AidWatch workshop in Busan
Posted on 28 November 2011
As we already announced in a previous blog, over 500 civil society representatives gathered for 3 days in Busan, South Korea, for the Busan Civil Society Forum that takes place from the 26th until the 28th of November.
Panel discussion at the workshop saw speakers from Bangladesh and Nepal
The main purpose of this global Forum is to prepare everyone for the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) that will take place immediately after. This should ensure that CSOs are univocal in their messaging and well organized when they participate during the HLF4. In addition, this Busan Civil Society Forum is a space where different CSOs from different parts of the world working on various themes can exchange experiences, learn from each other and build alliances for the future.
AidWatch organized a workshop on 27 November called ‘Working together to make the EU more accountable’ in which we wanted to share knowledge and look for ways to cooperate better with partner organizations in the future.
We were happy to see that there was a good turnout with various CSO representatives from different continents that shared their views and suggestions for improvements of our joint work to hold the EU accountable.
The workshop began with an introductory statement from our own Concord President Justin Kilcullen. He framed the set up of AidWatch and the work it is doing in a broader political perspective and stressed the importance of the HLF4 for the future of aid monitoring. Subsequently, Luca De Fraia from ActionAid Italy explained how we distinguish genuine aid from inflated aid. He pointed out that we work and must continue to work on both aid quantity and quality. To conclude his presentation, he suggested possible ways to broaden the scope of the current work of AidWatch beyond the outgoing flows and to include additional issues that affect effective development.
After this we gave the floor to two speakers from partner countries. Firstly, Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, Executive Director of VOICE in Bangladesh, expressed some of his concerns regarding the EU’s modus operandi when it comes to development cooperation and aid delivery. Secondly, Prabhash Devkota, National Program Manager of Alliance for Aid Monitor Nepal, inspiringly told the story of what the lack of effective development causes to villages in partner countries like Nepal and called on everyone to help change the paradigms on aid effectiveness.
From the presentations of these last two speakers and the various interventions from the floor, it became very clear that there is still a lot of work to be done to establish profound monitoring of the EU donors by CSOs from the EU as well as the CSOs from the recipient countries. EU development cooperation must be effective and have a genuine poverty focus. Therefore, it is crucial that we scale up our cooperation with partners so we can voice their concerns and advance our joint monitoring work in the post-Busan era.
