establishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in January 2002 after going through discussion at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS and the Genoa G8 Summit in 2001.

As for gender, Japan included in the ODA Charter that full consideration would be given to ensuring the active participation of women in development and their obtaining benefit from development. Japan announced the "Women in Development (WID) Initiative" at the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing Conference) in 1995. By this initiative, Japan clarified its policy of making efforts to expand ODA in the WID sector in cooperation with other aid bodies, while giving priority to improving the status of women and narrowing the gender gap and especially focusing on three priority areas—education, health, and economic and social participation—and thereby strengthened policy responses. Since then, in line with this initiative, Japan has steadily implemented activities in the WID/gender sector.

Such formulation of sector-specific initiatives has not been limited to the sectors of environment, population, infectious diseases. Japan also announced initiatives relating to other sectors and issues, such as democratization, information and communication technology (ICT), conflict and development, education, and water and sanitation. Through them, Japan has enhanced effective implementation of ODA.

Japan's Contribution to the International Development Goals

The strengthening policy formulation of regional/country assistance and of sectional assistance mentioned above enabled Japan to demonstrate its own development philosophy more effectively than ever in the international fora.

Looking at the international trend in assistance, in the 1990s, emphasis was continuously given to the environmental aspect, and development policy for poverty reduction shifted again from structural adjustment to social sectors. In 1990, the World Bank published a feature on the issue of poverty in the "World Development Report." In the United Nations, the UNDP issued the first edition of the "Human Development Report" in the same year and introduced the concept of the human development index as a comprehensive economic and social index that indicates the degree of human development in each country. Moreover, the goal of reducing absolute poverty in the world to a half was clearly expressed at the "World Social Development Summit" held in Copenhagen in 1995.

In response to such trends, the OECD/DAC formulated "Shaping the 21st Century: The Contribution of Development Co-operation (Development Partnership Strategy)" in 1996. This provided a basis for international aid policy from the late 1990s to the 2000s. In formulating this DAC Development Partnership Strategy, Japan contributed greatly to formulating basic principles, such as emphasis on ownership and partnership, institution-building and capacity-building, and the importance of the comprehensive approach.

In particular, when drafting the DAC Development Partnership Strategy, Japan actively lobbied other countries by, for example, proposing the setting of specific numerical targets (International Development Goals (IDGs)), which subsequently led to the numerical targets under the Millennium Developing Goals (MDGs). In this DAC Development Partnership Strategy, OECD/DAC dealt largely with poverty and the related issue of BHN and advocated a new desirable aid form by the international community.

The DAC Development Partnership Strategy contained two principles: (1) ownership, which means that developing countries themselves tackle development issues; and (2) partnership, which means that developed countries think and act together with developing countries, for achievement of economic development. These principles, which have come to be widely accepted in the international community, are in line with the idea of supporting the self-help efforts, which Japan has conventionally emphasized and indicated in the ODA Charter. Japan has claimed this philosophy ahead of other countries. Japan has believed from the outset that recipient countries could achieve economic independence through making efforts for their own development based on self-help efforts and that ODA could merely help for such efforts. On the basis of experience in receiving support immediately after World War II and in remarkable development in East Asia, Japan has consistently implemented assistance in the spirit of actively supporting the individual efforts of developing countries. Such longtime efforts and development philosophy of Japan have an important impact on the international trends in development.

In September 2000, the "Millennium Declaration" was adopted at the UN Millennium Summit, and then compiled into one common framework, the MDGs, in which the development-related part of the Declaration and the DAC Development Partnership Strategy were integrated. The MDGs are common and primordial development goals for the entire international community in order to create the basic conditions for the future prosperity of humankind.

Subsequently, when the role of economic growth in poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs was emphasized again, Japan's development philosophy had a great