Civil Society Key Recommendations
Official Development Assistance
- Overcoming donor dominance in the development discourse and in norm-setting
The Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) must be mandated to address development strategies, policies and financing of development cooperation, as well as promoting coherence between the activities of the various development partners. This forum should receive the necessary political, institutional and financial support to enable it to convene the relevant development actors, including the new official development assistance providers, for discussions on fundamental issues of development cooperation. Governments and civil society from the North and the South should be equally represented.
- Redefinition of “assistance” required
The UN Secretary-General’s calls for the involvement of recipient countries in the formulation of accounting principles for determining aid quantities should be heeded. Civil society organizations support this call, and insist that the issue of aid quality must also be addressed.
- Timetable for increasing real official development transfers
Those governments of the North that have not yet done so, should agree to binding timetables to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GNI to ODA by 2015 at the latest. All governments of the North should submit national ODA timetables ahead of the Doha Conference, in which they clearly state their quantitative financing pledges and determine in what year they intend to provide increased funding, and for what purposes. The grant component of ODA should be substantially increased and prioritized over loans.
- Removing conditionalities that undermine national ownership
The UN Secretary-General’s calls for the involvement of recipient countries in the formulation of accounting principles for determining aid quantities should be heeded. Civil society organizations support this call, and insist that the issue of aid quality must also be addressed.
All economic policy conditionalities defined by the donors should be abandoned. Rather, efforts must be expended to deepen the global consensus on human rights, social, labour and environmental standards, as well as mechanisms for enforcement in more democratic multilateral fora, based on the principles of universal compliance, shared responsibility, mutual accountability, and adherence to fiduciary standards.
The commitment to suspend aid tying ought to be extended to all countries and all aid modalities including food aid and Technical Assistance, with clear timetables. At the same time, special measures ought to be introduced to promote public procurement from domestic goods and services markets.
The donors ought to increase the predictability of their finance transfers by entering binding obligations to pay over a period of several years. This applies, not only to bilateral co-operation, but also to contributions to the multilateral development programmes and funds of the UN system.
New International Financial Instruments
- Expanding the solidarity levy on air tickets
The Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) must be mandated to address development strategies, policies and financing of development cooperation, as well as promoting coherence between the activities of the various development partners. This forum should receive the necessary political, institutional and financial support to enable it to convene the relevant development actors, including the new official development assistance providers, for discussions on fundamental issues of development cooperation. Governments and civil society from the North and the South should be equally represented.
- Making use of proceeds from emissions trading for international measures to combat global warming
Trading emissions rights bears a considerable financing potential for development tasks. Mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that proceeds are channelled into initiatives to combat climate change.
The share of generated revenues allocated to support the countries of the South in applying urgently required measures to adapt to climate change, as well as develop low carbon economies, should be considerably increased.
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developed country signatories have committed to providing developing countries with new and additional financial resources to meet the costs of their efforts to address climate change, and to assist vulnerable countries to adapt to its impacts. Revenues generated from the emissions trading system with the aim of financing climate change, should be seen as a means of developed countries fulfilling their international obligations under the global climate change regime, and therefore as separate from and additional to generating financing for development.
- Introducing a currency transaction or financial transaction tax
Numerous studies demonstrate that a currency transaction or financial transaction tax would be technically feasible, could be efficiently raised, and could mobilise far more funds than all innovative financing instruments so far put together. Moreover, the implementation of such a levy would mean that a very important step has been made towards a better distribution of the world’s wealth.
Governments are urged to include this currency transaction development levy as a specific item for the Doha draft outcome text, in keeping with the UN Secretary General’s recent report to the ECOSOC meeting with the Bretton Woods institutions which draws attention to a “renewed international interest in a possible currency-transaction “development levy” of 0.005 per cent, a minuscule tax that is not expected to materially affect market operations while having the potential to generate billions of dollars that can be allocated for development…by its very nature, currency transactions taxes involve more than one country, being levied on the exchange of the currency of one country for that of another. Thus, these are taxes that are best implemented in a cooperative manner among countries”
- Promoting innovative financial instruments - in search of appropriate governance arrangements
Innovative sources of finance provide much needed additional resources for development, above and beyond the 0.7% commitments of GNI to ODA. However, the tendency to create a new institution for each financing instrument promotes the proliferation and fragmentation of the system of global governance. Wherever possible, innovative financing instruments ought to be implemented by making use of existing institutions, provided they are democratic, have proven expertise and a demonstrated capacity for effective results. Innovative instruments should be monitored for their ability to generate truly additional funds, to engage new donors, and to prioritize allocations