Putting transparency on the agenda for Busan
Preparations for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in Busan will begin in earnest this week when the Executive Committee of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness meets in Paris to discuss the focus, objectives and ambition of the Forum.
There’s no shortage of ideas about what should be on the agenda in Busan from donors, partner countries and CSOs alike. And it’s no surprise that here at aidinfo, we are pressing the case for transparency to be a theme in its own right at HLF4. We also feel that it’s crucial that transparency is recognised as a cross-cutting issue essential to delivering many of the wider commitments on aid effectiveness made in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action.
The case for prioritising transparency at Busan is simple:
- it’s vital that HLF4 monitors progress against the specific transparency commitments made at HLF3 in Accra;
- increased transparency is essential for delivering on many of the priority issues highlighted by partner countries for HLF4 including increased predictability, greater use of country systems, mutual accountability and reduced transaction costs;
- transparency is high on the political agenda of many key donors – the past year has seen the launch of Aid Transparency Guarantees in the UK and Sweden, new disclosure policies and initiatives in the Netherlands, European Commission and World Bank, plus the launch of the US dashboard.
And finally, we believe that for donors who have invested in this area, transparency could be a key success story at Busan. In particular, those who have joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and begun to implement it prior to HLF4 will be well placed to demonstrate real progress against their Accra commitments on transparency.
For all of these reasons, we urge those meeting in Paris this week to put transparency at the heart of the agenda for Busan.
