BetterAid has submitted civil society views to the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-Eff) in response to the first draft of the Busan Outcome Document (BOD). The CSO platform notes that the document does reflect a number of key civil society concerns but does not adequately address the key challenges, findings and core messages demanded by civil society.

Among these concerns is a perceived lack of commitment to strengthen, and deepen, the principles agreed in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action which include commitments to aid transparency. The Busan Outcome Document must build on these agreements and ensure that undertakings and commitments are both met and built upon:

“Relevant information must be comprehensive, timely, gender-disaggregated and comparable, integrated into public budgets, and fully accessible to all citizens in donor and partner governments. It is crucial that all development partners, including the private sector, adopt policies of automatic, full disclosure of relevant information and submit to the norms and standards-setting of the UN system. The BOD should encourage all donors to adopt and fully implement the common standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). Donor and partner governments must also work to build the capacity of parliamentarians, local government, civil society, the media and citizens to access and analyze information on aid flows and development resources.”

The HLF-4 meeting in Busan later this year is a crucial opportunity to hold governments to account for the commitments they made in Paris and Accra. It is therefore critical that the Busan Outcome Document takes into account the views of civil-society and that these are incorporated into future drafts. Publish What You Fund supports the BetterAid recommendations and looks forward to civil society organisations having an effective voice in the lead up to Busan.

Read the BetterAid response