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PARIS DECLARATION ON AID EFFECTIVENESS IS ATTACHED.

 

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Direct Link to Report:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/58/41/41202121.pdf

 

2008 SURVEY ON MONITORING THE PARIS DECLARATION

EFFECTIVE AID BY 2010? WHAT IT WILL TAKE

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Accra International Women's Forum

 

On the 30th August 2008, more than 200 women's rights organizations, women's
empowerment  organisations, gender advocates and experts from all regions of
the world attended the Accra International Women's Forum to discuss the
implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. This
statement, which emanates from the forum calls for actions and
recommendations for the 3rd High Level Forum.


ACCRA INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S FORUM STATEMENT
http://62.149.193.10/wide/download/WomenForumStatement.pdf?id=712

The Accra Women's Forum participants believe that there is no aid
effectiveness without development effectiveness. Aid effectiveness without a
gender equality and women's rights perspective will not lead to effective
development and will not contribute to reduce poverty, inequalities and the
achievement of the MDGs.

Women's recommendations to the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness
The Aid Effectiveness process continues towards 2010 by which time the Paris
principles will need to be met. Yet, there are no clear actionable
commitments to set up work-plans for the coming phase. To affirm that there
is political will to move forward in Accra, women's organizations call
donors and developing country governments:

. To be consistent with the recognition of gender equality, environmental
sustainability and respect for human's rights, as cornerstones for
development; by treating these policy priority issues as sectors with
progress indicators and specific resources allocated in national budgets.

. To align the Paris Declaration implementation with international agreed
development goals (IADG) as suggested by the United Nations Secretary
General Report1, particularly the international standards on human rights,
gender equality, decent work, and environmental sustainability.

. To deliver donors' commitment to increase Official Development Assistance
(ODA) to 0.7% of their GNP. In addition, aid should be additional to debt
relief, and should be in ther form of grants, not loans.

. To provide transparent information on how ODA allocations respond to
policy commitments and people's needs, and developing country governments
have to provide transparent and publicly available budgets.

. To consider how available resources are allocated. Donors and governments
need to ensure that special funds are available for women's rights
organisations and that effective mechanisms are in place to ensure that the
money reaches these organisations. Funding needs to be diversified to ensure
that the current focus on CSOs as instruments of advocacy does not exclude
other work that is critical for women's rights, gender equality and poverty
reduction. We recommend that women are given opportunity to design and
implement their own projects according to their local priorities. Resources
need to be distributed to make provison for the use of local expertise
instead of wasting resources on foreign experts and consultancies.

. To recognize the importance of the UNSCR 1820, and allocate resources for
mobilizing communities and the protection of women rights and their
organizations.

. To integrate a strategic plan for financing gender equality and women's
empowerment that is reflected in budget guidelines into the monitoring
system of the PD implementation. In addition, donor (bilateral and
multilateral) and developing country governments must ensure and establish
clear mechanisms for the participation of women's rights organizations as
part of civil society, particularly women from excluded groups, in all the
national development planning processes and aid planning, programming,
management, monitoring and evaluation. Women's organisations should receive
substantial, predictable and multi-year, core funding.

. To define democratic and participatory ownership as a vector principle of
the implementation of the Paris Declaration, without setting new forms of
process conditionality. Such an approach must go in line with the
recognition of national leadership (Monterrey Consensus), the right to
development, the right to self-determination, the right to participation,
and the right to non-violence.

. To strengthen capacities, resources and authority of national women's
machineries to support and monitor line ministries, other government bodies
and parliaments in influencing national development planning and budget
allocations for gender equality and women's rights.

. To accept that economic policy conditionalities have a negative impact on
people, particularly on women. And therefore, to remove all economic policy
conditionalities that undermine the principle of ownership and stand in
contradiction with the rights to Development and Self-determination. This
must include those conditionalities related to gender equality and the
so-called "positive conditionalities". Instead, mutual responsibility,
accountability
and transparency of donors and developing countries must be applied and
strengthened towards gender equality and human rights standards and goals.

. To measure development results within the Paris framework by adopting the
existing reporting and monitoring systems for human rights compliance, such
as the Gini Index of Income Inequality, as well as other processes such as
CEDAW, MDGs, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325),
etc. If new indicators are created, they should be built within a more
inclusive process that also takes into account grassroots beneficiaries and
local actors. It must be explicitly stated how data for indicators are being
generated, allowing civil society, and women's groups, to participate both
in generating data and monitoring indicators. Allocating national budget
resources for training women's groups in monitoring and evaluating should be
considered.

. To measure outcomes on gender mainstreaming and gender specific action
such as access to health and education, changes in women's employment and
income, incidence of gender based violence, right to reparation, right to
inheritance, property, land use, women's participation in decision-making.

. To pay special attention to the needs and rights restitution of victimized
women in fragile states (states in conflict, coming out of conflict or
post-conflict situations) and in communities experiencing localised
conflicts and xenophobia attacks, by involving women in peace-building
processes and channelling specific development assistance to women's
organisations to address the concerns and needs of women survivors,
including, capacity building, access to sexual and reproductive health,
information and services and the stopping of violence against women.

. To promote the use of mix of funding mechanisms to ensure progress on
women's rights and empowerment, including general as well as sector budget
support, pooled funding through the SWAp and partnerships with civil society
organisations and UN agencies. General budget support alone cannot lead to
progress on development goals, especially for most marginalised groups.

 

_____________________________________________________________________

 

Direct Link to Report:

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/58/41/41202121.pdf





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