Mr. Wu Hongbo Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Secretary-General for the International Conference on Small Island Developing States

Closing Remarks
to the DCF Germany High-Level Symposium on
Accountable and Effective Development Cooperation in a Post-2015 Era

21 March 2014, New York

Director General, Ms. Müller,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me start by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the Government of Germany, for hosting this very important Symposium in Berlin.

I would also like to thank State Minister Fuchtel and you, Director-General, and the teams of the BMZ and the GIZ, for our excellent collaboration and also thanks to my own team.

I thank you very much, Ms. Melinda Crane and Mr. Johannes Linn, for your wonderful and professional moderation. You have guided us through these complex debates. We have enjoyed your professionalism.

To all the excellent facilitators, speakers and discussants, I thank you. I was heartened by your enthusiasm. You are trying to make concrete steps towards tangible solutions you can take home to your countries. You are gearing up for the negotiations of the post-2015 development agenda. And you are together working towards greater impact of development cooperation – to fight poverty and address economic, social and environmental challenges.

The discussions have been very rich and a more extensive summary will be circulated. Let me know share with some of the key messages emanating from this Symposium

Development cooperation will play an important role in the implementation of a post-2015 development agenda.

Our diverse efforts to cooperate – more and better – for development are showing real results, for real people. Different actors have achieved development successes in a variety of ways.

You agreed that development cooperation should originate from peoples’ needs. Clear government priorities, with strong social impact, can convince international partners to align their cooperation, and to empower citizens, in concrete ways.

The effectiveness of development cooperation will depend on our continued openness to learn from each other. This will shape our common language and approach to truly engage, involve and inspire people around the world. This is what drives accountability. 

To mobilize action and build positive pressure for change, monitoring and accountability are essential. An inclusive, recognized, robust global monitoring and accountability framework for development cooperation is key to accelerating progress at all levels. The framework should engage all actors on a level playing field and enable them to contribute.

Global accountability is about providing incentives to meet voluntary commitments. The promise of sustainable development results is the most powerful motivation for global accountability.

Our focus in the DCF is on accountability in development cooperation, in terms of technical and financial assistance by different partners.

We are also reminded, there is no-one-size-fits-all solution.

For post-2015, this needs also to be linked to accountability in development cooperation in the broader sense: the global partnership for development and the rules of the game of the global economy.

The variety of actors is an important strength. It must underpin the renewed global partnership for development.

There are specific constraints on enforcement of commitments at the global level. Yet, there is clarity on what is needed in recipient countries, in principle: An enabling environment for social accountability that links up to the mutual accountability between the government and its partners.

Global accountability must have strong domestic counterparts.

The role of parliaments and audit agencies are critical and require major investments in building their capacity.

Local and regional governments have a direct role in delivering effective development cooperation to people. This role should be reflected in the design of global accountability in development cooperation and how it works in practice.

The private sector needs to move away from seeing development cooperation through the narrow lens of corporate social responsibility to making development cooperation part of its core business approach.

Your deliberations have clearly pointed to some key features of global accountability in development cooperation.

It will have to go beyond ODA, to address global challenges and to promote policy coherence for development in all countries. The global architecture has to be designed through consulting all actors in development cooperation, from early on and from the grassroots upwards.

The roles of different actors must be better clarified. Any framework for global accountability in development cooperation should be simple and focused. It should build on existing reporting mechanisms at all levels. This is key to create the ownership needed to support country level implementation.

This means a multiple accountability framework. It would focus on the quantity and the quality of development cooperation. It should advance the impact of development cooperation, in direct support of beneficiaries. 

For all actors to engage, today’s better availability of data needs to be pushed to the next level. Information must not only be easily accessible. It should also be simple, comprehensible and, especially, useable for ordinary citizens.

Sharing knowledge will be one of the most crucial challenges post-2015. A strategy for global knowledge management on development cooperation is, at this moment, missing.

Going forward, and preparing for the July DCF, we should build on the consensus from previous DCF symposiums, in Ethiopia and Switzerland, on a renewed global partnership for development and the implications of the changing agenda for development cooperation, and on the results of this meeting.

I encourage you to do so, with a view to the next Financing for Development Conference. The DCF will contribute rich discussions on the development cooperation piece. The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation will also provide an important input to the United Nations processes on post-2015.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Together, we are moving steadily towards a renewed and intergovernmentally agreed global partnership for development, one that is effectively monitored and implemented, with accountability.

The 2014 DCF will bring the full range of development cooperation actors together to make a concrete contribution to setting out the development cooperation aspects of the renewed global partnership for development.

The Development Cooperation Forum will continue to serve as a platform for such frank discussions and make timely contributions towards a post-2015 development agenda, its design and implementation.

With that, I sincerely hope to see you at the Development Cooperation Forum in New York on 10 and 11 July 2014.

I wish to thank all of our colleagues from Germany and New York and the many others, including our wonderful interpreters, who made this Symposium possible.

I wish you a safe journey home.

******