The University of Ottawa's Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) Blog always provides interesting reading for those involved in international development.
John Sinclair's latest post is generating a lot of discussion amoung members.
"A key goal for Canada is to be BACK as a credible development partner. ... This goal was not helped when the recent OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) peer review of Canada suggested that Canada needed a more ambitious Official Development Assistance (ODA) volume target. Canadian ODA presence has backslid from the 1970s and ’80s, when we routinely ranked in the top five as a trusted interlocutor and reliable partner in those countries where we were an active donor. The current 2016 DAC ODA figure for Canada is a lowly 0.26% of GNI, ranked 17th in the DAC; our record effort was 0.54% of GNI in 1975.
But ODA dollars are not the sole indicator of engagement. More fundamental is the challenge of rebuilding our credibility as a trusted empathetic development partner. ... What we actually deliver is a more critical measure of being “Fit for Purpose” (F4P) than our words. Our profile on progressive goals is enhanced by the new Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) with its bold, pro-poor feminist agenda, but again there are real concerns about our implementational capacity ...
A solid agenda exists of desirable institutional changes in Global Affairs Canada (GAC, and other public entities) over the next few years. We need to start building ..."
Read the full blog at
http://www.cips-cepi.ca/2018/10/10/development-partnership-part-1-the-way-of-the-future/
http://www.cips-cepi.ca/2018/10/10/development-partnership-part-2-a-gac-action-agenda/
John Sinclair is a Senior Fellow, School of International Development and Global Studies and a member of the McLeod Group. He studied economics at Cambridge University and has worked as an international development practitioner, as a senior staff member of DFID, CIDA (now Global Affairs Canada) and the World Bank. He writes blogs and opeds for various publications, including Embassy/Hill Times, HuffingtonPost and the Ottawa U CIPS website.