The chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development, Linda McAvan, has warned nongovernmental organizations that they have “a lot of work to do over the summer” to ensure solid outcomes at the third International Conference on Financing for Development next month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“We know it’s going to be a battle to get agreement at Addis,” McAvan said at an event that Bond — a network of U.K.-based NGOs — held in London. “NGOs need to be lobbying their governments for a good outcome — both the ministers that went to the meeting of EU development and cooperation ministers recently in Brussels, and those going to Addis.”
At last month’s meeting in Brussels, development ministers set out the bloc’s position for July’s Addis conference. The ministers renewed their collective commitment to an official development assistance target of 0.7 percent of gross national income, but failed to support the European Parliament’s recommendation to achieve this by 2020.
About the author
Corinne Podger
Corinne Podger is a media development practitioner with more than 20 years' experience reporting for high-profile news outlets including the BBC World Service, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Economist. She works part time for BBC Media Action, the international charity of the BBC. Separately, as an independent consultant, she runs media skills training for a range of clients in her areas of expertise — social and multimedia, international news, science, health, climate change and religion.
