聯合國發展合作
 

發展合作的概念是指為了使發展援助更加有效以及可持續，由捐助者和受援國詳細制定的協調的活動，共同的政策、機制和方法。
 

本文的目的是解釋最近在各種國際論壇發表的關于發展合作的文件，以及描述了援助管理工具,辨別了這種合作必要性的原因,概述了最近在格魯吉亞的實踐應用，并且描述的了存在的挑戰和認真提出的建議。這篇dissertation并不是專注于發展方案,因為它被認為是另一門綜合性的學科,需要研究者的一項專門的研究。

問題描述
 

發展援助以及隨后發展合作的重要性的原因是北方和南方之間的差距日益擴大。發展合作的構想意味著對開發活動和政策的協調和合作建立有效的機制，這樣能夠避免重復的發展方案，增加透明度和問責制,確保援助的有效性。

 

An Un Development Cooperation Economics Essay

 

The concept of development cooperation refers to coordinated activities, common policies, mechanisms and approaches elaborated by donors and recipient countries for the purposes of making development assistance more effective and sustainable.

 

Purpose of this paper is to explain the development cooperation based on the recent documents endorsed at the various international forums and describe the aid management tools, identify reasons why this cooperation is needed, overview practice applied recently in Georgia, and describe the challenges and elaborate recommendations. The paper would not be focused on development programmes as it is considered to be another comprehensive subject, which requires a separate study from author.

 

Problem Description

 

Importance of development assistance and subsequently development cooperation emerged as a result of growing disparities between North and South. The idea of development cooperation implies the building of the effective mechanism for coordination and cooperation related to development activities and policies capable to avoid duplication of development programmes, increase transparency and accountability and ensure aid effectiveness. The process of development cooperation involves number of UN various institutions, funds, and agencies including major stakeholders such are UNDG, UNDP, UNFPA, WFP, UNICEF World Bank, IMF, ECOSOC as well as OECD, European Commission, various international development cooperation agencies, national governments and others.

 

Main stakeholders dealing with development cooperation:

 

United Nations Development Group (UNDG), chaired by Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is a main engine for cooperation between various UN development agencies, funds, programs aiming to improve the effectiveness of development assistance. The UNDG develops policies, procedures and mechanisms that allow member agencies to coordinate their work through the analyses, planning strategies, implementation of programmes, monitoring results ect. Through such coordination, UN seeks to ensure the most effective use of UN and international aid resources. UNDP, UNFPA, WFP, UNICEF which are core members of UNDG group periodically are holding joint meetings at the level of executive boards to discuss and draw strategies about the attaining MDGs.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

UNDP and World Bank - UNDP is considered to be UN’s global development network as well as may claim to have a leading role as the organization that forge global partnership among different stakeholders towards the achievement of MDGs, through the mobilizing financial resources and coordination of polices. UNDP Resident Representative serves as the Resident Coordinator of development activities for the United Nations system as a whole. Through so called standard grant letter and Loan Implementation mechanism, WB provides grants to UNDP for conducting its activities in developing countries. Entire budget of UNDP for 2008 was $4.8 billion [1] combing core and non core contributions. The WB provided more than $38.2 billion in development loans in fiscal year 2008 to nearly 100 developing countries.

 

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Development Cooperation Directorate (DAC) is a major contributor for drafting the guidelines and standards used in development funding (measured in accordance to the ODA/GNA ratio), in addition, OECD is major aid data preserving institution [2] . Donor countries grouped in DAC accounted for more than 90% of ODA worldwide (for instance contributions to UNDP budget increased from $1.1 billion in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2008).

 

EU is the largest provider of official development assistance in the world, the European Union accounted 60% (€49 billion euro for 2008) [3] of the world's ODA total, it is major source of financing support for UN programmes, specialized agencies and funds, for instance EC contribution to UNDP reached $1.3 billion in 2008.

 

UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)’s role as a institute to provide guidance and recommendations to improve development cooperation as well as enhance the implementation of internationally agreed commitments was recently strengthened by establishment of Development Cooperation Forum, the first session of which took place in 2008.

 

National governments of assistance recipient countries: Central or regional authorities are the main counterparts for international organizations and institution for the providing assistance for development.

 

1.2 Recent framework for development cooperation; Aid management and coordination tools:

 

It is also important to describe the main documents outlining the commitments and principles of donor communities regarding development cooperation: as well as differed modalities of endorsing the coordination mechanisms

 

Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is one of the key documents related to aid effectiveness, endorsed in 2005 and nowadays considered to be guideline for development cooperation focused on five mutually reinforcing principles: Ownership; alignment, harmonisation: managing for results: mutual accountability: donors and developing countries must account more transparently to each other for their use of aid funds, and to their citizens and parliaments for the impact of their aid.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) represents a statement made by ministers of developing counties and donors as well as heads of international development agencies during the 3rd high level forum on Aid Effectiveness. Three main challenges was identified to accelerate progress on aid effectiveness, in particular: Country ownership building more effective and inclusive partnerships, Achieving development results and openly accounting for them. On the one hand, the AAA was a sign of a real commitment and devotion of the signatories to the principles of the Paris Declaration. On the other hand, the Agenda is not strongly institutionalised format, as it is an agenda that is declared to be enforced by the sides. The agenda emphasizes the importance of involvement and cooperation with private sector and that represents the shift of focus from donor-state format in development policy toward inclusive partnership formats.

 

Doha Declaration on Financing for Development: outcome document of the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus [4] reaffirmed the commitments undertaken by Monterrey Consensus, in particular: Necessity of mobilizing domestic and international recourses, including FDI and other private flows for development; Importance of international trade as an engine for development; Necessity to increase international financial and technical cooperation for development; Debt repayment and relief - was also discussed in various frameworks. Dully attention was paid to the impact of current financial crisis and global economic slowdown on the ability of developing countries to access the necessary financing for their development objectives, in this regard donors and international financial institutions (WB and IMF) were asked to maintain and deliver their ODA commitments for the benefit of the developing countries. The Doha Declaration is a document which outlines the donors’ vision, policy and commitments. It addresses the needs of developing world on the background of financial crisis and emphasises the role of private funds in development policy.

 

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) [5] was launched during the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra in 2008. IATI focused on the transparency mechanism based on agreeing standards for sharing information for all stakeholders, particularly those in developing countries.

 

While implementing development programs it is very important both for donor and recipient- beneficiary countries to have accurate and precise data on donors funding, including the descriptions of activities and programs, that helps to avoid overlapping and to keep record constantly updated. Aid Information Management System (AIMS) [6] system was developed by UNDP, which it stores information related to grants and aid received from a various donors. AMIS is used mainly by Ministries of Finance and sometimes Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Generally the MoF’s aid unit is responsible for data entry, and producing the reports as well. Development Assistance Database (DAD) was introduced, it is a customizable web-based AIMS which allows tracking project information by funding agencies, implementing partners, commitments, disbursements, expenditures, sector and geographic location, as well as progress towards physical results through key outputs and performance indicators.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Besides these tools the donor community uses Donor Coordination formats: regular meetings of the donors and developing agencies at national level in order to be able to address sometimes frequently changing needs of the recipient countries and coordinate their activities.

 

1.3. Why cooperation happens:

 

Individual and collective necessities - achievement of MDGs, creation of social goods. Developing countries are not able to effectively implement expensive projects, requiring funds and technologies like infrastructure development, prevent migration and avoid social conflicts;

 

Effectiveness - mutual trust and reliance improves effectiveness and avoid overlapping among donors; Good governance - avoids mismanagement;

 

Narrow or specific responsibilities of institutions - some funds are specialized on coordination of MDGs, or environment, or food distribution, or children’s health. There is no single institution, which incorporate all functions, responsibilities and activities, policies related to development assistance;

 

Contemporary challenges –civil wars, intestates war, etc. environmental challenges. Developing countries can be more affected by any kind of crisis, vulnerable societies are less resistant towards internal or external unrest, force majeure; Current financial crises - may restrict the access to the necessary funds from one source, diversity of financial institutions and cooperation among them can tackle this problem;

 

Support the reconciliation processes - facilitate negotiations among parties, particularly in the case of weak states or where large areas or regions are outside the control of the central government.

 

2. UNDP Georgia Country Office Experience in Donor Coordination in Georgia

 

Like in other countries UNDP coordinates the development activities and mobilizes funds from international stakeholders (total budget for 2009 constitutes 14 266 787,82 USD). The UNDP Georgia Country Office has experience of leading the donor coordination format in Georgia. At the national level it was mainly linked to the urgent needs related to humanitarian, early recovery and conflict results mitigation response.

 

In 2008 the UNDP and the WB together with the government of Georgia leaded the process of elaboration of consolidated policy on the response and mitigation policy of the august 2008 conflict, as well as elaboration of the donor community’s and the Government’s joint policy document – Joint Needs Assessment (JNA) [7] .  The ADB, the EBRD, the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the IFC participated in elaboration of the JNA which examines the overall impact of the conflict, assesses the needs for early and medium-term recovery based on losses and damages resulting from the conflict, and presents an overall strategy for recovery as well as priority actions and investments based on this strategy. The JNA has become the main document guiding the national Government and the Donor Community during the Brussels Donor Conference (October, 2008)#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Facilitation of coordination of early recovery cluster. The work group of livelihood, which consists of several donor and state organizations representatives, is permanently held under the coordination of UNDP. The format envisages exchange of information and coordination of the activities related to improvement of livelihoods of IDPs.

 

Flash Appeal Humanitarian Response [8] has been coordinated by both the Government of Georgia and together with international agencies. The response in Georgia proper was organized through a Humanitarian Coordination Group, comprising of the UN agencies, international organizations, NGOs, government and donor representatives immediately after the start of the august conflict. The Humanitarian Coordination Group, under the leadership of the UN Resident Coordinator, has prepared this flash appeal to cover the identified and estimated scenario based humanitarian needs for six-month planning horizon.

 

Challenges that development cooperation should address

 

Inability of the government institutions in identification of development needs. Institutional weakness and instability of the governmental and other institutions in developing countries. Government institutions may be not able to formulate effective development policies. In such cases donor community face dilemma: either respond to the Government’s intentions or design and develop programs that do not have sufficient ownership from the Government stakeholders’ side. Continuity and sustainability of this kind of development assistance in these cases are very questionable. This is exacerbated by political instability in developing countries, when political instability lead to institutional instability while donors and developing agencies due to their mandate cannot influence directly the issues of political and institutional stability.

 

Non-effectiveness of the national level donor coordination formats. If there is no national level donor coordination formats it may cause duplication and gaps in donor’s programming. The donor community should advocate the country national level donor coordination formats where donor and Government institutions should be present and exchange information, plan jointly either immediate response or long term development programs to avoid duplications and inconsistency of their activities. It is important to note that donors and development agencies have more or less identical mandates and coordination is an essential in these circumstances.

 

New global challenges. The global economic downturn may lead to reduction of ODA from developed countries due to decrease of theirs GNI, consequently developing countries may face serious obstacles to meet their development objectives. Prior to the crisis, ODA flows to developing countries were falling during 2006-2007. In 2008 aid flows from DAC donors increased however, reaching almost $120 billion, equivalent to 0.3 per cent of donor countries’ combined GNI. Many donors target annual aid flows as a share of GNI, such that the absolute value of aid may fall with national income even if its share of GNI stays fixed [9] Thus, if crises continues is may again lead to reluctance or inability of donors to fulfil their commitments. However some largest bilateral donors, like Germany are promising to keep their commitments not only because well-known policy toward the developing countries, but also for getting political support in the reform agenda of UN Security Council [10] .#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Solutions

 

Capacity development of government institutions and strengthening of their policy making and implementing functions.  Institutional development of the government institutions and relevant national stakeholders should, on the one hand, integrate elements of ability for quick response to immediate socio-economic challenges and, on the other hand, capacities of development policy planning and implementing. This is related to capacities for developing strategic vision and planning and implementing consistent policy measures.  It is important to involve national, regional and local level authorities and all stakeholders, as well, and cooperate with the NGO and private sectors to ensure that large and broadly based participation (and consensus) is achieved regarding the development policy planning.

 

Increasing of effectiveness of the donor coordination format. It depends significantly on ensuring participation of all relevant stakeholders and transparency of the processes. Therefore, for ensuring effectiveness of the donor coordination formats, the donor community should link its development portfolio to advocacy and enforcement of good practice of aid transparency and coordination, as without this linking, the principles of Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda could have not been perceived and enforced at national levels. It should be mentioned that high political culture and the degree of good governance matters in a concrete case and influence success of donor coordination practices.

 

In order to avoid fluctuation and disruption of transfers from donors, caused by global economic crises, it is important to create effective monitoring mechanism for timely allocation of funds to the needs of developing countries.

 

Ensuring better integrity of donor community policy planning with the national level planning format. This will focus and consolidate both: national and donors policy priorities, streamline the policy planning and implementing process that will ensure better response to the needs and vision of the national authorities and donor/development agencies. Increase transparency and accountability between donors and recipient.

 

Conclusions

 

Thus development cooperation is the addressing of development objectives or needs through well coordinated mechanism, tools and common policies between donors and donors and recipients. It is an arrangement of solving the problems through development activities involving a number of stakeholders. It is specially important to combine all kind of global and national efforts to reach the development targets.

 

Aid effectiveness, transparency and accountability are treated as more important. The UN acts as a leader in development coordination.  UNDG coordinates UN agencies policy and is one leading coordinator of development coordination policy. The donors/development organizations face new challenges in developing world on the background of economic crisis that are to be addressed. This is a challenge for the donor community itself as the donor contribution may become vulnerable. The development cooperation in recent years takes more coordinated and institutionalized forms: UNDG format, DAD, IATI and others, that commits donors to work together to make aid more transparent; including by agreeing common standards for the publication of information about aid. The Paris Declaration and AAA were developed as containing the main guiding principles for donor community. The dialogue formats among the agencies has been strengthened leading to more effective joint polices. Next year ECOSOC will hold second forum for Development Cooperation and once again encourage all members of international community for collective and collaborative actions.#p#分頁標題#e#