STRENGTHENING ACCOUNTABILITY IN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION – Role of GPEDC Monitoring Indicators in the context of Agenda 2030 and AAAA

Effective development cooperation with sufficient accountability amongst the different stakeholders is expected to play a more vital role in the global development process. In this context, the paper aims to locate possible integration of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) Monitoring Framework in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) with a view to strengthen accountability in development cooperation. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda has a very ambitious set of targets which include complete elimination of absolute poverty by 2030, while the AAAA provides a set of means which will enable this to happen, including financing and promoting trade as an engine for development. In order to find the interface between the GPEDC Monitoring Framework with these two processes, the anticipated behaviour and the operational changes required by the stakeholders for the realisation of these two agendas were analysed from the perspective of the theory of change. It has been found that two GPEDC indicators are directly linked to respective SDG targets, but most are partially linked, and these will be discussed in detail. In the context of the AAAA, only one GPEDC target is not consistent with the AAAA while the other nine have direct linkage. Therefore, the GPEDC Monitoring Framework can serve as a complementary system for reviewing the means of implementing the SDGs related to development cooperation.

Author: Debapriya Bhattacharya, Refaya Rashmin, Ashraful Haque Mahfuze