Global aid partnership forged

BUSAN ― Donor and recipient countries, and representatives from international organizations, civil society and the private sector on Thursday agreed on a new global partnership for better development cooperation.

More than 3,000 delegates from 160 countries, international organizations, civic groups and private sector officials attended the three-day Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in the South Korean city, seeking better ways to broaden global partnership in annual development aid.

The final outcome document was endorsed by the participants on Thursday in which they agreed to seek a new global partnership for development.

“One of the most important achievements made at the Busan forum is that countries endorsed the outcome document to launch a new, inclusive global partnership for effective development cooperation,” Korea’s Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told reporters before the closing ceremony on Thursday.

“The global partnership includes participation by new emerging countries and the private sector and sharing capacities of development agencies including OECD, U.N. and UNDP.”

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, noted that a shift of discussion focus from aid to development was the largest achievement of the Busan forum.

“What is the single most important thing achieved in Busan is that this was not about aid. This was about development,” Gurria said.

Key participants in the Busan conference included President Lee Myung-bak, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The forum was the largest follow-up since the event was launched in Paris in 2005 to improve the quality of aid.

Hosting the Busan conference is a symbolic occasion for Korea, which rose from the rubble of the 1950-53 Korean War to become one of the OECD members.

While OECD projects that the global Official Development Assistance growth rate will fall to an average 2 percent a year for the next five years, compared to an average 6-7 percent annually over the past five years, Korea plans to nearly triple its ODA to about $3 billion by 2015.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)