The Guidelines in a nutshell

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (“the 2030 Agenda”) and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to ensure the fundamental rights of all people to a decent life, peace, and a healthy environment, including by eradicating poverty in all its forms and in securing the sustainability of the planet. Making this agenda a reality will require a dramatic increase in the volume of aid and investment in financing for development overall, as well as an increase in the quality of all resources available for development and the effectiveness of development partnerships.

Parliaments and parliamentarians are valuable partners in ensuring the accountable, inclusive, participatory, and transparent governance that is necessary to achieve sustainable development for all. Parliaments in both developed and developing countries have a crucial legislative, budgetary and oversight role to play in the overall implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Within this context, their role in development cooperation is crucial to ensuring that governments are accountable for the decisions that they make about how resources – including aid – are spent.

Despite the recognition of the significant role of parliaments, parliamentary oversight of development cooperation remains weak. Against this background, these Guidelines attempt to address the challenges and seeks to provide parliaments and parliamentarians and those who work with them with a common understanding and offer ideas on what they can do to promote more effective and accountable use of aid in particular and of resources for development in general. In particular, this note introduces parliamentarians and parliamentary staff to:

• The basic concept, main elements, and key commitments of effective development cooperation, in all its forms, public and private, financial and non-financial, international and domestic.

• The “architecture” of effective development cooperation, including the main delivery modalities, actors involved, and coordination structures at the global and country levels.

• Concrete ways in which they can contribute to development cooperation and engage with effective development cooperation and global forums such as the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC).

• Actions that can be taken by parliamentarians to ensure resources and partnerships are used in the most effective way possible, to contribute to increased development impact.

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