GLOBAL COOPERATION NEWSLETTER
August 2008
In this edition:
Accra meeting on Aid EffectivenessUN’s Affordable Pricing Policy for Publications
New IPC Publications
Publications on Gender Equality
Accra meeting on Aid Effectiveness
The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF 3) will be held in Accra,
Ghana in early September 2008. The HLF 3 builds on previous high levelinternational meetings, most notably the 2003 Rome HLF which highlighted theissue of harmonisation and alignment, and the 2005 Paris HLF which culminatedin the endorsement of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness by over 100
signatories from partner governments, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies,
regional development banks, and international agencies.
ICSW has prepared a paper entitled Can Aid be Effective without Civil Society?
The Paris Declaration, the Accra Agenda for Action and Beyond. The paper is the
ICSW contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate surrounding aid
effectiveness and the role of civil society in development. It has been prepared
for the High-level Forum in Accra. The intended audience for the paper includes
all actors in the realm of aid effectiveness.
The paper aims to add to future aid discussions and inform ICSW members about
the past and present state of aid effectiveness. It includes a summary of eventsand issues that are pertinent to fully understanding the dialogue surrounding theParis Declaration and the Accra Agenda.
Many of the events and issues
summarised have been the centre of great debate and the subject of numerous
publications.
The dialogue and rhetoric on aid effectiveness is constantly changing. Positively,
this means that aid effectiveness is an active policy area and a sphere in which
diverse actors are demanding progress. This means that while contemplating thecurrent state of aid effectiveness, we must also look to the future developments.
The Paris Declaration was seen by many as an attempt to revolutioniseinternational aid by combining the concepts of country ownership andaccountability. However, the resulting Declaration has been criticised by civilsociety organisations (CSOs) as ignoring the unique and essential role of civilsociety in executing the principles of the Declaration. CSOs’ discussions up to thispoint have been productive and have resulted in changes to the Accra Agenda for
Action. While the Accra Forum is a time to discuss which of CSOs’ criticisms havebeen taken into account and which remain unrecognised or unresolved, it is also
an opportunity for CSOs to step back and consider the larger picture. In doing so
we analyse not only the directions of current policies but also the next steps forcivil society. The ICSW paper can be found at Top News on the ICSW website
www.icsw.org
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UN’s Affordable Pricing Policy for Publications
The UN has introduced a new three-tier pricing policy for its publications sold indeveloping, least developed and developed countries. While prices in developed
countries will continue to be based on prevailing market conditions in thosecountries, the sale price in developing and least developed countries will be
reduced by 50 per cent and 75 per cent, respectively. The new pricing policy will
apply both to print publications as well as PDF versions sold online. For instance,
the print edition of the Yearbook of the United Nations, which costs $175, would
be available at half and one quarter the price, depending upon the country where
it is sold.
For information on the new three-tier pricing initiative, please contact Gundega
Trumkalne trumkalne@un.org, or Vlad Vitkovski vitkovskiv@un.org.
New IPC Publications
Title: Cash Transfers – Lessons from Africa and Latin America
Editors: Degol Hailu and Fabio Veras Soares Series: Poverty in Focus # 15
In this issue of the Poverty in Focus a collection of articles discuss lessons learnt
from conditional and social cash transfer programmes implemented in Africa andLatin America. Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCPovertyInFocus15.pdf
New IPC Online Resource
IPC has a new section on its website: Poverty Networks. This new resource
brings together web-based platforms that share development-related
publications and initiatives. IPC’s collaborating networks are accessible on thiswebsite.
Click here to access the Poverty Networks website: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/povnet/
New IPC “One Pagers”
Title: Why is Africa Constrained from Spending ODA?
Author: Terry McKinley argues that ODA should enable fiscal policies to become
more expansionary. Monetary policies should also support such fiscal expansion
to undertake the public investment needed to reach the MDGs. Series: One
Pager No. 34 Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager34.pdf
Title: Can all Cash Transfers Reduce Inequality?
Authors: Sergei Soares and Eduardo Zepeda Series: One Pager No. 36
This One Pager explains why the Conditional Cash Transfer programmes of Brazil
and Mexico have reduced inequality, while Chile’s programme failed to do so.
Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager36.pdf
Title: Growing Pains’: Key Challenges for New Conditional Cash Transfer
Programmes in Latin America Authors: Fabio Veras Soares and Tatiana Britto
Series: One Pager No. 44 (In French, English, Spanish and Portuguese)
The authors, Fabio Veras Soares and Tatiana Britto, address the key challenge of‘exit door’ strategies for CCT programmes, particularly in countries such as El
Salvador and Paraguay, which have less financial and institutional capacities thanBrazil and Mexico. While acknowledging that such features can help enhance
political support for CCTs, they maintain that early ‘exit’ of beneficiaries isinconsistent with the longer-term objective of human-capital accumulation.
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Page 2Moreover, such programmes should evolve, ideally, into permanent features ofthese countries’ general social-protection strategies.
Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager44.pdf
Title: Which Poverty Line? A Response to Reddy Author: Martin Ravallion
Series: One Pager No. 53 (In French, English, Spanish and Portuguese)
The author responds to a recent IPC One Pager. He reaffirms the importance ofthe "$1 or $2 a day" measurements in estimating poverty. Click here to
download: http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager53.pdf
Title: A Consistent Measure of Real Poverty: A Reply to Ravallion
Author: Thomas Pogge Series: One Pager # 54 (In French, English, Spanish
and Portuguese) The author contributes to the lively debate on poverty
measurement. He argues that a-dollar-a-day calculations are not sufficient to
inform policy.
Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager54.pdf
Title: Equitable Access to Basic Utilities: Who will Guarantee it?
Authors: Degol Hailu Series: One Pager # 55 Click here to download:
http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager55.pdf
Title: What Do We Mean by “Feminization of Poverty”?
Authors: Marcelo Medeiros and Joana Costa Series: One Pager # 58
The authors define the feminization of poverty as a change in poverty levels thatis biased against women or female-headed households. This definition provides asimple but effective tool for conducting policy analysis. Click here to download:
http://www.undp-povertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager58.pdf
Title: A Global Realignment by 2020: U.S. Decline, Emerging Economies Rise
Authors: Francis Cripps and Terry McKinley Series: One Pager # 63
Title: The Global Benefits and Losses from the U.S. Recession and Recovery
Package Authors: Francis Cripps and Terry McKinley Series: One Pager # 62
In these two papers, the authors analyse the impact on the global economy ofrising oil prices, a falling dollar and a U.S. economic downturn. By 2020 there will
be a major realignment of the global economy. The U.S. will experience further
economic decline. China, India and Brazil will continue to grow. Non-energy
producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa would fare the worst. Income percapita would fall by 1.2 per cent per annum.
New IPC Monthly Newsletter
IPC is publishing a new monthly Newsletter on Brazil-Africa Cooperation
Programme on Social Protection. Featured topics: Social Protection in Ghana,
Investing in Social Protection in Africa, related seminars and publications. Clickhere to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/publications/cct/brazil/news_eng.pdf

Publications on Gender Equality

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Social Justice and Gender Equality: Rethinking Development Strategies andMacroeconomic Policies
The contributors to this edited volume explore the effects of various development
and associated macroeconomic policies on women's well-being and progress
towards gender equality. Detailed analyses of major UN reports on gender reveal
the different approaches to assessing absolute and relative progress for womenand the need to take into account the specifics of policy regimes when making
such assessments. The book argues that neoliberal policies, especially theliberalisation of trade and investment, make it difficult to close gender wage andearnings gaps, and new gender sensitive policies need to be devised. These andother issues are all examined in more detail in several gendered development
histories of countries
from Latin America and Asia.
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BF3C2/setLanguageCookie?OpenAgent&lan
gcode=en&url=/80256B3C005BCCF9/search/AF2C4BEB1E1ABE4AC12574A3002D
3594?OpenDocument
GlobalPerspectiveson

GenderEquality:

Reversing

the

Gaze

The Nordic countries have long been seen as pioneers in promoting genderequality. The book, edited by Naila Kabeer and Agneta Stark with Edda Magnus,
brings together scholars from the global South and post-socialist economies toreflect on Nordic approaches to gender equality. The contributors to the bookseek to explore from a comparative perspective the vision, values, policies,
mechanisms, coalitions of interests and political processes that help to explain
Nordic achievements on gender equality. While some contributors explore theNordic experience through the prism of their own realities, others explore theirown realities through the Nordic prism. By cutting across normal geographicalboundaries, disciplinary boundaries and the boundaries between theory andpolicy, this book will be of interest to allreaders with an interest in furthering gender equality.
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BF3C2/setLanguageCookie?OpenAgent&lan
gcode=en&url=/80256B3C005BCCF9/search/4ACDAAF24B61A143C1257463003F
006F?OpenDocument
The content of this Global Newsletter may be freely reproduced or cited provided
the source is acknowledged. Views do not necessarily represent policies of ICSW.
Newsletter Editor: Denys Correll – Executive Director.
Contributor: Aurora Steinle Washington University in St. Louis and intern at ICSWICSW C/- MOVISIE Netherlands Centre for Social Development
PO Box 19129
3501 DC Utrecht
Netherlands
Website www.icsw.org Email: icsw@icsw.org

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GLOBAL COOPERATION NEWSLETTER
September 2008
In this edition:
Accra meeting on Aid Effectiveness
The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing
World Bank Updates Poverty Estimates for the Developing World
The World Bank’s New Poverty Estimates – Digging a Deeper Hole
Global Poverty Reassessed: A Reply to Reddy from Martin Ravallion
New UN Publication “National Development Strategies – Policy Notes”
Accra meeting on Aid Effectiveness
The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF 3) was held in Accra,
Ghana in early September 2008.
ICSW was represented in Accra by our Vice President, the two African Regional
Presidents, the Regional Treasurer for East and Southern Africa and the ICSW
Programme Coordinator from the African Office.
For the Accra Forum ICSW prepared “Can Aid be Effective without Civil Society?
The Paris Declaration, the Accra Agenda for Action and Beyond”. (On the ICSW
websiteat
http://www.icsw.org/doc/2008_Accra_ICSW_Full_Paper_FINAL_25Aug08.pdf)The
paper was the ICSW contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate
surrounding aid effectiveness and the role of civil society in development.
Those in Accra who commented on the paper welcomed ICSW’s call forgovernments to recognise and better engage with civil society organisations.
They saw the opportunity for ICSW to further develop its work in strengthening
national umbrella organisations with resultant better engagement with nationaland regional governments. The endorsement confirms the direction of the ICSW
four-year programme adopted by members at the General Assembly in July 2008.
ICSW will increase its work to strengthen national umbrella organisations.
While much can be said about the Accra Agenda for Action it is only possible tocomment on limited components in this newsletter. Further detail is at
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/15/41380264.htm The Accra Agenda can befound on the OECD website http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/58/16/41202012.pdf
On civil society the Accra Agenda states:“We will deepen our engagement with CSOs as independent development actors
in their own right whose efforts complement those of governments and theprivate sector. We share an interest in ensuring that CSO contributions todevelopment reach their full potential. To this end: a) We invite CSOs to reflect
on how they can apply the Paris principles of aid effectiveness from a CSO
perspective. b) We welcome the CSOs’ proposal to engage with them in a CSOled multistakeholder process to promote CSO development effectiveness. As partof that process, we will seek to i) improve co-ordination of CSO efforts withgovernment programmes,
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Page 5ii) enhance CSO accountability for results, and iii) improve information on CSO
activities.”
The Agenda speaks of the action necessary to accelerate progress:“Evidence shows that we will need to address three major challenges toaccelerate progress on aid effectiveness:
Country ownership is key. Developing country governments will take stronger
leadership of their own development policies, and will engage with theirparliaments and citizens in shaping those policies. Donors will support them byrespecting countries’ priorities, investing in their human resources andinstitutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing
the predictability of aid flows.
Building more effective and inclusive partnerships. In recent years, moredevelopment actors—middle-income countries, global funds, the private sector,
civil society organisations—have been increasing their contributions and bringing
valuable experience to the table. This also creates management and coordination challenges. Together, all development actors will work in more
inclusive partnerships so that all our efforts have greater impact on reducing
poverty.
Achieving development results—and openly accounting for them—must be at theheart of all we do. More than ever, citizens and taxpayers of all countries expect
to see the tangible results of development efforts. We will demonstrate that ouractions translate into positive impacts on people’s lives. We will be accountableto each other and to our respective parliaments and governing bodies for theseoutcomes.
Without addressing these obstacles to faster progress, we will fall short of ourcommitments and miss opportunities to improve the livelihoods of the mostvulnerable people in the world. Therefore, we are reaffirming the commitments
we made in the Paris Declaration and, in this Accra Agenda for Action, areagreeing on concrete and monitorable actions to accelerate progress to meetthose commitments by 2010. We commit to continuing efforts in monitoring andevaluation that will assess whether we have achieved the commitments weagreed in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action, and to what
extent aid effectiveness is improving and generating greater development
impact.”
The Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing
The following UN documents relate to implementation of the Madrid Plan ofaction on Ageing. (Thanks to Charlotte Nusberg of AARP for drawing these
documents to our attention)
Guide to the National Implementation of the Madrid International Plan of
Action on Ageing (2008)
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/papers/guide.pdf
The Madrid International Plan Of Action On Ageing: Guiding Framework
And Toolkit For Practitioners & Policy Makers
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/building_natl_capacity/guiding.pdf
Two following two items are UN position papers:
Mainstreaming the concerns of older persons into the social
development agenda (2003)
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/mainstreaming/positionpaper.pdf
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andIntegration and Participation of Older Persons in Development (2008)
www.un.org/esa/socdev/ageing/documents/papers/Integration_participation.pdf
World Bank Updates Poverty Estimates for the Developing World(With thanks to Isabel Ortiz of the UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs). The World Bank stated on 26th August 2008:“New poverty estimates published by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion
people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than US$1.25 a
day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion (one in two) in 1981.
The new numbers show that poverty has been more widespread across thedeveloping world over the past 25 years than previously estimated, but also that
there has been strong—if regionally uneven—progress toward reducing overall
poverty.
Looking at the new estimates from the perspective of the Millennium
Development Goals, a set of internationally agreed development targets, thedeveloping world is still on track to halve extreme poverty from its 1990 levels by
2015. This is the first of eight critical goals.
“However, the sobering news—that poverty is more pervasive than we thought—means that we must redouble our efforts, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said
Justin Lin, Chief Economist of the World Bank and Senior Vice President,
Development Economics.
Updated poverty estimates are published every few years, based on the mostrecent global cost-of-living data and country surveys of household consumption.
Full
text
at
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,conten
tMDK:21882162~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469382,00.html
The World Bank’s New Poverty Estimates – Digging a Deeper Hole.
Following the release of the estimates by the World Bank this critique by Sanjay
G. Reddy appeared. (Extracts only) Full text at http://www.socialanalysis.org/
The World Bank estimates of ‘updated’ global poverty are based on a newworldwide price survey and a new benchmark international poverty line of $1.25
2005 PPP which replaces earlier benchmark poverty lines (of $1.08 1993 PPP and$1.00 1985 PPP, both widely referred to as “$1 per day”) corresponding to earlier
base years. The revised figures purport to estimate world poverty figures for arange of years since 1981, and thus crucially affect our understanding of theworld over the last quarter century of globalization.
Many aspects of the global order, such as the movement toward freer trade, as
well as national institutions and policies, are defended by referring to their effecton the poor.
The Bank’s poverty estimates are thus central to their assessment. Moreover, theMillennium Development Goals are defined in terms of these estimates, making
this revision of great importance for determining whether the world is on track to
reduce poverty by the amount required by the Goals.
Can the Bank’s new estimates be trusted? Can they be trusted more than its own
earlier greatly lower poverty estimates, which they are intended to replace?
Unfortunately, the Bank’s new estimates are based on the same methods it usedearlier and are undermined by the same problems as the earlier estimates.
Two problems are foremost, as noted in a widely cited critique by Sanjay Reddy
andThomas Pogge (“How Not to Count the Poor”, forthcoming in Stiglitz, J., Anand, S.
and Segal, P. ed., Debates on the Measurement of Global Poverty, Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
The first is that the Bank’s chosen international poverty line is far too low tocover the cost of purchasing basic necessities. A human being could not live in
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the US on $1.25 a day in 2005 (or $1.40 in 2008), nor therefore on an
equivalent amount elsewhere, contrary to the Bank’s claims. Indeed, it appears
to be far too low in many countries to account for the cost of purchasing basic
necessities. That this is so is self evident in the case of the United States—thebase country in whose units the international poverty line is defined. One’s daily
income can be a great deal higher than $1.25 and still leave one unable to fulfill
basic nutritional requirements, let alone the other requirements of a minimallydecent life. Since the international poverty line is defined in purchasing power
adjusted units, meant to capture a constant level of purchasing power acrosscountries, this incoherence is not easy to overcome.
The Bank’s claim that its poverty line is sufficient in other countries, despite
being
insufficient in the United States, implicitly acknowledges the second problem:that the Bank uses inappropriate purchasing power parities (PPPs) to convert its
poverty line.
Global Poverty Reassessed: A Reply to Reddy from Martin Ravallion of theWorld Bank in the UNDP Poverty Centre One Pager Series. The author explains
the improvements made to the new global poverty estimates published by theWorld Bank. Click here to download: http://www.undppovertycentre.org/pub/IPCOnePager66.pdf
New UN Publication “National Development Strategies – Policy Notes”
The publication focuses on employment-generating macroeconomic policies,
inclusive finance for development, public enterprises, trade policy, investment
and technology (industrial) policies, and social policy. They concentrate on criticalareas where other sourcebooks and guidelines do not adequately reflect
alternative policy options.
The Policy Notes were reviewed by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Jomo K.
Sundaram, Jose Antonio Ocampo and other distinguished development specialists.
They were authored by Ha-Joon Chang, CP. Chandrasekhar, Murray Gibbs,
Mushtaq Khan, Shari Spiegel and Isabel Ortiz.
Electronic copies of the chapters and translations to Arabic, Chinese, French,
Russian and Spanish are available at:
http://esa.un.org/techcoop/policyNotes.asp
The content of this Global Newsletter may be freely reproduced or cited provided
the source is acknowledged. Views do not necessarily represent policies of ICSW.
Newsletter Editor: Denys Correll – Executive Director.
ICSW C/- MOVISIE Netherlands Centre for Social Development
PO Box 19129
3501 DC Utrecht
Netherlands
Website www.icsw.org Email: icsw@icsw.org

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