Philippine CSOs Statement on the Road to Busan

We, members of AidWatch-Philippinesⁱ, Council for People’s Development and Governanceⁱⁱ along with the broad CSO community in the country join the global CSO efforts in bringing forward a comprehensive agenda – a meaningful and ambitious Busan Compact on Development Effectiveness.

We assert that aid and the overall aid system will only be developmental if it is consistent with the key principles of respect for human rights (economic, cultural, civil and political); democratic ownership of the development process; equity in growth and development; transparency and access to information; accountability for decisions and actions, and primacy of the people’s well-being and welfare.

We maintain that aid effectiveness as reflected through the Paris Declaration Principles is about the technical “efficient delivery and management of aid” and has not address the crucial issues of conditionality and tied aid; and of truly delivering real economic progress, better social services and enjoyment of human rights for the people.

We join the global call for a new development cooperation system built not just in reforming aid delivery and management but more importantly ensuring development effectiveness in recipient countries like the Philippines.

In spite its supposedly middle-income status, the Philippines remains hobbled with widespread poverty, severe inequality, chronic bureaucratic corruption and underdevelopment. It is in this context of development effectiveness that the country must seriously address the following fundamental concerns:

• Promotion of human rights and social justice
• Poverty reduction that focuses on uplifting the living condition of the majority of the peasant poor through thorough going agrarian reforms that addresses landlessness and tenancy issues; decent work and decent wage; and a nationally-owned and democratically-adopted comprehensive national economic development policies and plans that will truly benefit the people.
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Environmental sustainability with focus on addressing the problem of climate change

In pursuit of these, the Philippines must strive to establish a development cooperation framework with development partners that resolve power in country relationships through mutual accountability, elimination of tied and donor-imposed conditionalities, increase aid transparency and predictability and the eventual elimination of dependency on foreign aid and technologies and external markets. This can be done through a multi-stakeholder approach, ensuring mutually-supportive policies in international aid, trade, investment and finance that uphold and advance the realization of the Right to Development.

We believe that as development actors in our own right, CSOs contribute in unique and important ways to development – we are human rights advocates, watchdogs/monitors, campaigners, organizers – we are innovative agents of change and social transformation.

Globally, CSOs have made significant progress in strengthening their own effectiveness in development via the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness process. In September 2010, 170 CSOs from more than 70 countries (the Philippine CSOs included) gathered together in Istanbul, Turkey and agreed on the Istanbul Principles for CSO Development Effectiveness. The Istanbul Principles reflects the important roles that CSOs play, the principles and values that they live by.

In the same vein, the High Level Forum III via paragraph 20 of the Accra Agenda for Action recognizes CSOs as development actors in their own right, as it promised to “deepen engagement with CSOs as independent development actors in their own right whose efforts complement those of the governments and private sectors…”

However, despite the apparent official recognition, many CSOs in the Philippines are facing policies and practices that are undermining or severely limiting their roles as development actors. Besides the highly restricting environment for the recognition of CSOs, many members of our CSO network organizations experienced being harassed, illegally arrested and detained, tortured, extra-judicially killed and enforced disappeared. Militarization in many rural areas in the country, limits the effectiveness of many of our grassroots partner organizations.

Despite these challenges, Philippine CSOs especially those within the AidWatch and CPDG network will continue to push for and support national and local development agendas that benefit the people.

Thus, on the occasion of the High-Level Multi-stakeholders’ Forum involving government, development partners and NGOs/POs involved in the run-up towards the High Level Forum 4 in Busan, South Korea this November 2011, we call upon the government and its development partners to:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

i AidWatch Philippines is a broad network of 160 grassroots-based NGOs and civil society networks involve in the promotion of aid and development effectiveness in over 60 provinces in the Philippines.

ii The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) is a broad and diverse national network based in the Philippines of national-sectoral and regional networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) engaged in development work. CPDG engages in the CSO development effectiveness process.