Southern Voice Alert 15: April 2014

Southern Voice’s Session in Mexico: High Level Meeting

The Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals in association with the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Dhaka and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), Delhi organised a Focus Session titled “Locating South-South Cooperation in Emerging Development Cooperation Architecture” on 15 April, 2014 at the first High-Level Meeting (HLM)of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) in Mexico city.

The focus session deliberated on core issues such as (i) How important is South-South cooperation in the evolving context of international development cooperation? (ii) Is it necessary and possible to develop a framework and a set of general principles as regards South-South Cooperation? and (iii) Can the OECD/DAC-centered development cooperation framework be improved upon by building on, learning from and leveraging South-South cooperation experiences?

The delegates from CPD joining the Mexico HLM were Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya, Chair, Southern Voice on Post-MDGs and Distinguished Fellow, CPD; Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Executive Director, CPD and Dr. Fahmida Khatun, Research Director, CPD.  The focus session was also addressed by H.E. Jaime Miranda, Foreign Minister of El Salvador ; Ambassador Omar Abou Eich, Deputy Assistant Foreign Minister for International Cooperation for Development of  Egypt; Ms. Mariam Mahamat Nour, Minister of Economy, Planning and International Cooperation of Chad; Ms. Tomoko Nishimoto, Director on South-South Cooperation, UNEP and Dr. Shekhar Shah, Director-General, NCAER, New Delhi.

Unpacking the Data Revolution at the Country Level: Midterm Stock Taking Workshop in Nairobi

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), The North-South Institute (NSI), in association with Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals (Southern Voice), and the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), organised a workshop to take midterm stock of the study on ‘Post-2015 Data Test: Unpacking the Data Revolution at the Country Level. The workshop was held in Nairobi, Kenya from 28 to 30 April 2014.

The first four sessions of the workshop heard about the progress made by the country research teams. The studies intend to road test the post-2015 development agenda and identify data challenges for its implementation and measurement. The idea is that if the study can do some beta testing before the post-2015 development framework is actually rolled out, that the global policymakers and architects of the post-2015 development agenda will be able to pre-emptively respond to identified challenges and maximize the post-2015 framework’s impact. Additionally, the initiative, appropriately named the Post-2015 Data Test, seeks to encourage, capture and promote analytical inputs from the global South in post-2015 deliberations to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda truly reflects universal priorities.

The first session was chaired by Molly Elgin-Cossart, New York University. The two presesnters for this session were Prof Mustafizur Rahman, CPD and Shannon Kindornay, NSI. The discussants were Sakho-Jimbira Maam Suwadu, IPAR-Senegal and Ama de-Graft Alkins, CSPS.

Philipp Schonrock, CEPEI chaired the second session and the keynote presentation was made by Mehmet Arda, Galatasaray University, Turkey. The discussants for the respective session were Prof Mustafizur Rahman, CPD and Blandina Kiama REPOA.

The third session was chaired by Kamen Naidoo, DPRU. The presenters for this session Sakho-Jimbria Maam Suwadu, IPAR-Senegal and Samuel Bramia, University of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone and the discussant were Shannon Kindornay, NSI and Juan Leon, GRADE.

The fourth session was chaired by Emma Samman, ODI and the presenters for this session were Blandina Kilama, REPOA and Ama de-Graft Aikins, CSPS. The discussants were Mehmet Arda, Galatasaray University and Samuel Bramia, University of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone.

Joseph Hoffman, PASGR chaired the fifth session titled ‘Way forward-Data Issues for Country Studies’ addressing the challenges faced by the country study team-Data Related Issues. Aniket Bhushan, NSI and Prof Mustafizur Rahman, CPD made presentations followed by discussion by Julian Chow, UN STATS, Eve de la Mothe Karoubi, SDSN and Trevor Fletcher,OECD.

The sixth session titled ‘Other Issues from Country Studies’ chaired by Nicholas Awortwi, PASGR, addressed the challenges faced by the country team-Other Issues. Emma Samman, ODI, Molly Elgin-Cossart, New York University and Philipp Schonrock, CEPEI, were the discussants for the session.

The last session was titled ‘Upcoming Work Plan’ was chaired by Minh-Thu D.Pham, UNF.  Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Southern Voice made presentation on the Communication and Outreach plan, followed by the publication plan and peer review process. The session was reflected by Joseph Hoffman, PASGR and Shanon Kindornay, NSI.