Appointment of co-chairs and Executive Committee

Another key departure from the previous structure was to appoint two co-chairs of the WP to replace the one-chair option. The selection / nomination process led to two nominees: Koos Richelle (European Commission) and myself (Egypt). Our names were put forward for endorsement and we took over from the outgoing chair, Jan Cedergren, who had ably managed the WP deliberations. Japan, which had registered some uneasiness about a perceived lack of transparency in the process, subsequently expressed its full support for the new co-chairs (OECD WP-EFF, 2009e).¹⁵ Two vice-chairs were nominated: Barbara Lee (World

15 For the record, my nomination was initiated as follows: Egypt was among the partner countries contacted to establish interest in nominating a suitable senior individual as a candidate to be assessed according to a selection process administered by the DCD Secretariat, who contacted 23 partner countries and 30 OECD members to submit nominations. The straw voting for the four candidates showed no consensus on any nominee, causing the Secretariat to make fresh requests for submitting new names. In response, the Egyptian Minister for International Cooperation proposed my name and submitted an official nomination on 4 December 2008. The EC submitted the name of Koos Richelle. A total of four nominees was announced on closing the nominations on 31 January 2009, and each was requested to submit a one- to two-page outline of their visions for what the WP needs to achieve, how they would seek to contribute as chair or co-chair, and to affirm their readiness to commit the time needed for the task. I submitted the outline on February 10. The nominations were then submitted to straw votes in the second round, and the results indicated that the highest votes went to Abdel-Malek and Richelle, respectively, with both partner countries and OECD members expressing their preference for the two candidates as co-chairs. The official announcement was made on March 17, barely two weeks prior to the WP meeting.

Bank) and Joon Oh (Republic of Korea). It must be said that the Secretariat (who was entrusted with the job of handling nominations,

“elections” and appointment announcements) did a professional and non-biased job through wide-ranging consultations with stakeholders and by keeping everyone informed. I was therefore somewhat surprised by Japan’s reaction about a lack of transparency. More details about the nominations for co-chairs are found in footnote 15 above.

Taking up such a joint responsibility of managing a large and very diverse group of members was no mean task. It was positive that Koos – whom I had never met before – and I discovered that we shared a similar vision about how to approach the assignment and resolve differences of opinion.

This helped manage the sometimes highly controversial discussions and steer the dialogue towards consensus.¹⁶ Nomination by our constituencies did not imply that each co-chair would support his constituency’s position.

This would have damaged our credibility and undermined the even-handedness in dealing with issues. This was made clear at the outset.

The Executive Committee was composed of 26 members: 10 partner country members; 10 members representing DAC and multilateral institu-tions; 1 civil society representative; and 5 ex-officio members, which included the 2 co-chairs, the 2 vice-chairs and the DAC chair. Clusters’

co-chairs joined as members. I voiced clear concerns about committee size, preferring that it be 12–15 members for the sake of efficiency. But this was considered too small to accommodate stakeholders’ demands.

Such was the nature of the compromise that the co-chairs had to finally give in, but we paid a price, as I said earlier in terms of adopting a cumbersome and lengthy decision-making process. WP members were kept informed by sharing documents and communicating via email, text message, etc. Transparency was essential to the Committee’s work as well as that of its subsidiary units. Looking back, my concerns about committee size were supported by issues that arose during committee meetings. There is little doubt in my mind that the smaller the size, the more efficient the

16 Koos and I made a habit of regularly spending some coffee breaks and lunches together to review issues and agree on a unified approach prior to the WP and Executive Committee meetings. This was time well invested. Sometimes we agreed to disagree and took the discussion to the plenary meeting for sorting out. This also showed that the co-chairs did not “collude” to impose or promote any particular position.

handling of issues at hand, and that this did not imply keeping some stakeholders guessing about what was going on.

Our top priority was now to focus on what was needed at the country level. We were determined to focus on implementation, and we managed meetings in a business-like manner. As it was not feasible to deliver on all 56 AAA actions within the two-year frame, clusters and work streams were asked to prepare a strategic outline of key deliverables and how to achieve them. Box 6 lists clusters’ deliverables.

Given the importance of continued partner-country participation, the Committee endorsed a proposal by the Philippines to “institutionalise the Caucus” as a Southern platform. A similar proposal was presented earlier by K. Y. Amoako, who called for strengthening the PCCG (Amoako, 2008). Caucus Group meetings were held on the margins of WP sessions and drew anywhere from 15 to 25 members. This was perhaps one of the best actions taken to give more space to developing countries by recognising them as a group and receiving their requests as delivered by one of their spokespersons.

Although by my background I was associated with the Caucus Group and asked to chair some of their meetings, I made it clear that I could participate only in my capacity as co-chair and declined to serve as the Group’s spokesman. This was accepted and it was the correct stand to take, especially since a few (only a very few, to my knowledge) implied or assumed that, as co-chair, I represented developing countries at the WP – an assumption that I corrected at the first meeting and affirmed a couple of times later, stressing that neither co -chair acted to defend one side or the other, but were elected rather to represent everyone without taking sides. Koos and I were in full agree-ment on this point, often arguing issues raised by developing countries or aid providers as objectively as possible. I was told later that this added to our credibility in running WP meetings.

Another agenda item was a proposal by Korea to host the next HLF in Seoul in October 2011, which was welcomed. This was followed by a proposal by Colombia to host a high-level event on SSC and capacity development in 2010, which was also strongly supported.

 We concluded the first meeting by summing up the points agreed to guide future work and avoid the risk of spreading our limited resources thinly over the whole “battle front”:

 WP was to become more action-oriented, emphasising country-level delivery.

 Work units were to produce two-page outlines showing expected deliverables.

 The disconnect between the Head Office and field missions of aid providers had to be addressed.

 The WP structure was to be simplified and clearer directions set, stressing partner-country leadership and taking note of limited resources.

 Emphasis was to be placed on results rather than rules, mechanisms and reports.

A comment about clusters is in order here. Cluster coordinators – supported by their members – felt uncomfortable with co-chairs restricting their outline of deliverables to two pages. References were made to the AAA document and to the need to address its recommended actions more fully than was possible in two pages. Our point, however, was not to deal with everything in that document but only focus on the actions that each cluster deemed would make a difference. This was easier said than done, and the co-chairs had to argue repeatedly that focus meant sifting through the more than 50 actions and distilling them into a more manageable set of deliverables.

It took at least two plenary sessions to get this point across – and in the end we had to show some, but not much, flexibility. Essentially, we managed to reduce the number of deliverables to what we hoped we could actually deliver.

Overall, this was a good meeting, in which WP members shared their visions about priorities and laid down the foundations for supporting the implementation of an ambitious set of goals.

Box 6: Illustrative cluster deliverables Cluster A – Ownership and accountability

– Mapping of practices and systems to agree on definitions of components of domestic and mutual accountability; definition of components of broad-based ownership

– Mapping of CD practices; reaching common understanding of how to promote and support Southern think tanks

Cluster B – Strengthening and using country systems

– Practitioner’s guide to using country systems

– Communication tools on the benefits of using country systems

– Guidance on doing diagnostic work on country systems

– Guidance to support preparation of CD strategy

– Good practice in strengthening parliamentary oversight Cluster C – Transparent and responsible aid

– Good practice principles in country division of labour (DoL)

– International dialogue on cross-country DoL

– Indicators to monitor in-country DoL

– Monitoring improvements in aid transparency

– Collecting good practices on conditionalities Cluster D – Assessing progress

– Developing enhanced Paris monitoring survey

– Agree arrangements to monitor Fragile States principles

– Ad hoc reviews of progress

Cluster E – Managing for development results

– Support partner-country learning on MfDR

– Strengthen public-sector capacity for MfDR

– Refine and adapt self-assessment tools for MfDR

– Good practice on results-reporting in partner countries and aid providers

Box 6 (cont.): Illustrative cluster deliverables Task team on health as a tracer sector

– Prepare interim report on best practice in cluster areas for use in health and other sectors

– Stock-taking event on aid effectiveness progress in health sector Task team on South-South cooperation

– Guidelines to determine good and bad practices of SSC

– Case studies on SSC

– Summary report and documentation on SSC for inclusion in preparations for HLF4

Source: WP-EFF (2009b)