UNDESA/OESC
United Nations DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS
Preparing for the 2012 Development Cooperation Forum
Luxembourg High-level Symposium
“Working together to increase the development impact of aid” 18-19 October 2011 Centre Culturel de Rencontre Abbaye de Neumünster, Luxembourg (city)
DRAFT PROGRAMME (as of 13 October 2011) The landmark Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development stressed the “importance that ODA plays, leveraging and sustaining financing for development in developing countries”. The need to meet ODA commitments has been repeatedly reaffirmed, most recently at the 2010 United Nations MDG Summit. The Monterrey Consensus also called for intensifying efforts to promote the “use of ODA to leverage additional financing for development, such as foreign direct investment, trade and domestic resources”. This message was reiterated in the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) in 2010, which stressed that the forum should “strengthen its work to identify best practices in this regard.” Against this backdrop, the Luxembourg Symposium aims to develop policy recommendations on how development cooperation can best help countries to enhance the impact of development cooperation and reduce aid dependency by catalyzing other sources of development finance that have a strong impact in reducing poverty. The first day of the Symposium will debate how to ensure that the growing amounts of aid targeted at mobilizing other sources of development finance (such as tax revenue, inclusive financial sectors, including microfinance and foreign direct investment) have maximum impact on poverty reduction and other internationally agreed development goals as well as on sustained inclusive growth. It will analyse lessons learned from good practices and address key concerns and challenges. The second day of the Symposium will discuss how programme countries can manage and use different sources of development finance and different modalities of cooperation in a coherent manner. One session will also be dedicated to ways of strengthening mutual accountability on aid commitments among the different development actors. Policy recommendations from the Luxembourg Symposium will feed into the preparations of the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum which will be held in June 2012 in New York. They will also inform the Fourth High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in November-December 2011.