Group hits new lake plan

(reposting from Tempo news)

MANILA, Philippines (Tempo) – The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) and the Save Laguna Lake Movement (SLLM) has assailed the government plan to implement the P300-billion, 10-year Laguna Lake Master Plan (LLMP), which is worse than the scrapped P18.7-billion Laguna Lake Dredging Project (LLRP).

Pamalakaya national chairman Fernando Hicap and SLLM convenor Pedro Gonzalez also twitted Malacañang for trying to lure the Belgian government into financing components of the LLMP after banging away at the LLRP, which was proposed by Baggerwerken Decloedt en Zoon (BDC) and approved in February 2010 and thrice upheld as valid, legal, and binding by the Department of Justice (DoJ).

BDC spent P400 million to conduct studies at the Laguna de Bay for four years and worked to secure Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the Belgian government only for President Benigno S. Aquino III to slam the project twice in major policy speeches.

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE.

AidWatch-Philippines present main points of CSO consensus for Busan Statement

September 9, 2011- Civil Society Organizations represented by AidWatch- Philippines join 1st consultation of the Technical Working Group on the country statement of the Philippines for the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea on November 29-December 1.

The TWG is expected to come up with the statement before the start of the HLF4.

While AidWatch affirms its June statement, it has presented ten points for the statement as a result of a consensus among its network organizations prior to the TWG meeting.

The points are as follows:

1.       We call on the government and its development partners to ensure an open and broader Partnership for Development  Effectiveness or a new development cooperation model that is built strongly on eradicating poverty, realizing human rights, gender equality, social justice and environmental sustainability in the Philippines.

2.       Democratic ownership is the key to any assistance to be developmental.  We call on the government and its development partners to take action in ensuring open, inclusive and meaningful engagement with all development actors and stakeholders.  Particular mechanisms must be in place for greater participation of grassroots-based aid recipients from the program & project conceptualization, implementation, monitoring and evaluation activities.

3.       Civil society organizations in the Philippines, diverse and dynamic as they are must be truly recognized as development actors in their own right.  The government and its development partners must urgently take steps to provide the enabling environment for CSOs to meaningfully participate in the aid processes including greater support for their capacity development.  They must give priority to civil society groups who are people’s organizations and non-governmental organizations with linkages with people’s organizations.

4.       People’s governance mechanisms must be in place to ensure transparency and accountability, inclusive and meaningful participation of people’s organizations in development programs and projects. Accountability mechanisms must also be in place for CSOs to exercise their watchdog role in making government and its development partners accountable in the implementation of official development programs and projects.

5.       Realizing education for all must be a top priority in development.  We call on the government and its development partners to seriously address challenges in achieving education for all targets; ensure social investments in human development as well as immediate human resources for nation-building and national development.

6.       We call on the government’s development partners to review and disseminate studies on the effectiveness of their aid policies vis a vis development results for the country particularly in the communities that they serve. 

7.       We call on the government’s development partners to increase the proportion of their aid money dedicated to establish partnerships with people’s organizations in the poorest regions and localities in the country.

8.       All development projects must be aligned with the government and its development partner country government’s commitments in internationally agreed covenants and conventions

9.       We call on government and its development partners to ensure that the participation of the private sector (big business) does not take primacy over the public interest. 

10.   We call on governments and its development partners must ensure policy coherence in climate change action plans and ensure that development assistance going into climate change adaptation and mitigation programs are given directly benefiting the communities.

Other CSOs with AidWatch in the consultation were representatives from the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC-Philippines) and the Council for People's Development and Governance. Among the donor agencies present were World Bank, USAid, AusAid, JICA, KOICA, UNDP, GIZ and a representative of China among others. For the government side, the National Economic Development Authority, Department irector of Finance and the Commission on Audit attended. It was facilitated by NEDA Deputy Director General Rolando Tungpalan who also sits in the  Working Party on Aid Effectiveness.

The TWG sets a multi-stakeholders' meeting on Aid Effectiveness on September 28, 2011 as part of the country's preparatory activities towards the Busan HLF4.

Pacific Civil Society Leaders: 'give development a human face'

SUVA, FIJI ISLANDS (11 July, 2011) ─. A Pacific regional meeting on aid and development effectiveness has reinforced an international call for people to be brought to the centre of development and that development co-operation and aid effectiveness processes are people centered, respect human rights and achieve social justice as cornerstones of aid and development effectiveness.

In recent years, the Pacific region has experienced structural adjustments, political instability and policy changes in its development assistance landscape. Threats to human rights, peace and security being experienced in some Pacific countries have impacted on the enabling environment for civil society and affected the way in which civil society works. 

This was revealed at the Pacific Islands Consultation on Aid and Development Effectiveness which ended in Nadi at the weekend.  The meeting was attended by civil society leaders from Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. 

Organised by the Pacific Islands Association of Non Government Organisations (PIANGO) in partnership with the Reality of Aid Asia Pacific, based in the Philippines, the meeting acknowledged the critical importance of donor support for CSOs.  It congratulated the Australia Government on accepting the recommendations of an independent aid review to increase development assistance to the Pacific and its emphasis on support to Non Government organisations. Participants also congratulated the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) on its positive decision to reinstate the post of Non State Actor Officer saying they looked forward to working closely with PIFS in supporting Pacific governments to engage more effectively with civil society.

Civil society leaders called on Pacific Island governments to revisit their commitments to Pacific people and CSOs at regional and international levels within the context of the Pacific Plan and Cairns Compact.

“As umbrella CSO bodies, we have an important role to play and collaborate with other development actors to influence regional and global agendas and give voice to the poor, disadvantaged and marginalised that we work with.  We need to bring together youth, women, men and community voices to advocate on  very real and pressing issues affecting our region such as climate change, food security, human rights, gender, disabilities and trade,” said Ms Emele Duituturaga, PIANGO’s interim Executive Director.

 “Commitments made on donor harmonisation in international agreements such as the Paris Declaration need to be extended to dialogue, resourcing and collaboration with CSOs. Civil Society needs to have partnership agreements with governments and development partners to ensure that development takes on a human face,” she said.

Ms Ava Danlog of Reality of Aid, said that in some instances aid effectiveness processes have been very disempowering for citizens. 

“There is a need for CSOs to focus on concrete, tangible outputs as there is usually a tendency to focus on donor ‘hot topics’.  Aid should be about partnerships.  Development partners must foster basic principles of partnership and acknowledge the contribution of recipients.  In addition, trade and other economic activities need to also focus on human development,” Ms Danlog said.

An emerging issue in the Pacific region and one that is also a part of the larger development agenda issue concerns the rights of people living with disability in the region who continue to be marginalised and excluded from development processes.

Mr Katabwena Tawaka, of the Pacific Disability Forum told the meeting that present statistics (June, 2011) illustrate that over 800,000 people are living with disabilities in the Pacific. 

“There is a need for governments and development partners to recognise disability as a development issue. Disability may increase the risk of poverty.  In the Pacific, people with disabilities rely on their families for support, assistance and medical care and this must be acknowledged by stakeholders.  The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) also do not make specific reference to people with disabilities,” he said.

The Pacific meeting was organised by PIANGO and was part of Reality of Aid Asia Pacific regional consultations in the lead-up to the HLF4 in Busan, South Korea, in November, 2011.  HLF4 will assess whether or not key government commitments on aid effectiveness have been achieved since the last high-level meeting in Accra in 2008.  The Busan meeting is a key opportunity for governments to go beyond promises and commit to more effective, sustainable development assistance in terms of its real impact on the lives of all people. (ENDS)

IBON Philippines' critique on the Aquino "Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016"

Here is IBON Philippines' policy critique on the Aquino administration's development plan. IBON Philippines is one of AidWatch Philippines' convenors.

Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016: A Social Contract With Whom?

The Aquino administration adopted the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2011-2016 in March this year which the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) formally released to the public on May 30, 2011. The PDP is the government’s blueprint for implementing its declared “Social Contract with the Filipino People”. The plan sums up the administration’s chosen economic direction and defines its strategies and programs for the next six years.

The meat of the nearly 400-page document is divided into 10 chapters. The introduction (15 pages) summarizes the state of the economy and the plan’s approach. The key strategies are then outlined in nine chapters on macroeconomic policy (24 pages), industry and services (38), agriculture and fisheries (18), infrastructure (57), financial system (22), good governance (25), social development (56), peace and security (9), and the environment (32).

FOR THE WHOLE STORY AND THE DOWNLOADABLE PDP, PLEASE CLICK HERE. and HERE.

BetterAid Announces Busan HLF4 CSO Participants

A global call to be accredited as a Civil Society Organization (CSO) participant at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) was made on April 8 via the BetterAid and Open Forum websites.
700 emails and more than 600 applications were submitted to the BetterAid secretariat. Networks and organizations represented in the BetterAid and Open Forum steering groups worked together in regional caucuses to lead the selection process for CSOs wanting to represent the region.

Now the Global Selection and Oversight Committee is pleased to announce regional lists of those CSOs who will be recommended to the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) Core Group for accreditation.

Altogether 270 participants were selected plus a ten percent alternates/reserves list in case a person originally selected is unable to fulfill the requirements of active preparation or is unable to travel to Busan.
A letter from the Global CSO Selection and Oversight Committee provides more details on the selection process.

 See the list of selected participants and CSOs below:
-        Africa (Sub Saharan) -        Asia (including Pacific)
-        Latin America
-        Middle East and North Africa
-        Europe (including non EU member states and North America): this list is still being finalized.
-        Global CSOs (International CSOs, international networks etc…)

The Korean CSOs have their own selection process and are aiming at 30 participants.
The lists of reserve participants and CSOs is still being finalized and will be released imminently.

Lists of funded participants
The lists for those who will be funded will start with a list of 100 Southern CSOs that the Selection and Oversight Committee will submit to the OECD Trust Fund managed by Asian Development Bank, to be released imminently. A second list will be announced in mid July when the Committee has confirmed the first commitments from international donor agencies.

A third list will be announced in September.
Please contact Applicationhlf4@betteraid.org if you have any questions for the Global CSO Selection and Oversight Committee regarding the selection process.

Crossroads: Food security vs ethanol vs mining vs climate change

By MARY LOU O. MARIGZA
www.nordis.net

Food security and food sovereignty had always been related to the land problem. It is a pitiful state of affairs that those who till the land and provide food for our table have for the longest time been deprived of the right to own the land they till. Blood, sweat, tears, hunger, dispossession and ejection are the sorrowful realities they face.

In our hunger for clean energy and more production to feed a hungry world, our farmers have been the least of the concern of state planners and investors, especially foreign investors who have to keep their deep pockets full and their economies rolling. Poor Filipino farmers at the receiving end.

This is the problem faced by the farmers of San Mariano town in Isabela who are facing a rich giant conglomerate of Japanese investors and local sugarlords that needs the energy and the clean environment “pogi points” to turn sugarcane to bio-ethanol for electricity and transport fuel. Theoretically, the bio-ethanol enterprise will provide the necessary shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources for energy and transport that was mandated into law through the BioFuels Act.

However, what is hidden in the equation is the gargantuan shift from farming for food to farming for energy. To use the analogy of Ka Daning Ramos of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the farmer who produces the chicken for the market will now be reduced to buying chicken cubes if he wants to eat chicken. The farmers who will be contracting with the bioethanol company will now be reduced to buying all their needs including rice since they will be forced to plant only “ethanol” to meet the company’s quota. Even their language has changed. The farmers of San Mariano no longer say they will plant sugarcane, no, they will plant “ethanol”.

The International Fact-finding Mission to San Mariano, Isabela last week of May was conducted by several experts on food security and land rights on the national and international level. This is a follow-up activity to an earlier national Fact-finding mission last February to probe into land grabbing vis a vis the biofuels project.

The IFFM documented cases already brought as early as 2005 to the municipal, provincial and national levels of the government and heard new cases of landgrabbing with the open knowledge of government agencies like the DENR, DAR, Land Bank and the like. The land problem is so massive and deep but the tillers of the soil stood their ground – “Laban kung laban” as they said it so eloquently. They had to confront a bureaucracy that was clearly washing its hands off the problem or outright sitting on the complaints while they “study the matter further” until the next fact-finding mission maybe. They gritted their teeth when a legal officer accused them of “nagpapaloko” even when they presented evidences of the scam and fraud in several barrios of San Mariano.

San Mariano has a history of land struggle that started when the logging of the forest region started. The first to be affected are the Agtas. They have been displaced by migrants who have heard of the land frontiers and the richness of the Isabela soil. The vast expanse of logged over areas that had water resources and roads however bad became home to communities of Ifugaos, Ilokanos and Ibanags and the Agtas who later realized they have to claim some piece of land with “paper” ownership and stay in one place if they have to show proof of their claim to these paper documents.

In one barangay, an Ifugao settler who has been a local official has been “resourceful” to title his ownership over hundreds of hectares. In Ilocos, he would have been a big landlord but in San Mariano, he is just one of the big guys. San Mariano is so big that a lot of people can easily settle and make the land productive. And therein lies the problem. The land in San Mariano is up for grabs even if it is knowledge that these lands have been occupied since the tillers can remember or were themselves born there.

In the midst of these land problems, a Japanese funded consortium is planning to lease/rent lands for sugarcane plantations for bio-ethanol. What will be left of the farmers then? Only the knowledge that once upon a morning they “own” a piece of land and in the afternoon, another has claimed it by paper documents? What will they put on their tables if all they will be planting are “ethanol”? After all, 11,000 hectares is not a small number. And would 11,000 hectares suffice if there is crop failure due to weather and pests? Where will the farmers now get their food (and it is knowledge also that most of the rice fields have been converted to yellow or animal corn fields)?

And yet another specter is looming in San Mariano – mining companies have applied for permit to mine the areas for minerals. Where will the farmers of San Mariano get their food? # nordis.net

Philippine CSOs present position at multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness

Last June 2, Philippine Civil Society Organizations represented by AidWatch Philippines and the Council for People's Development and Governance (CPDG) were able to present their statement for the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which will happen on November 29-December 1 this year, in the Multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness.

The multi-stakeholders forum was facilitated by the Philippine Harmonization Committee on Aid Effectiveness and was attended by the National Economic Development Authority- Project Monitoring Staff (NEDA-PMS), Department of Finance, Representative Luzviminda Ilagan of Gabriela Partylist, a representative from the office of Kabataan Partylist Representative Raymond Palatino, donor agencies US Aid, World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the German KFW Bankengruppe and the United Nations and CSOs.

In the statement presented by Jazminda Lumang of AidWatch, the CSOs calls were:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

(Please read the whole statement here.)

Aside from AidWatch, CPDG and the Reality of Aid, the CSOs present were  the Council for Health and Development, Health Alliance for Democracy, Community Medicine Development Foundation, Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Center for Women's Resources, Citizens Disaster Response Center, AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People), Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP), NARS ng Bayan, Med-herbal Pharmacy and the Center for Development Programs in the Cordillera.

Philippine CSOs Statement on the Road to Busan

We, members of AidWatch-Philippinesⁱ, Council for People’s Development and Governanceⁱⁱ along with the broad CSO community in the country join the global CSO efforts in bringing forward a comprehensive agenda – a meaningful and ambitious Busan Compact on Development Effectiveness.

We assert that aid and the overall aid system will only be developmental if it is consistent with the key principles of respect for human rights (economic, cultural, civil and political); democratic ownership of the development process; equity in growth and development; transparency and access to information; accountability for decisions and actions, and primacy of the people’s well-being and welfare.

We maintain that aid effectiveness as reflected through the Paris Declaration Principles is about the technical “efficient delivery and management of aid” and has not address the crucial issues of conditionality and tied aid; and of truly delivering real economic progress, better social services and enjoyment of human rights for the people.

We join the global call for a new development cooperation system built not just in reforming aid delivery and management but more importantly ensuring development effectiveness in recipient countries like the Philippines.

In spite its supposedly middle-income status, the Philippines remains hobbled with widespread poverty, severe inequality, chronic bureaucratic corruption and underdevelopment. It is in this context of development effectiveness that the country must seriously address the following fundamental concerns:

• Promotion of human rights and social justice
• Poverty reduction that focuses on uplifting the living condition of the majority of the peasant poor through thorough going agrarian reforms that addresses landlessness and tenancy issues; decent work and decent wage; and a nationally-owned and democratically-adopted comprehensive national economic development policies and plans that will truly benefit the people.
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Environmental sustainability with focus on addressing the problem of climate change

In pursuit of these, the Philippines must strive to establish a development cooperation framework with development partners that resolve power in country relationships through mutual accountability, elimination of tied and donor-imposed conditionalities, increase aid transparency and predictability and the eventual elimination of dependency on foreign aid and technologies and external markets. This can be done through a multi-stakeholder approach, ensuring mutually-supportive policies in international aid, trade, investment and finance that uphold and advance the realization of the Right to Development.

We believe that as development actors in our own right, CSOs contribute in unique and important ways to development – we are human rights advocates, watchdogs/monitors, campaigners, organizers – we are innovative agents of change and social transformation.

Globally, CSOs have made significant progress in strengthening their own effectiveness in development via the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness process. In September 2010, 170 CSOs from more than 70 countries (the Philippine CSOs included) gathered together in Istanbul, Turkey and agreed on the Istanbul Principles for CSO Development Effectiveness. The Istanbul Principles reflects the important roles that CSOs play, the principles and values that they live by.

In the same vein, the High Level Forum III via paragraph 20 of the Accra Agenda for Action recognizes CSOs as development actors in their own right, as it promised to “deepen engagement with CSOs as independent development actors in their own right whose efforts complement those of the governments and private sectors…”

However, despite the apparent official recognition, many CSOs in the Philippines are facing policies and practices that are undermining or severely limiting their roles as development actors. Besides the highly restricting environment for the recognition of CSOs, many members of our CSO network organizations experienced being harassed, illegally arrested and detained, tortured, extra-judicially killed and enforced disappeared. Militarization in many rural areas in the country, limits the effectiveness of many of our grassroots partner organizations.

Despite these challenges, Philippine CSOs especially those within the AidWatch and CPDG network will continue to push for and support national and local development agendas that benefit the people.

Thus, on the occasion of the High-Level Multi-stakeholders’ Forum involving government, development partners and NGOs/POs involved in the run-up towards the High Level Forum 4 in Busan, South Korea this November 2011, we call upon the government and its development partners to:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

i AidWatch Philippines is a broad network of 160 grassroots-based NGOs and civil society networks involve in the promotion of aid and development effectiveness in over 60 provinces in the Philippines.

ii The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) is a broad and diverse national network based in the Philippines of national-sectoral and regional networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) engaged in development work. CPDG engages in the CSO development effectiveness process.

Philippine CSOs brace for Aid effectiveness 4th high level forum in Korea; forward country’s key development issues

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) from all over the Philippines gathered last Friday, April 29 in a strategy meeting tagged as “In Busan and beyond: claiming the people’s right to development” which aimed to identify key issues to be forwarded in the 4^th High Level Forum (HLF4) on Aid effectiveness in November this year.

Moreover, the meeting also merged aid effectiveness and its parallel process CSO development effectiveness in the country. This initiative which aims to further advance Filipino people’s development issues in the global community is the first of its kind in Asia-pacific. 

During the said meeting, AidWatch Philippines presented its engagement on the aid effectiveness process since its establishment in 2003 as a strong CSO network on aid and development issues while the Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) discussed Philippine CSOs’ engagements in the development effectiveness process.

 For their part, CSO representatives pointed out several issues of the marginalized sectors that need to be addressed in the Korea HLF4 through a workshop guided by the BetterAid platform Key Asks document.

Willy Marbella of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP/Peasant Movement of the Philippines) registered that the peasants, the largest sector in the society must be included in the global discussions of development by addressing the issue of Agrarian Reform.

On the other hand, Carlos Maningat of Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research pointed out that issue of higher wages must be part of development agenda.

Destruction of ancestral domains and environmental degradation as effects of development aggression were also among the issues raised by the CSO representatives.

After the workshop, AidWatch Philippines announced its series of CSO gatherings towards the HLF4 and its projects which include an independent report on the Philippine government’s implementation of the 2005 Paris Declaration in the country. 

CLICK HERE for some of the photos of the event.

AidWatch April Newsletter

Download here and here for your digital copy.

Philippine CSOs affirm convictions, assert stances and signify principles on development issues

The nationwide Civil Society Organizations-National Economic Development Authority (CSO-NEDA) consultation workshops on the Country Level Evaluation (CLE) in the implementation of the 2^nd phase of the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness in the Philippines were conducted in Luzon (October 29), Visayas (December 1) and Mindanao (December 14).

In the said workshops, 83 CSOs under AidWatch Philippines, convened by the Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) and IBON Foundation and its network organizations were able to strongly give their stances on the evaluation conducted by NEDA’s commissioned evaluators.

NEDA-Project Monitoring Staff head, Director Roderick Planta presented the CLE for Luzon and Mindanao while Ms. Lirio Abuyuan, one of the commissioned evaluators, presented the CLE in the Visayas leg. Planta and Abuyuan also answered questions raised by workshop participants in the open forums of each workshop.

More importantly, the CSOs made the workshops as venues for them to reaffirm long-standing convictions that “genuine development should benefit the people” and assert the negative impacts of ‘development’ including massive violations of human rights and the failure of many Official Development Aid (ODA)-funded projects to deliver its promise of development.

For its part, AidWatch presented the basics of the Paris Declaration, the CSO initiatives after the 2008 formulation of the Accra Agenda of Action (AAA) and the active involvement of CSOs inside and outside the country both in the aid effectiveness process and its parallel, development effectiveness process.

Moreover, AidWatch plans to come up with its own evaluation of the government’s implementation of the Paris Declaration, using indicators that will be formulated by the CSOs under its wing.

In each of the workshops, CSOs were able to map out general plans and activities towards the Busan High Level Forum in November this year.

BETTER AID PRESS RELEASE: 9 months to deliver: tipping point to make development aid effective

Brussels, March 23. Days after officials at the OECD made plans towards the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), more than 80 representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) from across the globe gathered in Sweden to develop their own strategy for the forum.

HLF4 will be held from November 29 to December 1 2011 in Busan, Republic of Korea. It will assess if commitments of governments made in recent years have been achieved or not, and stands out as a key opportunity for governments to go beyond promises and to commit to more effective, sustainable development assistance in terms of its real impact on the lives of all women and men.

With global development needs rocketing following escalating global crises such as rising food and fuel prices, growing inequality, lack of sustainable jobs,  and political unrest in Northern Africa, the issue of development effectiveness cannot be ignored anymore.

As a result of last week’s civil society meeting in Harnosand, Sweden, BetterAid and Open Forum identified key messages to national governments as well as regional and international institutions.

Central to the concerns of both platforms is the shrinking political space for civil society, the multiple attacks on freedom of association and the lack of participatory ownership of development at the national level in a growing number of countries.

Achieving full respect of human rights, gender equality, decent work and environmental sustainability should remain the ultimate goal for development effectiveness. 

“Development effectiveness is about how best to help people help themselves in a sustainable way. It’s not about the short-term results of stand-alone projects,’’ said Richard Ssewakiryanga from BetterAid and the Uganda National NGO Forum.

The Istanbul Principles for CSO Effectiveness, adopted in September 2010 and based on a global process of consultation in which hundreds of CSOs participated,  should be supported and governments should implement measures to create an enabling environment for civil society organisations as  development actors in their own right. 

“Governments and donors should make the strength of civil society an indicator of successful development cooperation,” said Ruben Fernandez from Open Forum and ALOP.

With multiple and escalating political and natural crises globally, it takes forward-thinking to commit to the kind of  long term and sustainable development progress that BetterAid and the Open Forum are advocating for. The voice of the people must be heard and acted on in Busan.

AidWatch-Philippines one with BetterAid for Busan 2011 results

On November 2011, the future of development cooperation will definitely face a critical moment as the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan (HLF4) will take place.

The HLF4 is a chance for the development community to not only assess the progress it has made against the Paris and Accra aid reform commitments, but also to build upon them by agreeing to bolder and more comprehensive reform of development cooperation in order to maximize its support for the world’s poorest people.

AidWatch- Philippines, being the main CSO organization in the country at the forefront of aid effectiveness issue is one with BetterAid in pushing for the HLF4 to result in the following:   

Measurable, time-bound and monitored commitments: The Paris Declaration’s Annex of specific, time-bound, measurable and regularly monitored commitments – despite its flaws - has been critical to the progress it has helped to generate. Without such an Annex and an independent process for monitoring its implementation, a Busan agreement will likely be soon forgotten, like many international agreements that lack these unique elements.

Commitment to implement and build on the Paris and Accra reforms: The Paris and Accra reforms will not have been implemented in full by Busan. As these reforms are already contributing to critical improvements to aid delivery and partner countries are demanding further implementation, it is important they continue. HLF4 must therefore tackle obstacles to change and push forward these and further reforms. Future reform commitments may need to focus on areas of Paris and Accra that are delivering the most change (as judged by partner country experience and the Paris Declaration evaluation) and issues neglected by these frameworks.

Operationalization of a development effectiveness approach to aid through the management for results agenda: It is critical that aid reform efforts are increasingly approached from the perspective of development effectiveness. The evolving management for results agenda provides an opportunity to take steps in this direction by helping to focus aid more effectively on supporting the poorest people to satisfy their basic needs, escape from poverty, progressively realise their rights and hold their governments accountable.

Ensure that the process of preparing for HLF4 and the negotiation of its outcome is fully transparent and participatory:  Such an approach is vital to ensuring that Busan responds to the major challenges facing an evolving aid system and is legitimate and therefore has the best chance of being implemented. 

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About BetterAid

BetterAid unites over 900 development organisations from civil society, and has been working on

development cooperation and the aid effectiveness agenda since January 2007. BetterAid is leading

many of the civil society activities, including in-country consultations, studies and monitoring,  in the lead up to the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4) in 2011.

The platform’s overarching goal is to monitor and influence international aid effectiveness  agreements such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness PD and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) (with a specific focus on issues of democratic  ownership), while broadening the policy agenda from the AAA towards development  effectiveness, and a substantial reform of the international aid architecture.

The BetterAid platform came together in the lead up to the High Level Forum 3 in Accra.  When after Accra the OECD Working Party on Aid Affectiveness was opened for civil society  organisations, BetterAid became responsible for coordinating their contributions.