The Development Dimension Development Assistance Committee Members And Civil Society

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is clear on the need to engage civil society organisations (CSOs) in implementing and monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals. With their capacity to bring the voices of those on the frontlines of poverty, inequality and vulnerability into development processes, CSOs can help to ensure no one is left behind. In order to work to their maximum potential, CSOs need members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to provide and promote enabling environments.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is clear on the need to engage civil society organisations (CSOs) in implementing and monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals. With their capacity to bring the voices of those on the frontlines of poverty, inequality and vulnerability into development processes, CSOs can help to ensure no one is left behind. In order to work to their maximum potential, CSOs need members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to provide and promote enabling environments. This study provides a comprehensive review of the various ways in which DAC members support and engage with civil society. It argues that they can do more to make their civil society policies and practices effective. To that end, the study provides action points for further discussion with DAC members, CSOs, and others, to be developed into a guidance or a recommendation for how members can improve the effectiveness of their work with civil society, and, by extension, make environments for CSOs more enabling.

Developing countries, with the support of multilateral institutions, the bilateral development assistance community and civil society organisations, are focusing as never before on the development priority of reducing poverty by half by 2015. Country-led and country-owned poverty reduction strategies focusing on local needs and priorities as determined by stakeholders are now the focus of all development assistance efforts. The DAC Guidelines on Poverty Reduction provide practical information about the nature of poverty and best practice approaches, policies, instruments and channels for tackling it. They also break new ground in setting out the parameters for building effective partnerships with governments, civil society, and other development actors, and in describing how institutional change and development within bilateral agencies themselves could be undertaken for mainstreaming poverty reduction, partnership and policy coherence.

The book, How DAC Members Work with Civil Society Organisations: An Overview, examines why donors think it is important to work with CSOs, the ways they provide funds and the challenges they encounter.

Philanthropy’s role in advancing sustainable development attracts a lot of attention. This report calls into question long-held assumptions about the volume, nature and potential of foundations’ engagement in developing countries, and the role they can play to support the SDGs. It presents ground-breaking data and analysis that capture previously non-existent global and comparable quantitative and qualitative data on how foundations support development. The report examines philanthropic resource flows for development purposes, as well as foundations’ priorities, practices and partnering behaviours. It presents fresh perspectives and action-oriented recommendations to optimise philanthropy’s role in support of sustainable development. This report offers practical insights for government policy makers and decision makers in civil society organisations, social enterprises and foundations. It results from close co-operation between the OECD Development Centre’s Network of Foundations Working for Development (netFWD) and the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate.

Represents a "work-in-progress" by the Members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Reflects the current state of their common thinking on "principles and approaches" and "areas for action" in pursuit of the shared objectives, particularly through development co-operation efforts.

Developing countries want to join in the globalisation process. However, the increasing complexity of global markets, the new challenges of the multilateral trading system and the competing demands of regional, bilateral and multilateral trade agreemen