At its 13th meeting on 23-24 April 2017 in Washington, D.C., the Global Partnership’s multi-stakeholder Steering Committee endorsed a Work Programme for the Global Partnership for 2017 and 2018. During the meeting, the Steering Committee agreed on specific actions to ensure the implementation of six strategic priorities for the biennium, including the organisation of working sessions to help advance action. It discussed working arrangements to ensure effective delivery of the work programme and endorsed the approach and roadmap for refinement of the monitoring framework.
Nairobi Outcome Document – available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish
The Nairobi Outcome Document guides the work of the Global Partnership and helps stakeholders think jointly about how to ground the principles of effective development into each actor’s daily operations.
The Financing for Development (FfD) Follow-up Forum in May, which took stock of achievements and gaps in funding the SDGs, underscored the importance of effective development co-operation and key linkages to the Global Partnership’s work. The Interagency Task Force on Financing for Development (IATF), mandated with annual reporting on progress of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), included in its 2017 Report the importance of development co-operation between government and non-state partners as a vital aspect of the broader financing and policy landscape. The report reiterated the AAAA call for national development co-operation policies, and the importance of integrated national financing frameworks, both of which improve the performance and management of development financing at the country-level. Finally, the Global Partnership’s work presents opportunities for future collaboration related to the report’s emphasis on country ownership in South-South Co-operation, as well as the need for case-by-case evaluations for blended financing.
The Global Partnership Initiatives (GPIs) are voluntary initiatives led by different types of development actors to advance implementation of development effectiveness principles. GPIs spearhead the achievement of development results at country and regional levels. The 28 GPIs contribute to reaching the Global Partnership’s vision by directly implementing commitments and by generating evidence, policy-relevant lessons and innovative solutions that can feed both mutual accountability and learning within the Global Partnership.
What are the best ways to share practical experience of partnering? Which partnering tools and methodologies are most effective? How do contextual factors affect the partnering approach?
The PEP Facility, launched at HLM2, is designed to address these (and other) questions in order to rapidly scale up partnering practice for the SDGs. PEP is now looking to connect with other GPIs and organisations that share this ambition. PEP’s website brings together a curated selection of proven partnering tools covering context, strategy, collaboration and communication, governance and learning, among others.
As partnering debates move rapidly from answering ‘why’ to ‘how’, there is a growing need to share tools and methodologies, together with the expertise necessary to apply them. Drawing on the experience of five specialist partnering organisations over more than 20 years, PEP takes a deep dive into partnering practice with proven tools and methodologies including a partnering agreement template; contractual wording to enable organisations to exit partnerships; and a resource mapping tool that highlights partners’ strengths.
But we know there is much more available! We need your help to identify more examples, and to help us share them more effectively. Our intention is to make effective partnering tools more accessible and to encourage further application, feedback and refinement, while avoiding reinventing the partnering wheel. PEP provides an opportunity to share practical experience of partnering, to discuss frankly what works and what doesn’t, and to open source partnering knowledge.
Integrating digital payments into the rapidly growing web of social networks and e-commerce platforms presents vast opportunities to drive economic opportunity, financial inclusion, transparency, security and growth. This report examines two of China’s most far-reaching applications – WeChat and Alipay – and explores their role in one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated digital payments ecosystems. Learn how incorporating digital payments into existing services has unlocked opportunities for hundreds of millions of users, including through low-risk savings accounts, new credit assessment and lending services, and by opening up new markets for micro, small and medium enterprises.
The journey from cash to electronic payments in Bangladesh’s garment sector is gathering pace as production factories discover how digitizing wages, thus improving access to finance, can save time, reduce costs, increase transparency and empower workers. To guide garment producers in the transition to electronic wage payments, and provide insight for international garment brands, the Better Than Cash Alliance commissioned a survey of garment factories in Bangladesh that have already introduced electronic wage payments. The survey quantified the cost and time savings of digital payments compared with cash, and measured employees’ preferences, based on interviews and data shared by 21 factories in Bangladesh. It is the first of its kind to document the factory perspective of wage digitization's costs and benefits.
Trade Union Update on Effective Development Co-operation
The development effectiveness agenda guides the work of the Trade Union Development Cooperation Network (TUDCN). Trade unions are intimately familiar with the benefits of multi-stakeholder dialogue. Through social dialogue, they engage in consultative processes with other stakeholders. Through their development work, they aim to leverage this experience for more people-centred development efforts. Most recently, the TUDCN published Social Dialogue as a Driver and Governance Instrument for Sustainable Development, an issue paper analysing the contribution of social dialogue to effective development through the lens of three of its fundamental principles: inclusiveness, democratic ownership and accountability. The TUDCN also released a compilation of three case studies in Social Dialogue for Sustainable Development in Uruguay, Ghana and Indonesia, which delves deeper into the evidence of how the above principles are implemented through social dialogue. The trade union statement on the HLM2 Nairobi Outcome Document welcomed the emphasis on the value of decent work and the recognition, for the first time, of social dialogue as a way to realise sustainable development. Global Partnership constituents are encouraged to engage on this through the Social Dialogue in Development GPI.
It is with this outlook that trade unions are ramping up their efforts to support the realisation of the SDGs. In What does the 2030 Agenda mean for labour?, Paola Simonetti, coordinator of development policy at the International Trade Union Confederation, provides an overall assessment on the 2030 Agenda from a labour movement perspective. Additionally, a trade union delegation will participate in the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the UN 2030 Agenda follow-up process. TUDCN members are present at the UN Regional Forums on Sustainable Development: in the ESCAP and ECE regional forums, trade union representatives promoted the role of multi-stakeholder dialogue and partnerships in ensuring an effective SDG monitoring process.
New European Consensus on Development
The European Council adopted a new European Consensus on development, which sets out a framework for development co-operation for the European Union and its member states. It lays out the vision for EU member states to utilise effective partnerships for implementing the 2030 Agenda. The CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE), which sits on the Global Partnership’s Steering Committee representing the civil society constituency, released a statement in response to the new consensus. CPDE welcomes the references to development effectiveness, but cautions against backtracking on existing commitments and calls for stronger application of development effectiveness principles.
Read the new European Consensus on development here.
Organised by the European Commission, the European Development Days (EDD) bring the development community together each year to share ideas and experiences in ways that inspire new partnerships and innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
Germany and the European Commission are hosting this event to explore how policies and instruments need to adapt to set the right incentives for public private engagement for development.
Meeting of the DAC Networks and OECD Hosted Partnerships
19-20 June, Paris
As a Partnership co-hosted by the OECD and UNDP, the Global Partnership Co-Chairs will attend the annual meeting of networks of the OECD Development Assistance Committee and OECD-hosted Partnerships in Paris to strengthen their collaboration and ensure they contribute effectively to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Nairobi Outcome Document puts the Global Partnership on a path to contribute in practical ways to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other global commitments made, including on Financing for Development, climate change and disaster risk reduction.
The 2017 HLPF, the central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda, reviews SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 9 and 14, together with the annual review of SDG 17, under the theme of ‘Eradicating Poverty and Promoting Prosperity in a Changing World’. Data collected by countries through the Global Partnership’s monitoring process contributes to the review of the goals by providing data and evidence to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Reports in preparation for the HLPF, including on SDG targets 5c, 17.15 and 17.16. Inputs to the Inter-agency Task Force Report on Financing for Development will also inform the review of SDG 17.
