Essential Reading

High Level Forum Documents

• Conflict Prevention and Peace Building: What Counts as ODA? 
  As part of the DAC process of clarifying ODA eligibility in relation to certain conflict, peace and security activities, the DAC High Level Meeting agreed wording for a number of new items.
• Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness
  This declaration calls for ambitious reforms in the way aid is managed to improve its effectiveness - a fundamental challenge as we look ahead to the UN five-year review of the Millennium Delaration and the MDGs later this year. The declaration is also available in Spanish.
• Harmonisation, Alignment, Results: Report on Progress 
  This report looks at the widepsread activity in the field of aid effectiveness, and the effects of recent changes, to assess progress in implementing the international commitments of Rome, and Marrakech; it draws some lessons of experience, and it identifies areas and opportunities for further action.
• Development Co-operation Report 2004   
  This year's Development Co-operation Report is released at a time when the international community is focusing increased attention on the challenges inherent in a very unequal world, and hence on the absolute necessity to help the very poor improve their lives.

Other papers

• Doing Aid Better 
  Editorial by the OECD Secretary General and Chair of the DAC. The world was shaken by the drama which recently hit Asia. It showed that people everywhere respond to stark human needs when they see them. And it also showed yet again the need for aid to be delivered in a coordinated way.
• Public Opinion Polling and the Millennium Development Goals 
  OECD Development Centre Working Paper 238. This paper suggests a way to address the problem of monitoring changes in public awareness and attitudes in rich countries towards aid by way of a common questionnaire for all DAC countries to use in their national surveys, centred on the Millennium Development Goals.
• Eurobarometer: Europeans expect the EU to act as driving force for development 
  The European public expects the European Union to play a central role in development cooperation, especially in Africa. According to Eurobarometer, public awareness of Commission activities in this field and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is limited. For the first time, this two-yearly opinion poll on development policy has covered the 25 EU Member States.