Civil society groups, including InterAction, attended a high-level meeting in South Korea in November 2011 to review progress in making aid more effective. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was among hundreds of ministers gathered for the meetings in the South Korean port city of Busan from Nov. 29-Dec. 1.

About 2,000 delegates participated in the meeting, which is expected to produce an Outcome Document aimed at improving global efforts to make aid more effective in reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

• See the outcome document, the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation: http://www.interaction.org/document/busan-partnership-effective-development-co-operation
• See the key civil society links to the Busan proceedings: http://www.cso-effectiveness.org/-home,091-.html and http://www.betteraid.org

• Read the Istanbul Principles for Civil Society Development Effectiveness: http://www.cso-effectiveness.org/-8-istanbul-development,067-.html

• Additional information on aid effectiveness is available from the OECD.

Recently, InterAction President Sam Worthington and Millennium Challenge Corporation president Daniel Yohannes wrote a joint opinion piece for The Guardian’s development blog, Poverty Matters, in which they argued strongly for foreign assistance even during the current tough economic times. They also underscored the need for transparency and accountability in the delivery of aid and for governments to allow an enabling environment for civil society to operate.  

Read Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Washington Post opinion piece on Busan and the implications.

See the official web page for the summit  and also track what USAID is saying about the high-level forum via their web site. 

Another interesting read is a new study by the group Publish What You Fund, which assesses aid transparency of donors. The study compares the transparency of 30 major donors and ranks them in an index.

InterAction's work on Aid Effectiveness

Aid effectiveness is an issue that spans InterAction’s national and international work. Nationally, we are engaged in efforts to modernize U.S. foreign assistance; internationally, we participate in two civil society-led processes—Better Aid and the Open Forum on CSO Development Effectiveness.

Read InterAction's most recent policy papers:

• Aid Effectiveness in Fragile States
• Country Ownership
• Enabling Environment for Civil Society Organizations: An Opportunity to Lead
• Private Sector Development
• Transparency, Accountability and Results

Sam Worthington, InterAction president and CEO, also contributed a chapter to a pre-Busan joint study on aid effectiveness, Catalyzing Development: A New Vision for Aid. 

Better Aid

The Better Aid process seeks to improve the effectiveness of bilateral and multilateral aid in the context of the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and its next iteration in 2011.

Open Forum on CSO Development Effectiveness

The Open Forum looks internally at the effectiveness of our community’s work. Its mandate is to work with CSOs globally to define the key principles of development effectiveness and the enabling conditions necessary for CSOs to operate effectively.

Opening Aid Data For Better Development

Read more and access "Opening Aid Data For Better Development" resources here. 

For more information on InterAction's aid effectiveness work, please contact Carolyn Long.