Secretary of State Clinton Attends High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

Today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Busan, South Korea to attend the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. She’ll join about 2000 other representatives of governments, civil society organizations and the private sector to “review global progress in improving the impact and value for money of development aid and make new commitments to further ensure that aid helps reduce poverty and supports progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.” The Busan Forum follows earlier fora in Rome (2003), Paris (2005) and Accra (2008), all of which aimed to develop and outline principles for aid effectivness.

The New America Foundation believes that an underexplored way to cut waste and reduce corruption in foreign aid is by providing development assistance directly to poor households via savings-linked cash transfers. Given the robust results seen with these programs, our ideas are being experimented with in numerous contexts. We hope that one outcome of the Busan Forum will be a commitment on behalf of the international donor community to provide technology, infrastructure and capacity building for governments and local financial institutions to enable cash transfers.

The Busan Forum’s website has many useful documents, including the latest draft of the Busan Outcome Document, "Aid Effectiveness 2005-2010: Progress in Implementing the Paris Declaration" and background information.