In November 2011, Action for Global Health participated in the Busan Aid Effectiveness Civil Society Forum and the High Level Forum together with health advocates from the Busan Health Working group convened by the network. Our goal in the run up…

At the end of November, 2,000 representatives of governments, international organisations and NGOs convened in Busan as the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Just before the meeting we proposed four criteria by which to judge its outco…

The Busan Summit (29. November to 1. December), which was nearly shipwrecked by China’s interim refusal to sign the final declaration, had to resolve a basic dilemma.

For many decades development aid of western donors has been pretty well shielded from probing questions by the public opinion and politicians. Development aid was, and to some extend still is, essentially seen as “helping poor people”, a charitabl…

The ‘development world’, which may be referred to as a world in it’s own right, has witnessed yet another high level gathering at a ‘critical juncture’ in global development. 

As many of those gathered here in Busan, I feel very excited about the chance we have to collectively shape the way in which development is practiced.

I have some good and some not so good news about aid. First, the good news. The aid landscape has seen three important changes during the last decade that have had a transformative, positive effect onthe very nature of aid.

We’ll start with a close-up of a woman on her knees. She seems to be scrubbing some tiles. We track back and see that in fact she’s scrubbing the tyre tracks off a forecourt.

The Busan Conference can be a make it or break it conference for the future of worldwide development cooperation. It can turn the page by being self-critical and encompassing many more players and actors.

Today, the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness has opened in Busan, Korea. The HLF4 is an opportunity for the global development community to come together and showcase the results that our partner countries have been producing, and to sh…