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Why multi-stakeholder partnerships?

In today’s evolving international landscape, development challenges are increasingly complex, persistent and interlinked. As such, achieving sustainable development for everyone, everywhere, calls for strong, equal partnerships between all stakeholders. Participation of civil society organisations, the private sector and other local development partners in all phases of development policy-making, planning and implementation helps ensure that resources are used effectively, capitalising on the comparative advantage of every stakeholder group and sharing resources, technology and knowledge.

In this context, multi-stakeholder partnerships are key to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Effective multi-stakeholder partnerships are also important for building more sustainable and resilient societies, which require key policy actions and institutional reforms, as well as diverse financial resources, knowledge, innovation and collaborative relationships. This makes it urgent to effectively engage stakeholders in development policy-making, planning and implementation, and to expand and strengthen spaces for open dialogue and joint work.

To this end, promoting inclusive institutional frameworks in countries’ National Development Co-operation policies and strategies, as well as multi-stakeholder dialogue and co-ordination mechanisms for joint work are crucial. These national efforts also support an enabling policy, legal and regulatory environment for multi-stakeholder partnerships, encouraging development partners to work more effectively together at the country level.

Why the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation?

In this context, the internationally-agreed principles of effective development co-operation (country ownership, a focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency and mutual accountability) remain important. The principles guide development stakeholders as they refine their policies and institutions to enable stronger, more inclusive partnerships for maximum development impact.

The Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) promotes multi-stakeholder partnerships that help countries achieve their sustainable development priorities. Grounded in the effective development co-operation principles, the GPEDC supports countries in establishing and strengthening mechanisms for multi-stakeholder dialogue and engagement, by bringing together a wide variety of actors to collaborate in the spirit of openness, trust and mutual respect.

The GPEDC’s monitoring framework also measures country-level progress in implementing the development effectiveness principles, providing evidence for multi-stakeholder dialogue on progress and challenges. For instance, 81% of countries that participated in the GPEDC’s 2016 monitoring process reported that they and their partners lacked instruments and policies for public-private dialogue. The state of play from the last round of Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) mirrors the findings from 2016 GPEDC monitoring. Many VNRs presented challenges in consolidating effective multi-stakeholder engagement, particularly facilitating meaningful stakeholder participation and maintaining collaborative relationships.

What is the side event about?

Hosted by the governments of Korea and Bangladesh, the objective of the side event is to discuss key opportunities and challenges for building more inclusive institutional frameworks, and generate evidence-based dialogue on ways to strengthen relationships with a wide variety of development stakeholders at the country level. It will draw on first-hand experience of how fostering multi-stakeholder partnerships can strengthen countries’ capacity for resilience and address a wide variety of sustainable development challenges.

The side event will be an interactive, multi-stakeholder panel discussion, including interventions from various countries that will present their Voluntary National Reviews in 2018. This will be followed by an open discussion with audience members. Representatives of the Co-Chairs of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation, as well as its active members, will participate in an interactive discussion.

The discussion aims to support increased engagement of all stakeholders in inclusive, country-level partnerships. It will also serve as a platform for exchanging ideas on how national multi-stakeholder partnerships can help implement the SDGs.

 

CONTACT

Questions?

Anna Whitson
anna.whitson@undp.org

Artemy Izmestiev
artemy.izmestiev@undp.org