While the issue of aid effectiveness has been discussed extensively between the Royal Government of Cambodia and donor community, few NGOs have been engaged in these national discussions. Many NGOs based in the province are not aware that these discussions are taking place.
In the attempt to engage provincial NGOs in the national aid effectiveness agenda, CCC in cooperation with Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) conducted five training workshops in various regional areas of Cambodia The workshops involved 328 participants from 287 provincial NGOs. This series of workshops helped participants to become aware of internal and external factors that facilitated and/or hampered their own efforts and potential to contribute to development assistance in Cambodia. In addition, the workshops provided opportunities for NGOs across the country to dialogue with government officials and in particular representatives from the CDC.
Participants learnt about the concept and principles of aid effectiveness as expressed in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA). They found the concept and principles to apply to the aid relationship between official donors and recipient governments and to be relevant to NGO relationships with both sub-national governments and international NGOs that are their donor counterparts. Such awareness enable the sub-national NGO leaders to reflect and become better change agents while working with their respective fund providers and beneficiaries by aligning their thinking and actions in line with the 5 principles.
During the workshops it was suggested that official donors and international NGOs should reduce their direct project implementation. At the same time, they should do more to provide financial support and strengthen the capacity of the local NGOs to work together with the government, Both national and international NGOs need to promote the principles of the Paris Declaration (PD) in their development projects. They should be invited to participate in preparing, implementing, and monitoring development plans at the sub-national levels. Meanwhile, NGOs should keep promoting their internal ownership and accountability. For future engagement in aid effectiveness discussions, two focal point persons were established in each province, selected by participants from respective provinces who attended the training workshops.
Consolidated feedback from the series of workshops confirmed an overwhelming need for provincial NGOs to link up their day-to-day work to aid effectiveness’s principles. Additional dialogues and consultations on related to Aid Effectiveness should be of multi-stake holder nature involving local authorities, donor and recipient NGOs. These dialogues and consultations will overtime bring all parties concerned on the same page and will also contribute to foster closer relationships between the entire NGO community, the donor community and the host government.
Minutes of CSO-DP on March 23, 2010 English (PDF 2MB)
NGO statement to third CDCF Â Khmer(PDF 66KB) | English (PDF 26KB)
Aid Effectiveness Global linkage Download
