Putting local capacity development on the national and international agenda

The Paris Declaration, endorsed on 2 March 2005, is an international agreement to which over one hundred Ministers, Heads of Agencies and other Senior Officials adhered and committed their countries and organisations to continue to increase efforts in harmonisation, alignment and managing aid for results with a set of monitorable actions and indicators.

The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) was drawn up in 2008 and builds on the commitments agreed in the Paris Declaration. At the highest level, the Paris Declaration recognises the importance of capacity development. And the outcome document for the follow-up meeting (the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra Ghana in September, 2008) takes it further by committing partner countries to ensure that capacity development requirements are specified at national, local, thematic and sector levels; and by committing donors to aligning with these capacity development strategies and providing demand-driven capacity development support.

The 2008 workshop, Capacity Development: Accra and Beyond, held in Bonn, Germany, assembled participants from both the various regional preparatory events and from the nine Accra Round Tables. The strong Bonn Consensus which emerged from this workshop was approved unanimously by its participants and its co-chairs Talaat Abdel-Malek and Richard Manning. The conclusions of the Bonn workshop are reflected in a short report on capacity development which includes key recommendations and messages.

Organized to formulate recommendations for more effective capacity development investments in the region, this regional consultation convened over 75 participants from ten Asian countries, including senior government officials, civil society representatives, politicians, and CD experts and practitioners. The Outcome Statement captures the key recommendations and conclusions emerging from the discussions.

On 24 April 2009, during the Senior Government Segment of the ESCAP Commission Session, the head of the Nepal delegation read the Outcome Statement at the Special Body on Least Developed and Landlocked Developing Countries.

This briefing paper puts forward a series of policy recommendations. It was prepared for the high level Ministerial Dialogue, “Investing in Capacities for National Development”, held in April 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand. The recommendations draw from the experience base of the UNDP and SNV programs in several countries in Asia, where the partnership has supported the strengthening of local level capacities for achieving the MDGs.