Sharing Knowledge and Transition Ex[erience for Development: the view of New European Donors

New Donors in Europe, including countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007(EU12), Croatia and Turkey are increasing their ODA flows, and as part of their technical assistance engage in "East-East cooperation" or sharing knowledge with a variety of partner countries in the region and beyond.  Of particular significance is their experience of transition that eventually led to political, economic and social transformation to become the countries that they are today.  This means that the governments, civil society and academia of these new donors in Europe are a valuable source of recent and often replicable knowledge that can make a difference for achieving development goals elsewhere.  . 

Organizing effective knowledge- and experience sharing remains a challenge, especially in what concerns ensuring its quality and its impact on real peoples’ lives, visibility and transparency of knowledge exchanges, fragmentation of approaches to knowledge and experience sharing for development,  and coordinating knowledge and experience sharing with ODA tools.   In this context, international partners, such as the EU, WBI, UNDP and OECD can play an important role in supporting and facilitating knowledge sharing, such as on transition processes..  The EU plays a crucial coordinating and standard-setting role in the EU-12 and together with WBI and UNDP, they bring to bear their global expertise, experience and networks, in a complementary and mutually supportive way. 

In June 2012, the EU, WBI and UNDP co-organized an event in Budapest “Capacity Building of Emerging European Donors”, bringing together representatives of the governments and NGOs of EU-12 countries, Croatia, and Turkey.  At the global level, several forums have taken up this issue, most recently – the side event on “Country Strategies of Southern Cooperation Agencies: a knowledge exchange,” the UN Development Cooperation Forum in July 2012 and the High-level Conference in Bali, Indonesia ‘Towards Country-led Knowledge Hubs’ (co-organized by WBI, UNDP and JICA) in July 2012.   As a next step, UNDP, the EU and WBI are in the process of developing platforms and service lines in support of the knowledge sharing activities in the region, based on their respective mandates and comparative advantages.   However, these platforms and service lines need to be based on a clear understanding not only of the knowledge that exists in New Donor countries but also of partner countries who might wish to tap into their experience and expertise.

Objectives

This technical workshop will represent a region-specific follow-up to the Budapest technical workshop and the recent Global For a as mentioned above.  It will focus on the experiences, challenges, potential and needs of New European Donors as providers of knowledge and transition experience.  The ultimate goal of the discussion is to agree on specific steps and cooperation options to ensure the knowledge and experience sharing is more effective, delivers sustainable impact for partner countries and produces the required visibility for the New European Donors.   To achieve this goal, it is proposed that the workshop’s agenda covers three inter-related themes: what kind of transition experience can be shared; the mechanisms of engagement and cooperation with partner countries; and the role of international partners to facilitate this process. 

Participants:

Government officials from EU12 member countries, Croatia and Turkey representing Ministries in charge of the international development cooperation agenda and sectoral ministries, ODA agencies, major NGOs and think-tanks involved in provision of capacity building and knowledge exchange, select representatives of recipient countries in the region and beyond, representatives from ‘best practice countries’ (e.g. Korea, Singapore) in knowledge exchange, WB and WBI, UNDP, OECD and the European Union.