroon government’s voluntary engagement and resolve with the GPEDC process, found out that the GPEDC process is merely a cosmetic process in Cameroon, and the national coordinator of the GPDEC process did not organize a final validation meeting with CSOs to validate the final GPEDC report. Worthy to note is that, the GPEDC process should be a process based on leveraging the outcome of development processes and services to genuinely impact the lives of grassroots citizens in a sustainable manner within the landscape of the 2030 development agenda.


3.1. Usefulness: Do stakeholders see the indicators as useful and effective in furthering positive behavior change (toward achieving the relevant Busan commitment) and promoting effective development co-operation? Is the monitoring process contributing to incentives for all relevant actors to change?

 

No, some of the indicators have outlived their usefulness and are no longer effective in furthering positive behavioral change amongst stakeholders. The GPDEC monitoring process has created a situation whereby stakeholders are simply fighting to protect their respective “niches” without a due consideration of grassroots citizens. The GPDEC process needs to be overhauled for genuine engagement with grassroots citizens in order to trigger genuine behavioral changes within entire the GPEDC process.

 

For instance, in some countries the government does not see other stakeholders as equal partners in fostering development and as such the government is not very collaborative with civil society entities like the case of Cameroon and most often, the government is extremely suspicious of civil society actors. Worthy to note is that most of the GPEDC indicators are old and have outlived their usefulness. It is absolutely necessary to invent a new set of indicators as proposed in question 1 inter-alia. The development cooperation providers have very limited collaborative and a dialogue space with civil society entities especially in developing and least developed countries.

In terms of changing the indicators, Investment Watch is proposing that:

A true measure for tracking progress regarding the enabling environment for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) can be easily gathered through the creation and operationalization of a new set of citizen-driven indicators thus :

  • Existing laws that guarantee free association, free speech and free public gathering for citizens as pre-conditions for effective civic participation and engagement with government.
  • Existing fiscal incentives or laws that ease fundraising for civil society entities.
  • Existing dialogue platforms between the government and CSOs.
  • The quality of collaboration between the government and CSOs.
  • The quality of collaboration between civil society and the development cooperation providers.
  • The quality of collaboration between civil society and the private sector.

 

For instance, concerning indicator 3, engagement and contribution of the private sector to development can be measured by fixing an entirely new set of indicators thus:

  • Existing government-private sector dialogue platforms.
  • The quality of collaboration between the government and the private sector.
  • Domestic resource mobilization financial flow  by the private sector into development.
  • Private Foreign Direct Investment financial flow into development.
  • Timeline for the creation of a new business.
  • Number of decent jobs created by the private sector.
  • Accessing business capital by private sector actors.

 


3.2. Is the indicator drawing attention to established co-operation practices in ways that inform multi-stakeholder dialogue and increase accountability?


Yes but not entirely. The GPEDC indicators do not carry all aspects that are related to development effectiveness. It is vital to build coherence between domestic and international resource mobilizations financial flows as well as coherence between domestic and international accountability indicators. Genuine accountability can only be developed when all parameters are brought tighter to track the quality of development cooperation at all levels.

 

It is therefore equally very vital; to build a new set of indicators within the scope of tracking financial flows in the scope of implementing and tracking the 2030 agenda thus:

  • Domestic resource mobilization financial flow by the government.
  • Domestic resource mobilization financial flow by the private sector into development.
  • International resource mobilization financial flow by bilateral partners.
  • International resource mobilization financial flow by multilateral partners.
  • Private Foreign Direct Investment financial flow into development.

 

 

Shasha Azri

En los resultados de los indicadores anteriormente evaluados en La Alianza Global para la Cooperación Eficaz al Desarrollo, se evidenciaron avances con respecto a las prioridades y metas del país, a pesar de que se concluye como medida de mejoramiento la aceleración de esfuerzos basados en metas y compromisos con miras a un desarrollo internacional eficaz.  

 

Aunque se ha progresado en la agenda de eficacia de la ayuda, todavía persisten grandes desafíos, como por ejemplo la pobreza y la desigualdad que siguen siendo el desafío principal.


Reconocemos la función esencial de los diferentes actores participantes como el sector privado, la organización civil, sindicatos, gobiernos territoriales y proveedores de cooperación, para determinar el progreso y estimular el dialogo político sobre la construcción de la Cooperación al Desarrollo en la aplicación de los ODS. 

 

Para que la participación de las partes interesadas fuera eficiente y con la intención de socializar la  información anteriormente obtenida y fomentar la contribución en el intercambio de conocimientos e ideas, realizamos diálogos con los actores de manera independiente en cuatro ocasiones;  esto fue  importante para reforzar la comprensión mutua de los avances y desafíos hacía una cooperación más efectiva        

Este monitoreo motivo especialmente a compromisos ventajosos entre el sector público-privado y recomendaciones en pro de la competitividad empresarial hacia el sector público. Lo anterior se hace evidente entre otras cosas, en el lanzamiento de su Informe Nacional de Competitividad, un espacio anual que reúne a una parte representativa del sector empresarial colombiano con actores públicos relevantes (ministros y presidente) para discutir sobre diferentes temáticas que están afectando de manera directa la competitividad del país.