The International Budget Partnership is collecting stories about successful civil society budget advocacy efforts, in preparation for the future production of a guide on budget advocacy strategies.
The 3rd OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy will be held in Busan, Korea between 27-30 October.
The forum will hold over 40 sessions that consider how the world is progressing (and how to measure that progress), what does focusing on wellbeing and progress mean for policy making and how we can improve the ways in which evidence on progress promotes change.
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In a report published on September 21, 2009, Oxfam called for reforms to strengthen recipient ownership so US foreign aid supports the efforts of governments and people to lead in their own development.
The report, Ownership in Practice: The key to Smart Development sets out three steps to ownership as; Information, Capacity, and Control. It argues that US aid reforms should: let countries know what donors are doing (Information), help countries lead (Capacity), and let countries take leadership (Control).
In a review of the new Japanese government’s policies in Burma, Human Rights Watch has called for increased humanitarian aid from the country ‘to meet the acute needs of the Burmese people’.
Significantly, they have requested that ‘donors should stress the importance of transparency and accountability in the delivery of humanitarian aid, including taking approaches that strengthen civil society rather than the existing corrupt power structures, and that respond to the views and needs of ordinary people’.
In a recent turn of events, the Rwandan government has assessed the country’s aid donors and ranked them according to performance. A blog by the Department for International Development has suggested that this significant act of ‘turning the tables on donors’ demonstrates progress and the emergence of recipient countries holding donors to their commitments.
