It depends on who you ask.

A number of aid groups and civil society organizations said it’s too early to gauge whether the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was successful in crafting the future of international development efforts.

“We’ll know six months down the line whether there’s any meat on the bones of this deal,” international aid group Oxfam says. “One billion poor people are waiting for more than words — they want measurable action.”

The Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation embraces the diversity of actors in the development field and proposes a “new and more inclusive development agenda” based on four principles: developing country ownership, focus on result, transparency and new development partnerships.

U.N. Development Program Administrator Helen Clark, meanwhile, said the deal is a “big step forward” considering it was endorsed by China, India and Brazil — countries that have initially distanced themselves from any global aid or development partnership.

Civil society organizations, which for the first time attended an aid effectiveness forum as partners, agreed that the inclusion of new donors and other development actors in the partnership is a “major step towards a fairer world.” But BetterAid, which represented CSOs in negotiations in Busan, stressed that the true test of the partnership’s “historic potential” is whether donors would follow through on their commitments.

Further, BetterAid expressed regret over the lack of binding commitments or specific actions on women’s rights and for fragile and conflict-afflicted countries in the text of the partnership. The document did highlight the need to support gender equality and women’s empowerment efforts, and backed a new cooperation deal for fragile states that was agreed on in Busan.

BetterAid also criticized the new partnership for not tackling the unfinished business and lack of follow through on commitments in previous aid effectiveness summits in Paris and Accra.

The Australian Council for International Development, meanwhile, took a swipe at the lack of mandatory commitments among emerging donors.

“China and India should have entered into mandatory commitments which would see them untying their aid from their own commercial advantage, protecting the human rights of NGO workers and making time-bound commitments to being transparent about the aid they give,” ACFIC Executive Director Marc Purcell, said. “Instead new Southern donors — most of whom are not [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] members — will have the option of ‘voluntarily’ making these commitments.”

Read more:

• New Aid Architecture: Common Goals, Shared Principles, Differential Commitments

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