Mr. Wu Hongbo Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Secretary-General for the International Conference on Small Island Developing States
Final Plenary of the First High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation
16 April 2014, Mexico City
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is an honor to address the closing of the first high-level meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Government of Mexico, for their great hospitality.
The dialogues over the past two days have provided rich food for thought, for orienting future development cooperation. As the Secretary-General emphasized yesterday at the opening, the meeting’s outcome will surely contribute to the ongoing discussions of the post-2015 global development agenda.
The post-2015 development agenda will have a much broader focus than the MDGs. It will have to reflect a greatly changed landscape of international development cooperation, which is reflected with multi-stakeholders, multi-orientations, and multi-approaches.
Most importantly, we must aim to finish the job started with Goal 8 of the MDGs. All partners should deliver on existing commitments, particularly those on ODA, climate finance and domestic resource mobilization.
Yet, development cooperation today is about more than governments – North-South and South-South – and about much more than aid. It is about enabling and supporting, rather than driving. It is about engaging the breadth of development actors in a range of partnerships.
We need a new narrative of development cooperation. A narrative that fits the transformation the post-2015 agenda aims to achieve.
The type, or form, of development cooperation, should follow its evolving function. It should be guided by the principles of national leadership and ownership. It should be flexible. It should take into consideration country needs and priorities.
Above all, development cooperation should benefit all stakeholders, especially the poor and most vulnerable, within and among countries.
This is about solidarity and shared responsibility. Essentially, global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly. And that ensures attention to the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Governments alone cannot deliver the needed transformation. Governments will need to lead and actively engage the diverse range of partners in development cooperation.
All actors will need to take an integrated approach to sustainable development. All will have to demonstrate ability to deliver lasting development results. Greater coherence and coordination should drive their actions.
Transparency and effective accountability measures will be needed at all levels, driven by good governance and a vibrant civil society.
A shared, yet differentiated, global framework will be needed to hold all actors accountable.
Such a framework should put greater focus on “how” to promote inclusive development and to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of development cooperation, while recognizing that no one-size-fits-all approach exists.
The framework has to be anchored in a renewed global partnership for development, building on what has been agreed by all member states of the United Nations, at the Millennium Summit, Monterrey and Johannesburg.
Despite the diverse interests and positions, we are seeing an increasing meeting of the minds on what should be the desired characteristics, content and format of a renewed global partnership for development. Let me share a few key points.
First, the renewed global partnership for development must be grounded in equity, solidarity and basic rights. It should capture – and will depend on — a spirit of mutual respect and mutual benefit.
Second, it should bring together the Monterrey track, on Financing for Development, and the Rio track, on financing for sustainable development and means of implementation.
Third, it should be equitable and inclusive, with a fair sharing of responsibilities, and with strong monitoring and accountability. ?It should engage all actors and enable and incentivize them to contribute, including through existing national and regional accountability mechanisms.
Fourth, multi-stakeholder partnerships organized around specific sectors or issues are unlikely to replace the intergovernmental global partnership for development. They are likely to become an ever more important complement.
Fifth, to deliver on these expectations, the renewed global partnership for development must have the highest legitimacy and the most broad-based buy-in. The United Nations, as the most universal and representative body, will play a central role in that respect, and to bring North and South together.
The United Nations is advancing the debate on these issues, in complementary ways, especially through the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, the Expert Committee on Sustainable Development Financing, and the Development Cooperation Forum of the Economic and Social Council, where a broad membership of the organization participated in building a consensus.
The DCF is serving as the platform to shape the development cooperation aspects of a renewed global partnership for development for the post-2015 era. It engages the full range of stakeholders – traditional donors, Southern partners and other non-state stakeholders – in candid global policy dialogue.
The DCF also works to build synergies with other relevant initiatives, including the Busan Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Our shared objective is to ensure a global architecture for development cooperation post-2015 – an efficient and effective one.
The July 2014 high-level meeting of the DCF in New York will provide a principal entry point for the GPEDC to bring its key messages from thishigh-level meeting to the United Nations. In addition to the role of ODA, a future narrative for development cooperation, including both North-South and South-South cooperation, will also feature in the July DCF.
I am confident that our collaborative efforts, under the auspices of the UN, will succeed in making development cooperation more effective in the delivery of sustainable development results in the post-2015 era.
I look forward to seeing all of you at the DCF in July.
Thank you.