Brazilian Delegation III High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (Accra, 2-4 September 2008)

Mr. Chairperson,
At the outset, my delegation would like to congratulate the Government of Ghana for hosting this Forum, and for the warm welcome to all participants. My Government believes that improving effectiveness in development cooperation deserves joint efforts and engagement from all partners. Anybody working in development cooperation can recognize that tire are persistent weaknesses in the whole system, such as insufficient local ownership, lack of coordination, low sustainability, unstable provision of funds, etc. In this sense, the Accra's Forum may provide us with a comprehensive analysis on what has been working well, and what needs to be subject to further actions, in order to improve the quality and impact of development cooperation.

Although there is a basic consensus among developing and donor countries that development cooperation must evolve in many aspects, we believe that the points of view from the two sides are not fully convergent in the way the Paris Declaration intended to portrait them in 2005. From the perspective of a country like Brazil, the Paris Declaration and all subsequent meeting sand papers related to it organized prepared in the last three years, were based on two premises: i) a rigid view of the world development system, where countries should be classified as donors or recipients; ii) the dissemination of the belief that the practices, standards and goals of donor countries and some international financial institutions were the pattern to be observed by everyone.

Mr. Chairperson,
My Government also believes that development cooperation in the Twentieth-first century cannot be implemented with our eyes turned to the 1960s. All development players and partners have gained sufficient experience to realize that the current diversity of models, partnerships and practices are a great source of feasible solutions for the present weaknesses in development cooperation. In this context, l would like to introduce the subject of South-South cooperation, in all its forms. South-South cooperation has developed its own practices in terms of motivation, negotiation and implementation. These practices sometimes differ from the ones applied in North-South cooperation or by some IFIs. II would like to stress that ,the existence of different models of providing cooperation does not mean that one set of practices is better or superior to the other one, or vice-versa. They both aim at ,the best outcomes possible.

It is not reasonable to start a debate taking for granted that the practices of one side are absolute truths. In this context, the standards applied by donor countries and IFls do not have to be automatically observed or adopted in South-South cooperation. The South-South cooperation providers should not be automatically classified as "new-donors", in the sense that not all of them wish to reproduce the rationale and conduct of DAC-OECD donors. We believe that there is no single way to achieve more effectiveness in development cooperation.

Having said that, my Government believes that the debate on the effectiveness of development cooperation continues to be unbalanced. The lack of balance may also be found in the final draft of the "Accra's Agenda for Action", which did not incorporate the concept and particularities of South-South cooperation in the process that we shall discuss here.

As a contribution to this Forum, my delegation would like to distribute to the interested delegations a short paper with views on how South-South cooperation has improved development cooperation. We would like to suggest that some new paragraphs be inserted in the 'AAA" document, as a separated item dealing with South-South cooperation.

Mr. Chairperson,
As a closing remark, I would like to say that, taking into account that the official documents prepared for this Forum continue to consider North-South cooperation, including through the IFls, as a kind of "international standard of quality"; in view of the fact that ;South-South cooperation has been presented as less than a complementary modality to the North-South cooperation; and also considering that there is no single source of best practices in development cooperation, my delegation believes that the Accra's Agenda for Action does not reflect in full the present day configuration of development cooperation's actors, modalities and distinctions. We expect that the AAA may be adjusted appropriately, in order for a broad consensus to be achieved on it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.