Has Busan Changed the World? Or Just Your World?
Has Busan changed the world, or just your world? This was the fundamental question Monday’s workshop sought to answer. The Busan outcome document, agreed upon at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in Busan, South Korea, has the potential to significantly change U.S. government policy and practice regarding aid effectiveness and give civil society a more prominent voice in the discussion.
Leading up to Busan, the U.S. government made a concerted effort to engage earlier and more often with a broader range of stakeholders (especially civil society organizations) than it had in the past. In addition to broadening the range of stakeholders investing in the Busan agreement, another main objective of the U.S. government was to push for a results-based agenda, including a stronger focus on transparency and accountability. The elevated engagement from the U.S. government, including Secretary Hilary Clinton's attendance in Busan, highlighted the administration's commitment to improving development assistance.
Carolyn Long, director of global partnerships at InterAction, described Busan as a "shift from the concept of development assistance... to development coordination that engages civil society in a way that has not been done before." Civil society had a seat at the negotiating table in Busan through the BetterAid Coalition, a global advocacy group of over 1,000 CSOs. U.S. CSOs engaged in Busan through five roundtables on: the enabling environment for CSOs in development; democratic country ownership; transparency, accountability and results; aid effectiveness in fragile states; and the private sector. Moving forward, civil society will play an elevated role in monitoring the implementation of Busan. CSOs are designing a new global advocacy structure, implementing the Istanbul principles, promoting an enabling environment and continuing advocacy for key asks.
The discussion around Busan is an important piece of the broader conversation in Washington around the reform of U.S. global development policy and practice. According to Noam Unger of the Brookings Institution, "Busan was an act of catching up, officially, to the way the world is changing." The changes in U.S. government policies in practices in response to the Busan agreement reflect a global shift in development assistance, and will likely have significant impacts on the InterAction membership, as well as the broader NGO community.
Contributed by Carrie Henderson
