ANEEJ & 2016 GLOBAL SYNTHESIS REPORT

 

Background: The 2016 Global Synthesis Report is a prestigious document by the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness, with Global Secretariat at 3/F IBON Centre, 114 Timog Avenue, Quezon City 1103, the Philippines. It is  produced with financial assistance of the Swedish International Development Cooperation(sida), the Department of Foreign Affairs-Ireland(IrishAid), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Australian Development Agency(ADA), and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada(DFATD-Canada).

ANEEJ article titled STATUS OF THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS IN NIGERIA, and authored by the Rev David Ugolor and Leo Atakpu, executive and deputy executive directors respectively, features in this prestigious document from pages 118-126, and can be accessed from here:

http://csopartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-Global-Synthesis-Report-e-copy-1.pdf.  Herewith is the executive summary.

 Executive Summary

Building upon the Global Synthesis Report (SR) 2015 baseline stocktaking on the state of Development Cooperation, CSO Enabling Environment, and CSO Development Effectiveness, the SR 2016 seeks to gauge, at the country-level, the status of the Unfinished or Core Business. These are the commitments made from the First High Level Forum in Rome (HLF-1) to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-2), the Accra Agenda for Action (HLF-3), and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development (HLF-4). The findings can be summarized as follows:

Democratic Ownership

• Large-scale corruption in recipient countries are heightening the perception of fiduciary risks associated with ODA to Government. This is leading to sharp drop in the share of programmable aid (which, by default, tends to use country Pubic Financial Management (PFM) systems and country results framework).

• Donors’ interests still considerably determine ODA allocation choices.

• In some countries, CSOs have contributed to the strengthening of democratic ownership and community-based responses to social problems.

• War and corruption are significant challenges to the advancement of democratic national development planning in the Middle East and North Africa and in fragile states.

Results Focus

• Donor priorities significantly affect development results.

• The governance and political context in many countries fosters strong biases against development outcomes consistent with human rights, i.e., they systematically fail to address poverty and inequality.

 

Inclusive Partnerships

• Flat-lining and in some countries declining ODA have increased CSO vulnerability.

• Gains in fundamental freedoms are jeopardized. Several governments around the world continue implementation of new restrictive regulation grounded in mistrust and suspicion of CSOs as perceived by ruling elites and driven by foreign interests. As a result, CSOs operate in shrinking space often constrained by limitations on access to information.

• There is little evidence of multi-stakeholder dialogue in 17 of 48 countries examined in the global synthesising research (2015-2016).

Transparency and Accountability

• There exist significant transparency issues with many governments. Combined with the lack of progress in terms of CSO enabling environment, which is important for citizen participation, mutual accountability and accountability to development beneficiaries remains weak, especially in fragile states.

• Accountability in some countries remains unidirectional with government influenced by donors (e.g., through technical cooperation). Donor accountability, however, remains weak to governments and to citizens.