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Title: The DAC and the South, a failed encounter? Strategies of Association and

Participation in the 2000s

Author: Isaline Bergamaschi, assistant professor, Department of Political Science,

Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia

Key words: global South, multilateralism, OECD/DAC, aid efficiency

Word count: 8.919

Abstract: How do countries of the global South take part in multilateral mechanisms,

and with what effects? And how can global governance better take into account the rise

of Southern powers? This article addresses this issue by looking at works about aid

efficiency carried out at the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD/DAC) in the 2000s.

The article first argues that the DAC has partially failed to accomplish its stated

objectives regarding Southern country participation. On the one hand, the modalities of

non-member country (NMC) participation set up by the DAC did not allow for

challenging the traditional division of labour between donors and recipients. On the

other hand, emerging donors of the South have remained reluctant to participate in

DAC’s Paris agenda and endorse its policy norms. However, the article shows that some

other developing countries such as Rwanda and Colombia have actively seized the DAC

to promote certain visions and priorities.

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The DAC and the South: a failed encounter?

Strategies of Association and Participation in the 2000s

How do countries of the global South take part in multilateral mechanisms, and with

what effects? And how can global governance better take into account the rise of

Southern powers?

Even though it has been under-represented in the existing literature1, the Development

Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD/DAC) is a relevant site to study the role of Southern states (both poor, recipient

countries and new donors) in the changing landscape and architecture of aid. The

organisation is composed exclusively of “developed” countries. But in the past years,

new demands for inclusiveness have affected the OECD and the DAC, whose mission is

to formalise, rationalise, and disseminate information about development assistance. As

the DAC is not a development bank or agency which implements projects and

programmes), it provides – in theory at least – a space where emerging powers could

exert some normative influence on the international agenda and practices of aid.

This article scrutinises why and how, in the 2000s, the DAC has increased its efforts to

associate non-member countries (NMC) of the South to their work related to the “Paris

agenda”, i.e. the principles and commitments made since the adoption of the Paris

declaration on aid harmonization and efficiency in 20052. Almost ten years down the

line, and in the aftermath of the first Forum of the Global Partnership on Effective

Development Cooperation in Mexico (April 2014), the article offers a critical

assessment of these efforts3.

In the first section, the article traces the genesis and rationale of DAC’s attempts to

“open up” and improve the inclusion of non-member states of the global South. The

second section examines the ways in which this has been done in practice. The third

section puts forward a typology of Southern country strategies for participation in the

discussions about the Paris agenda, highlighting their different roles, contributions and

agendas.

The article first argues that the DAC has partially failed to accomplish its stated

objectives regarding Southern country participation. This can be attributed to two main

factors. On the one hand, the modalities of non-member country (NMC) participation

set up by the DAC did not allow for challenging the traditional division of labour

1 There is a notable exception: Rosalind Eyben and Laura Savage, “Emerging and Submerging Powers:

Imagined Geographies in the New Development Partnership at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum”, The

Journal of Development Studies, 2013, 49:4, 457-469; and the literature on this topic is growing. See, for

example, the special issue of the Third World Quarterly called « Emerging Powers and the UN: What

Kind of Development Partnership? », Volume 35, Issue 10, 2014.

2 These principles are: ownership, alignment, harmonization, results and mutual accountability. For more

details, see: http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction.htm

3 It is important to note that interactions between the DAC and NMC from the South in other divisions

(for example, the Development Centre) and on other topics (aid statistics) are not taken into account in

this article.

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between donors and recipients prevailing in the aid field, at the expense of so-called

low-income countries (LDCs). On the other hand, emerging countries of the South such

as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have remained reluctant to

participate in DAC’s Paris agenda and endorse its policy norms. However, the article

then shows that the space opened up by the DAC has created opportunities that some

other developing countries such as Rwanda and Colombia have actively seized to

promote certain visions and priorities.

The methodology adopted here is inspired by sociological approaches to international

relations and by socio-anthropological accounts of development4. As such, the article’s

objectives go beyond an evaluation of Southern country participation’s effects on policy

outcomes and on aid’s multilateral agenda, i.e. on the decisions made and the norms

adopted within the framework of the OECD/DAC. Attention is also paid to the concrete

and mundane forms of Southern participation, including issues of self-presentation (i.e.

how delegates present and understand their country’s role and status within the DAC),

mutual representations and interactions between participants. The notion of “division of

labour”5 is applied to relations between Northern and Southern participants so as to

unveil the limits of the “partnership” between so-called “developed”, “emerging” or

“partner” countries promised by the DAC6. But our observations do not point to simple

domination or subordination of Southern participants. On the contrary, their agency is

taken seriously in the typology presented in section III7.

Primary sources include relevant institutional documents produced by the DAC. Field

and ethnographic observations of formal meetings and informal exchanges were

collected during several events organized by the OECD/DAC, including the Working

Party on Aid Effectiveness in Paris and the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid

Effectiveness (HLF4, 29 November-1 December 2011) in Busan, Korea. Some

meetings were viewed online. Given that Southern countries do not have a permanent

delegation or representation at the OECD headquarters in Paris, the collection of data

was multi-sited. In total, 31 interviews were carried out: with DAC delegates, former

and current staff of the DAC Secretariat / Development Co-operation Directorate

4 Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. Anthropologie et développement. Essai en socio-anthropologie

du changement social. op. cit. and Mosse, David. Cultivating development: An ethnography of

aid policy and practice. London: Pluto Press, 2005.

5 The notion has been used in the works of Johanna Siméant, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle and

Frédéric Sawicki focusing on the sociology of the international; in the ongoing doctoral work of Hélène

Baillot (see her Master’s thesis: Hélène Baillot, Penser la division du travail et les rapports Nord-Sud au

sein d’un réseau transnational de lutte contre la dette. Master 2: Science politique Mention Etudes

africaines: Paris : Université Paris 1, Panthéon-la Sorbonne, 2010, 204 p.) and in Bergamaschi, Baillot,

and Iori, “Division of Labour and Partnerships in Transnational Social Movements: Observations of

North-South and South-South Interactions at the World Social Forum”, in Johanna Siméant, Marie-

Emmanuelle Pommerolle, and Isabelle Sommier (eds.), Observing an International Mobilisation: The

World Social Forum in Dakar (2011), University of Amsterdam Press (under review). 6 The rise and ambiguity of the “partnership” rhetoric has been informed by Abrahamsen Rita. “The

power of partnership in global governance”, Third World Quarterly, vol.25, n°8, 2004, p. 1453-1467. 7 Our approach builds on Brown, William & Sophie Harman, (eds), African Agency in International

Politics. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013.

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(DCD-DAC) and other directions at the OECD in Paris and London; and with Southern

country delegates in Bamako (Mali) and Bogota (Colombia), as well as by Skype8.

“Ten years ago, we did not know we would have this discussion”9. DAC’s

engagement with the global South

The OECD is a multilateral but selective organisation. Its members are industrialized

countries only and it is hence considered a “rich club”. Once an explicitly European,

Western and liberal organization, its membership has progressively broadened to

include countries in transition after the dissolution of the Soviet block and non-Western

states. In addition, as Peter Carroll and William Hynes recall, engagement with NMC,

including developing countries, was laid down in the OECD’s founding Convention in

1961. At its creation, the DAC sought to reach out to non-members so as to “spread the

burden of assistance (…) to new donors – especially Germany, (…) Japan”10

and Italy11

and as part of a broader effort to counter Soviet bloc influence in the Third World

during the Cold War era.

The drafting of the Paris declaration, which in 2005 proposed a roadmap to improve the

processes and modalities of aid delivery and reduce transaction costs, was strictly driven

by prominent DAC donors. Developing countries were silent observers at the High-

Level Forum on Harmonisation in Rome (February 2003) – with the exception of

Tanzania’s Ministry of Finance, who stated in the opening session that it was time for

donors to harmonise12

. Recipient countries had “little to do with Paris”13

. Overall, the

Paris declaration appeared as a “European donor thing”14

and did not make any

reference to emerging donors15

. The DAC’s initiatives to “reach” beyond its members

and foster dialogue with NMC have targeted more specifically than ever before at

countries of the global South. The quest for legitimacy, after a period of aid fatigue and

harsh critique against the International Financial Institutions in the 1990s, has played a

key role in this development16

.

DAC’s efforts to increase the participation of NMC countries have been intensified

significantly after the adoption of the Paris declaration in 2005. In fact, most principles

and objectives of the Paris declaration can only be operationalized and monitored at the

country level, i.e. in aid-recipient countries. There was agreement around the notion that

8 See list of interviews in annex 1.

9 Representative of Ghana, WP-EFF meeting, Paris, October 2011.

10 William Hynes and Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval, “The Donor that came in from the cold: OECD-Russian

engagement on development co-operation”, IIIS Discussion paper 450, p. 4. The authors make this

argument by building on J. Wheller, Around the World for 85 Years: A Memoir by Joseph C. Wheeler,

Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachussets. 11

Migani Guia, « La politique de coopération européenne: une politique étrangère ante litteram? Le rôle

de la CEE au DAC pendant les années 1960 », in M. Rasmussen, A-C. Knudsen (eds.), The Road to a

United Europe. Interpretations of the Process of European Integration, Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009, p.

190. 12

Talaat Adel-Malek, interview 13

Brian Atwood, interview 14

Former DAC representative of a European donor, interview 15

Gerardo Bracho, interview 16

On how the IFIs responded to critiques and reformed their practices in developing countries, see,

amongst others: Jacqueline Best, “Legitimacy Dilemmas: the IMF’s Pursuit of Country Ownership.”

Third World Quarterly, 28, no. 3 (2007), p. 469-488.

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5

responsibility for aid’s past failures had to be at least partly shared, as illustrated in the

notion of “mutual responsibility” included in the declaration. A China-DAC Study

group was created in 2008. The DAC’s New Deal on Fragile States17

has closely

associated low-income and conflict-ridden countries. The DAC shares information with

India, China and Brazil about its peer review mechanism, good practices, transparency,

and aid statistics. In April 2011, the DAC issued a statement welcoming non-DAC

partners to engage in a mutual learning dialogue about poverty reduction.

Furthermore, since 2005, some Asian and South American countries have consolidated

their status as “emerging” countries and “new” donors (China, India, Brazil, Venezuela

and Mexico). These countries are both donors and beneficiaries of aid. For the DAC,

this is an indication that “the world has changed”18

. While the West is immersed in

economic crisis and finds it difficult to meet its aid commitments, a growing share of

development finance comes from donors from the South. For Paul Isenmam and

Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval, greater inclusion of Southern donors is a matter of burden-

sharing and relevance for the DAC, which needs to reinvent itself19

.

The Accra Agenda for Action in 2008 recognized SSC as a “valuable complement to

North-South cooperation” and encouraged SSC providers to endorse the Paris

principles20

. The rising role of new donors has blurred traditional lines and divides

between aid donors and recipients. The question of “Who is ‘we’?” – in reference to the

uses of the word “we” in the outcome document – was a recurrent one amongst

participants at the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) meeting held at the

DAC in Paris in October 2011. The new configuration of the aid field is a source of

unease as much as excitement, a constraint as well as an opportunity – as illustrated by

the following quotes by participants:

“Recipients are also providers. We are no longer in a world of donors and

recipients but a world of partners” (Brian Atwwod, DAC chair, in one of

the plenary sessions at the HLF4 in Busan, 2011)

“The world is changing and we’re working to make change happen (…)

They [emerging countries] are anxious to learn and we are anxious to learn

about how they reduced poverty in their country” (Brian Atwood,

interview)

“Things used to be easy, with DAC on one side and partners on the other.

Now it’s crowded and complicated (…) We don’t have common views”

(Mexican delegate at the post-Busan senior meeting, Paris, April 2012)

“The BRICS are essential to make a new partnership (…) We need to be

more inclusive (…) We need to open the doors (…) We cannot work in our

self-referential world.” (Talaat Abdel-Malek, WP-EFF Co-Chair, Plenary,

Paris, 7th October 2011)

17

“Brian Atwood (OECD-DAC Chair) reflects on Busan Progress”, op. cit.

18 OECD/DAC, “Welcoming New Partnerships in International Development Co-operation, OECD

Development Assistance Committee Statement”, April 2011: http://www.oecd.org/dac/47652500.pdf 19

Interview with the author, skype, 22.7.2013 20

Paolo de Renzio and Jurek Seifert, opcit.

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6

“The OECD is a rich kids club (…) You don’t have ordinary donors and

ordinary recipients anymore (…) We’ve started a process and we won’t let

you go away with it so easily”. (Representative of Ghana, WP-EFF meeting,

Paris, October 2011)

“The negotiation will be more difficult than three years ago because of

issues of representation and the global political economy (…) Emerging

powers will have to be included (…). We will not force anybody. I’m happy

to see that a new group is taking the lead of the global economy” (Bert

Koenders, WP-EFF Co-Chair, WP-EFF meeting, Paris, October 2011)

After its adoption, the Paris declaration was signed and endorsed by a number of aid-

recipient countries21

. Later on, many of them were involved in monitoring its

implementation and in its evaluation at the country level. While only 34 recipient

countries took part in the Paris declaration monitoring survey in 2005, 55 participated in

the second survey in 2007, and 91 did so in the 2013 survey22

.

Another fundamental step was taken with the creation of the WP-EFF in 2003, an

“international partnership for aid effectiveness with 80 participants including bilateral

and multilateral donors, aid recipients, emerging providers of development assistance,

civil society organisations, global programmes, the private sector and parliaments” in

charge of implementing and monitoring the Paris declaration. Originally, the WP-EFF

included fewer than 30 members. At the Third High-level Forum on aid effectiveness

(HLF3) held in Accra in 2008, it had over 80 members; the increase was due to partner

countries such as Ghana, Honduras, the Salomon Islands, Malaysia, Mali, Vietnam or

Cambodia. In order to foster the participation of NMC, the DAC’s membership

requirements did not apply to the WP-EFF, which was open: “any developing country

was welcome to join and participate in the discussion”23

. In 2011, new donors were

invited to the table for a WP-EFF senior-level meeting; Chinese and Brazilian officials

attended.

Partner countries were granted a co-chair of the WP-EFF. Before HLF4 (2011), the very

final negotiations of the Busan Outcome document (BOD) were led by 18

representatives, the so-called ‘sherpas’, which included representatives of Southern

countries such as Bangladesh, Rwanda, South Africa, Mali, Timor-Leste, the People’s

Republic of China and Honduras24

. Southern country representatives have been able to

lead or take part in the “task-teams”, “building blocks” and “clusters” in charge of

preparing the HLF425

.

21

See list in annex 3 22

Jonathan Glennie, “The OECD should give up control of the aid agenda”, The Guardian, 29.4.2011:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/apr/29/oecd-control-aid-agenda 23

Talaat Abdel-Malek, interview 24

Hayman Rachel/ INTRAC, “The Busan Partnership: implications for civil society”, Policy brief paper

29, 2012. 25

These are initiatives that enabled development partners and organisations to unite behind pressing

development issues and to make concentrated efforts to further progress in the context of the Third and

Fourth High Level Forums:

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After the HLF3 in 2008, a Partner Country Caucus was created. It was “informal” but

was deemed “very successful” in relation to its purpose: the “exchange of information

and the development of an informal but lively network; and to develop a uniform

position paper as [a] negotiating document in Accra and Busan”26

.

Finally, the representation of NMC was institutionalised within the steering committee

of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC), which

replaced the WP-EFF after 2011, whose three co-chairs represent a South-South

cooperation provider, one traditional donor and one aid-recipient country. This surely

represented an innovation for the “rich club”. The establishment of the Global

Partnership also sealed a strategic alliance with the United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP). The DAC sought to combine its technical expertise with the UN

agency’s political legitimacy, which is guaranteed by its quasi-universal membership.

As a result of the aforementioned initiatives, the DAC chair declared at the Working

Party held in October 2011: “Looking around the table, I can see that everybody is here;

it is inclusive”27

. In the same vein, the WP-EFF chair assessed at a meeting in October

2011 that: “The first time I came here in 2001, the divisions [between old and new

participants] were very clear. The gap has conceptually and pragmatically diminished”.

However, I argue that DAC efforts have faced structural limits.

NMC participation and division of labour

Field observations suggest that partner participation in DAC spaces did not transform

aid recipients into full-fledged partners in the agenda-setting and decision-making

process. The DAC’s institutional settings and the conditions of participation have led to

the reproduction of archetypal roles (“donors” and “partners”) as well as a symbolic and

material division of labour between participants.

The DAC does not have an institutional tradition for dealing with partner countries in

practice. Neither the OECD nor the DAC have representation in developing countries.

As a consequence, the DAC is not represented in or part of everyday negotiations and

“policy dialogue” on development strategies and aid management at the country level.

Reversely, NMC do not have a permanent delegation or representation at the DAC or

the OECD’s headquarters in Paris. The institutional mechanisms established within the

WP-EFF did not ensure equal representation and power-sharing. For example, African

countries also felt that the continent, with its 54 countries, was under-represented in the

system of sherpas.

The DAC is difficult to understand from a Southern perspective: “the OECD is not a

donor, and it’s not a multilateral organisation like the UN”, summarized the

representative of Ghana at a meeting in 2011. The DAC cannot provide financing for

http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/fourthhighlevelforumonaideffectivenessbuildingblocksponsors.ht

m 26

Member of the Partner country causus, interview 27

WP-EFF meeting, Paris, 07/10/2011

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development and that, to a certain extent, makes it less attractive for developing

countries, whose governments “do not know what the OECD can do for them”28

. At the

HLF4 in Busan in 2011, a certain degree of misunderstanding was palpable when the

OECD presented a draft of its Development Strategy – a key element for determining

the direction of the organisation’s future activities. As the OECD secretary-general and

DAC chair asked developing countries to give their input and feedback on the draft

document, the representative of El Salvador invited the DAC to act as a “broker” in the

conflict between his government and European donors. Following disagreements about

the country’s development strategy, some donors had cut their aid to the country. But

this task is not part of the DAC’s mandate and common practice. As highlighted by an

OECD staff member who was in the room: “We only have our expertise on policy (…).

We’re not involved in giving and suspending aid”.

A degree of suspicion and discomfort towards the Partner Country Caucus could be felt

amongst DAC members because of its private and exclusive character – only

representatives of partner countries were allowed in meeting, whereas the DAC is

always expected to be transparent. “We are the parents, they are the children”, one

DAC delegate added. Suspicion was aggravated by the fact that the caucus was chaired

by Talaat Abdel-Malek, who was also co-chair of the WP-EFF and the delegate of

Egypt, a developing country29

.

A symbolic and material division of labour between Northern and Southern participants

was visible in DAC activities. At HLF4 in Busan, partner countries were equally

represented in the plenary sessions and the presentations of the different building

blocks. Yet very few of the side-events, mini-debates and workshops – which actually

made up a big share of the conference’s interest and vibrancy – were actually convened,

led or moderated by Southern delegates. During meetings, representatives of the WP-

EFF would frequently invite Southern delegates to “do their homework”. Southern

delegates interventions would predominantly be called for to provide insights about

realities “on the ground” or “country perspective” rather than opinions or reflections on

the features and future of aid from a broader, over-arching perspective. For example,

even when they talked on behalf of global institutions (public or private) in plenaries,

some of them were tempted to refer to the experience and situation of their “home”

country. This recurrent mise en scène has tended to confine Southern delegates to the

role of ‘local’ experts, as victims or witnesses of underdevelopment, or case-study

examples of a developmental meta-truth elaborated in the North. It has further tended to

fix and reproduce the traditional imaginary divides constitutive of aid logics, knowledge

and practice.

Invisible frontiers between participants of industrialised and developing countries

become evident by paying close attention to the mundane conditions of their

contributions in public speeches and to their postures during discussions and activities.

28

DAC Secretariat, interview 29

He was Economic Adviser and an Executive Director of the Centre for Project Evaluation &

Macroeconomic Analysis at the Minister of International Cooperation. Talaat Abdel-Malek, interview

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9

In fact, the participation of Southern delegates within the DAC has been a gradual

process: “Some were vocal. Others took a bit of time to get used to the setting and what

was going on, to prepare themselves (…). After a while, none acted as mere observers”.

Due to their lack of previous experience, Southern participants at first found it difficult

to understand the DAC’s technical language and were “a bit overwhelmed”30

. Being

proficient in English has surely been an asset for the delegates of Colombia, Honduras

and Mali. From a more informal and interactional perspective, one Southern delegate

asserted that “the DAC does not know how to deal with [them], i.e., how to handle the

new diversity of actors involved in the discussions. Another one ironized about the fact

that when sherpas met, Southern delegates around the table were sometimes physically

separated (their seats were moved apart from one another) between sessions because

they were exchanging and coalescing too much. “Like children at school”, he said. In

informal settings, DAC delegates or DCD staff occasionally made jokes about certain

developing countries. One Southern delegate initially felt that “DAC people, because

they are international civil servants and earn millions, looked down on [them]”.

Paying for airplane tickets to attend meetings of the Working Party – or getting

international sponsors to do so – is a chronic challenge for Southern governments with

limited resources, especially if they suspect that their leeway in the negotiations is

structurally restricted31

. Financing the participation of Southern delegates to WP-EFF

meetings grew problematic as the number of participants rose after Accra and became a

burden for DAC members32

. For the HLF4 in Busan, airfare to Korea for Southern

delegates was covered mostly through a trust fund established with contributions from

the UNDP (approximately 150,000 euro), but also from the governments of Canada,

Denmark, Japan, Australia, and Korea. However, there were major differences in the

traveling conditions of DAC staff as compared to those of partner country delegates.

Most of the former travelled with Korean Airlines from Paris to Busan via Seoul.

Southern participants had to make very long trips (usually two full days) from Central

or South America and Africa with long layovers in Europe and/or China. Because the

UNDP’s budget for partner country participation was limited, West African delegates

flew with China Eastern, which offers inferior on-board traveling conditions. This

meant that all participants were not in the same physical condition when they arrived at

the meeting. During the summit, some DCD staff had to supervise every dimension of

the event’s organisation and work on the outcome document’s draft, and did not sleep

for several days – a sign of their prominent role over agenda-setting and decision-

making.

Many recipient countries (Honduras or Argentina) have long perceived the Paris

declaration as an imposition, and find the DAC to be “an elitist and exploitative

institution”33

. Some members of African delegations were critical of – and frustrated

30

Representative of a developing country, interviews 31

Representatives of developing countries, interviews 32

Representative of a developing country, interview 33

Richard Woodward, “The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development”: meeting the

challenges of the Twenty-first Century”, in Simon Lee and Steven McBride (eds.), Neo-Liberalism, State

Power and Global Governance, Springer Netherlands, 2007, 231-244

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10

about – the HLF4 held in Busan in 2011. They considered that this type of “big mass”

(“grand messe”), “hypocritical game” or “institutionalised mockery” was only there to

lecture them and to make new commitments that will not be met. One ironized the

relations between donors and recipients as follows: “I will let you do your things even

though you are not honouring your commitments, and then you will let me do my things

because I am aware that you are cheating, too (…) The preach is a sinner, too, but he

still preaches”.

Traditional identities of “donors” and “recipients” or “North” and South” were

questioned by the rising visibility and participation of middle-income and emerging

countries in the Paris agenda, Eyben and Savage have shown34

. But this has not

necessarily benefited or empowered LDCs. On the contrary, as the South-South

Cooperation (SSC) initiative developed, some African delegates had the impression that

SSC promoters sometimes treated them as mere “foils”. It was palpable in a meeting

dealing with SSC organised at the DAC in Paris in 2011. The need to invite aid-

recipient countries to upcoming discussions had not occurred to the Colombian

organisers until the representative of a European donor agency encouraged them to do

so. Interestingly, a few years down the line in Mexico in 2014, some aid-recipient

countries explicitly asked emerging donors to be more precise and transparent about the

conditions, objective and value-added of SSC35

. In doing so, they seemed to be more

assertive by using some standards inspired by DAC norms.

Despite the limits and caveats mentioned above, it would be erroneous to say that

Southern country participation in the works around aid efficiency was simply nominal,

superficial or ineffectual. What is true, though, is that the patterns and goals of countries

of the global South have differed. The next section draws a typology of the different

participation strategies and forms of engagement of Southern country representatives at

the DAC.

Strategies of participation: A typology of Southern countries at the DAC

The good partners in favour of the status quo: the cases of Ghana and Mali

Ghana and Mali represented LDCs on many occasions. Mali was selected by the OECD

to be a pilot country for aid reform in 1996. After a round-table with donors held in

Geneva in 2003, it was agreed that Mali’s experience would be taken into account in

DAC analysis about aid efficiency. Later, Mali was an observer at the WP-EFF and then

was elected as a sherpa by the African Union to represent the continent, together with

Rwanda. Ghana hosted the HLF3 in 2008, and later participated actively in the Partner

Country Caucus and in the cluster on country systems in preparation for the Busan

meeting.

Both West African countries have low levels of economic development and are highly

dependent on aid. Ghana is often singled out as a showcase of donor coordination, aid

34

Eyben and Savage, opcit. 35

Thomas Fues and DAC Secretariat, interviews

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11

harmonisation and efficiency in West Africa. Obama’s visit to Ghana in 2009

consolidated this image. Finally, both countries have long been seen as models of

democracy and stability in sub-Saharan Africa36

and enjoyed a status of “donor

darling”37

.

Because Mali and Ghana needed to protect their status as aid-recipients, during

discussions at the DAC they acted as good partners, i.e., they could be demanding but

not bold. They would not criticise the DAC or challenge aid’s status quo, instead

playing by the rules, valuing progress and always displaying good disposition for

reaching consensus. Publicly, Ghana was careful to be supportive and encouraging of

DAC’s inclusiveness efforts. At the WP in October 2011, one member of the Ghanaian

delegation highlighted that: “Some people say the DAC is not a legitimate forum to have

that discussion. Excuse me but if that was the case (…), why would we have more and

more countries interested in getting involved in the Paris declaration?”. She added that,

some years ago, some recipient country officials “did not dare to open their mouth”

during meetings held at the OECD headquarters – at the Château de la Muette, a

French-style castle in Paris’ wealthy 16th

arrondissement. Now, she said, they come to

OECD meetings stating, “this is what we want”. When the representatives of Mali and

Ghana were critical, it was always on the process – not the essence – of the WP-EFF,

and their appreciations would always leave room for improvement. For example, they

would call for a greater – not lesser – role for DAC, hence legitimising its existence and

action. At the WP in October 2011, Ghana’s representative declared: “We know that the

WP is not a sustainable system (…). We’d like the chairman to engage in our activities

at the country level”.

The conciliatory and compliant posture of Ghana was criticised by other African

constituencies, who accused them of not being progressive, strong and assertive

enough38

.

LDCs taking part in the WP-EFF did share a common agenda at the DAC39

: to

“increase the volume and quality of [the] aid” they receive. Even if aid-recipient

countries did not contribute to drafting the Paris declaration, many things included in

the document are favourable to the interests of aid-recipients countries, such as aid

harmonisation and donor coordination, the promotion of budget support, and the

principle of “ownership” – which some Southern governments have interpreted and put

forward as an equivalent to sovereignty40

. Consequently, what mattered to LDCs was to

see the Paris principles translated into a clear timeline for implementation and follow-up

36

On the construction and meanings of “models” and development success stories in the aid community,

see Paula de Almeida Cravo, What’s in a label? The aid community’s representations of success and

failure in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, doctoral thesis submitted at the Department of Politics and

International Studies, University of Cambridge, January 2012, 271 p.

37 For Mali, this was the case until March 2012, when a military coup was orchestrated and followed by a

multi-dimensional crisis that led to the de facto partition of the country. On this aspect, see: Bergamaschi

Isaline, "The fall of a donor darling: the role of aid in Mali's crisis", The Journal of Modern African

Studies, Volume 52, Issue 03, September 2014, p. 347 – 378.

38 African representative of an international NGO, interview

39 Representatives of African countries, interview

40 DAC Secretariat, interview

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12

indicators that they could then bring “back home”. This is why I argue that they adopted

a posture in favour of the status quo, which was still a source of embarrassment for

many traditional donors.

Before Accra in 2008 and Busan in 2011, LDCs pushed for the reduction of aid

fragmentation, of the transaction costs generated by the proliferation of projects (e.g. the

global funds to fight specific diseases), more coherence and a clear division of labour

between donors at the country level. When donors argued that their reason for

establishing parallel structures of implementation are risk management concerns,

partners responded that donors “must use country systems to know if they work or

not”41

.

The influence and empowerment of aid-recipient countries is considered to have

reached a peak at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Accra,

Ghana, in 2008, where Southern governments voiced their “growing frustration (…)

that DAC members were not doing enough” to enhance aid efficiency42

. Under the

influence of developing countries, follow-up indicators were added to the Accra Action

Plan: “The DAC somewhat lost control (…) They had to move backward, to make more

detailed compromise, especially regarding mutual accountability”43

.

In the Busan Outcome Document, partner country participation is reflected in two main

commitments by donors. The first is to “accelerate [their] efforts to untie aid”

(paragraph 18) and the second is to “use country systems as the default approach for

development co‐operation in support of activities managed by the public sector”

(paragraph 19). Partner countries had initially lobbied for country systems to be referred

to as “the only option” for aid delivery. But several donors, including the United States,

opposed it, and on November 18, 2011, Rwanda and Ghana suggested the formula of

calling it “a default option”. The BOD reiterated that the Paris and Accra principles

were still valid – it put the emphasis on the country level and recipient “ownership” –

but did not add new material of interest for LDCs on to it44

.

Before Busan and Mexico, LDCs lobbied to keep the negotiating agenda narrow, i.e. to

stick to the principles and commitments of Paris and Accra. Firstly, when South Korea

attempted to "forge a new global consensus around development effectiveness as an

alternative to aid effectiveness”45

, Malian delegates felt that “we must keep the issue of

transaction costs in mind”46

. Likewise, as Nordic donors, the British Department for

International Development (DFID) and Southern providers were pushing to bring new

topics to the table (aid results, fragile states, SSC, middle-income countries), the

delegations of LDCs were eager to limit the scope of discussions and focus on the

41

Representatives of African countries 42

Alexsandra Trzeciak-Duval, interview 43

Representative of a developing country, interview 44

Representative of a developing country, interview

45 Hyuk-sang Sohn, “Busan High-Level Forum: From Dead Aid to Better Development? Current Issues in

U.S.-ROK Relations, Coucil on Foreign Relations Press, December 2011: http://www.cfr.org/south-

korea/busan-high-level-forum-dead-aid-better-development/p26790

46 WP-EFF meeting, Paris, October 2011

Draft. Please do not quote or circulate without permission

13

“unfinished business” that matters to them47

. “They did not want to add anything to the

Paris declaration. They want it to be implemented”48

. They felt that including these new

issues would dilute the agenda and offer donors opportunities to bypass their requests49

.

A member of the Malian delegation who was about to travel to the meeting of the First

Forum of the Global Partnership held in Mexico in April 2014 considered that the

private sector’s contribution to development did not need to be addressed in multilateral

settings such as the DAC’s because it usually follows the firms’ risk analysis and

discretionary decisions. Similarly, he argued that SSC agreements are made at the

highest political level, behind closed doors and on a bilateral basis – for example, when

the Chinese President goes on an Africa tour and meets directly with his African

counterparts. “It [SSC] is mostly political, we don’t need the DAC for that. What we

want to talk about at the DAC is our relationships with industrialised countries”, added

one of his colleagues50

.

As a result of contradictory interests and initiatives, the final communiqué included

about forty initiatives dealing with a wide range of topics such as aid for taxes, Arab

donors, the private sector and foundations. A network of NGOs, INTRAC, argued that

“the Paris and Accra commitments (…) have watered down”, that no “tangible

commitments” were reached and that “no indicators or targets” were annexed to the

communiqué concerning aid predictability, untying or alignment 51

. The agenda of the

Forum was clearly “not owned by developing countries”52

.

Wooed but unwilling partners: the BRICS53

Immediately after the adoption of the Paris declaration, DAC efforts to associate NMC

of the global South were initially geared towards the aid-recipient countries of sub-

Saharan Africa and Central America. But in the following years, DAC’s interest and

attention have increasingly targeted emerging countries, especially the BRICS. At the

WP-EFF meetings held in Paris in 2011, the co-chairs would always thank delegates

from the BRICS for attending meetings and making contributions.

The DAC hoped that the SSC initiative led by Colombia and Indonesia would provide

an opportunity to reach the BRICS and entry point for them to participate in the Paris

agenda-related discussions54

.

47

Abdel-Malek Talaat, “The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation: What next for a

global architecture?”, op. cit. 48

DAC Secretariat, interview 49

OECD, interview

50 Representatives of developing countries, interviews

51 Hayman Rachel/ INTRAC, op. cit., p. 9-11 and 14

52 Member of the Partner country causus, interview

53 This section builds extensively on Bergamaschi, Isaline, Soulé-Kohndou Folashadé, « Les émergents

du Sud face à la gouvernance mondiale de l’aide au développement : stratégies réformatrices,

concurrences et tâtonnements, Foro Internacional, 2015 (forthcoming), pp. 11-14 and 16-17.

54 Representative of a developing country, interview

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14

In return, the BRICS have behaved as unwilling partners towards the DAC. There has

been no common or coordinated strategy, but their postures shared several

characteristics: they would send delegates to attend WP-EFF meetings erratically, and

were reluctant to make firm commitments. Overall, their participation has remained

ambivalent all throughout the process and none of them clearly endorsed the pillars of

the Paris agenda. Brazil, China and India have always questioned the legitimacy of the

WP-EFF. Representatives of the Chinese embassy in France would sometimes

participate but could not make any contribution, on the grounds that they were tied up

by instructions coming directly from Beijing. India would usually send a delegate, who

would deliver a ceremonial speech at the beginning of the meeting and disappear

immediately afterwards. The Republic of South Africa was active and played a

constructive role, but due to its reduced volumes of aid, South Africa was ironically of

less interest to the DAC. The BRICS were allowed to join the Partner Country Caucus

but never did55

.

Important concessions regarding content were made in order to accommodate the

BRICS and invite them to endorse the documents. Under the influence of Brazil, China,

India, Indonesia and the Republic of South Africa, the BOD indicates that “the nature,

modalities and responsibilities that apply to SSC differ from those that apply to NSC

[North-South cooperation] (…). The principles, commitments and actions agreed (…)

shall be the reference for South-South partners on a voluntary basis” (paragraph 2).

After Busan, the ambiguity has remained. At the first meeting of the Post-Busan Interim

Group, 13-14 February 2012, “Brazil, India and China informed the group that they

were attending the meeting as observers”. Brazil and Mexico emphasized “the

differential and voluntary nature of commitments”56

.

The WP-EFF’s greatest efforts were oriented towards China, given its large aid volume.

Over the years, China’s spokespersons projected an image of non-negotiability,

conditional commitment and unpredictability, and conveyed the impression to be “her

own master”57

. During the WP-EFF in October 2011, its delegates systematically called

for deleting all parts of the draft outcome document that did not conform to its aid

principles and interests, leaving other country delegates – who were desperately trying

to find suitable and constructive formulations – puzzled. At the plenary at the WP

meeting in October 2011 for example, they made it clear that “the Paris principles

should not apply to SSC” and simply asked to delete references to “transparent and

responsible cooperation” in the draft BOD, arguing that “different countries have

different responsibilities and different natures of cooperation”.

In Busan, China agreed to taking part in the sherpas - unlike Brazil – but refused to

formally embrace the SSC agenda. Some DCD staff in fact became concerned and

anxious every time that Chinese delegates attended an activity that they organised.

Before the meeting, representatives of the OECD and of the Republic of Korea (host of

the Forum) went to China several times to convince the country’s authorities to attend

55

Member of the Partner country causus, interview 56

Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, revised draft summary record, First meeting of the Post-Busan

Interim Group, 13-14 February 2012 - DCD/DAC/EFF/M(2012)1/PROV/REV121/03/2012, p. 2-6 57

Representative of an African country, interview

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15

the meeting58

, to the point that getting China on board appeared to be the Forum’s real

but hidden purpose.

Rather abruptly, Chinese delegates left the negotiating table on the Forum’s very first

day, arguing that they had taken part in the Paris agenda as an aid-recipient country, and

that they were not ready to endorse it as a donor. On the Forum’s second day, the

atmosphere was gloomy. Thanks to the diplomatic mediation of the United Kingdom

and Korean diplomats, China agreed to endorse the outcome document. Busan was

subsequently considered a “success” by its organisers. During the final plenary, civil

society organisations regretted that the urge to co-opt China had weakened

commitments concerning the respect of human rights.

The first High-level Meeting of the GPEDC held in Mexico in 2014 was a setback

regarding the BRICS group and China in particular59

. Jonathan Glennie (ODI) summed

up Southern country participation at the summit as follows:

“China was the elephant not in the room (...) Russia turned up (…), but

there was disappointment that South Africa did not send a weightier

delegation, and India didn't bother as usual – though it does have elections

under way. Brazil, which also has major reservations about the GPEDC,

stating in the plenary that it was not a part of the partnership but then

engaging in mobile phone diplomacy over the communiqué, implying an

appreciation of the meeting's importance”60

.

India and China boycotted the event on the grounds that they had permanent “issues of

concern on aspects relating to developing countries especially with regards to South-

South cooperation”. They also feared that the final Communiqué “would become a

"binding input" to UN processes especially when all member states were not present at

the meeting”61

. Some OECD staff were equally frustrated that “[they] give China a lot,

and don’t get anything in return”. Brazil’s statement that they are not part of the

Partnership came as a “nasty surprise” to many62

. After Mexico, Brazil, China and India

attended the Post-Busan Interim Group (PBIG) meetings as ‘active observers’ and

showed “less interest on how the partnership was developing”. Brazil, China, India,

Mexico and South Africa did not integrate the Partnership’s Steering Committee, and

were replaced by Indonesia and Peru63

.

58

Representative of a developing country, interview 59

Fues Thomas and Klingebiel Stephan, “Unrequited love: What is the legacy of the first Global

Partnership summit?”, The Current Column, 17/04/2014. 60

Jonathan Glennie, “Development partnership conference: what did we learn?”, The Guardian,

22/04/2014: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/apr/22/development-

partnership-co-operation-conference

61 Economic Times, “India, China boycott high-level meeting on global partnership”, 17/04/2014:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/33856239.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_me

dium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

62 Member of a Partner country causus, interview

63 Assunção Manaíra and Esteves Paulo, “The BRICS and the Global Partnership for Effective

Development Cooperation (GPEDC)”, BRICS Policy Center Brief, V. 4. N. 03, Feb- Mar/2014. Rio de

Janeiro: PUC, p. 5.

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16

Several factors account for the reluctance of BRICS to participate. Initially, they saw

the Paris declaration as a document devoid of interest (for they are not dependent on

aid) or a Northern imposition, and refused to endorse it as donors. As with the OECD in

general, NMC “do not see why they should be constrained by rules developed by an

organisation of which they are not a member and that they have no part in framing”64

.

China and some Southern delegates considered that the DAC is not legitimate to lead

the Paris agenda. Furthermore, Brazil is reluctant to be perceived as closely associated

to “developed” economies via the DAC since it claims to represent or lead the Third

World in other multilateral arenas such as the G7765

. Together with Mexico, the

Brazilian government makes the case that, contrary to traditional, North-South aid, SSC

is based on horizontality and equality.

In brief, the DAC’s will and efforts to ensure the BRICS’s participation in shaping and

implementing the Paris agenda have largely failed. However, DAC efforts and

initiatives have created a different scenario, with unintended effects. The opportunities

provided by the DAC have been seized by ambitious “second-bests” such as Rwanda

and Colombia, which have made strategic uses of DAC spaces to promote their specific

views and interests.

Bold “second bests” pushing for change: Colombia and Rwanda

Rwanda participated in DAC processes and exercises significantly after 2008 and acted

as a sherpa before and during the HLF held in Busan in 2011. Rwanda was a vocal

spokesperson of aid-recipient countries. The Rwandan sherpa pushed for reinforcing

donor commitments regarding aid predictability and the use of country systems66

. At the

senior post-Busan meeting held in Paris in April 2012, the Rwandan representative

invited donors to better coordinate aid, to reduce transaction costs, and to provide more

capacity-building activities to strengthen recipient administrations.

But some of the points made by Rwanda went beyond the technical aspects of the Paris

agenda and challenged the broader status quo of aid. Its language was bolder and its

posture more ambitious in comparison with the role played by Ghana and Mali. At WP-

EFF meetings in 2011, the Rwandan representative called for setting the deadline to

untie aid for 2013 instead of 2015. In Busan, Rwandan President Kagame – the only

African president who agreed to attend the meeting – delivered an assertive speech

which pointed to donors’ own incapacity to meet their commitments, their “unending

questions that no answer can fully satisfy” and the burden that this generates for

recipient leaders and their administrations. In the BOD, Rwanda pushed to add a

reference to Western practices and responsibility (in particular, multinationals) in

fomenting corruption in poor countries.

Rachel Hayman’s work is useful for understanding the Rwandan participation in the

discussions about aid effectiveness at the OECD/DAC. It is better understood in the

64

Woodward, opcit., p. 239. 65

In OECD circles, it is believed that joining the OECD came at a symbolic and diplomatic cost for

Mexico and Chile, especially amongst the developing country constituency within the UN system. 66

Ronald Nkusi, interview. The use of country system refers to the use of national systems and

procedures of recipient countries for the delivery, implementation and evaluation of aid resources and

projects, as opposed to the establishment of ad hoc, parallel implementation units that tend to bypass

public administrations.

Draft. Please do not quote or circulate without permission

17

context of the country’s post-genocide context both domestically and diplomatically. In

1994-5, aid came “disorganized through multilateral channels and international NGOs

in the form of emergency assistance”67

. After a period of transition, the government

wished to regain control over the management and allocation of external funds aid, and

to centralize and align it around their policies, priorities and procedures68

. It is

interesting to note that the Paris agenda was one of the resources that they used to reach

that goal. Since 2005, Rwandan authorities have established a Development Partners

Forum and website, organized annual retreats with donors, created a development

assistance database and published an Annual Aid effectiveness report69

.

In parallel, in the 2000s the government has deployed an “ambitious path to long-term

sustainable development”, promised to reduce its dependence on external assistance70

and adopted an Aid Policy (2006) which seeks to “assert genuine ownership and

leadership in development activities – and the external resources on which they rely”71

.

Since then, the Rwandan representative at the DAC, Ronald Nkusi (from the Ministry of

Finance and Economic Planning) supported and promoted the government’s will “to lay

the foundations to get out of aid dependency”72

and turn Rwanda into a middle-income

country.

On the other hand, Colombian authorities signed the Paris Declaration in November

2007. They represented 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries in the second phase

of its global assessment73

. After Accra, Colombia became a member of the WP-EFF and

of the Partner Country Caucus. Colombia has made two contributions to the WP-EFF.

Together with Indonesia, they led the Task Team on South-South and Triangular

Cooperation starting in March 2009 and the Building Block dedicated to this topic in

advance of Busan. During the meeting, the topic of SSC was high on the agenda.

Rwandan and Colombian officials used the DAC spaces to promote specific diplomatic

objectives, too, i.e., as a platform to re-negotiate their international status. Both

countries have pro-West postures and neoliberal economic policies (regarding trade in

particular)74

. But because their records in terms of democracy and human rights are less

than ideal, the two governments are treated as “pariah states” in many multilateral

organisations75

. Therefore, they welcomed the DAC invitation and seized the

opportunity to promote a better image of their country. Rwanda has confirmed its status

as a model of ownership and leadership in the aid community. In about one decade,

Kagame has successfully projected the leadership and political will appreciated in DAC

67

Hayman Rachel, “From Rome to Accra via Kigali: “Aid Effectiveness” in Rwanda”, Development

policy review, 2009, 27(5): 584. 68

Ibid, p. 2. 69

Hayman Rachel, “From Rome to Accra via Kigali…”, opcit., p. 581. 70

Hayman Rachel, “From Rome to Accra via Kigali…”, opcit., p. 581.

71 Republic of Rwanda, “Rwanda Aid Policy” as endorsed by the cabinet, Kigali, 26

th July 2006:

http://devpartners.gov.rw/docs/H%20&%20A/H%20&%20A%20Local/Aid%20Policy/Aid_Policy.pdf, p.

1.

72 Ronald Nkusi, interview

73 Castaňeda-Lefèvre Dorly, Peace laboratories in Colombia : the European approach to peace-building,

doctoral thesis defended at SciencesPo/ CERI, 2012, p. 234-5 74

Hayman, “Milking the cow…”, opcit., p. 175

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18

circles and become “the global elite’s favourite strongman”76

, despite chronic tensions

about human rights records in Rwanda.

Colombian authorities were also interested in transforming the country’s image from a

conflict-ridden country to a victim of terrorism and drug trafficking77

and a willing

partner for the West. Their initiative to promote SSC held the promise to reconcile non-

traditional aid with the principles of the Paris agenda. Via the SSC initiative, the DAC

has become “an opportunity to project internationally and propose an alternative to

leftist SSC in Latin America”78

, and hence to counter-weight the diplomacies of Brazil,

Cuba or Venezuela79

.

This initiative has fuelled into the government’s efforts to attract foreign direct

investment, and served as a springboard to achieve the country’s project to join the

OECD80

, which was formalized when President Santos sent a membership letter to the

organization in 2011. One of its main promoters argued that “the task-team has given

Colombia unprecedented visibility in the organisation”81

and helped the country’s

authorities to show interest in the topics, and compliance with the norms produced at the

Château de la Muette82

.

In return, the DAC was eager to open its doors to Colombia, as it seeks to increase their

“reach” in South America. After Latin America’s turn to the left in the 2000s, Colombia

has been one of the few countries in South America to implement and support neoliberal

economic policies and adopt a pro-West posture. It has remained an important political

and economic ally of the United States, as showcased by the implementation in 2012 of

a bilateral free-trade agreement.

Concluding remarks: a failed encounter?

The efforts and strategies deployed by the DAC towards the global South have

produced mixed outcomes. The participation of NMC has been institutionalized. But the

process has remained ambiguous and limited for two main factors. Due to the DAC’s

lack of experience and institutional capacity, its multiple initiatives have not challenged

the traditional division of labour between donors and recipients. Secondly, the BRICS

have been reluctant to buy into the Paris agenda. Since Busan in 2011, it seems that

South-South providers will not fully adopt the DAC’s aid effectiveness principles, and

prefer to discuss SSC-related issues at the UN83

. In any case, it is clear that they will

75

DAC Secretariat, interview

76 Gettleman Jeffrey, “The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman”, The New York Times, 4.12.2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwanda.html?pagewanted=all 77

Casteneda-Lefebvre, op. cit., p. 224 78

Enrique Maruri, interview 79

DAC Secretariat, interview 80

Casteneda-Lefèvre, opcit., p. 231. 81

Enrique Maruri, interview

82 Claudia Florez, interview

83 On this, see: Assunção Manaíra and Esteves Paulo, opcit., p. 8; Paulo Esteves and Manaíra Assunção,

opcit., Weinlich, Silke, opcit.

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19

have to answer ever-pressing questions regarding the impact and added-value of their

aid, and their accountability as donors.

However, it would be incorrect to conclude that DAC’s strategy has completely failed.

Forms and trajectories of engagement with NMC countries of the global South within

the DAC have multiplied since Busan. Representatives of aid-recipient countries have

been included in discussions about aid effectiveness and found a unique platform of

dialogue with traditional donors outside their capital cities. Delegates of Rwanda or

Mali hence reckon that the DAC is a legitimate space to discuss aid issues, and feel

personally very committed and attached to the Paris agenda84

. The typology of Southern

country engagement with the Paris agenda shows a great variety ranging from unwilling

partnership (emerging donors) to full commitment to (position of recipient countries),

and strategic use of DAC norms by ambitious “second-bests” such as Colombia and

Rwanda eager to promote their agendas and renegotiate their international status.

Even with the BRICS, some elements point to a progressive socialization to DAC

practices85

. For example, China has published a white paper on foreign aid strategy

(2011) which is not very detailed but corresponds to the spirit of transparency instilled

by the DAC. In Busan, representatives of China’s Ministry of Commerce spoke about

aid, which they have been reluctant to do for decades. China participated in the last aid

monitoring survey, thus providing some information about its practices as a donor86

.

Likewise, Brazilian officials are talking about “ownership” and “best practices”.

As a consequence, the DAC’s strategy has generated important – if unintended and

limited – outcomes, in particular an imperfect institutionalisation of Southern country

participation, which holds some potential to deeply change the committee’s profile,

functioning rules and role.

84

Mary Ann Addo and Modibo Macalou, interviews

85 This remark was inspired by the works of David Ambrosetti on the role of practical, social norms in the

negotiations at the United Nations Security Council. See, for example: Normes et rivalités diplomatiques

à l'ONU. Le Conseil de sécurité en audience, Bruxelles, P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2009. 349 p.

86 OECD, interview

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20

ANNEXES

Annex 1. List of interviews

Brian Atwood, DAC chair, Paris, 23.4.2013

Claudia Flórez, Cultural aggregate, Colombian embassy to France, Paris, 18.12.2011

Hubert de Milly, Senior Policy Analyst, coordinator of the "Working Party of Aid

Effectiveness", OECD, September 2007 – October 2012, Paris, OCDE, 20.09.2011

Eduardo Gonzalez, Governance Advisor at OECD – OCDE, Paris, OCDE, 20.09.2011

Sara Fyson, Development Cooperation Directorate, Policy Advisor, Aid Effectiveness,

OECD, Paris, 13.09.2011

Enrique Maruri Londoňo, former director of International Cooperation, Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, Republic of Colombia, Bogota, 21.08.2012

Jan Schuijer, OECD's Centre for Co-operation with Non-members, Paris, 23.04.2013

Jorge Carbonell, Policy analyst, Latin America and the Caribbean, Global relations,

Paris, 15.1.2013

Juana C. García Duque, former director of International Cooperation, Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, Republic of Colombia, Professor, School of Management, Universidad

de los Andes, Bogota, 14.08.2012

Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval, Head, Policy Division, Development Co-operation

Directorate, OECD, skype, 22.7.2013

Pedro Sousa, consultant, Policy Analyst for Latin America – OECD, Paris, 18.12.2012

Sandra Wilson, Counsellor, Global Relations Service, OECD, Paris, 19.12.2012

Ronald Nkusi, Director, External Finance Unit, Ministry of Finance and Economic

Planning, delegate of Rwanda at the WP-EFF, Busan, 2.12.2011

William Hynes, Policy Analyst in the Development Co-operation Directorate at the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Adjunct

Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies

and Research Associate at the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) at

Trinity College, Dublin. Paris, 10.12.2011

Mary-Anne Addo, Director at Ministry of Finance & Economic Planning, delegate of

Ghana in the WP-EFF, phone, 28.5.2014.

Thomas Fues, Economist, Head of the Training department, German Development

Institute, Bonn, 6.5.2014

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21

Christine, Hackenesch, Political Scientist, Researcher at the Bi- and Multilateral

Development Cooperation Department, German Development Institute, Skype,

12.05.2014

Richard Manning, Chair of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC),

London, 23.11.2012

Simon Mizrahi, Senior Policy Adviser, Aid Effectiveness, OECD from September 2001

– June 2007, phone, 15.09.2011

Talita Yamashiro Fordelone, consultant in the OECD Development Co-operation

Directorate, in Busan in December 2011 and Paris, 23.4.2014

Farida Tchaitchian Bena, Policy Analyst Joint OECD/UNDP support team, Paris,

23.4.2014

Gilles Eric Foadey, public communications Manager, NEPAD, Busan, 2.12.2011

Meja Vitalice, Kenya - Development Policy Analyst at Reality of Aid Africa, phone,

13.12.2011

Gerardo Bracho, Mexican Delegation to the OECD, Paris, 6.6.2013.

Modibo Macalou, Head of the Development and Cooperation Unit, President’s Office,

Republic of Mali, in Busan in September 2013 and 22.6.2013 in Bamako.

Pierre Nébié, coordinator of the donor technical pool, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

technical Unit, Ministry of Finance, Republic of Mali, Bamako, 17.9.2013

Mr Dembelé, Secretariat for Aid Harmonisation, Ministry of Finance, Republic of Mali,

Bamako, 01.04.2014

Philippe Besson, Swizz delegate at the DAC, 12.11.2011, 11.05.2012, Paris

Philipp Schronk, director of the Centro de Pensamiento Estratégico Internacional, a

Bogota-based think-tank, Skype, 14.5.2014

Talaat Abdel-Malek, former co-chair of the WP-EFF, Skype, 26.5.2014.

George Carner, formerly U.S. Representative to the OECD/DAC (2003-2008), Skype,

27.09.2011

Michel Reveyrand de Menthon, former advisor for African Affairs at the French

Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, former French delegate at the DAC, Paris,

09.09.2011

Jennifer Moreau, Governance Advisor, Governance for Development and Peace Team

(G4DP), Global Partnerships and Policy Division, OECD-DCD, Paris, 27.06.2014.

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Annex 2. Countries of the global South Adhering to the Paris Declaration (2005)

and Accra Agenda for Action (2008)

Afghanistan Argentina

Bangladesh

Benin Bolivia

Botswana Brazil* Burkina Faso

Burundi Cambodia Cameroon

Cape Verde Central African Republic

Chad China Colombia

Comoros Congo, Republic of Congo D. R.

Cook Islands

Djibouti Dominican Republic

Ecuador Egypt El Salvador

Ethiopia

Fiji

Gabon Gambia, the

Ghana

Guatemala Guinea Guinea Bissau

Haiti Honduras

India

Indonesia Iraq

Italy Ivory Coast

Jamaica Jordan

Kenya Korea

Lao PDR

Lesotho Luxembourg Madagascar

Malawi Malaysia

Mali Mauritania Mexico

Moldova Mongolia Morocco

Mozambique Namibia Nepal

Nicaragua

Niger Nigeria

Pakistan Palestinian Territories Panama

Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru

Philippines

Rwanda

Samoa Sao Tomé & Principe

Senegal Sierra Leone

Solomon Islands

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South Africa Sri Lanka

Sudan Swaziland

Syria Tajikistan

Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste

Togo Tonga Tunisia

Turkey Uganda

Vanuatu

Vietnam Yemen Zambia

* Confirmation pending

Source: http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/countriesterritoriesandorganisationsadheringtotheparisdeclarationa

ndaaa.htm