OECD (2011) Strengthening Ownership and Accountability: A Synthesis of Key Findings and Messages produced for the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectivenes

This paper points to the issues that donors should address at the High Level Summit on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4) in Busan to make further progress in two dimensions essential to aid effectiveness: ownership and accountability. The recommendations are based on findings from research on the implementation of aid effectiveness commitments made by donors in Paris and Accra.

Recent research produced by the Cluster on Ownership and Accountability of the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness highlights several lessons from progress made towards meeting Paris and Accra’s commitments:

·Donors acknowledge the importance of inclusive ownership whereby non-state actors are involved in the design and implementation of national development strategies. In practice the implementation of this principle suffers from a lack of consensus on the roles that these stakeholders are expected to play.

·Development partners face the challenge of promoting mutual accountability and domestic accountability simultaneously. ‘Do no harm’ approaches based on a good understanding of the country context are key to promoting domestic accountability.

·Aid effectiveness could significantly improve if donors relied on partner countries own assessment of capacity development needs and if donors reduced their own institutional disincentives (search for visibility, pressure for quick value-for-money, etc.).

Based on those research findings, donors and partner countries should consider the following key questions at the HLF-4:

1)Inclusive ownership: what can be considered as good practice in donors’ facilitation of country ownership, in particular through multi-stakeholders dialogue and interventions at national and local levels?

2)Government leadership: what and how can development actors learn about the institutional conditions necessary to enhance government leadership?

3)Capacity development: how can donors address internal disincentives to support evidence-based capacity development in partner countries, and how can partner country stakeholders best define their capacity development needs?

4)Inclusive accountability: what can be considered as good practice in including civil society, local governments, parliaments and political parties in the design, implementation and monitoring of aid programmes?

5)Enabling environment for CSOs: how can donors, CSOs and development partners improve CSO’s contributions to development and understand better how different actors can contribute to aid effectiveness?

6) Multi-level governance: how to ensure complementarity between the development contributions of local, regional, national and international actors?