The way to Nairobi: the EIP shares approaches with the Global Partnership Initiatives
An international gathering in a beautiful location always raises eyebrows…
Hosted by the United Cities and Local Governments in Barcelona, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the government of Japan, and the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) held an acceleration workshop for its 47 Global Partnership Initiatives—the Effective Institutions Platform (EIP) being one of them.
When you see this many interesting people coming together to update each other on their activities, share their challenges and seek partnerships it is not that difficult to forget where you are. Barcelona had to wait…
While I knew that the GPEDC was the mothership of the EIP, I had little knowledge of the breadth of activity occurring under its umbrella. The number of Global Partnership Initiatives (GPI) multiplied after the 1st GPEDC High Level Meeting (Mexico, 2014), covering a wide range of topics from aid coordination to networking think tanks and tax to service delivery.
What is the role of the GPIs, and our own platform, the EIP, in the context of the Global Partnership? The GPEDC has three main pillars: i) maintaining political momentum for the commitments made in Busan and Mexico City (the first HLM) ii) monitoring and reporting against those commitments and iii) the work of the Global Partnership Initiatives (GPIs), which are voluntary multi-stakeholders initiatives exercised at the country level; these initiatives are meant to show how Busan commitments can guide the implementation of effective development programs.
Given the changing international development landscape, the Global Partnership will need to evolve and adapt to the reality that development resources flow from three sources: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), domestic revenues and Official Development Assistance (ODA), with the ODA being the smallest. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a reflection of this reality; the EIP is well positioned to emphasize the importance of an effective public sector and offer its insights into multi-stakeholder dialogue and peer learning activities.
This acceleration workshop helped us to prepare for the 2nd High Level Meeting (HLM), to explore opportunities for collaboration, maybe even a clustering or merger of similar initiatives. The HLM will be hosted by Kenya from 28th November to 1st December 2016.
EIP Co-Chair Margaret Kobia and I shared progress with our conceptual frameworks like the EIP Peer-to-Peer Learning Guide and the report Engagement practices between Supreme Audit Institutions and external actors: Mechanisms, risks and benefits, alongside the encouraging development that EIP members are working on launching Peer Learning Alliances from Astana Hub for Civil Service to Paraguay and Ecuador and the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat. The EIP’s two core approaches of multi-stakeholder dialogues and peer learning were central to the discussions; our strong presence at the meeting, with the EIP Co-Chairs and EIP Joint Secretariat, signaled our commitment to the GPEDC agenda on effective development partnerships.
We got to know our “nearest neighbors”—various initiatives on tax (inspection, administration, systems, illicit flows, etc.), aid transparency, development finance, effective partnering, state-building, as well as a local/regional governments—and we will, between now and the HLM in November, explore how EIP could benefit from partnering with these initiatives.
Given the large number of EIP members that are likely to attend the HLM in Nairobi in early December, it is a good time to organise this year’s EIP Annual Meeting and a thematic side event —organised in partnership with the Public Service Commission of Kenya— around the same time. An EIP member update will follow. This will give us an opportunity to feature our work, build our network, strengthen our focus and connect to the larger development agenda. After all, effective institutions are at the heart of its implementation.
…and Nairobi makes another fascinating host city that will deepen the legacy of Busan, Mexico City, Paris, Singapore, and Barcelona in organizing impactful gatherings.