Values and interests

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, the time is ripe to reflect on the lessons of development co-operation over the last 50 years and to put forward strategies for the first part of the next century. This report sets forth the collective views on these matters of development ministers, heads of aid agencies and other senior officials responsible for development co-operation, meeting as the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.¹

In the year 2000, four-fifths of the people of the world will be living in the developing countries, most with improving conditions. But the number in absolute poverty and despair will still be growing. Those of us in the industrialized countries have a strong moral imperative to respond to the extreme poverty and human suffering that still afflict more than one billion people. We also have a strong self-interest in fostering increased posterity in the developing countries. Our solidarity with the people of all countries causes us to seek to expand the community of interests and values needed to manage the problems that respect no borders- from environmental degradation and migration, to drugs and epidemic diseases. All people are made less secure by the poverty and misery that exist in the world, Development matters.

The record of the last 50 years, from Marshall Plan aid to the network of development partnerships now evolving, shows that the efforts of countries and societies to help themselves have been the main ingredients in their success. But the record also shows that development assistance has been an essential complementary factor in many achievements: the green revolution, the fall in birth rates, improved basic infrastructure, a diminished prevalence of disease and dramatically reduced poverty. Properly applied in propitious environments, aid works.

Co-operation within the United Nations, the international financial institutions, the OECD and other global and regional fora has greatly enhanced these efforts and shaped an evolving multilateralism in which all countries hold a vital stake.

We have learned that development assistance will only work where there is a shared commitment of all the partners. We have seen the results in countries which have grown, prospered and achieved industrialization; they no longer depend on aid but stand on their own feet and participate in the global economy. We have seen, on the other hand, the countries in which civil conflict and bad governance have set back development for generations. And we have learned that success takes time and sustained international and local effort.

As we look ahead, we see an overwhelming case for making that effort. As a crucial part of this undertaking, the international community needs to sustain and increase the volume of official development assistance in order to reverse the growing marginalization of the poor and achieve progress toward realistic goals of human development. Domestic preoccupations in Member countries should not jeopardize the international development effort at a critical juncture. Today's investments in development co-operation will yield a very high return over the coming years.

We believe that ways must be found to finance multilateral development co-operation that are adequate, efficient, predictable and sustainable. The full implementation of current agreements to pay arrears and create workable financing systems is an essential part of efforts to ensure that the United Nations and the multilateral development banks avoid severe crisis and continues to play their vital roles.

We also recognize that those responsible for public money are accountable for its effective use. We have a duty to state clearly the results we expect and how we think they can be achieved.

It is time to select, taking account of many targets discussed and agreed at international fora, a limited number of indicator of success by which our efforts can be judged. We are proposing a global development partnership effort through which we can archive together the following ambitious but realizable goals:

Economic well-being :

• a reduction by one-half in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

Social development :

• universal primary education in all countries by 2015;
• demonstrated progress toward gender equality and the empowerment of women by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005;
• a reduction by two-thirds in the mortality rates for infants and children under age 5 and a reduction by three-fourths in maternal mortality, all by 2015;
• access through the primary health-care system to reproductive health services for all individuals of appropriate ages as soon as possible and no later than the year 2015.

Environmental sustainability and regeneration:

• the current implementation of national strategies for sustainable development in all countries by 2005, so as to ensure that current trends in the loss of environmental resources are effectively reversed at both global and national levels by 2015.

While expressed in terms of their global impact, these goals must be pursued country by county through individual approaches that reflect local conditions and locally-owned development strategies. Essential to the attainment of these measurable goals are qualitative factors in the evolution of more stable, safe, participatory and just societies. These include capacity development for effective, democratic and accountable governance, the protection of human rights and respect for the rule of law. We will also continue to address these less easily quantified factors of development progress.

Effective international support can make a real difference in achieving these goals. This is far from saying that they can be achieved by aid alone. The most important contributions for development, as in the past, will be made by the people and governments of the developing countries themselves. But where this effort is forthcoming it needs and deserves strong support from the industrialized countries. We commit ourselves to do the utmost to help.

• first, by a willingness to make mutual commitments with our development partners, supported by adequate resources;
• second, by improving the co-ordination of assistance in support of locally-owned development strategies; and
• third, by a determined effort to achieve coherence between aid policies and other policies which impact on developing countries.

These approaches were set out in broad terms in the statement of policy that we adopted in 1995 entitled Development Partnerships in the New global context.² The report that follows builds on this statement and proposes specific new practical measures to achieve the vision of partnership for development.

We intend our report to be a contribution to the broad contemporary effort to improve the effectiveness of development co-operation. A rich process of dialogue and decisions is underway- within the OECD, in the Interim and Development Committees of the World Bank and IMF, in the regional development banks, in the G7, and in the United Nations system. This heightened international focus on development co-operation reinforces our conviction that development matters.

The success or failure of poor people an poor countries in making their way in an interdependent world will have a profound influence in shaping the 21st century. We offer our proposals in this report with confidence that international co-operation can be effective in supporting development, and that the results will be well worth the effort they will demand of our societies. The stakes in a stable, sustainable future for this planet and all who will inhabit it are far too high for us to forego that effort.

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1. This report was adopted at the Thirty-forth High Level Meeting of the Development Assistance Committee, held on 6-7 May 1996.
2. The text of the statement is an annex to this report. It is analyzed and discussed in the 1995 DAC report Development Co-operation: Efforts and Policies of the Members of the Development Assistance Committee (OECD, 1996).