Legal and political orientations. A new strategic project for one of the most generous donors the world.
Germany is one of the most generous bilateral donor in the world for twenty years and has played a leading role in key areas such as establishing a link between climate change and development. The Millennium Declaration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the fight against poverty and the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness are the determinants of the strategic framework and policy objectives of Germany cooperation for development.
While upholding its commitments under this policy framework, the federal government promised last year, a shift evident in the German development cooperation. The new project is outlined in the Coalition Agreement of October 2009, but its practical consequences, as well as other statements made since then, remain elusive.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will clarify what the shift provided by the government will engage in strategic and convenient for him and his partners, especially the impact it will have on the many commitments, policies and strategies put in place since the previous Peer Review. It will also explain to its own employees and other German actors and partners in Germany, why this change was considered necessary.
A concentration of ODA in the interests of results
Germany has abandoned the term "priority partner country, and refocused its focus on 57 countries (instead of 84 five years ago) in line one of the recommendations in the previous peer review (in 2005). This refocusing is the result of applying more stringent selection criteria and prioritization.
The 57 partner countries therefore benefit from greater cooperation, and was developed for each country strategy, generally aligned with the national development strategy. Germany's cooperation with emerging economies (also called Anchor countries ") is evolving to focus on regional and global public goods.
In this context, Germany has used the trilateral cooperation in order to mobilize human and financial resources to the German combine contributions from emerging economies. This is an innovative approach that combines foreign policy objectives and development to counter threats and global challenges.
Germany has also tightened its sectoral focus and future focus efforts on eleven priority sectors. In each partner country, it limits its interventions on three of these sectors at most. This increased concentration of German development cooperation is encouraging, but the range of countries and sectors in which Germany is involved nonetheless broad and does not attest to a well-defined strategic vision.
Statements in Germany since October 2009 have brought to seven the number of priority areas of cooperation for development: good governance, education, health, climate protection, environment and natural resources, rural development, private sector development and sustainable economic development.
Still, it will take some time before these new priorities are reflected in the program of development cooperation and aid disbursements. Moreover, to ensure an efficient division of labor, decisions on countries and sectors where it is appropriate to intervene should be taken at the field level, in consultation with other donors.
In line with the commitment displayed by Germany in respect MDGs and the commitments it made at Gleneagles in the G7 framework, policies and strategies of the BMZ are a greater emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in 24 countries of this region, it does was the case during the previous peer review. Cooperation for development, the priorities of Germany for this area primarily concern education and health, good governance, agriculture, natural resource protection and water (starting with the reduction effects of climate change on water supplies and agriculture), and sustainable economic development. In the future, Germany will focus on private sector development, and also on improving the investment climate and economic infrastructure in the energy field in particular, to increase the economic potential of the continent.
To honor the financial component of the commitments made at Gleneagles, Germany must however be given more room to SSA in its overall strategy and the allocation of its resources. He will also lend greater attention to conflict and fragility, which constitute major obstacles to achieving the MDGs in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
A new strategy for multilateral aid
For many years Germany's policy not to allocate more than one third of its ODA to multilateral channels (including the EU). This limitation of the use of multilateral institutions is not based on observation of facts, nor related to the relative effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral aid.
BMZ is currently developing a strategy vis-à-vis multilateral organizations, which gives Germany the opportunity to reiterate the reasons that prompted it to channel funds through these entities and to determine its priorities for reform of the multilateral system and criteria for allocation of its multilateral financing. This new strategy should also articulate how the use of multilateral channels can serve the goals development pursued by Germany.
need for a more central role with regard to gender equality and empower women
Germany continues to promote equality gender and economic empowerment of women in its dialogue with partner countries and through its programs. Still, if the main implementing agencies apply well to take into account gender issues and integrate them into their own programs targeted measures to strengthen the empowerment of women, the impetus came from above is insufficient to system-wide cooperation for development as a whole.
strategy and guidelines issued by the BMZ on the subject must find a firmer anchoring in the activities of all agencies involved in the implementation of German ODA, beginning with the departments. In addition, the ability of the BMZ to take action in support of gender equality is limited by the paucity of resources allocated to this intervention its headquarters and in the field.
BMZ would therefore be well advised to expand the resources allocated to address this issue in its central and field to more effectively fulfill its role as a driver at all German system of cooperation for development.
source OECD
0 comments:
Post a Comment