CIAO DATE: 08/04

Third Development Cooperation Forum: Human Security and the Future of Development Cooperation

I have long been concerned about the lack of vision, policy coherence, and overall effectiveness of international development cooperation. Yet, Carter Center programs over the past 20 years have been able to demonstrate that where sound nationally owned policies exist, where people are able to participate in determining their future, where enabling resources are made available, and where the donor community effectively cooperates and coordinates - development assistance yields effective results. I am, therefore, pleased to see that after years of dialog and debate the international community finally is beginning to show signs that it is committed to taking meaningful action to attack global poverty and reduce human suffering.

It has been a decade since the Carter Center's first development cooperation conference, which I co-hosted with then U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. In 1996 we held a second development cooperation conference to review the experiences of our Global Development Initiative in Guyana. With our Guyanese partners, we were able to demonstrate that the successful formulation of a comprehensive long-term national development strategy is dependent on its methodology - one that is country-driven and involves as many different interest groups as possible - including the political opposition. The national development strategy (NDS) that Guyanese civil society produced with broad-based participation in 2000 provides a long-term policy framework, which has already helped guide the preparation of Guyana's Poverty Reduction Strategy or PRSP process. It is hoped that a parliament-endorsed NDS will further serve to guide Guyana's sustainable development.