## Section 2 Efforts Relating to the Philosophy of the ODA Charter

The revised ODA Charter states that the objective of Japan's ODA provision is "to contribute to the peace and development of the international community, and thereby to help ensure Japan's own security and prosperity." To achieve this objective, the revised ODA Charter puts forward the following five basic policies.

"Supporting self-help efforts of developing countries" is the most important philosophy of Japan's ODA, and Japan intends to provide support in fields such as human resources development, institution building including development of legal systems, and economic and social infrastructure building, which constitute the basis for development of developing countries. The "perspective of 'human security'" is the philosophy that was newly included by the revision of the ODA Charter in 2003, and Japan has been making efforts to diffuse and put into practice this philosophy. In terms of the "assurance of fairness," it is necessary to give consideration to ensuring that the outcome of ODA benefits the people of recipient countries fairly, and Japan takes a course of emphasizing environmental and social considerations and the perspective of gender equality. The "utilization of Japan's experience and expertise" is also an important policy, in which Japan's experience in economic and social development as well as in economic cooperation are utilized when assisting the development of developing countries and its advanced technologies, expertise, human resources, and institutions are also utilized. Moreover, it is necessary that the implementation of ODA is coordinated with Japan's key policies to ensure overall policy coherence. In addition, "partnership and collaboration with the international community" is important when the international community is sharing more common development goals and strategies with the initiative of international organizations. Japan also intends to take an active part in international discussions to send out its own assistance strategies and philosophies.

Japan's ODA policy is formulated and implemented in line with the above basic policies. Specific efforts are referred to in the part describing sector/region-specific efforts and the part describing efforts in formulation and implementation of assistance policies from Section 3 onwards. This section explains efforts in terms of the "perspective of 'human security'," the perspective of gender equality in relation to the "assurance of fairness," and efforts for "partnership and collaboration with the international community," which are difficult to describe there.

## ☑ Perspective of "Human Security"

Japan has been making efforts to make the 21st century a human-centered century while giving priority to "human security" as the philosophy of international partnership in the 21st century. The revised ODA Charter also takes up the perspective of "human security" as one of the basic policies, and efforts have been made to utilize the philosophy for implementing Japan's assistance.

To promote human security, it is important for persons concerned to understand the importance of the concept thereof. However, Japan intends not only to diffuse such philosophy but also to think of the implementation of ODA from the perspective of "human security" and actively promote ODA projects relating to such fields as education, health care, environment, gender, consolidation of peace and nation building, in order to strengthen the capacity of local communities through human resource development (for the philosophy of human security, also see Part I, Chapter 2, Section 3 of this white paper, and page 30 of the ODA White Paper 2003).

Japan took the initiative in setting up the "Trust Fund for Human Security" within the United Nations in March 1999 to strengthen cooperation in the sector of human security, and has contributed, as of July 2004, a total amount of about 25.9 billion yen, which is the largest among trust funds set up in the United Nations. The number of projects supported by the fund reached 108 as of the end of July 2004 and the total amount was 133 million dollars. By sector, the number of projects is high for the health care sector (25 projects; 0.232 million dollars), including "The Only Opportunity: Maternal Health and Integrated Early Childhood Development" in Peru aiming to disseminate knowledge about maternal and child health as well as early childhood education and provide nutritional supplements for communities in the Andean

Educational activity to foster the five senses for infants at a village meeting hall; fathers also participate. (The Only Opportunity: Maternal Health and Integrated Early Childhood Development: Peru)