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“Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”.
(a) Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of the SDGs (1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, and 17 [every year]) under review in the 2021 HLPF from the vantage point of your intergovernmental body, bearing in mind the interlinkages with other SDGs;
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•The COVID-19 Pandemic required a swift and concerted international action to slow down the spread of the virus and deal with its health related as well as socio-economic impacts. In many countries this has led to a shift of power from de-centralized to centralized state structures, a reduction of the involvement of civil society and in some cases a strengthening of direct action by international organizations. While needs are as urgent as ever, the challenges and pressures resulting from the pandemic have only underscored the importance of the principles of effective development cooperation, the importance of strengthening national capacities and the core role of inclusive partnerships involving local governments and civil society in our collective development efforts.
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•The Partnership is premised on supporting and strengthening national capacities for national ownership. In terms of indicator 17.15.1: the extent of use of country-owned results frameworks and planning tools by providers of development cooperation, there was already evidence prior to the pandemic that this was in decline (2019 Global Partnership Progress Report). Emerging evidence from partner countries receiving development cooperation suggest this trend has only been compounded by the pandemic. Since spring 2020, hundreds of millions of dollars of development assistance have been re-purposed (much of it building on nascent social protection systems, strengthened by ODA in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and now being used to channel COVID-related assistance), in an admirable spirit of solidarity and often under dramatic circumstances, but alignment with and visibility for national systems has suffered. It is urgent that development partners re-focus their action and support on the national efforts and leadership to achieve the SDGs.
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•The Partnership remains equally committed to promoting multi-stakeholder dialogue and engagement. The sudden and dramatic impact of the pandemic means less scope for partners to focus on reporting on multi-stakeholder development effectiveness efforts – indicator 17.16.1. Effective multi-stakeholder partnerships, however, are now more important than ever to an inclusive and sustainable economic recovery and protecting the most vulnerable. Findings from the 2019 Progress Report show that, again, even prior to the pandemic, substantial efforts were needed from governments to enable the effective engagement of civil society and private sector actors. This is why the Global Partnership is investing in efforts to support exactly these engagements: from the Action Dialogues 2021 initiative (more below) to bring stakeholders together to address how government and partners work better together to meet the 2030 Agenda and build back better from COVID-19; to work promoting the Kampala Principles for effective private sector engagement.
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•As noted in the Global Partnership Co-chairs’ statement on COVID-19 from May 2020, ‘with such difficult conditions, strong and effective partnerships must be at the heart of our response.’
(b) Actions, policy guidance, progress, challenges and areas requiring urgent attention in relation to the SDGs and to the theme within the area under the purview of your intergovernmental body;
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•In terms of core actions and guidance on effective development cooperation in relation to the SDGs, the Global Partnership is pursuing several inter-related efforts. The first is the ‘Action Dialogues 2021’ initiative, a series of country level engagements between different partner types that serve to:
- oStimulate country-led dialogue on progress and challenges toward more effective partnerships;
- oStrengthen stakeholder engagement in development planning and processes, and mobilize all partners to be more effective;
- oEmbed (or reinforce) critical actions that make development partnerships more effective within national systems and processes; and,
- oSpur policy, system and behaviour change by encouraging concrete action from all stakeholders to strengthen partnerships and make development co-operation more effective. As of February 2021, 10 countries had already confirmed their intention to hold a Dialogue, making this initiative a core part of their efforts to strengthen their development partnerships.
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•The second component consists of a comprehensive reform of the Global Partnership monitoring exercise (tracking progress on effectiveness commitments) to better link the evidence it produces to policy action that supports the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and sustainable development. Constituency-based stakeholder consultations are ongoing, with a view to working towards a politically relevant indicator framework that can continue to provide meaningful insights into the extent to which partners are implementing their commitments on partner-country ownership, mutual accountability, a focus on results, and inclusive partnerships.
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•The third component is the 2020-22 Work Programme of the Global Partnership premised on an inclusive, multi-stakeholder-led approach, organized around stakeholder-led ‘action areas’ of work, under the overall guidance of the Global Partnership Co-chairs. ‘Action areas’ of work, themselves largely organized around stakeholder-types, eg. civil society, the private sector, multilateral partners, are in turn organized into three strategic priorities focused on (i) accelerating progress to 2030; (ii) building the better partnerships the SDGs need; and (iii) leveraging the Global Partnership’s monitoring exercise for policy action.
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•The work programme will culminate in the Co-chairs’ commitment to convening at high level – the third high-level meeting of the Partnership, and seventh high-level meeting on effectiveness – in 2022: a global opportunity for a modernized narrative on effective development co-operation at the ‘half-way point’ of the 2030 Agenda.
(c) An assessment of the situation regarding the principle of “ensuring that no one is left behind” at the global, regional and national levels against of background of the COVID-19 pandemic in achieving the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, within the respective area addressed by your intergovernmental bodies;
•The Global Partnership maintains its commitment to leaving no one behind as its ‘greatest challenge’, as articulated in the Partnership’s Nairobi Outcome Document (2016): ‘A successful, sustainable development agenda requires strong, dynamic and innovative partnerships. This is most urgently needed in the effort to leave no-one behind, where the combined contributions of partners working together can outweigh individual interventions and overcome impediments to inclusive outcomes.’-
•The 2020-22 work programme, structured around multi-stakeholder actions areas of work, is a recognition of the continuing need for just such ‘combined contributions’ in the midst of a pandemic that is already exacerbating levels of extreme poverty, and hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
(d) Cooperation, measures and commitments at all levels in promoting sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; &
(e) Various measures and policy recommendations on building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development;
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•The programmatic efforts above are premised on, and in the service of, the effectiveness principles; as critical now in response to COVID-19 as to the broader achievement of the 2030 Agenda and ‘decade of action’. As framed in the Co-chairs’ statement on COVID-19:
As noted above, even prior to the pandemic, development partners’ alignment to partner country priorities and country-owned results frameworks was in decline.
An important example of such voices, civil society organizations were facing a deteriorating enabling environment before the onset of the pandemic which has only further exacerbated the shrinking of civil spaces.
Development planning in partner countries has improved dramatically over the last decade; COVID-19 recovery should aim to build on this progress, rather than undermine country-owned and identified results.
While results from the latest monitoring round indicated that mutual accountability mechanisms are becoming more inclusive, there has been mixed progress in making development co-operation more transparent. Progress on timely and forward-looking information on development cooperation is critical to sustainable recovery.
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•The ‘Action Dialogues 2021’ initiative’s efforts to improve the Global Partnership monitoring exercise, and the inclusive and multi-stakeholder nature of the 2020-2022 work programme, are all part of efforts to not only promote, but demonstrate, the principles, as measures central to an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. They collectively contribute to placing partner-country realities, challenges, and experiences at the center of the Global Partnership’s work to help drive the ‘decade of action’.
(f) Key messages for inclusion into the Ministerial Declaration of the 2021 HLPF.
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•Based on the structure of the 2019 Ministerial Declaration of the High-Level Political Forum, there is ample scope to include the effectiveness principles, the basis for effective development cooperation, as part of the shared call for ‘accelerated action’:
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•Additionally, language from OP58 of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (2015) also remains relevant: We welcome continued efforts to improve the quality, impact and effectiveness of development cooperation and other international efforts in public finance, including adherence to agreed development cooperation effectiveness principles. We will align activities with national priorities, including by reducing fragmentation, accelerating the untying of aid, particularly for least developed countries and countries most in need. We will promote country ownership and results orientation and strengthen country systems, use programme-based approaches where appropriate, strengthen partnerships for development, reduce transaction costs, and increase transparency and mutual accountability. We will make development more effective and predictable by providing developing countries with regular and timely indicative information on planned support in the medium term. We will pursue these efforts in the Development Cooperation Forum of the Economic and Social Council and in this regard, we also take account of efforts in other relevant forums, such as the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, in a complementary manner.
