G20 outcomes: the end of the promise of a new world order?

Source: EU News, Issue 3, April 2009

The much-anticipated G20 London Summit ended in an anti-climax. The measures announced appear to be more of the same old solutions the world has relied on so far to deal with financial problems. Have we arrived at the ‘beginning of the end’ of a promise of a new world order rather than at the ‘beginning of the beginning’ of a new world order? CIDSE’s main criticisms of the outcomes:

• The IMF with a slight face-lift will continue to regulate global finance. The IMF, bastion of industrialised country influence, will be given a 500 billion USD boost to continue to be the guardian of the global financial system, a role it has failed at so far. The G20 acknowledges the need to reform the mandates, scope and governance of these institutions by increasing the voice and representation of emerging and poor economies; ‘to take steps’ to make them more accountable and credible; and to appoint the heads and senior management on merit through open and transparent process. Will this make a difference to the numerous low income countries who are recognised to be the most adversely affected by the crisis? Highly unlikely.
  
  
• Tax havens will continue to flourish so long as they sign bilateral agreements that have proven not to be effective. The black-listing measures that the G20 announced will do little to return the millions of euros that have been illegally taken out of developing countries and deposited in secret European Bank Accounts. The OECD’s new black list will be reduced to no more than a diplomatic exercise. Countries like Liechtenstein, Monaco, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Belgium and Austria have found an easy way to stay off the list through bilateral tax agreements, while hardly changing their bank secrecy rules. Such bilateral agreements have delivered meagre results until today.
  
  
• The announced 50 billion USD for low income countries is little more than a repackaging of existing resources. With many countries in the EU set to default on their aid commitments, the Summit’s reaffirmation of donors’ commitment to achieve their respective Official Development Assistance pledges can only be believed if followed by concrete allocations to development budgets.
  
  
• A balanced and development-friendly system for international monetary stability remains elusive. The current monetary system disproportionately affects the currencies of non-reserve currency countries. The preliminary recommendation of the Expert (Stiglitz) Commission of the UN General Assembly President on reforms of the international monetary and financial system to adopt a new Global Reserve System, and the call by China to review the current monetary system based on a single reserve currency, is not reflected in the communiqué.
  

In conclusion, the G20 with its limited membership and interests is not the forum that can provide the global response to the financial crisis. Instead, the G20 should feed this outcome into the broader process to prepare the June UN Conference on the financial and economic crisis and its impact on development. Through such a dialogue, the G20 can ensure that its commitments and further policy orientations are informed by the needs and interests of this larger group of states that have as much if not a greater stake in ensuring that a new global order is carved out of the present crisis.

See CIDSE’s new policy paper, "From Collapse to Opportunity: Development Perspectives on the Global Financial Crisis" (April 2009), full G20 analysis and the Christian Aid response to the G20.

See also Euforic's newsfeed on the financial crisis

Nordic organisations join Euforic

In January, the Euforic Board approved membership applications from the Danish Development Research Network, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

DDRN is a network linking research-based knowledge and development within the sectors of agriculture, environment, and governance. Members are drawn from the research community, the private sector, NGOs and development organisations. Its objective is to contribute to the inclusion of research and research-based knowledge in development assistance and in partner countries’ development activities.

NIAS is a Nordic research and service institute with an international mandate and a focus on political, economic, business, social and cultural transformations in modern Asia in their historical contexts. It works closely with partner universities in the Nordic region to develop critical mass in and add value to research initiatives on modern Asia and to promote synergy and growth in Asian studies, and it provides a window to the Nordic countries for research-based knowledge and information on Asia.

Norad is a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Norad's most important task is to contribute in the international cooperation to fight poverty; it contributes to effective management of development funds and ensures that the Norwegian development cooperation has high quality and is evaluated.

Chris Addison visited Copenhagen and Oslo in December 2008.

See Euforic newsfeeds on research, DDRN, Norad, Norwegian cooperation, and NIAS. Also news from Euforic members

CONCORD is seeking a Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) Officer

CONCORD is seeking a Policy Coherence for Development (PCD) Officer to contribute to the implementation of this strategic outcome. The initial contract will be until December 2009, with the possibility of renewal. The position is based in Brussels. Click here to see the full description

Application: Click here to download the application form - Deadline: Monday 2nd March - Interviews dates: 5th, 6th or 10th March 2009 - Aimed start date: Immediately

Please send the completed application form, in English only, (CVs will not be accepted), by e-mail ester.asin@concordeurope.org

European InternetWorking for Development: EC-funded Euforic project starts in 2009

In 2009, Euforic starts a new project co-financed with the European Commission (EuropeAid), ICCO and other partners. The action is funded for three years in response to a call for proposals on actions supporting 'Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development - Coordination, Cooperation and Networking Activities in Europe.'

The project particularly focuses on the use of social media (see recent projects) by Euforic and its members - particularly in opening up the reporting of meetings and helping information to travel.

The project is led by Euforic and ICCO, with close involvement of other members and partners of Euforic.

The project intends that:

• Euforic members successfully use the Internet to enhance the impact of face to face events they organize to exchange information and experience to advocate and influence policies, or to communicate with wider publics;
• European non-state actors in development commonly and effectively use low cost online social networking tools to collaborate and communicate and that they are supported by a virtual community of specialist-users within their networks.

The project has four components:

1. F2F+ (Face to Face plus) – Through the project, we will help ensure that at least nine significant face-to-face multi-stakeholder events on issues relevant to EU development policies reach virtual audiences at least 10 times the actual number of face-to-face participants.

2. Web2ToT (Web 2 Training of Trainers) – Through the project, at least 50 organizations (both Non-State Actors and Local Authorities) particularly in New Member States will be enabled to actively use free or low cost Internet tools and services to enhance how they create, exchange and communicate knowledge and how they engage in intra-network and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

3. KnowHow2Share – Through the project, Euforic and its ‘network’ members will use social networking tools strategically, having developed new, cross-sectoral network relations.

4. REACT - Through the project, we will compile and disseminate action research findings on the use of Internet and web2 in networking for development among actors in Europe.

The project will be formally launched in April 2009.

More:

• list of Euforic members
• newsfeed on civil society in development
• newsfeed on information, communication and networking in development
• newsfeed on Europe's international cooperation
• European Communicators on Cooperation, Relief and Development blog

Rosien Herweijer joins Euforic as Managing Director

The Euforic Board has appointed Ms. Rosien Herweijer to a part time role as Managing Director of Euforic. She took up her post on 2 February, 2009.

Rosien worked freelance the past two years in Brussels, specializing in learning, change management and diversity in development organizations. She brings a wealth of development practice and management to Euforic, from her previous roles at PSO and posts in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, SNV and UNDP.

Her prior role as Director of PSO Capacity Development is particularly relevant to Euforic – she brings us hands-on experience as a manager of a small NGO in development, covering all dimensions of the job including finance, personnel, communication, fundraising and strategic management.

Accepting her new position, Rosien told the Euforic Board “what I like about Euforic is that it uses technology - the Internet - for learning and sharing in development.”

Peter Ballantyne, Euforic interim manager and director since November 2005, will continue to work with Euforic in a senior programmatic role.

How to improve the relations between NGOs & the Council of the European Union?

Source: Concord Flash, nr. 56, November/December 2008

On Monday 15 December, 30 NGO representatives coming from all eight sectors forming the EU Civil Society Contact Group
(CSCG) met for a lunch debate to discuss the relations between NGOs and the Council. The debate was the opportunity to present the outcomes of a CSCG survey on the issue and draft recommendations. CONCORD, the Social Platform and the European Peace Building Liaison Office (EPLO), a member of the Human Rights and Democracy Network, presented their
experience in working with the Council. Main features of their experiences are:

♦ all three sectors used one specific opportunity as a door opener with the Council and to set a precedence;

♦ it is crucial to explain the representativeness of the network and make use of the complementarities with the activities of the national members;

♦ it is important to anticipate the work at least one year in advance and negotiate with the future presidencies on priorities in order to have an influence on the agenda.

Find the draft survey report including the recommendations here. Find notes of the lunch debate here. Find the invitation including the program of the event here.

For further information: Regula Heggli from the CSCG

Interested in the CSCG? click here for its strategic plan, work program 2009 and its “Mission, Vision and Governance”.

See also Euforic's newsfeeds on EU cooperation, and on Concord

CONCORD meets the Africa Working Group of the EU Council

Source: Concord Flash, nr. 56, November/December 2008

The French presidency invited CONCORD and other civil society organisations (CSO) to a dialogue session with the Africa Working Group (COAFR) of the Council of the European Union in November, on the state of play of the implementation of the Strategy and the involvement of CSO. This meeting was a follow-up to a previous meeting with the French Presidency to discuss the modalities of involvement of CSO in the implementation of the Strategy. Concrete proposals worked out by CONCORD and other organisations were presented at that meeting.

In November, CSO presentations focused on the pending issue of the participation of the civil society in the Strategy process and in the Joint Experts Groups (JEGs) in particular. The JEGs have a particular responsibility in ensuring the implementation of the 8 Partnerships of the Strategy. They are made up of European and African Union (AU) Member States and institution
representatives.

The main outcomes of the meeting were that there would be better and more timely information available for CSOs on the participants in the JEGs and the CSO would also communicate to the institutions the focal points for each JEG.

For further information: Romain Philippe- ActionAid (romain.philippe@actionaid.org)

See also Euforic's newsfeeds on EU cooperation, and on Concord

Dgroups – migrating to a new platform in 2008

During 2008, Euforic continued to provide overall coordination support to Dgroups - a leading discussion and community platform for many development actors (see 2007 report).

The main focus of 2008 was the platform itself and its migration to a new system and host. Early in the year, it departed IDRC for IGLOO – who hosted the ‘D1’ platform throughout the year. In mid 2008, the Dgroups Executive Committee selected WA Research to build the new ‘D2’ platform. It also recruited a small migration team to assist in the transition, due to be complete in February 2009.

The task was to build a new platform and migrate more than 2500 groups, some 110,000 individual users, and more than 40,000 shared resources (and in the process identify which groups were active, which could be archived, and which deleted).

By the end of 2008, the beta D2 platform was ready and many groups were already migrated in a test phase. The new platform immediately won over users with its fast and reliable email functionalities, a welcome improvement from an increasingly shaky D1 platform (which was already past its best).

The Dgroups blog has reports and milestones on the migration and build processes.

Alongside the platform migration, the Executive Committee worked to establish a Dgroups Foundation that could take on the independent ownership of the platform – and be the focus for the Dgroups partnership.

Euforic acted as coordinator and sub-contractor to Dgroups, nurturing the partnership and catalyzing the various steps along the way.

We look forward to having a more reliable platform, with added possibilities to mash Dgroups into other communication tools used by Euforic and its members.

by Peter Ballantyne

Euforic goes Nordic

In December 2008, Euforic's Chris Addison contributed to several awareness and training activities held in Copenhagen and Oslo in December 2008.

He reported on the meeting facilitated by the Danish Development Research Network on the evaluation of research communications in early December (on communication M&E and communication success).

He also worked with the Danish Institute of International studies (already a euforic member) to establish their diis.blip.tv channel and report on their migration and climate change seminar. A series of sessions with DIIS researchers established their own virtual research desks, blogs and search engines.

A morning session at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies covered an introduction to recording meetings on Blip.tv, the web2 high street tools and building a web presence rather than a site. One day at Norad included briefings to over 30 staff and work with individual teams on relevant tools and approaches to communicate, store and retrieve development related information.

Vacancy at Euforic: Financial Officer

After two years of rapid growth and innovation, Euforic is looking for an enterprising Financial Officer to reinforce its team.

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a small, dynamic organization working at the cutting edge to apply information, knowledge-sharing and communication for more effective international development.

As Financial Officer, you will organise and coordinate the financial and salary administration:

• As required, enter, and supervise entry of financial and activity data into the administrative system;
  
• Supervise recording of time registration by staff and consultants;
  
• Produce overall and project financial reports and budgets periodically, and on demand;
  
• Supervise contracts, time budgeting and costing, invoicing, and timely reporting on projects and activities;
  
• Monitor Euforic’s liquid assets (bank and cash);
  
• Liaise with the salary administration firm, auditors, tax service and other agencies as required;
  
• Monitor AO/IC.
  

You will assist the Managing Director:

• In financial policy matters;
  
• In preparing the annual budget as well as the annual accounts;
  
• To prepare financial reports and advice to the Executive Committee and the Board;
  
• To develop and implement a management information system;
  
• To coordinate project administration and reporting.

You are able to work in a small but complex organizational environment, an affinity and background in non-profit or development sectors.

Euforic has a small core team based in the Netherlands. With a team of part-time associates in several countries, it operates as a virtual network using information and communication technologies to deliver public goods to its members and the wider community.

You have:

• Education HEAO-BA or SPD, or equivalent;
  
• Knowledge of English;
  
• Knowledge of VAT;
  
• Knowledge of EC funded projects;
  
• Familiar with on-line bookkeeping systems.

The position is initially foreseen to be 1 day per week (20%), preferably in the Euforic office in Maastricht.

Closing date: 25 January 2009 [interviews early February 2009]
Salary: Ranging from 29.000 to 35.000 EUR per annum on a fulltime basis, depending on education and experience.

Interested? Send us a letter and CV outlining your experience and abilities: info@euforic.org

Launched in 1995, Euforic is a not for profit cooperative, owned and guided by members located in several European countries. Through advice, training, web services and joint projects, Euforic helps people share, access and apply information and knowledge for more effective international cooperation. Website: www.euforic.org

European Development Days: A rough guide

The European Development Days (EDD08) are underway in Strasbourg with over 55 events crammed into 3 days, a development village of 116 stands and over 1000 participants. Tracking everything that is happening is a little difficult, but here is your quick guide (or try the full programme).

The key themes fall into six areas:

• Media and Development
• Decentralised cooperation
• Development cooperation new issues
• Local governance
• Millenium Development goals
• Youth and education

Bernard Petit introduces the concept and the background to the meeting.

Click To Play

As part of the events on Media and Development the Lorenzo Natali Grand Prize for 2008 was awarded to Larisse Houssou, a journalist from Benin, for his article on Darfur entitled "Trained to kill...".

Media and development has been a key part of the whole meeting with numerous teams reporting on the event, both European broadcasters such as TV5monde and African journalists supported by CTA.

A series of parallel panel discussions have focussed on the role of the media and development and Tumi Makgabo an indepent producer, who worked with Inside Africa for CNN had some interesting insights to share.

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Decentralised cooperation discussions and events have covered the twinning of towns from Europe with those in developing countries. Mayors from around the world exchanged experience of local development activities through international networks. The development village contains stands from a number of regions in europe with development activities around the world. The President of the mayoral association of francophone africa and a Mayor from Cameroon tell more on euforic.blip.tv.

New issues for development cooperation came to the fore as the plenary focussed on the impact of the global financial crisis. The challenges were matched by the opportunities for development apparent on the myriad of stands from organisation working with development who all had a story to tell of succesful results or promising projects. Some euforic members give their examples.

Local governance and the role of new actors, was tackled in a parallel session organised by EDC2010 with discussions on the role of new countries working in Africa dominating the debate.

Progress towards the Millenium Development Goals was reviewed in the session "Where do we stand and where do we need to go?"
Engaging youth in the event has been more a part of the event than in previous years, with a young reporters team from Plan International covering the event and YARD Young Ambassadors for Rural Development.

You can hear more from Plan International and the Global Donor Platform about this project on euforic.blip.tv.

subscribe to news from the European Development Days in Strasbourg at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/eudevdaysall

Shadow Report on German Development Cooperation – support for tax and public revenue systems

The 2008 shadow report (in German) on German Development cooperation sheds light on the German support for public finance systems that enhance developing countries' capacity to fight tax evasion and capital flight.

Each year, tax evasion and capital flight cause some US$ 500 Billion to be lost as public revenue for developing countries, which is 5 times as much as total ODA. Although case studies show the enormous effectiveness of money spent to support tax and public revenue systems, only 0,07% of global ODA is actually spent on this. Reasons might be the unattractiveness of such measures, as compared to support for health or education. Furthermore the international trend of deregulation, decentralization and privatization for a long time has not supported projects that aim to increase government incomes. With the development discourse on 'good governance' and 'ownership' the issue became more important.

Recent calculations of the UN Millennium Project show that even if all donors would reach the ODA target of 0,7% immediately, it would not be enough to achieve the MDGs. For this the development countries themselves need to increase their public spending on poverty alleviation, hunger and social protection. According to the UN, there is a huge potential to increase public income if one compares economic strength and actual public revenue in developing countries.

The German Ministry for Development Cooperation identifies programmes to increase local public resources as one priority for the upcoming Doha Conference on Development Finance in December. The shadow report notes an increase of resources allocated for this purpose within the German ODA. However Germany ranks 9th among the biggest donors in this area with the UK spending more the 5 times as much. Furthermore German engagement is fragmented, uncoordinated and lacking clear political orientation, according to the authors of the report.

The 'Shadow Report of German Development Cooperation' is published by Terre des Hommes Germany and Welthungerhilfe and is seen as a critical counterpart to the OECD-DAC report regarding German cooperation. It analyses whether promises by the German government are actually met.

by Martin Behrens

Read BMZ statement on the report

See the Euforic dossier and newsfeed on German cooperation

Innovation, information, communication - maximising research impact

An important change in the discourse on agricultural and rural development is the emergence of an ‘innovation systems perspective’ that focuses on interactions among different actors working to bring change. According to Hall, the innovation systems perspective fundamentally recognizes that the determinants of innovation, as a process of generating, accessing and putting knowledge into use, are the interactions of different people and their ideas, and the social setting of these interactions and relationships.

At last week’s workshop to discuss how improved communication can help maximize the impact of agricultural research in Africa, we caught up with David Spielman of IFPRI and Patti Kristjanson of ILRI - both of whom work in this area.

We asked David to explain what such innovation systems entails:

Click To Play

We also spoke to Patti Kristjanson, Leader of the ‘Innovation Works’ Initiative at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya for an example of such thinking, in action, so to speak. The 'Innovation Works' initiative is about "how we do the research, more innovatively, with partners, to have more impact on sustainable poverty reduction." According to Kristjanson, how the research is done "absolutely matters" - she and her colleagues have identified some principles and strategies that can "indeed increase the probability that the research will generate knowledge that leads to actions." More ...

Click To Play

By coincidence, during the Addis Ababa workshop, Louise Clark, Knowledge Transfer manager at the Research Into Use Programme launched a new blog with the name: RIU: An Innovation System Story!

The Addis Ababa workshop is organized by the Global Development Network (GDN) in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the World Bank Institute (WBI), and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), with support from the Information and Communications Technology – Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Photos from the workshop
Video interviews at the workshop
More stories on this blog / on IAALD blog / on ICT-KM blog
Euforic news on communication and knowledge-sharing
R4D news on research communication

story by Peter Ballantyne

Development management training 2009

MDF recently published its 2009 Training Brochure(pdf) for development practitioners. The organization offers training and consultancy, building linkages between policies and practices. It works as facilitator and knowledge broker between policymakers and implementers.

The new programme offers reputed courses in management and organization, as well as new and adapted trainings, such as Outcome Mapping, Assessing Sector Programmes, Advocacy and Policy Influencing and Management for Results.

MDF also offers combinations of courses on the spot with learning and coaching at a distance, before and after courses are held. Training is provided in the International Learning Centre "de Bosrand" in the Netherlands or in one of the regional offices in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Tanzania, D.R. Congo and Brussels.

Visit the MDF website

Euforic newsfeed of training events

Using Euforic: What and who?

Just like our members and partners, each month, we spend some time examining the various sets of data and metrics about the use of Euforic. With a move toward more social, interactive 'web 2.0' services, it is less and less easy to see 'all' the uses and users from one interface. The information we index is mostly on other people's web sites - the information we share goes out across several different platforms.

Last week, we added a page on our web site that lists the most popular stories highlighted in our main english and french email alerts/RSS feeds. We also list the most popular newsfeeds, in terms of items viewed and 'clicked through'. We aim to repeat this each month to give you and us a sense of what's popular.

In the same period, the most popular pages on our web site (based on google analytics) were the home page, countries, euforic members, euforic projects, development issues, about euforic, search euforic, development newsfeeds, and euforic workshops....

Of the visits, 71% came from addresses in Europe, 10% from North America, 7% from Asia, 5.5% from Africa, and 3% from South America. We can see from a table of world internet users, that the regional breakdown of visitors to the Euforic web site is biased somewhat: Where 26% of Internet users are in Europe, 71% of our visits are from Europe; where nearly 40% of Internet users are in Asia, only 7% of our vists are from Asia; and where 3.5% of Internet users are in Africa, some 5.5% of our visits are from Africa.

Next time: something more on our blogs, blips, and slides...

Launch of the Intellectual Network for the South (INSouth)

Source: South Centre
South Centre, the Geneva-based intergovernmental organization of the developing countries (with over 50 Member Countries) working on issues, among others, related to trade, finance, IPRs, internet governance, climate change and global governance, has launched the Intellectual Network for the South (INSouth).

The key objective of the network is to draw attention to institutions and individuals in developing countries who are working on issues currently under debate and negotiations in the international policy arena.

The network focuses on intergovernmental organizations and think tanks, south-south cooperation agreements, and eminent intellectuals and negotiators from the global South to provide a platform where research and analysis, and commentaries coming out from these sources gets highlighted to build bridges between the Northern and the Southern perspectives on wide ranging issues.

INSouth.org also welcomes intellectuals amongst developing and developed countries be it from academic, research, media, NGOs or international development or diplomatic commmunity to register with it, so that joint North-South projects, partnerships and dialogues can be initiated through this platform.

We are also looking for partners who can support and build up this initiative. Your suggestions and feedback are most welcome.
More information on South Centre is available from www.SouthCentre.org

Budget 2009 – Development and foreign affairs committees of the Parliament ask more money for external relations

Source: EU News, nr. 6, September 2008

Two committees of the European Parliament, the Committee on foreign affairs (AFET) and the Committee for Development (DEVE) share the responsibility of the EU External Action budget (Heading 4). Each of them adopts amendments to the draft budget that had been adopted by the Council in July on the basis of a proposal from the Commission. In general the Parliament asks for an increase of the budget lines and also adds a few comments on the way the funds should be utilised. Here are the main requests from the two committees for the Budget 2009:

Migration and asylum: slight increase by less than 2 m€ is requested by AFET to a total of 53.1 m€.

Common Foreign and security policy: the AFET asks for a systematic reduction by 50% of all budget lines under that chapter with the argument that there is a need to improve transparency, visibility, and also accountability of actions pursued within the CFSP (particularly concerning EULEX (EU rule of law mission in Kosovo); appointment and evaluation of EU Special Representatives etc.

Human rights and democracy: AFET asks for 20 m€ increase (to a total of 130.3 m€) and adds the following comment:
- encouraging less well represented groups to gain a voice and participate in civil society and the political system, combating all forms of discrimination, and strengthening the rights of women and children and other particularly vulnerable groups, including disabled persons and older persons as well as gays, lesbians and transgender persons.

Stability Instrument – crisis response: AFET asks for 10 more m€ (total 214.8 m€) and the following comments:
- Part of the appropriation aimed at crisis response measures will be managed through a facility fund for NGO-led activities at grassroots level to prevent violent escalations.
- In 2009 the country-specific crisis response exceptional measures will take NGO proposals more into account and increase the share spent on these proposals.
European Neighbourhood and Partnership financial assistance to Palestine, the peace process and UNRWA: AFET asks for a strong increase by 286 m€ (total 447 m€) in reaction to the unjustified EC and Council’s proposals to reduce the budget compared to 2008. According to AFET, the UNRWA which is the only provider of health, education and social services assistance to people living in the Gaza strip is facing increasing financial problems when trying to alleviate the increasing poverty of the people in the Gaza strip.

Aid to Latin America and Asia: AFET wants to increase the budget for Latin America by 10 m€ (total of 364.2 m€), budget for Asia worth 517.4 m€ is maintained.
DEVE adds the following comment in budget lines for Latin America, Asia, Central Asia and South Africa:
“Where assistance is delivered via budget support, the Commission shall ensure partner countries to develop parliamentary control and audit capacities, in line with Article 25 (1) (b) of Regulation… establishing a financing instrument for development cooperation. This shall include full provision of information and the transmission of budget support agreements to parliamentary control entities and supreme audit institutions”.
And also the following comments with regard to the contribution to the Global Climate Change Alliance (which is good as the GCCA should not be funded with EDF and thematic budget line only):
– support disaster prevention and risk reduction, including climate-change-related hazards, including through contributions to support the regional implementation of the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA).

Aid to Afghanistan: AFET wants to increase it by 24m€ to a total of 184 m€ and to put more emphasis on social development:
The EU should increase its financial assistance to such areas in Afghanistan as health (construction and renovation of hospitals, prevention of children mortality) and education (construction of schools, vocational and literacy training), small and medium size infrastructure projects (reparation of roads network, embankments, etc.) as well as effectively implement job security ("cash for work") and food security ("food for work") schemes.
As well as Part of this appropriation is to be used for mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction, based on ownership and national strategies of disaster-prone countries.

Thematic budget lines:

Food Security: DEVE asks for an increase by 50 m€ (total 283.2 m€) and adds the following comment:
This instrument shall also be used to support actions aimed at responding to the crisis of soaring food prices, particularly by supporting actions
- to promote increased agricultural productivity including provision of agricultural inputs for the next agricultural cycle
- to mitigate the immediate effects of high food prices on low-income populations by support to social safety-nets and similar measures.
Another proposal from DEVE is to establish a new tiny budget line with 2m€ as a pilot project entitled Finance for agricultural production and aiming at facilitating access to small-holder farmers to financial resources which should be used to stimulate agricultural production in developing countries. These appropriations should be channelled through organisations specialised in microfinance, including local banks and associations, which conform to recognised international standards of transparency, accountability and financial probity.

DEVE’s rapporteur argues that this kind of actions does not fit into the Food security thematic programme and it is the reason why a separate project has to be established. We think however that it would be more effective to lobby for this kind of microfinance actions to be funded at a larger scale under the FS programme than to add a little budget line that will have no significant impact at field level. Something to keep in mind when reviewing the thematic programmes at mid-term (in 2010).

Non state actors: no increase of the budgets for non-state actors (184 m€) and for local authorities (32 m€) is requested. No new comment is added except a general comment that is included everywhere in the budget regarding the need include aspects of input activities and chain of results (output, outcome, impact) in evaluations of projects.

Environment and natural resources: the budget has already been increased compared to 2007 in the original Commission’s proposal to a total of 144.6 m€, the Parliament’s committee on Environment wants to add the following comment about the way to use the additional resources: The increase in funding aims to finance climate change adaptation measures, in particular measures to avoid deforestation and forest degradation.

The DEVE also asks for the pilot project on water management in developing countries to be continued with a budget of 3 m€.

Investing in people

Budget line for health: DEVE asks for an increase by 10 m€ (total 40.6 m€) and maintains the budget allocated to the Global Health Fund at 50 m€.
Gender equality: DEVE asks for an increase by 1.8 m€ (total 10 m€) with the following comment: Appropriations for 2009 for DCI countries shall be used specifically for programmes that support the participation of women as equal actors in the development of their societies and regions. With the argument that Appropriations for 2009 for this line are programmes for ENPI countries only. The increase will allow actions in DCI countries as well.

Other aspects of human and social development: DEVE asks for total of 28 m€.
Next steps in the process: Note that all these requests have now been transmitted to the Budget Committee of the Parliament that will select through a vote the amendments to be presented to the plenary session of the Parliament for the vote in first reading (end of October). The Budget committee has an arbitrary role and it may well be that not all amendments proposed by AFET and DEVE are retained.

Check Euforic's newsfeeds from CIDSE and APRODEV, and on EU cooperation,

Social web awareness and training at Healthlink Worldwide

In September 2008, Euforic hold a three-day awareness and training session on web2 with new member Healthlink Worldwide, In London.

A preparatory day gave us the opportunity to discuss Healthlink’s expectations from the training, understanding their needs and see which specific needs could be addressed by the introduction of web2 tools.

With this picture in mind, the first day of the training focused on a general introduction to the social web, and how development organization are embracing it to run their back office, collaborate with different partners and communicate with the wider public. Two hands on session gave Healthlink staff the opportunity to set up their own ‘gourmet’ dish of information, using Google personal page, start publishing their news and reflections on a blog, and set up wiki pages to organize events and coordinate projects.

A roundtable discussion closed the day, giving us important feedback to arrange the agenda for the second day, so to accommodate the growing interest of the team.

On the second training day, we kicked off again in plenary by looking at the different ‘forks’ we need to navigate the ‘spaghetti’ junction of information now available on the net: different Google commands to make the most out of our web queries; specialized Google services like blogs and news searches; thematic portals such as R4D and AiDA; multimedia content with iTunes and Podscope.

Introducing Delicious provided a way start making sense of this wealth of content, using tags to organize it and creating new lists of items to be republished on different websites.

The last part of the plenary explored tools for remote collaboration, using applications such as Google Calendar and Google Docs; and understanding how and why development organizations are increasing their presence in spaces such as Facebook and Linkedin.

A final intensive hands-on session encouraged Healthlink staff to practice with their preferred applications: Often working in pairs, different people mastered the use of different applications, some working with blogs, others editing videos, others uploading presentations in Slideshare and pictures in Flickr. Allowing time for each person to work on what they preferred proved to be quite beneficial, as the team, together, has experience on a wide range of tools and can more easily support each other in using them.

The closing roundtable highlighted some of the lessons learned:

“It’s important for Heathlink to stay in the loop and see what’s going on in terms of using the web. This type of exercise has to become part of an ongoing learning process.”

“All the different things we’ve been experimenting with these couple of days are extremely useful and have huge potential; we now have to discuss and see how we go about it.”

“Now it’s all about practice: we have to see what the different team members are interested in mastering and try to combine our skills and expertise.”

“We could benefit a lot from the social web, in particular as far as coordination among the team is concerned.”

“We could think about linking this type of awareness and training session about the social web to our quarterly reviews, to reinforce our learning processes.”

“The most amazing thing is how user friendly all these applications are. Even more, they’re almost all free of charge!”


by Pier Andrea Pirani

See Euforic newsfeeds on Healthlink Worldwide, and on information, knowledge sharing and communication

OECD Development Centre 2.0

The OECD Development Centre has begun to use so-called web 2.0 infrmation shring tools and approaches.

Already in March 2008, it launched Wikigender, a wiki platform for information sharing on gender equality. Now, it is extending its strategic presence and visibility by appearing on well-known Web 2.0 sites, such as Youtube.com, Facebook.com, Flickr.com and slideshare.net.

See the Development Centre spaces:

Visit the website
Subscribe to RSS feeds
See photos on Flickr.com
Participate on Wikigender.org
Watch videos on Youtube.com
Browse presentations on Slideshare.net
Become a fan of the Centre on Facebook.com!

The EU and the MDGs: No time to Waste

Source: CIDSE Advocacy Newsletter 39, June 2008

European leaders meeting in Brussels on 19-20 June in the European Council will have on their agenda a discussion on the means to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The groundwork for this discussion was laid by EU Development Ministers, in the conclusions to their Council of Ministers meeting on 26-27 May.

In view of the May meeting, members of the European NGO coalition CONCORD including CIDSE undertook concerted efforts to push for commitments to redress the decrease in European aid and improve aid quality. CONCORD published its third annual “Aid Watch” report entitled “No Time to Waste,” calling on European governments to respect democratic ownership, enhance transparency, phase out economic policy conditionality, increase predictability, align technical assistance to national priorities, and evaluate aid independently. The May Council conclusions did integrate some of civil society’s demands, by: agreeing to reform, streamline and harmonise conditionalities; supporting the strengthening of domestic accountability for development results through better involvement of Parliaments and civil society; and calling for transparency regarding allocation, use and impact of resources for development.

However, EU Member States did not yet agree to establish binding annual timetables for aid increases through 2015 to meet their pledges made in 2005. European NGOs will continue to work ahead of the June European Council summit and beyond to hold their governments to account on their responsibility for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the enjoyment of human rights by all.

See also Euforic's CIDSE newsfeed; also its newsfeed on eu cooperation