Exclusive: OECD Development Assistance Committee to begin reforms under new chair

The Development Assistance Committee — the body at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development tasked with setting and evaluating the organization’s rules for official development assistance — will begin large-scale reforms this summer, its new chair Charlotte Petri Gornitzka revealed in a conversation with Devex. The DAC — whose membership includes 30 global north-based donors contributing about 80 percent of ODA worldwide — has drawn criticism in the past for failing to represent developing country interests in its work. That has included policies that appear to favor the interests of donors over recipients, most recently in reforming the ODA rules to allow spending for more security-related costs. Petri Gornitzka, who took the helm of the DAC in October 2016, said the committee will undergo dramatic reform with a process ending around late October this year. The reforms will be made with an eye on improving its members’ use of the private sector in national aid policies, as well as becoming a more consistent complement and critic to the United Nations system, among other goals. In the wake of a meeting with civil society groups yesterday to discuss the reforms, representatives from CSOs such as Eurodad said they are cautious but hopeful for the long-awaited shift in direction for the DAC. “This year will be very much focused on the reform of DAC, and I am the leader of that process on behalf of the members,” Petri Gornitzka told Devex at her office in Paris, confirming rumors. “We run the risk that we’ll be way over there, not the driving force or one of the most important players for the implementation of the [Sustainable Development Goals] if we don’t move, open up and use other ways of working than we do currently,” she said. “If public money well spent can catalyze other flows for development, then that’s the journey we should be on.” --— Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. Petri Gornitzka, who led the Swedish International Development Agency from 2011-2016 and formerly served as secretary general of the Save the Children International, explained that DAC reforms will fall into “three pots”: the international role and mandate; outreach and stakeholder engagement; and working methods. “I hope to be able to run a process now that will end around October 30. We will have a high-level meeting in Paris, which I hope will endorse this reform,” she said. “There, I hope we can demonstrate, in the way we do the meeting, what a future DAC can do by getting the right level of people there, discussing issues that need to be discussed and bringing this to the broader global community,” Petri Gornitzka told Devex. Asked how she’d like to change the purpose of the DAC — whose remit is to measure development finance, strengthen aid cooperation, improve aid policy and build development partnerships — she said that the committee does not necessarily “need to do a thousand new things.” “I think the core of DAC is still so valid, but it’s where we take it, with whom we work and really how we use the learning, statistics and reviews; [how we use] the tools that we have to inform policy in contexts where they don’t even know these facts exist, that’s one side,” she said. “The other side is to realize the committee is a community of resourceful governments and nations. I think its untapped potential is to really work with members in a servant-leader way.” As it stands, Petri Gornitzka said the DAC best serves smaller, newer contributors of ODA — countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic — while they decide on the policies that will shape their future aid engagement. When it comes to the bigger, better-established aid donors, the DAC is battling for relevance and the power to shape donor practices. “I think that’s where we’re not really helpful yet to some of the members, and where they think they’re better at this themselves than asking DAC to do something. I hope to change that in the sense that I hope even the bigger members begin to feel that we are mutually beneficial more in a couple of years than they do today,” she said. The DAC is currently absorbed in determining the rules around the use of private sector instruments in ODA spending, Petri Gornitzka added, an issue that has drawn concern from aid stakeholders who worry that donor governments could manipulate the rules to advance their own business interests. The timing is tricky, she admitted, but she added that she is also committed to reforming the way the DAC engages civil society about these concerns. “If public money well spent can catalyze other flows for development, then that’s the journey we should be on,” she said, “and we’re working hard on how to create good incentives rather than perverse incentives. The debate now for some members of civil society is very much about — will this benefit the people we serve? Do we have the checks and balances in place? Will it become more tied?” Petri Gornitzka staged her first attempt to engage civil society on future engagement on these and other issues yesterday in Paris. Jeroen Kwakkenbos, policy and advocacy manager at Eurodad, who took part in the meeting, told Devex that Petri Gornitzka seemed keen to find new ways to engage and update the DAC, particularly in its approach to civil society. “Last year we had pointed out to the DAC that there was no systematic mechanism to regularly engage with CSOs,” he said. “The high level of turnover in DAC leadership means that when somebody leaves, we have to reforge those relationships, so we’re talking about how to create systematic, institutional methods of engagement, particularly to hear the voices of CSOs in the [global] south who don’t have access to this level of decision-making,” he said. Kwakkenbos said Petri Gornitzka echoed the enthusiasm of her predecessor, Erik Solheim, who was also keen to “bring DAC into the 21st century.” “We feel Charlotte is certainly working in good faith. A lot of the members of DAC are very excited about this, and its potentially groundbreaking on the CSO side, because there’s starting to be more interest in what the OECD DAC does,” he said. Still, he added that he and other members of the CSO community are watching closely, and advised that a shift in the DAC’s role won’t necessarily change the often highly politicized nature of ODA. “You can never underestimate bureaucratic inertia and resistance to change,” he said, “and that’s our main obstacle here.” Read more international development news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive the latest from the world’s leading donors and decision-makers — emailed to you free every business day.