Good development support in fragile, at-risk and crisis affected contexts, by Cyprien FABRE

Today again, as she has done every day for the last 10 years, Rose will wake up early and walk several kilometres to sell the few tomatoes and bell peppers she’s grown in the small parcel of land she shares with a group of women in the semi-urban neighbourhood she landed in several years ago. She left her village after many years of drought, no harvest, no income and a large debt to cope with. She was forced to sell her land and go, adding herself to the millions of urban poor crowding the city’s outskirts. 

The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook – Sceptics Welcome, by Alan WHAITES

We are at an interesting time in the evolution of thinking on governance practice; academics and economists agree like never before that institutions are crucial to economic and social performance, and yet practitioners often seem riddled with doubt about what really works. Institutions are central to the delivery of the new sustainable development goals, but exactly how you get good institutions remains opaque, contested and often a question of ideological taste.  

Is there a need for a global integrity standard?, by Oskar Karnebäck

How do you make sure that the money you invest in a country prone to corruption is not embezzled but spent according to intent? This discussion is very topical for international development cooperation agencies as they work in most of the countries that score poorly on the available corruption indices, such as the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators or the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. How do we make sure that our funds are used for meaningful investments in health, education and good governance, and do not disappear into private pockets?

Communicating anti-corruption messages in development, by Heather Marquette

Development cooperation partners are increasingly asked by their constituencies to show that they give value for money. The financial crisis has hit public agencies around the world hard, and many countries have cut their development cooperation budgets. Under these circumstances, development practitioners are under strong pressure from government – and ultimately their citizens – to justify what they spend on development assistance.

Do we need more ODA for governance reform?, by Eduardo González Cauhapé-Cazaux

The inclusion of a goal on governance in the post-2015 framework has been one of the most hotly debated issues in the search for a successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  This topic has generated - and will continue to generate - discussions across the development community. Some believe that peace and effective institutions are both development outcomes in their own right as well as vehicles to deliver other development goals. Others are not necessarily contesting this, but fear that including a goal on peace and institutions could detract from other development goals. The final proposal from the Open Working Group includes a goal on the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. The prospect of keeping this goal in the final agreement now looks more favourable. 

Return to sender: confiscation and repatriation of stolen assets, by Alessandra FONTANA

Question: What do these three men have in common – beyond having governed areas in the same region?

• James Ibori (former Nigerian governor)
• Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (son of the president of Equatorial Guinea)
• Sani Abacha (former president of Nigeria)

Answer: According to the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative and media reports, all of them have been – or are still being – investigated in connection with stolen assets and are in the process of having them confiscated. These investigations are often cumbersome but necessary to prove that the assets in question are linked to corruption and fraud.

Money laundering, bribery and tax evasion: how to freeze illicit flows, by Lena DIESING

Developing countries lose $1tn a year due to poor governance and lax regulations. A new OECD report suggests how governments can collaborate to clamp down on illicit finance

Continue reading the full blog at the Guardian website here

Don't Give Up on the Central African Republic, by Donata GARRASI

In the words of the UN Security Council, there has been “a total breakdown in law and order” in the Central African Republic (CAR) following the March overthrow of the government by the Séléka rebel group.


*This blog has been reposted with the permission of OECD Insights Blog. Click here for the original post*

To mark UN International Day of Peace, today’s article is by Donata Garrasi of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding

In the words of the UN Security Council, there has been “a total breakdown in law and order” in the Central African Republic (CAR) following the March overthrow of the government by the Séléka rebel group. UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos reported that CAR faces “a complex emergency characterised by violence, acute needs and grave protection issues.” According to Amos, all 4.6 million CAR citizens have been affected and 1.6 million people are in dire need of food, protection, health care, water, sanitation and shelter. Amos’s words were echoed by EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Kristalina Georgieva when she exposed the gravity of the situation of CAR to the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and called for greater international attention to what she described as a “forgotten crisis” and a country at risk of disintegration, in a region characterised by high levels of instability.