This chapter outlines how development partners can foster more equitable partnerships to reduce poverty and inequalities. It frames what equitable partnerships mean in practice – advancing both equity in process and outcomes – and why navigating power dynamics between and within countries is essential to prioritising the interests of those furthest behind. It examines how development partners can support inclusive government-led strategies, policies and systems while engaging strategically in contexts where government commitment to poverty and inequality reduction is limited. It explores how to support civil society as agents of change, in their own right and as development co-operation implementers. Finally, it sets out how to centre people experiencing poverty and inequalities as rights-holders through meaningful participation.
OECD Guidance on Reducing Poverty and Inequalities through Development Co‑operation
Abstract
Development partners engage with a wide range of actors and being deliberate about how these partnerships are structured, and who they centre, is essential to effective poverty and inequality reduction. As governments hold primary responsibility for advancing poverty and inequality reduction, partnering with low- and middle-income country (L&MIC) governments is critical to support their policies, investments and institutions. Partnerships with civil society actors (CSAs) are also critical to advancing social progress: they deliver services to those furthest behind, hold duty-bearers to account and advocate for structural change. Underpinning all these considerations is the need to place people experiencing poverty and inequalities at the centre of development co-operation partnerships – not as passive beneficiaries, but as rights-holders whose voices, agency and lived realities need to be reflected in the priorities and practices of development co-operation and in broader public life.
This chapter provides guidance on how development partners can shift towards more equitable partnerships that contribute to reducing poverty and inequalities with these three key actors. Section 4.1 focuses on partnerships with L&MIC governments, examining how development partners can support government strategies and systems in ways that strengthen social development outcomes and reinforce government leadership and institutional capacity over time. Section 4.2 explores partnerships with CSAs as key agents of inclusive development and structural change. Finally, Section 4.3 considers how to ensure the meaningful participation and empowerment of people experiencing poverty and inequalities, grounded in a human rights-based approach (HRBA).
Although not included in this chapter, partnerships with other actors can also significantly shape poverty and inequality outcomes, and some of these partnerships are covered elsewhere in this Guidance. Section 3.3 addresses partnerships with private sector actors through the lens of private sector engagement and mobilisation for inclusive economic development. Other relevant actors include philanthropic foundations and diaspora communities (see Section 3.4) and academia and research institutions (see Section 5.1.3). Furthermore, South-South and triangular co-operation also offer important modalities for advancing more balanced partnerships through shared ownership, mutual accountability and context-driven solutions (UN, 2025[1]; OECD/IsDB, 2025[2]).
Tackling poverty and inequalities requires that partnerships are not just effective in delivering results, but also equitable in how they are structured and implemented, and how they distribute power between development actors. This chapter uses the concept of equitable partnerships to refer to approaches that advance both equity in process and equity in outcomes:
Equity in process refers to partnerships that strengthen the agency, leadership and decision making power of local actors, especially partner country governments, CSAs and people experiencing poverty and inequalities. At their core, such partnerships are grounded in trust, shared responsibility and mutual respect and accountability. They aim to redress imbalances in power and resources between development actors, enabling them to shape priorities and practices together. Equity goes further than inclusion: while inclusion ensures that diverse actors have a seat at the table, equity transforms how the table itself is designed to overcome systemic barriers and redistribute power. Central to this is the principle of country ownership – the idea that partner countries should lead their own development processes. A people-centred, whole-of-society approach to development builds on this principle by broadening engagement alongside central government leadership to include civil society, local governments, communities and people experiencing poverty and inequalities. This approach helps to ensure that development priorities, processes and decisions reflect the needs, perspectives and lived realities of those furthest behind, and that leaders and institutions are accountable to them.
Equity in outcomes refers to partnerships that aim to achieve sustained reductions in poverty and inequalities by addressing both immediate needs and deeper structural disparities in the distribution of resources and opportunities, and in people’s ability to exercise their rights and cope with and adapt to shocks. More equitable relationships can enhance equitable outcomes: by elevating the voices, agency and leadership of local actors – including people experiencing poverty and marginalisation and those representing them – development partners can better respond to context-specific needs and lived realities. By rebalancing power and resource asymmetries between L&MICs and provider countries, and by strengthening representation of marginalised communities, equitable partnerships can contribute to reducing inequalities both between and within countries.
While not new, efforts to promote more balanced partnerships have gained renewed urgency and are more explicitly focused on addressing underlying power imbalances. Such commitments have been articulated over time, from the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness to the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda. More recently, momentum has grown for a systemic shift towards development co-operation that is more inclusive, locally led and attentive to power dynamics (OECD, 2023[3]; Peace Direct, 2023[4]). There have also been further calls to address entrenched norms and biases that perpetuate historical power imbalances, social injustices, colonial legacies, racism and other intersecting inequalities within and between countries (Wong Pérez et al., 2024[5]).
Structural power asymmetries – in financing, decision making authority and influence over governance processes – continue to shape development co-operation.
However, significant barriers constrain progress towards more equitable partnerships. Structural power asymmetries – in financing, decision making authority and influence over governance processes – continue to shape development co-operation in ways that limit partners’ agency. The 2026 Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation monitoring findings reveal persistent challenges (OECD/UNDP, 2026[6]). First, development partners’ use of country results frameworks has stagnated, and while their objectives are largely aligned with those of partner countries, their use of national statistical systems, results indicators and public financial management systems remains limited. Second, in almost 75% of partner countries surveyed, civil society organisations (CSOs) report that consultations with development partners are often of poor quality and insufficiently aligned with their priorities, with many noting unpredictable funding and a tendency for development partners to pursue their own agendas. Third, while development partners and partner country governments commonly prioritise groups such as women, youth, children, people facing poverty and persons with disabilities, they remain less consistently engaged with other marginalised groups, including older persons, internally displaced people and LGBTIQ+ communities, leaving them at risk of being overlooked.
Institutional incentives within development partners often prioritise risk management, compliance and upward accountability, limiting the willingness to share control over resources and decision making. Persistent cultural biases can undervalue local knowledge and reinforce reliance on external expertise. Structural inequalities in access to information, financing and decision making spaces further restrict the ability of local actors – particularly those closest to affected communities – to engage on equal terms. Finally, growing domestic pressures in provider countries to align development co-operation with national interests, alongside constraints on ODA budgets, risk further constraining progress towards more country-owned development. Addressing these challenges requires more than technical adjustments, but deeper transformations in the norms, incentives, systems and institutional cultures that underpin development co-operation. Development partners have therefore deepened their reflections on how to better align their policies and programmes with principles of equitable partnership, helping to create cultures and structures that share and shift power (OECD, 2024[7]) (see Box 4.1).
Pursuing equitable partnerships also requires navigating complex internal power and political dynamics within partner countries. Elites, institutions and interest groups hold unequal and often competing influence – and the actors that development partners most readily engage with, including senior government officials, business leaders and well-established CSOs, do not always act principally in the interests of people experiencing poverty and inequalities. In some cases, their interests may be directly opposed to pro-poor and pro-equality action. Navigating these realities is therefore key to ensuring that development co-operation prioritises and protects the interests of those furthest behind, rather than reinforcing existing power imbalances. This requires strategic engagement grounded in robust political economy analysis and a deliberate effort to seek out and support actors, including marginalised communities themselves, whose priorities align most closely with poverty and inequality reduction. Sections 4.1.4 and 4.3 explore how development partners can navigate these tensions in practice.
Postcolonial development co-operation refers to approaches that explicitly challenge and seek to dismantle the enduring power structures, institutional inequalities and paternalistic mindsets inherited from colonial rule (OECD, 2023[3]). It forms part of broader efforts to address historical injustices and persistent power imbalances entrenched in development systems. Some critics argue that international aid reinforces historical colonial ties through contemporary political and economic interests (Gwatiwa, 2024[8]), while others call for the decolonisation of aid from historical colonial powers by framing it as “reparations” for the past, and for reimagining the norms and redistributing the power and resources that underpin the international development architecture (Peace Direct, 2021[9]). In response, some development partners have begun engaging in postcolonial reflection, reviews and reform. As part of these efforts, development partners can consider applying anti-racist, intersectional and decolonial lenses to policies and programmes, reviewing practices to identify biases and strengthen accountability and incorporating local decolonial knowledge and perspectives to enhance understanding, capabilities and partnerships (Tawake et al., 2021[10]; OECD, 2023[11]).
Overcoming coloniality in German development policy
Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is undertaking efforts to confront and dismantle colonial legacies in its co-operation, stating in their development policy that “any traces of coloniality in German development policy are to be identified and eliminated” (BMZ, 2026[12]). This involves critically reflecting on Germany's colonial past, addressing economic and representational inequalities, and engaging in a dialogue on historical injustices. This open, transparent and sometimes uncomfortable dialogue about the past and future of institutional relationships can foster mutual understanding, build trust and lay the groundwork for equitable partnerships (BMZ, n.d.[13]). Tangible outcomes include funding research examining how social protection systems in Africa are shaped by colonial legacies and postcolonial influences, as well as a series of knowledge exchanges with African scholars on the influence of colonial histories, attitudes and institutional structures on Germany's development and foreign policy towards Africa (IDOS, 2025[14]). This approach has shaped BMZ’s Africa Strategy which aims to support African-led initiatives, promote partnerships based on mutual respect and shared goals, and tackle structural inequalities and discrimination through an intersectional feminist and postcolonial lens, by addressing racism and colonial legacies and promoting the rights of marginalised groups (BMZ, 2023[15]).
Belgium’s development co-operation objective of addressing historical colonialism
Belgium’s Directorate-General for Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Aid recognises that Belgium’s “colonial past has had a lasting impact on both our society and the colonised societies. It has created geopolitical legacy and power dynamics that are still present today. Remembering this and attempting to address it is one of the paths our country is following” (MFA Belgium, n.d.[16]). Belgium commissioned an independent report on decolonising its development sector, which found that colonial patterns continue to persist in its development co-operation programme. Belgium also promotes multi-voiced debate and exchange among actors in the development sector on this topic. Belgium has supported decolonisation initiatives such as the Bokundoli project, developed with African scientists and the Belgian CSO Coopération Éducation Culture, which aims to “decolonise minds” by rethinking the teaching of history in Congo, with the aim of developing critical thinking, tolerance, the promotion of peace and active citizenship (Bokundoli, n.d.[17]). Inspired by UNESCO's General History of Africa textbooks and in line with the African Union's Agenda 2063, this project integrates Pan-Africanism and African renaissance into the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s education system, supporting a decolonial and transformative vision of education and contributing to global efforts to combat racism and discrimination and the quest for justice.
Governments hold primary responsibility for reducing poverty and inequalities within their national context and for advancing their citizens’ rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living (UN, 2015[18]; OHCHR, 2012[19]). As recognised in the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, this responsibility includes adopting comprehensive national strategies to reduce poverty and social exclusion, prioritising people living in extreme poverty in public policies, ensuring equitable access to essential goods and services facilities, and promoting policy coherence. This central mandate means governments are uniquely positioned to lead policies, investments and programmes and to co-ordinate action across sectors and stakeholders to build more inclusive and equitable societies and transform the lives of those facing poverty and exclusion – although their capacity or willingness to fulfil this mandate varies significantly across contexts.
Development partners can play a meaningful role in strengthening L&MIC governments' capacity and resources to deliver on this mandate. This section focuses on how they can do so, by supporting the government-led strategies, systems and capacities that enable more equitable and inclusive policymaking and sustained reductions in poverty and inequalities. This aligns with longstanding development effectiveness principles and renewed momentum behind locally led development and emerging initiatives – such as the Accra Reset Initiative – that promote more Southern-led and -centred approaches to development co-operation.
This section outlines how development partners can support government-led efforts to tackle poverty and inequalities across several interconnected areas. It first sets out how they can support the foundations of equitable policymaking: strengthening evidence, data systems and inclusive policy dialogue; embedding equity into public financial management and budgeting systems; and strengthening accountability and oversight mechanisms. It then provides guidance on how development partners can support governments in designing and implementing people-centred and rights-based policies across social, economic, environmental and governance domains. The section then examines equitable co-operation modalities that pursue transformative, long-term engagement to tackle structural drivers, align with country-led priorities and systems, and support subnational governance for inclusive development. Finally, it explores how development partners can engage strategically in more challenging contexts where government commitment to poverty and inequality reduction is limited, contested or actively being undermined.
Across all these areas, development partners can support governments not just through financial and technical assistance, but also through policy dialogue and diplomacy. This means it is essential to ground partnerships in a clear understanding of country contexts – including the drivers of poverty and inequalities, political economy dynamics, and governments' commitment and capacity to address them –to inform effective engagement (see Section 2.4.1).
Underpinning all these efforts is the need to acknowledge the structural power imbalances that characterise many development co-operation relationships. Addressing these imbalances goes beyond the scope of this chapter: ultimately it requires partner countries to have a greater voice in international financing and governance institutions, and more balanced responsibility for financing development outcomes. This chapter focuses on what development partners can do within their own relationships and programmes, while recognising that more systemic change – including reforms to the international development architecture – is equally necessary.
4.1.1. Strengthening government evidence, planning, budgeting and accountability for equitable outcomes
Effective poverty and inequality reduction requires governments to be equipped with the evidence, analytical capacity, budgeting tools and accountability mechanisms needed to design and implement equitable policies. Development partners can play a meaningful role in strengthening each of these interconnected functions by supporting the systems and processes that enable governments to translate commitments into equitable outcomes.
Supporting the evidence base
Strengthening government data systems on poverty and inequalities is a critical foundation. Development partners can support investments in national and subnational statistical systems, civil registration and vital statistics, administrative data and survey infrastructure. This includes helping governments improve data disaggregation beyond national averages to capture intersecting inequalities for example by income group, gender, age, disability, location, race, ethnicity and migration status, and link the data to service access and outcomes. It also covers support to upgrade national statistical office capacities and strengthening co-ordination with other government agencies, the private sector and civil society, including to harness geospatial, other innovative data sources and citizen-generated data. Section 5.1 provides further guidance on investing in data.
Development partners can also support governments in conducting poverty and inequality diagnostics and ensuring the findings feed into equity-focused planning and policy processes. This includes analysis of who benefits from or bears the cost of existing policies (e.g. benefit and financing incidence analysis), how taxes and transfers affect different groups (e.g. fiscal incidence analysis) and the potential social impacts of proposed reforms (e.g. microsimulation and macro-micro models). It is equally important to strengthen the capacity of officials in finance, planning and key sector ministries to use such analysis to inform planning documents and budget allocations, so that evidence shapes decisions rather than remaining in standalone reports. Supporting government collaboration with civil society, academia and oversight bodies in producing such diagnostics can enhance their quality, inclusiveness and utility as a basis for policy dialogue.
The EU-AFD Facility on Inequalities: Supporting the generation of evidence on inequalities
The EU and French Development Agency’s (AFD) Facility on Inequalities supports the generation of evidence on inequalities to inform partner countries’ fiscal policies (AFD, n.d.[20]). The Facility has supported a stronger understanding of multidimensional inequalities in over 30 countries, collaborating with governments, national statistical offices, local research centres and civil society. Through support to evidence and policy dialogue, it has contributed to a better integration of inequality-related concerns into policies and decision making across countries such as Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco and South Africa. For instance, in Colombia and Morocco, the Facility worked with ministries, researchers from the Commitment to Equity network and local researchers to conduct fiscal incidence analyses (FIAs) and use them in the preparation of fiscal reforms. AFD's Understanding the Role of Taxation in the Fight Against Inequalities project further examines how taxes, transfers and public expenditures affect income distribution, strengthening local research capacity and providing guidance on using tools such as FIA and microsimulation models to assess the distributional impacts of fiscal systems (AFD, 2024[21]).
Bridging the Gap: Strengthening disability-related data in Paraguay
The EU-funded Bridging the Gap II initiative, implemented by Spain’s Agency for International Development Co-operation (AECID), supported Paraguay in strengthening data systems to better inform inclusive public policies for persons with disabilities. Working with the National Secretariat for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and organisations of persons with disabilities, the programme helped integrate disability-related data into national information systems in line with Paraguay’s National Action Plan for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2015-2030). The project strengthened public institutions’ capacity to collect and analyse reliable and disaggregated data, making persons with disabilities more visible in national statistics and enabling evidence-based policy design. It also supported the development of indicators and targets to monitor progress under the action plan. By improving data availability and use, the initiative contributed to more inclusive planning processes and fostered a culture of monitoring, evaluation and accountability in policymaking (AECID, 2021[22]).
Germany’s support to integrating inequality reduction in national development plans.
The German Agency for International Cooperation’s (GIZ) Global Project on Reducing Inequality (2020-24) provided partner countries with tailored cross-sectoral expertise, capacity development and peer-to-peer exchange to help them integrate inequality reduction in national policymaking. The project used: i) Inequality Diagnostics to understand the multidimensional nature of inequalities, evaluate political strategies and develop policy solutions tailored to national circumstances; ii) a multisectoral approach to inequality with a distributional perspective; and iii) the tailoring of project design and services to partner countries’ needs through a collaborative approach (OECD, 2024[23]).
Supporting inclusive policy dialogue
Development partners can support governments in leading inclusive, whole-of-society policy dialogue that draws on poverty and inequality diagnostics to inform policymaking. Such dialogue can help shape a shared understanding of the root causes of deprivation and disparities and inform national development plans and other processes where key distributional decisions are made. These might include Just Energy Transition Partnerships (OECD, 2024[24]) or consultations accompanying sector reforms or major legislation, for example on social protection or taxation. Development partners can support the integration of a human rights perspective into policy dialogue to anchor it in states’ obligations and strengthen the perspectives and entitlements of rights-holders – particularly those most marginalised (SDC, 2021[25]). Given that inequality can be politically sensitive and closely linked to structural power imbalances, inclusivity can be supported by taking an adaptive approach to context, recognising that dialogue frequently involves actors who benefit from existing arrangements (UNRISD, 2024[26]). Support to government-led multistakeholder dialogue at national and subnational levels can be complemented by support to ad hoc platforms to broaden participation, particularly of non-governmental actors.
Supporting the engagement of marginalised groups alongside non-marginalised and influential groups in policy dialogue is key to effective and sustainable poverty- and inequality-reducing policies. Grounded in political economy analysis, paying particular attention to supporting the safe and meaningful participation of people experiencing poverty and marginalisation, under-represented groups, grassroots and community-based actors helps ensure policies reflect their rights, needs and priorities (see Sections 4.2 and 4.3). There is also value in engaging non-marginalised and more influential actors in policy dialogue as their buy-in is key for effective and sustained reform (AECID, 2024[27]; Dercon, 2023[28]). Such inclusive policy dialogue can help shape policy narratives and public discourse around poverty and inequalities more widely, including countering harmful or exclusionary narratives – for example around “deserving versus undeserving” groups – and build broader support for universal and equitable policies. In practice, balancing inclusive participation with political feasibility may entail trade-offs, as engaging certain groups may limit the willingness of others to participate. In such cases, context-specific and politically informed choices, including sequencing engagement, using indirect or parallel channels, and identifying ways to mitigate potential exclusion or backlash over time are important. These considerations are particularly relevant where government commitment to poverty and inequality reduction is limited or contested (see Section 4.1.4).
Support to inclusive policy dialogue can help counter harmful or exclusionary narratives and build broader support for universal and equitable policies.
Supporting equity across public financial management systems
Building on improved evidence and engagement, development partners can help governments embed equity considerations across their public financial management (PFM) systems, from analysis and consultation through to allocation, execution, monitoring and accountability (see Table 4.1). Drawing on approaches developed for gender-responsive PFM (UN Women, 2023[29]), adapted to broader equity objectives, this means providing technical assistance to support equity-responsive budgeting frameworks, the use of disaggregated data, expenditure tagging to track spending against poverty and inequality objectives, and equity-focused budget statements and audits that assess how public spending affects disadvantaged groups and regions. Strengthening transparency and parliamentary oversight around budget allocations can further reinforce accountability for equitable outcomes. The effectiveness of equity-focused budgeting ultimately depends on the overall strength of the PFM system, underscoring the importance of sustained support for wider PFM reforms.
Improving the efficiency of public spending can create significant fiscal space for investments that reduce poverty and inequalities. Low-income countries (LICs) face the largest spending efficiency output gaps, meaning they achieve far lower education, health or infrastructure outcomes per dollar spent, indicating substantial scope to reallocate or save resources by reducing PFM inefficiencies (Darko et al., 2025[31]). Addressing inefficiencies in health spending in Africa could generate efficiency gains estimated at roughly half of current development partner financing for health on the continent (Mahama, Youssouf and Kaseya, 2026[32]). Development partners can support finance and sector ministries to strengthen budget prioritisation, procurement and execution in key sectors such as health, education and social protection to maximise poverty and inequality reduction impacts from existing resources (Serebro and Hart, 2025[33]).
Strengthening accountability and oversight
Weak accountability and oversight systems can exacerbate poverty and inequalities by undermining rights and allowing policy decisions and public resources to be shaped by vested interests rather than the needs of disadvantaged populations. They enable governance failures such as elite capture, unequal participation and limited transparency (World Bank, 2017[34]). In particular, corruption exacerbates poverty and inequalities by distorting policy choices, diverting resources from essential services and weakening governments' capacity to finance social programmes. It undermines democratic processes, erodes trust in public institutions and hinders the realisation of human rights and dignity (OECD, Forthcoming[35]). By skewing spending toward rent-seeking activities, creating rents for well-connected groups and weakening tax collection, corruption deepens income and wealth inequalities. High levels of corruption can contribute to fiscal imbalances, especially in resource-rich countries, increasing public debt and raising the risk of social unrest (Clements, Gupta and Jalles, 2025[36]).
Development partners can support L&MIC governments in strengthening institutional accountability and oversight systems needed to safeguard rights and promote transparent and equitable policymaking and public spending. This includes reinforcing legal and regulatory frameworks that uphold transparency, participation and non-discrimination; integrating anti-corruption frameworks across sectors; and supporting oversight institutions – such as parliaments, supreme audit institutions (SAIs), anti-corruption bodies and independent institutions that monitor equality and human rights outcomes (see Box 4.3). In particular, support for national human rights institutions (NHRIs) has proven essential for advancing rights-based implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), supporting inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and sustaining peace (UNDP, 2021[37]).
Ireland’s support for supreme audit institutions
Irish Aid supports the strengthening of SAIs through the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions’ Development Initiative (IDI, 2024[38]). This initiative provides capacity development support to SAIs in L&MICs. Its programmes strengthen audit quality, institutional independence and oversight of public spending, contributing to stronger accountability and transparency in line with SDG 16.6 on accountable institutions. The initiative also supports SAIs in strengthening gender responsiveness and inclusion, including by promoting audits that assess how public policies and spending affect women and other left behind groups, and by supporting more inclusive governance within SAIs themselves.
Germany’s capacity development initiatives in Kenya
In Kenya, GIZ collaborates with the National Gender and Equality Commission on capacity development initiatives, including training on fiscal incidence analysis, and inequality monitoring and evaluation to expand understanding of income, wealth and opportunity disparities and to identify appropriate policy responses. As a constitutional commission mandated to safeguard the rights of women, youth, persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups, it plays an important role in strengthening oversight and promoting more equitable public policies and spending. The aim of this ongoing collaboration is the development of the Kenya Action Plan on Inequality Reduction, expected to be launched in 2027 (NGEC, 2026[39]).
The Asia Pacific Forum’s promotion of human rights community-led development
The Asia Pacific Forum, alongside other development partners, supported a regional programme to promote human rights community-led development with NHRIs in Fiji, Samoa and the Cook Islands. Pacific NHRIs helped design the approach through the Lautoka Navigation Principles and a Pacific-specific human rights community-led development model, ensuring it reflects local values and priorities, as outlined in the Forum’s guidelines. Each NHRI received grants to implement community projects. For example, communities in Fiji addressed clean water access through inclusive dialogue, while in Samoa the model was applied to climate change through village governance systems and in the Cook Islands it empowered persons with disabilities and youth in disaster planning, demonstrating locally led, culturally appropriate and rights-based development (APF, 2024[40]).
In parallel, development partners can help strengthen societal accountability mechanisms that enable citizens, civil society and communities to monitor policymaking, public spending and service delivery. Citizen engagement and social accountability approaches – such as community scorecards, social audits and grievance redress mechanisms – that actively engage people experiencing poverty and inequalities can help ensure that policies and budgets respond to their needs and that resources reach those furthest behind. Their effectiveness depends on being embedded within broader governance and PFM systems, and being linked to institutional processes that can respond to citizen feedback and address underlying power imbalances (Malena, 2023[41]). They can also help protect the civic space that makes such participation possible and meaningful, as constraints on freedoms of expression, association and access to information can limit oversight and expose civil society to reprisals (see Sections 4.2.4 and 4.3.4).
4.1.2. Supporting people-centred and rights-based policies
There are a wide range of well-known and extensively studied policy solutions for tackling poverty and inequalities (OECD, 2024[24]; World Bank, 2024[42]; Sumner, unpublished[43]; UNRISD, 2023[44]). Evidence across regions shows that both multidimensional poverty and inequalities can be reduced through a coherent and context-specific mix of social, economic, climate and environmental and governance measures. The relevance, feasibility and effectiveness of these policies vary depending on country context, underscoring the importance of grounding development co-operation support in robust context analysis (see Section 2.4.1), and aligning with partner country governments’ national strategies and systems where possible. While governments hold primary responsibility for these policies, their design and implementation depend on the active engagement of the private sector, civil society and communities themselves – whose roles are explored further in Sections 4.2 and 4.3.
Where aligned with partner country priorities and strategies, development partners can support governments in designing and implementing policies that are both people-centred and rights-based across social, economic, environmental and governance domains, while also strengthening the systems that enable their effective delivery and implementation.
A human rights-based approach focuses on ensuring that all individuals can claim and exercise their rights without discrimination (see Section 2.2.2). It requires strengthening the capacities of both duty-bearers – particularly state institutions responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights – and rights-holders, while reinforcing accountability, participation and access to redress.
People-centred approaches to policy and decision making share a number of underlying principles: a focus on equity and inclusion and reaching the most vulnerable and marginalised first; recognising the multidimensionality of well-being outcomes and their linkages and trade-offs, adopting a co-ordinated cross-silo, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach; investing in an evidence base that reflects the reality of peoples’ experiences, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour; and focusing on the long term through prevention, early intervention and sustainability (OECD, 2024[45]). They emphasise aligning policies with people's lived realities and needs over the life-course, removing administrative and social structural barriers preventing access, and continuously adapting policies based on feedback and evidence (OECD, 2024[46]) – see Table 4.7 for examples of policy levers to increase the participation of marginalised groups.
Together, these approaches have practical implications that cut across all policy domains. They require formal coverage to translate into effective access in practice; policies to be responsive to diverse, intersecting vulnerabilities and inequalities, including informality, gendered care responsibilities and geographic disparities; the embedding of participation, transparency and accountability mechanisms throughout the policy cycle; and for affected individuals and communities being able to seek redress. The following paragraphs highlight how development partners can apply these principles in supporting governments across social, economic, environmental and governance policy domains.
Development partners can support governments in designing and implementing policies that are rights-based and people-centred across social, economic, environmental and governance domains.
Supporting inclusive social policies
Development partners can support governments to strengthen inclusive social protection and essential service systems that reduce multidimensional poverty and inequalities while enabling individuals to realise their rights in practice. Income support and access to essential services are mutually reinforcing components of inclusive and resilient social policy systems, combining income security with the provision of basic goods and services needed for a dignified life (De Schutter, 2026[47]). Beyond their intrinsic importance from a rights perspective, these policies also constitute core investments in people, strengthening human capital, capabilities and resilience, and laying the foundations for inclusive economic participation (Alaka, Schady and Silva, 2026[48]). Development partners can support partner country governments in strengthening these systems in ways that reflect country priorities and strengthen institutional frameworks, including through support to:
Inclusive and shock-responsive social protection systems. Direct social transfers – both unconditional and conditional (e.g. tied to health, nutrition and education outcomes) – are among the most effective tools for lifting people out of poverty (Gentilini, 2022[49]). Expanding social protection systems towards universal coverage is essential to uphold social rights and ensure inclusive protection. Ensuring these systems are able to anticipate and respond to protect groups most vulnerable to climate, economic or health shocks is critical in contexts of increasingly frequent crises (ILO, 2024[50]).
Universal basic services in health and education. Investing in primary health care, education, early childhood development and nutrition programmes can reduce inequalities and improve life chances by strengthening health, learning, cognitive development and future economic opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged populations (WHO, 2019[51]; World Bank, 2018[52]).
Care systems. Support for public investment in maternal health, early childhood education and elder care improves well-being while enabling greater economic participation, particularly for women (UN Women, 2018[53]).
Living conditions and basic infrastructure. Investments in safe and affordable housing and basic water, sanitation and electricity infrastructure are central to reducing multidimensional poverty and addressing structural inequalities, as lack of access to these essential services remains a key driver of deprivation and exclusion (UN Habitat, 2022[54]).
Supporting inclusive economic policies
Development partners can support governments in embedding poverty and inequality objectives across fiscal, monetary, financial and structural policies. Conventional wisdom has long placed economic growth as a cornerstone of development, including the reduction of poverty and inequality. However, shortcomings in traditional measures of growth, such as GDP (UN, 2026[55]; De Schutter, 2026[47]), growth’s impact on planetary boundaries (Anda et al., 2025[56]) and uneven distribution of gains from global growth both within and between countries (Bourguignon, 2004[57]; Ravallion, 2001[58]) have all spurred challenges to conventional thinking on growth. There is a growing impetus to shift away from a hyper-focus on aggregate GDP growth toward a more deliberate focus on building foundationally inclusive economies, and growing traction around economic models grounded in human dignity and well-being (DEAL, n.d.[59]), (OECD, 2024[45]). These alternative paradigms vary, from ideas for making growth more sustainable to challenges to the very premise of growth in present-day high-income countries (Anda et al., 2025[56]), but share a common thread that strengthening economic opportunities in L&MICs is critical to raising basic living standards and lifting people out of deprivation. In response, development partners can support governments in incorporating poverty and inequality into facets of economic policy, including through support to:
Fiscal policy. Encompassing taxation, public expenditure and the rules that govern them, fiscal policy is a well-recognised lever for addressing poverty and inequalities. Progressive taxation is a primary redistribution mechanism (see Section 3.2), while public spending on targeted transfers can tackle poverty and inequalities directly. Policies on public goods and essential services can do so indirectly, functioning as a social wage that expands economic participation (Oude Nijhuis, 2015[60]). Fiscal policy can also be deployed countercyclically to protect livelihoods in the face of shocks, which tend to hurt the poorest hardest (Elgin, 2025[61]). Fiscal incidence analysis can help policymakers monitor who bears the costs and captures the benefits of fiscal measures – and tailor them accordingly (Lustig, 2018[62]).
Monetary and financial policy. Measures related to interest rate setting, lending standards or credit allocation not neutral with respect to poverty and inequalities. Robust macroprudential regulation can avert financial crises, which have disproportionate knock-on effects on low-income households (Baldacci, De Mello and Inchauste, 2002[63]). Interest rate decisions carry distributional consequences through their effects on borrowing costs, asset prices and the real value of essentials like food and energy. Although these dynamics have historically sat outside core central bank mandates, they are receiving growing attention in policy debates (BIS, 2021[64]). Expanding access to credit, savings and insurance through financial inclusion regulations or directed credit frameworks can further improve household resilience, support upward mobility (World Bank, n.d.[65]) and ensure the benefits of monetary policy decisions reach all segments of the population (Mehrotra and Yetman, 2014[66]).
Structural policies shaping the underlying rules and architecture of an economy. These policies can make the economy an engine for durable poverty and inequality reduction. Labour policy can set a meaningful wage floor, strengthen bargaining power and extend protections to informal workers – shaping the primary distribution of resources before redistribution is needed (Duval and Loungani, 2019[67]). Competition policy can manage market concentration – including in sectors that matter most to low-income households, such as food, retail and telecoms – reducing both the rents extracted from consumers and the wage suppression imposed on workers. By deliberately directing investment and productive capacity, industrial policy can not only spur economic transformation, but address poverty and inequality dynamics (Juhász, Lane and Rodrik, 2024[68]). For instance, when focused on lagging regions, industrial policy can be a powerful way to address geographical inequality. Trade policy, meanwhile, can manage the terms of liberalisation to protect vulnerable sectors and workers and account for transition costs (Autor, Dorn and Hanson, 2016[69]). UNCTAD's programme on trade, poverty and inequalities, for example, supports Africa, LDCs and other vulnerable developing countries by identifying gaps in the trade-poverty nexus, assessing the drivers of poverty and inequality, and mainstreaming distributional concerns into national policy design (UNCTAD, n.d.[70]).
These groups of economic policies are inter-related and most effective when used in concert. Fiscal redistribution can correct market-generated inequities but is costly and treats symptoms rather than causes whereas structural policies can address this gap by reshaping the market structures that underpin poverty and inequalities in the first place. Monetary and financial policy, meanwhile, can anchor macroeconomic stability – which, in itself, can help prevent crises that widen inequalities and economic impoverishment – as long as its pursuit does not come at the expense of the poorest and most marginalised. Development partners can therefore add most value by providing coherent, cross-domain support that reflects partner country priorities and builds institutional capacity over time.
Supporting inclusive environmental policies
Development partners can support governments in ensuring that climate and environmental policies are not only sustainable but also socially just. This requires addressing differentiated vulnerabilities; protecting rights related to land, resources and a healthy environment; and distributing transition costs and benefits fairly. Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and resource depletion disproportionately impact people living in poverty and exacerbate inequalities, within and between present and future generations. Delivering just transitions requires strengthening institutional capacity to manage trade-offs and distributional effects, and ensuring that affected communities can access information, influence decisions and seek redress. Development partners can support partner country governments in embedding these principles across environmental policy, including through support to:
Climate change adaptation measures. Investments in early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure and adaptive social protection are critical for protecting and strengthening the resilience of low-income households, who are most exposed to climate hazards and least able to absorb shocks. Ensuring that these measures reflect differences in people’s vulnerability to climate shocks and reach those most at risk is central to reducing poverty and preventing further marginalisation.
Climate change mitigation policies. These can be designed to ensure the benefits and costs of energy transitions are distributed more equitably across the population. For example, investments in clean energy can expand energy access and reduce energy poverty. This reflects the DAC approach to supporting developing countries’ net-zero aligned energy transition, which calls for addressing “energy access, energy affordability and energy poverty as central elements of energy interventions” (OECD, 2025[71]). At the same time, measures such as skill development and income support can help mitigate adverse impacts on workers and households negatively affected by transitions (OECD, 2024[24]).
Biodiversity protection and ecosystem restoration. These are essential for sustaining the natural systems on which many livelihoods depend, particularly in rural and low-income contexts. While biodiversity loss disproportionately affects these communities, conservation measures can also impose costs – such as restrictions on land and resource use – if they are not carefully designed. Nature-based solutions can help bridge these tensions by combining ecosystem restoration with livelihood and resilience benefits, provided they are inclusive, respect local rights and ensure equitable sharing of benefits (IPBES, 2019[72]).
Food, land and resource governance. Food systems can be reoriented to improve affordability, inclusion and environmental sustainability (FAO et al., 2022[73]). Strengthening secure and equitable land tenure can help prevent dispossession, reduce rural inequalities and enable long-term investment in sustainable land use. Improving the governance of natural resources – including water, forests and critical minerals – can help ensure that benefits are shared more equitably, while avoiding environmental degradation and new forms of inequality linked to resource extraction (OECD, 2024[24]).
Supporting inclusive governance policies
Development partners can support more inclusive and accountable governance systems, particularly for marginalised groups. Through equitable, transparent and accountable processes and institutions, inclusive governance shapes whether individuals and groups can access, influence and oversee decision making, and how resources and public policies are determined and distributed (OECD, 2024[74]). In addition to providing support to PFM systems, accountability and oversight institutions (see Section 4.1.1.), development partners can help governments further strengthen inclusive governance, including through support to:
Legal and regulatory frameworks. These are foundational to reducing poverty and inequalities, as they shape the rules governing access to rights, resources and opportunities. Measures such as anti-discrimination laws or affirmative action can help dismantle structural inequalities and expand representation, although legislation alone is insufficient without effective enforcement and institutional commitment (Fredman, 2016[75]).
Legal empowerment. Measures such as access to legal identity, simplifying administrative procedures, grievance mechanisms and public accountability initiatives increase the uptake and effective use of services while enhancing both distributive and procedural equity (De Schutter, 2022[76]).
Participation, transparency and accountability mechanisms. Measures supporting inclusive consultations, participatory planning, access to information, transparent and accountable public financial management, and independent oversight can strengthen the voice and agency of marginalised groups, while helping ensure that institutions deliver on commitments and enabling individuals to seek redress, improving service delivery and reducing unequal access to public resources (see Sections 4.1.1 and 4.3.4).
Across all these domains, development partners can support governments in designing and implementing policy instruments to prioritise lifting individuals and households out of poverty, reducing disparities, or both. Table 4.2 illustrates how development partners can orient their support to the design of selected policy instruments depending on whether the primary objective is poverty reduction or reducing vertical inequalities (differences between individuals or households) or horizontal ones (differences between identity-based groups) – although in practice, given the interconnections between poverty and inequalities, most instruments affect both and tend to be more effective when designed to address them jointly (see Chapter 1). These measures might aim to shape how benefits are generated in the first place (pre-distribution) or correct inequitable outcomes after they occur (redistribution) – see Section 2.3.2 for more details.
4.1.3. Strengthening poverty and inequality reduction through equitable co-operation modalities
Development partners' choices about how they structure and deliver support – their co-operation modalities – have a direct bearing on both outcomes and the equity of partnerships, including how power asymmetries between donors and partner countries are managed. This subsection discusses four ways to foster equitable co-operation, understood as approaches that support both more balanced partnerships and more inclusive and equitable development outcomes: strengthening co-ordination to reduce fragmentation; sustained engagement and alignment with country systems; managing conditionalities to protect social outcomes; and strengthening subnational governance for locally led inclusive development.
Strengthening co-ordination to reduce fragmentation and increase impact
Fragmented assistance increases transaction costs and administrative burdens for partner country governments, weakens the coherence of national policies and can undermine national institutions by creating parallel systems and distorting policy priorities (Watkings, Nwajiaku-Dahou and Kovach, 2024[77]). These dynamics can reinforce power asymmetries between development partners and partner country governments, limiting the latter's ability to steer development priorities and implement sustained strategies to reduce poverty and inequalities. Addressing fragmentation is therefore more than a matter of efficiency – it is central to more equitable partnerships.
Conversely, greater co-ordination and stronger alignment with country priorities and systems can reduce duplication, lower transaction costs and enable governments to allocate resources more effectively, including toward poverty and inequality reduction. Co-ordinated approaches – such as shared analytical work, joint strategies, shared programming, pooled funding mechanisms or co-ordinated policy dialogue – are particularly important for scaling action on structural inequalities and complex challenges, such as expanding social protection systems or supporting marginalised communities (OECD, 2024[78]). They can also leverage the comparative advantages of different actors: multilateral organisations may engage more easily on sensitive policy issues or in contexts facing fragility and conflict, while philanthropic actors may support innovative or higher-risk initiatives. While development partner harmonisation has weakened in recent years (OECD/UNDP, 2026[6]), pooled funding through multi-donor trust funds successfully scaled up social assistance in response to COVID-19 (OECD, 2020[79]) and new initiatives such as the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty are emerging to revitalise collective action grounded in country-led development (see Box 2.4).
Sustained engagement and alignment with country systems for transformational change
Addressing the structural drivers of poverty and inequalities requires sustained engagement that supports systemic reforms over time, while reinforcing countries’ leadership, capacity and domestic financing. Evidence on "transformational engagement" – understood as supporting deep, systemic and sustainable change with the potential for large-scale impact – suggests that a lasting impact on poverty reduction and shared prosperity is more likely through long-term support that helps governments identify and tackle binding constraints (see Section 2.4.1), strengthen institutions and scale up successful innovations (IEG, 2016[80]). Such engagement is most effective when it is predictable and sustained; supports multisectoral collaboration across government agencies to break down institutional siloes and enable more integrated responses to the intersecting dimensions of poverty and inequalities; and is designed from the outset to strengthen countries' self-reliance rather than entrench dependency on external assistance.
Strengthening government strategies and systems – including through budget support when systems are robust enough – is key to achieving large-scale, sustainable, transformative and system-wide impact.
Development partners can support poverty and inequality reduction most effectively when they use and reinforce core government systems and align with national policy frameworks. Where PFM systems are sufficiently robust, budget support – general or sectoral – can increase the decision making authority of partner country institutions, strengthen country systems and reinforce accountability around nationally defined priorities. Evidence shows it can increase public spending on core social sectors, enhance access to public services and facilitate dialogue on macroeconomic policies that shape governments’ fiscal space and capacity to advance poverty and inequality reduction (Orth and Schmitt, 2018[81]; IDD, 2006[82]; EC, 2021[83]). However, budget support requires careful calibration: it may not be appropriate where PFM systems are weak and it risks crowding out domestic revenue efforts if it is not accompanied by institutional strengthening and sustained government commitment. It may also need to be complemented by support for targeted measures to ensure resources effectively reach disadvantaged populations. Although general budget support is limited and has declined in recent years (OECD, 2023[3]), sector budget support, sector programmes and pooled financing mechanisms offer alternatives that contribute to system strengthening and align with country systems and priorities.
Budget support advancing partner-led development in the Pacific
Australia and New Zealand’s effective use of general and sector budget support – including in times of crisis, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic – has helped Pacific countries manage economic shocks, strengthen resilience and deliver essential services (OECD, 2023[84]; OECD, 2026[85]). Their growing use of budget support also offers a platform for policy dialogue on economic reform and inclusion, including on gender equality and disability rights. For instance in Fiji, Australia combined general budget allocations with sector budget support that focused on enabling people living with a disability to access government allowances (OECD, 2025[86]). In both cases, complementing budget support with investments in institutional strengthening and in protecting and promoting civic space and whole-of-government approaches is important to further improve sustainable and locally led outcomes.
Multi-donor budget support strengthening fiscal transparency and tax reform in Morocco
Morocco has received budget support from the European Union, AFD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other partners as part of broader reforms to public administration and fiscal systems. EU budget support fostered policy dialogue on improving fiscal transparency and tax equity. For example, one condition required the government to evaluate fiscal expenditures and publish the results alongside the annual budget law. This step informed reforms to reduce tax exemptions, simplify tax brackets and revise value-added tax. Analytical work, including fiscal incidence analysis through the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities, helped strengthen dialogue about the distributional impacts of fiscal policy (EC, 2021[83]).
Ensuring conditionalities do not undermine poverty and inequality reduction
Conditionalities – whether in budget support or more broadly – risk undermining country ownership and equitable partnerships when they are externally imposed without genuine dialogue. Evidence shows that the effectiveness of externally imposed conditions in sustaining reforms is mixed and can deepen power asymmetries between development partners and partner country governments (Guillaumont, Boussichas and Dsouza, 2023[87]). The growing use of conditionalities to advance development partners' own domestic priorities – such as controlling migration or securing access to critical minerals – risks further entrenching these asymmetries and subordinating poverty and inequality reduction objectives.
Grounding the use of conditionalities in genuine dialogue and an explicit rights and equity focus is critical for more balanced partnerships and for sustaining poverty and inequality reduction.
Where conditionalities are used, their design and focus matter significantly for poverty and inequality outcomes. Conditions linked to human rights, gender equality, progressive taxation, improved PFM and transparency can incentivise progress toward inclusive outcomes in some contexts. However, those centred primarily on macroeconomic or fiscal targets – such as fiscal consolidation or privatisation – have in some contexts been associated with adverse social outcomes, particularly when linked to public spending cuts, increased user fees and reduced access to essential services (Eurodad, 2019[88]; HRW, 2023[89]; Hickel et al., 2026[90]). Citizens’ support for conditionalities depends on their trust in government: they may view them as a form of external accountability when trust is low but reject them when trust is high (Clark, Dolan and Zeitz, 2025[91]). Strengthening the design of conditionalities through ex-ante assessment of social and distributional impacts – including human rights impact assessments (UN, 2019[92]) – can help identify risks for marginalised groups and ensure reform measures align with human rights obligations and inclusive development objectives. Ensuring that any use of conditionalities is grounded in genuine dialogue, an explicit rights and equity focus, and partner country priorities is therefore critical both for more balanced partnerships and for sustaining progress on poverty and inequality reduction.
Supporting subnational governments for locally led inclusive development
Subnational governments are critical actors in poverty and inequality reduction yet often face significant barriers that limit their ability to fulfil this role. They account for around 21.5% of public spending and nearly 40% of public investment globally and play a central role in delivering essential services such as education, health care, housing, water, sanitation and transport (SNG-WOFI, 2022[93]). Their proximity to communities makes them well placed to identify local needs, tailor policies and services to local contexts, and support more participatory, community-driven and bottom-up approaches to development. Yet underfunded mandates, restricted borrowing capacity, limited fiscal capacity and expertise, and structural constraints on revenue mobilisation (e.g. limited taxable economic activity and narrow tax bases), combined with uneven central transfers that often reflect political or strategic priorities, can limit their ability to address poverty and inequalities within their territories (OECD, 2025[94]). Fiscal disparities across regions can contribute to persistent spatial inequalities, often leaving poorer or more rural regions systematically disadvantaged.
Development partners can support subnational governments through two complementary avenues. First, they can support decentralisation reforms that clarify roles and responsibilities across levels of government and strengthen intergovernmental fiscal transfers that reduce regional disparities and improve equity in service provision. Second, they can support subnational governments through decentralised development co-operation – partnerships between local or regional governments in different countries – which provides financial support alongside peer-to-peer learning, technical co-operation and exchange of good practices on inclusive local development (OECD, 2023[95]). Such co-operation can strengthen subnational governments' capacity to plan, finance and deliver services effectively, promoting locally led strategies and tangible improvements for disadvantaged communities and territories.
Barcelona’s 2023-26 Cooperation for Global Justice Master Plan
Barcelona’s Plan adopts a “transformative and feminist” approach to global justice, explicitly aimed at addressing the structural drivers of poverty, inequalities and human rights violations (Barcelona City Council, 2023[96]). In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, this translates into support to local authorities for more inclusive urbanisation, strengthened urban planning and equitable access to essential services, alongside efforts to promote decent work and address broader drivers of inequality such as climate change, displacement and extractive industries. By linking local service delivery with action on structural drivers, this approach illustrates how decentralised co-operation can contribute to more systemic and sustainable reductions in poverty and inequalities.
Sweden’s SymbioCity programme
This programme, implemented by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions and supported by Sida, seeks to foster partnerships with L&MICs to alleviate urban poverty and promote sustainable urban development. It uses a holistic, inclusive approach that engages local communities and stakeholders to identify their own vision for the city and co-design strategic city plans (OECD, 2023[95]). In Kimini, Kenya, SymbioCity engaged with a wide range of local stakeholders to consult them on their vision for the town. Over a few months, more than 300 residents shared their views on Kimini’s future and priority urban improvements, leading to different projects related to tree planting, waste management and youth participation (Symbiocity, 2020[97]).
4.1.4. Engaging strategically where government commitment to poverty and inequality reduction is limited or undermined
In some contexts, governments show limited commitment to poverty and inequality reduction or pursue policies that restrict or violate rights, reinforce exclusion and discrimination and perpetuate unequal access to resources, opportunities and essential services. This might reflect political economy dynamics – political and economic elites might resist redistribution that challenges established interests, pro-poor reforms might be seen as politically risky, or prevailing “trickle-down” policy paradigms might be crowding out more inclusive approaches (IEG, 2015[98]). In more extreme cases, governments may actively work against the interests of marginalised populations – through criminalisation of dissent, targeted discrimination against minority groups, withdrawal of essential services from specific communities, legal and administrative constraints on civil society, or restrictions on access to conflict-affected regions.
Development partners therefore face difficult choices about how to engage in ways that advance poverty and inequality reduction while respecting country ownership, managing political risks and protecting vulnerable populations. Whole-of-society, people-centred approaches to equitable partnerships can be understood expanding engagement alongside the state-centric model of government leadership to include subnational authorities, parliaments, civil society, the private sector and community actors (see Infographic 4.1) (OECD, 2026[99]). From a poverty and inequality perspective, this approach can be further understood as centring the people who most need support, and being responsive to their priorities and strategies (Brown, 2024[100]). This broader approach to partnerships is especially important where national and local actors' priorities are misaligned or where government positions actively marginalise excluded populations. In some circumstances, this may mean development partners working alongside or around governments – supporting civil society, local actors and marginalised groups directly. Abrupt withdrawal of development co-operation can disproportionately harm those facing the most severe forms of poverty and marginalisation, while sustained but carefully calibrated engagement can help protect rights and development gains – recognising that in some contexts, security conditions, violence or restricted access may limit what forms of engagement are possible or safe (OECD, Forthcoming[101]).
Where governments do not favour inclusive policies, development partners can help shift incentives for political and economic elites through evidence, policy dialogue and support to reformers within and beyond government.
Where governments do not favour inclusive policies, development partners can help build support for poverty and inequality reduction through the strategic use of evidence, policy dialogue and support to reformers within and beyond government. This includes supporting high-quality diagnostics and evidence-based dialogue to highlight how inclusive policies contribute to growth, fiscal sustainability and social stability – helping shift the calculus for political and economic elites who are more likely to embrace reform when they see it as compatible with their own interests and wider national goals (Dercon, 2023[28]). Development partners can also foster norm change within government institutions – by supporting legal reform, policy updates and service delivery rules to challenge discriminatory practices; promoting counter-narratives through officials, lawmakers and public discourse; and reinforcing these shifts through implementation, enforcement and accountability so that more inclusive norms become embedded in how institutions operate in practice (UN Women, 2026[102]). This also means identifying politically feasible entry points, preparing the ground for future windows of opportunity, working with reform-minded officials and helping build coalitions across government, parliament and local authorities that gradually expand support for change.
Development partners can also rely on quiet diplomacy – confidential dialogue with government counterparts – to raise concerns and advocate for human rights and inclusive policies, particularly where more public forms of engagement may be politically sensitive or counterproductive. While such approaches can help sustain dialogue and achieve incremental progress, they raise important questions around transparency and accountability (Browne and Somji, 2025[103]). In particular, external advocacy about rights and inclusion may be perceived by domestic actors as intrusive or as reflecting external agendas, underscoring the need for careful calibration and strong grounding in locally owned processes and partnerships.
Where political constraints are more severe – including where there is democratic backsliding or authoritarian rule – development partners may need to adopt adaptive engagement strategies to protect social outcomes. Depending on the political conditions and the degree of openness of state institutions, there are three adaptive engagement strategies: appeasement, complementarity and resistance, with different implications for poverty and inequality reduction (see Table 4.3). These approaches are not mutually exclusive and their relevance varies as political trajectories change (OECD, 2025[104]). Recognising early warning signals of democratic decline – such as a backlash against gender equality, or growing discrimination against minority groups including ethnic, racial and LGBTIQ+ communities – and escalating human rights abuses can help identify political shifts and adjust engagement strategies before authoritarian consolidation takes hold (OECD, forthcoming[105]). In all such contexts, engagement strategies with state institutions require careful calibration to avoid inadvertently reinforcing authoritarian power (Cheeseman and Desrosiers, 2023[106]).
Where engagement with central authorities is constrained, development partners may need to engage with reform-oriented subnational or non-governmental actors to advance progress on poverty and inequality reduction. This may involve transitioning from central government budget support to partnering with CSAs and local governments, funding multilateral organisations, or strengthening the focus on humanitarian or governance programmes (OECD, 2022[107]; OECD, Forthcoming[101]). Sustained support to locally rooted CSAs, human rights defenders and social movements – including long-term financing and efforts to strengthen domestic coalitions for reform – can help navigate political backlash, maintain momentum for inclusive policies and shift public narratives around rights and social inclusion over time (Browne and Somji, 2025[103]). However, such approaches involve significant legitimacy and risk trade-offs: CSOs, business groups and local authorities are not always independent from ruling power structures and, without careful safeguards, support can inadvertently reinforce elite capture or legitimise restrictive regimes. Development partners therefore need to assess civic-space conditions and the political positioning of potential partners and adopt appropriate risk-mitigation measures – ensuring that their support advances poverty and inequality reduction while avoiding unintended harm to marginalised communities (Cheeseman and Desrosiers, 2023[106]).
Civil society actors (CSAs)1 play essential roles in tackling poverty and inequalities, both as development actors in their own right and as implementing partners. These non-state, non-profit individuals, groups and organisations representing citizens’ interests are key agents of change in development co-operation, contributing not only financially but also by advancing rights-based approaches; shaping, monitoring and implementing policy; delivering complementary services; innovating to address overlooked barriers; and amplifying the voices of people experiencing poverty and marginalisation (OECD, 2020[108]). Evidence suggests that greater levels of civil society participation are associated with lower income inequality (Sintos, Chletsos and Kontos, 2024[109]). Importantly, the people experiencing poverty and marginalisation are not merely passive beneficiaries of civil society action – they are often civil society actors themselves, organising and advocating informally or collectively to address shared needs and claim their rights (see Section 4.3.1).
The roles played by CSAs can be grouped into three interconnected areas: i) expanding inclusive access to services and economic opportunities; ii) strengthening institutional accountability and pro-poor policy reform; and iii) supporting collective agency, community resilience and representation of marginalised groups (see Table 4.4). The roles unfold at multiple levels (local, national, regional and global), on multiple fronts (with the public, governments, development partners, the media and the corporate world) and across multiple dimensions, reflecting the multidimensional nature of poverty and inequalities. The following subsections explore the first two of these roles in greater detail, while the third role is cross-cutting. By explicitly recognising these roles in their policy frameworks for civil society engagement, development partners can signal political support for, and acknowledgement of, CSAs' comparative advantages in advancing poverty and inequality reduction (see Box 4.6).
This section provides guidance to development partners on recognising and supporting CSAs’ varied roles in reducing poverty and inequalities through equitable partnerships. It covers strengthening their contribution to inclusive service provision and livelihood support; empowering them to drive advocacy for structural change; and building equitable and locally led partnerships with and between CSAs while safeguarding and promoting civic space as preconditions for sustained, inclusive outcomes. These priorities align with the DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance (OECD, 2021[116]), the principles of development effectiveness and inclusive partnerships (OECD/UNDP, 2020[117]) and the OECD Guidelines on Locally Led Development (OECD, 2026[99]).
Two cross-cutting considerations inform the guidance that follows. First, development partners’ engagement with CSAs complements their engagement with governments, who hold primary responsibility for poverty and inequality reduction (see Section 4.1). Although CSAs are indispensable partners in their own right, where possible, development partners should support their contributions in ways that strengthen rather than bypass public systems and accountability. At the same time, where governments show limited commitment to inclusive policies – or actively marginalise excluded populations – CSAs may be a critical means for reaching those most left behind and sustaining inclusive development. Navigating this tension requires careful, context-sensitive judgement (see Section 4.1.4).
Second, CSAs' ability to fulfil these roles depends fundamentally on two enabling conditions that cannot be assumed: civic space and predictable and sustained funding. Civic space – the environment in which CSAs operate – is under growing and serious pressure globally. When it shrinks, CSAs cannot safely organise, advocate or deliver services, and marginalised voices are silenced precisely when they most need to be heard. At the same time, volatile financing and abrupt funding shifts can undermine CSAs' institutional foundations, threatening the continuity of services and advocacy for people experiencing poverty and exclusion. These concerns are central to whether CSAs can play any the roles discussed here and are explored in Sections 4.2.3 and 4.2.4.
Global Affairs Canada’s Civil Society Partnerships for International Assistance policy
This policy recognises the importance of strong CSA partnerships as essential to advancing Canada’s overarching policy objectives in international co-operation. The policy highlights civil society’s unique contributions and functions in addressing the underlying causes of poverty through socio-economic development and service delivery, in advocating for the interests of the poorest, most vulnerable and most marginalised, and in strengthening resilience and capacity in areas of health, education, social protection and environmental sustainability, including in the face of external shocks. Canada commits to working with CSAs, including local women’s organisations, to tackle the root causes of gender inequality and address the systemic discrimination of women and girls. CSAs were involved in the development of the Policy itself, as well as in its implementation plan and reviews through annual meetings (OECD, 2024[118]).
Irish Aid’s Irish Civil Society Partnership for A Better World
This strategic framework recognises, supports and enables the pivotal role of civil society in advancing international development, as envisaged in the SDGs, as a key pillar of Ireland’s foreign policy. It provides proven and trusted NGO partners with flexible and predictable multi-annual funding to apply a nexus-based approach to responding to humanitarian crises and addressing the root causes of poverty and injustice in more than 40 countries. It aims to reach the furthest behind by prioritising promoting gender equality, reducing humanitarian needs, climate action and good governance. Central to the framework are organisational benchmarks which advance the localisation agenda, strengthening locally led action and promoting civil society space consistent with Ireland’s endorsement of the OECD DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society. It encourages a shift in CSO practices from traditional charity-focused approaches to ones that promote mutuality, shared learning and co-development of solutions (Irish Aid, 2021[119]).
4.2.1. Partnering with civil society for inclusive provision of essential services and economic opportunities
Development partners can work with CSAs to extend the inclusive access, reach and impact of essential services and economic opportunities for people facing deprivation and discrimination, particularly where public and private provision are absent, limited, unaffordable or not trusted. This is not confined to health, education or water and sanitation, but also economic inclusion such as access to agricultural extension, cash transfers, financial services, skills development, climate adaptation and local market opportunities. While governments retain primary responsibility for ensuring universal access to essential services, CSAs – especially local ones – are well placed to identify those facing the starkest deprivations and to provide or connect them with appropriate support (OECD, 2020[108]). Their proximity to communities and embeddedness in informal networks enables low-cost, decentralised approaches – such as door-to-door outreach, local events and community radio. Critically, this also includes the community-based CSAs that people in vulnerable situations have themselves organised to address shared needs, such as self-help groups, solidarity networks and community associations (UNDP, 2022[120]). These groups are not merely delivery channels: they represent organised community voice and agency, and engaging with them as active partners – rather than as instruments for service delivery – can strengthen both the relevance and sustainability of the support provided.
Civil society actors are well placed to identify those facing the starkest deprivations, not merely as delivery channels, but as active partners whose community voice and agency can strengthen both the relevance and sustainability of support.
When appropriate, CSAs’ service delivery and economic inclusion activities can be supported in ways that position them as complements to public systems rather than substitutes. This includes support to link their services to national and subnational education, health, social protection and economic development plans, and co-designing handover strategies with governments and local authorities from the outset, ensuring clear pathways to public financing, governance and maintenance after external support ends. Development partners can also support CSAs to combine service delivery with efforts to strengthen citizens’ capacity to claim their rights and hold duty-bearers accountable. This helps avoid parallel systems that undermine government accountability and service sustainability, or that position CSAs as de facto public service providers without addressing structural barriers to inclusion (Ibrahim and Hulme, 2010[121]; UNDP, 2022[120]). Community-led development modalities illustrate how this works in practice: by facilitating community leadership and collective problem-solving alongside local authorities, CSAs help embed accountability, shared responsibility and local ownership within service provision, strengthening sustainability as external actors gradually reduce their role.
Development partners can also support CSAs’ ability to innovate and test effective new approaches to tackling deprivation and exclusion that can later be scaled up by governments (OECD, 2024[122]). Working closely with marginalised communities, CSAs can often identify highly adaptive, context-specific solutions and help development partners and public authorities spot, document and refine these community-based innovations for broader adoption (Avendo, Culey and Balitrand, 2018[123]). Support such as staged grants and flexible funding can help CSAs pilot solutions that address both immediate hardships and underlying drivers of inequalities, as well as creating opportunities for peer learning and knowledge sharing on what works and why. A learning-oriented environment – where CSAs are encouraged to take informed risks and where failed experiments are recognised as generating valuable knowledge – is essential.
BRAC’s Graduation Approach
This approach – supported by multiple bilateral and multilateral development partners – provides people living in extreme poverty with a time-bound, multidimensional and sequenced package that combines basic needs support (connecting participants where possible to essential services provided by governments, such as education, health services, water and sanitation), transfers of assets (such as livestock or lump-sum cash) and training to build agency and skills. Pioneered by BRAC in 2002 in Bangladesh, it has since expanded to over a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, reaching over 145 million people. This scaling has been enabled by governments integrating Graduation elements into their existing systems, in particular social protection schemes, and by support from development partners, philanthropic groups and, increasingly, blended finance and social impact investors. Multiple evaluations have documented its transformative and sustained impact on the poorest households, with a recent review showing income gains of 7-65% and consumption increases of 11-30% within 18 months to 3 years. With a cost typically ranging between USD 200 and 3 000 per household over two years, the approach is widely regarded as a “best buy” in global development (Abed, 2024[124]).
AFD’s Fund for Innovation in Development and Sectoral Innovation Facility for NGOs
The Fund enables a wide range of actors, including partner country CSAs, to test out new solutions in the fight against poverty and inequalities, scaling up those with the most positive and lasting impact. It uses staged grants for the scaling up of emerging or growing innovations, combining mechanisms to crowd in commercial capital with swift disbursements for locally led initiatives with strong potential for impact and immediate benefits for local communities (OECD, 2023[125]). The Innovation Facility also promotes innovation as a dedicated facility supporting NGO-led experimental projects, testing new technical approaches and partnership models within a structured learning framework that emphasises monitoring, evaluation, knowledge sharing and the scaling up of successful practices.
Service delivery is most effective when reinforced by advocacy, and vice versa. Individual CSAs may specialise in one or the other, but supporting greater co-ordination and complementarity across service provision, policy engagement and mobilisation can enhance collective impact and better align immediate support with longer-term structural change. Service delivery generates knowledge of lived realities that can inform and strengthen advocacy, but where it is confined to an exclusively needs-based approach without engaging with rights, accountability and institutional reform, it risks alleviating immediate hardships while leaving underlying inequalities intact (Ibrahim and Hulme, 2010[121]). Development partners can support platforms, partnerships and funding arrangements that link frontline service providers with advocacy organisations and social movements, enabling evidence from practice to inform policy dialogue.
4.2.2. Empowering civil society actors to drive advocacy for structural change
Civil society advocacy and monitoring are essential drivers of structural change but are increasingly constrained. By raising awareness, influencing policies, representing the interests of those furthest behind and scrutinising government and institutional actions, CSAs strengthen institutional accountability and advance equitable policy reform. The ability of CSAs to amplify marginalised voices, hold duty-bearers accountable and advocate for equitable policy depends critically on the existence of open and safe civic space. In many contexts, this space is shrinking, limiting what CSAs can do and how development partners can support them. The guidance in this section should therefore be read alongside Section 4.2.4, which addresses the enabling conditions that make meaningful advocacy possible.
CSAs can channel citizen engagement, make policies more contestable and help reduce the power asymmetries that perpetuate deprivation and exclusion by generating information, co-ordinating collective action and presenting alternative policy options (World Bank, 2017[34]). Through bottom-up participation in national and subnational policy and budget processes – particularly among groups led by or representing people experiencing poverty and marginalisation – CSAs mobilise collective input and enable excluded communities to challenge disparities (e-Pact, 2016[126]). Their participation at the international level can further enhance decision making legitimacy, build citizen trust, improve policy quality and strengthen ownership of global outcomes (Bozzini and Pascual Dapena, 2025[127]). NGOs based in provider countries can play a complementary role by mobilising public and political support for international solidarity, helping sustain ODA commitments and a focus on poverty and inequalities, and leveraging private donations and volunteer engagement.
Civil society actors can channel citizen engagement, make policies more contestable and help reduce the power asymmetries that perpetuate deprivation and exclusion.
Development partners can strengthen civil society's ability to engage and influence policies for stronger social outcomes at multiple levels. This can be through their own strategies and programmes, L&MIC national and subnational development planning and budgeting, and global policy dialogue. At all these levels, this means supporting structured, institutionalised, inclusive and accessible consultation mechanisms with transparent feedback loops (OECD, 2021[116]). It also involves strengthening CSAs' capacity to engage in dialogue and supporting inclusive frameworks that ensure geographic and thematic diversity, combining in-person and online modalities to address access barriers, and providing targeted support to smaller or less well-resourced organisations. In restrictive settings, this requires context-sensitive risk management – assessing engagement feasibility and putting in place safeguards such as confidentiality protocols or remote participation options to minimise harm while maintaining dialogue, alongside measures to protect civic space (see Section 4.2.4).
Supporting civil society engagement in national and subnational budget monitoring is a critical entry point for tackling disparities in resource allocation. Government revenue and spending decisions fundamentally shape the distribution of resources and CSAs play an important oversight role in ensuring budgets do not overlook people facing systematic exclusion. Evidence shows that citizen monitoring works best when citizens are in direct contact with frontline service providers, when both providers and citizens are involved in the process and when activities strengthen community organisations' members' voices (3IE, 2022[128]). Development partners can reinforce CSAs' role by funding local CSAs and coalitions for budget analysis, providing technical support for public expenditure tracking, prioritising locally led monitoring in high-poverty areas paired with support to safe civic space, and promoting fiscal transparency standards that enable citizen voice in budget processes.
Development partners can also help foster the emergence and consolidation of civil society coalitions and alliances advancing shared poverty and inequality goals. These span formal actors like NGOs and trade unions to looser issue-based movements, such as recent youth-led protests in Nepal, Madagascar and Kenya demanding justice, equality and public services amid economic exclusion and corruption. Trade unions play a distinct role in institutionalised social dialogue, representing workers in collective bargaining and tripartite negotiations, thereby influencing labour, wage and social protection policies that shape income distribution and working conditions. Supporting coalition-building among reform-minded CSAs can help align fragmented efforts, strengthen collective influence (UNRISD, 2024[26]; OECD, 2024[74]).
When supporting coalitions, development partners can strengthen their institutional sustainability as a foundation for effective and durable advocacy. Rather than treating coalitions as instruments for specific objectives, support can be designed to build organisational resilience and sustain advocacy capacity over time. It is important to also pay attention to the power dynamics within civil society: coalitions can risk being dominated by more powerful actors at the expense of those with the closest links to people experiencing deprivation and exclusion such as membership-based groups, women-led organisations or disability movements. Development partners can also help coalitions build connections beyond civil society – governments, other development partners and private actors – to further amplify and sustain impact. The Global Partnership for Education, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Global Poverty Alleviation Coalition (a coalition graduating extremely poor refugees and host communities out of poverty) are examples of broader issue-based coalitions that play a critical role in key dimensions of poverty and inequalities.
Finally, development partners can support networks, coalitions and platforms of human rights defenders (HRDs). These play a critical role in advancing structural change by co-ordinating advocacy, amplifying marginalised voices and facilitating engagement with national, regional and global human rights processes. Many HRDs – particularly those working on land and environmental rights, gender equality and LGBTIQ+ inclusion – face severe risks, including intimidation, criminalisation, physical violence and in some cases loss of life. Strengthening collective structures can enhance the reach and effectiveness of their advocacy, provide solidarity and safety in numbers, and facilitate access to international human rights mechanisms. Dedicated measures to protect individual HRDs are discussed in Section 4.3.
The EU’s mechanisms supporting engagement with European development policies
These mechanisms are grounded in the EU’s 2012 Communication “The roots of democracy and sustainable development: Europe’s engagement with civil society in external relations”. They include the Policy Forum on Development, launched in 2013, which offers multistakeholder dialogue between EU institutions and Member States, CSOs and local authorities on development priorities, and the Global Gateway Civil Society and Local Authorities Advisory Platform. In addition, EU Civil Society Roadmaps – participatory strategies led by EU Delegations in partner countries – assess civic space, set engagement priorities and ensure civil society has room to input into EU programming, with the third generation of Roadmaps (2025+) integrating Global Gateway investments (OECD, 2025[129]).
The Australia-Indonesia Partnership Towards an Inclusive Society (INKLUSI)
INKLUSI is Australia’s flagship programme for promoting gender equality, disability and social inclusion in Indonesia (INKLUSI, n.d.[130]). It seeks to increase the participation of marginalised groups in Indonesia’s socio-cultural, economic and political development, ensuring they fully benefit from these processes. Working in partnership with government and civil society, INKLUSI strengthens the roles and contributions of CSOs in advancing gender equality, the rights of persons with disabilities and their broader social inclusion in Indonesia’s national development. Guided by the principles of locally led development, the programme operates through local CSOs and supports their engagement with both national and subnational government stakeholders to achieve more inclusive development outcomes.
The Jubilee 2000 Campaign
Although not recent, this campaign is one of the best-known examples of civil society influencing international policy. This coalition of NGOs, trade unions, churches and activists was widely credited with catalysing the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative and subsequent debt relief totalling over USD 100 billion for 37 countries. It demonstrated civil society’s power to shape discourse and policies, by helping shift the debt discussion from a technocratic priority to a political one, mobilising global advocacy efforts from the Global North and South and framing debt relief on the basis of human development needs, arguing that savings from debt relief should be channelled to social sectors (IMF, 1999[131]; Kopij, 2025[132]).
4.2.3. Addressing power imbalances in partnerships with civil society
Addressing structural power imbalances – between development partners and CSAs, and within civil society itself – is central to building equitable and locally led partnerships that advance inclusive development. CSAs often have little input into development partners' strategic priorities, budget allocations and policy decisions, contributing to gaps in ownership, legitimacy and effectiveness. Historical, institutional and cultural barriers; compliance pressures; and risk aversion can further reinforce asymmetrical relationships not just between development partners and CSAs, but also between international and local CSAs. International actors may bring access to funding, global policy arenas and compliance expertise, while local CSAs contribute contextual knowledge, community trust and mobilisation capacity – yet the former may unintentionally crowd out local leadership (Peace Direct, 2023[133]). Partnerships that rebalance these relationships – so that international actors support and amplify rather than overshadow local leadership – can strengthen both legitimacy and structural impact. The OECD toolkit Shifting Power with Partners highlights practical approaches to recalibrating these dynamics, including support to diverse CSAs, equitable decision making, locally led capacity strengthening and more balanced funding arrangements (OECD, 2024[122]).
It is also worth acknowledging that CSAs themselves – including locally based ones – do not always directly represent or adequately amplify the voices of people experiencing poverty and marginalisation. At times they may even inadvertently reproduce the power dynamics they seek to challenge. Supporting CSAs that are directly accountable to, and governed by, the communities they serve is therefore an important dimension of building equitable partnerships.
DAC members have committed to increasing direct, flexible and predictable support to civil society to strengthen local leadership, ownership and the independence and diversity of civil society (OECD, 2021[116]). Such support, including core and programme-based support, strengthens CSAs' institutional and organisational capacities for pro-poor service provision and advocacy and enhances their responsiveness and accountability to marginalised communities. Directing more funding toward locally based CSAs – particularly those working directly with and accountable to groups facing intersecting disadvantages, such as women in informal work, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples, refugees and displaced communities – can empower them to exert greater control over resources and ensure that service delivery and advocacy reflect the priorities of those most left behind.
Financing modalities that shift power and enable CSAs, particularly those based in L&MICs, to decide how resources are used are key to more equitable partnerships. Where development partners operate through country offices, empowering grant managers with sufficient autonomy in financial decision making can provide more direct and equitable access to funding for local actors, including in challenging environment for civil society. One example of this is Ireland's experience of channelling direct funding through its embassies in Viet Nam, Sierra Leone and Tanzania (OECD, 2024[7]). Development partners can also invest in CSAs' capacity to diversify their funding base, strengthening access to local resources and philanthropy, and exploring endowment-based models for longer-term sustainability. Streamlining administrative and compliance requirements can reduce their disproportionate burden on smaller organisations. The OECD toolkit on Funding Civil Society in Partner Countries provides further guidance on these approaches (OECD, 2023[125]).
Building institutional resilience from the outset is essential to sustaining progress on poverty and inequality reduction. Structural change requires long-term engagement and therefore support that strengthens rather than undermines CSAs’ institutional foundations. This means investing early in organisational resilience – through capacity strengthening, institutionalising mechanisms for civil society participation and flexible funding. Where reductions or withdrawal of support are unavoidable, development partners have an obligation to do no harm: advance notice, transition planning and support to identify alternative funding sources can help protect the continuity of advocacy and services for people experiencing poverty and exclusion (McDonough and Rodríguez, 2020[134]).
FCDO’s Shifting the Power Programme
This programme supports the capacity and financial sustainability of locally led CSAs in Africa, recognising that communities are often best placed to tackle issues related to early childhood development, gender equality, safe and secure shelter, mental health and climate justice. To counter power imbalances that can skew funding towards donors’ priorities, it adopts a locally led, participatory, co-created and democratic approach, providing long-term support that enables partners to grow, build resilience, gather evidence on effective practices and experiment new projects (Comic Relief, n.d.[135]).
The Equality Fund
This is a global feminist fund that mobilises public and private resources for women’s rights organisations and feminist movements, particularly in the Global South. Through its four-pillar model – investments, policy/strategic partnerships, philanthropy and grant making – it grows resources via gender-aligned investments; advocates for systemic change with governments and foundations; and channels flexible, multi-year grants directly to women-led organisations or local, regional and global funds with gender equality at their core. This initiative receives support from Canada and the United Kingdom (Equality Fund, n.d.[136]).
Norad’s Human Rights grant scheme
Norad invited Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex and other identities (LGBTQI+)-led organisations with strong networks, established trust within the LGBTQI+ community and robust sub-granting capacity to apply for funding aimed at strengthening protection, security and enabling environments for LGBTQI+ individuals and human rights defenders globally. The objectives of the support were two-fold: i) to provide quick, flexible and responsive support, particularly for grassroots LGBTQI+-led networks and movements operating in contexts with limited funding; and ii) to contribute to improved protection, security and enabling environment for human rights defenders promoting LGBTQI+ rights. Through strategic partnerships, Norway has supported initiatives such as dialogue between LGBTQI+ groups and religious leaders in Kenya and Southern Africa, youth-focused LGBTQI+ rights initiatives in South and Southeast Asia, and grassroots movements fighting persecution of marginalised groups (Norad, 2025[137]).
The NGO Empowerment for Poverty Reduction (Tadamon) programme
This partnership between the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development, Islamic Development Bank and UNDP empowers CSOs in 57 countries to tackle poverty through its Innovation, Mobilisation, Promotion, Assistance, Connection, Transformation (IMPACT) model. It supports CSOs – in particular those working with groups facing deprivation and exclusion – to access finance through crowdfunding and Islamic social finance, builds their capacity for alternative funding access and strengthens their visibility and networks (Tadamon, n.d.[138]).
Reimagining International NGOs (RINGO)
This initiative, supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung, challenges power dynamics between traditional international NGOs and local CSAs by prototyping new partnership models that shift decision making, risk-sharing and leadership to Global South actors. It rejects top-down capacity narratives, co-designs equitable governance structures and fosters mutual learning between international and local civil society, demonstrating how reimagined relationships can strengthen locally led efforts against poverty and inequalities (RINGO, n.d.[139]).
4.2.4. Safeguarding civic space for civil society to contribute to poverty and inequality reduction
Civic space is under growing pressure. It refers to the physical, virtual, legal, regulatory and policy space where people can securely exercise their rights to the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression and is essential for CSAs to operate safely and engage meaningfully in policy processes (OECD, 2021[116]). Nearly three-quarters of the world’s population live in places where civic space is repressed or closed (CIVICUS, 2024[140]). When it shrinks, civil society is less able to hold governments accountable, amplify marginalised voices and generate bottom-up demand for reform – directly undermining efforts to reduce deprivation and tackle structural drivers of exclusion. Constrained civic space also weakens the basis for equitable partnerships, as meaningful engagement cannot occur where civil society is silenced or excluded.
When civic space shrinks, civil society is less able to hold governments accountable, amplify marginalised voices and generate bottom-up demand for reform.
The links between civic space and poverty and inequality reduction are direct and consequential. Restrictions on civil society disproportionately affect organisations representing those most marginalised – such as women's rights groups, LGBTIQ+ networks and Indigenous Peoples' organisations – preventing critical voices from shaping inclusive policies and holding duty-bearers to account. Democratic backsliding, which often begins with restrictions on these groups, tends to be associated with weakening redistributive policies and growing inequalities. Protecting civic space is therefore both a matter of rights and a prerequisite for sustained, inclusive development.
Development partners play a critical role in respecting, protecting and promoting civic space. This includes supporting co-ordinated, context-sensitive responses that combine programmatic and diplomatic action; prioritising preventive approaches to address emerging restrictions; and engaging with a diverse range of CSAs to ensure support does not inadvertently reinforce existing power imbalances. The OECD toolkit for co-ordinating action for civic space provides further practical guidance (OECD, 2025[129]).
The meaningful participation of people experiencing poverty and inequalities lies at the heart of equitable partnerships, and is both a legal obligation and a practical imperative. Rooted in the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development and expanded by taking a human rights-based approach (HRBA, see Section 2.2.2) across civil, economic, social, cultural and political life, the right to participation is further guaranteed by binding treaties specifically for women, children, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples, among others.2 It explicitly extends to people living in poverty, who have the right to participate in decisions affecting their lives at all stages of design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation (OHCHR, 2019[141]; UN, 2003[142]). People experiencing poverty and inequalities face significant systemic barriers that limit their capacity to engage, influence decisions and exercise their rights in both development processes and broader public life. When people are recognised as rights-holders rather than passive beneficiaries, participation rebalances power, builds trust and empowers marginalised populations to act, claim their rights and influence decisions that directly affect them (IEG, 2018[143]; UNDP, 2018[144]). However, without deliberate efforts to engage the most marginalised, their rights risks being undermined and priorities crowded out by more influential actors – including policymakers, development partners and the private sector – whose interests often diverge significantly from theirs (see Box 4.10).
Their participation also enhances the effectiveness, impact and sustainability of development co-operation and country-led public policies and programmes. By grounding interventions in the needs, priorities and lived realities of people experiencing poverty and inequalities, it can lead to more equitable and pro-poor outcomes (ATD Fourth World/De Schutter, 2024[145]; F3E, 2021[146]). Participatory methods help identify blind spots and unintended consequences, acting as a reality check for development partners and providing critical insights into how identities intersect and multiple deprivations overlap (Bray et al., 2020[147]). Complex structural barriers – such as discriminatory laws, unequal access to services and governance constraints – cannot be fully understood, let alone addressed, without continuous direct engagement, feedback and learning from those most affected, drawing on local and non-Western knowledge and lived experience (UNDP, 2018[144]).
This section outlines how development partners can support the meaningful participation of people experiencing poverty and inequalities in development, both in partner country systems and in their own programmes and processes. It starts by addressing how development partners can identify and engage the most marginalised within complex power dynamics, then explores how to remove barriers and manage risk. It sets out guiding principles for operationalising meaningful participation, followed by examining how development partners can strengthen inclusive participation in L&MIC’s development processes before finally considering what this means for their own programmes and processes.
Citizens, especially those most affected by poverty, discrimination and inequalities, prioritise basic needs, inclusion and equality highly – often more than policymakers, businesses and global actors. In a survey conducted in 34 countries of the global South and North, 90% of respondents considered that international co-operation is important to address poverty and inequality (Rockefeller Foundation, 2025[148]). In contrast, private sector actors identified hunger and poverty reduction as the SDGs requiring both the least urgent action and being the least relevant to their company operations, with four times more private sector actors viewing innovation, infrastructure, decent work and economic growth as more urgent (Global Survey, 2020[149]). Perceptions also differ substantially across population groups. Almost 20% more members of minority groups identified discrimination and inequality as top global challenges compared to non‑minority respondents (UNESCO, 2021[150]). Similarly, more than 10% more women than men shared this view. Women were also far more likely to prioritise solutions related to decision making powers for women and girls and were 20 percentage points more concerned than men about violence against women and girls (UNESCO, 2021[150]).
Citizens tend to prioritise poverty and hunger, education, health, clean water and sanitation, and gender equality more highly than partner country leaders, who place greater emphasis on jobs, industry and infrastructure (Horigoshi et al., 2025[151]). Education, poverty reduction and gender equality are underfunded by development partners in relation to how highly they are ranked by both citizens and leaders in partner countries. Lower‑income and minority-group respondents are significantly more likely to view economic, gender and racial inequality as very big problems compared to wealthier or majority‑group respondents, while those not in high income countries are more likely to believe that excessive political influence of the rich is a major cause of inequality (Wike et al., 2025[152]).
Finally, support for international co-operation varies significantly depending on who people believe will benefit from it. Support is significantly higher when people perceive benefits for themselves or marginalised groups such as people experiencing poverty, low-paid informal workers and rural populations. By contrast, support is lower when the perceived beneficiaries are wealthier groups, richer countries or those in stable, higher-paying jobs (Rockefeller Foundation, 2025[148]).
4.3.1. Identifying and engaging with the most marginalised in participatory processes
A first step for development partners is to shift from a broad stakeholder consultation approach to one that centres rights-holders. Stakeholder approaches involve any interested or affected party including governmental or non-governmental institutions and organisations, civil society, academia, the media or the private sector (OECD, 2022[153]). In contrast, a rights-holder lens reframes participation as duty-bearers deliberately engaging those whose human rights are impacted by the development process, rather than simply those who are more generally interested or organised enough to participate (Oxfam, 2023[154]). Engagement with rights-holders also extends beyond direct programme participants to include anyone whose rights may be affected. By supporting governments to fulfil their responsibilities as duty-bearers (see Section 4.1), as well as rights-holders to assert their rights, development co-operation can help rebalance the power dynamics that underpin exclusion (UNDP, 2025[155]).
Where possible, development partners can seek direct engagement with people experiencing poverty and inequalities. The selection of groups to engage is best guided by the project’s objectives and the local context, accounting for factors such as income levels, group-based identity and intersecting forms of disadvantage, while ensuring a diverse and representative sample. In practice, however, those furthest behind often face a dual constraint: having neither the resources and capacity to participate nor organised representation to advocate on their behalf (Akram, Maitrot and Devine, 2024[156]). People experiencing poverty and inequalities are not a single group – targeted strategies are needed to reach marginalised individuals, distinct communities and those facing intersecting inequalities. Disempowerment and internalised social hierarchies can make engagement particularly difficult, for example when marginalised communities avoid authorities because they see themselves as "low" or "left behind". Direct engagement therefore requires proactive outreach and capacity strengthening to enable participation and gradually strengthen collective voice.
Those furthest behind often face a dual constraint: having neither the resources and capacity to participate nor organised representation to advocate on their behalf.
In many contexts, engaging through representatives and intermediaries will be more appropriate than direct engagement – particularly where the latter is unsafe, logistically difficult or where communities prefer to participate through trusted actors. Development partners can draw on several types of intermediaries, including human rights defenders (HRDs) and community and grassroots initiatives.
HRDs play a key role in advocating on behalf of individuals and communities who are marginalised and vulnerable to poverty, enabling their participation in human rights processes both nationally and internationally. HRDs, particularly those who belong to marginalised groups, face significant risks – including arbitrary arrest, detention and prosecution, assault, enforced disappearance and killings – with women and LGBTIQ+ defenders facing additional legal risks and discrimination. Development partners can support and protect HRDs and their legal representatives by supporting their skills and activities, raising individual cases and providing holistic assistance including physical protection, medical care, psychosocial assistance, legal counselling and emergency shelter and relocation.
Community actors and grassroot initiatives are often the primary source of support for those at risk of being left behind and can become significant advocates over time (IEO, 2025[157]). These include informal solidarity networks, women's savings groups, land and housing movements, and youth-led campaigns. Community-based CSOs and citizen organisations that work through established community structures can be effective intermediaries for development partners, drawing on their mobilisation capacity, local networks and frontline knowledge (Malena, 2023[41]). Individual community actors such as grassroots activists, community leaders (e.g. village chiefs, elders, religious leaders, Indigenous leaders), community volunteers and youth organisers can also provide important entry points.
Development partners cannot assume that civil society or community actors automatically represent the most marginalised, however. CSAs’ internal structures and external relationships have at times been found in practice to foster elite capture, co-option and personalised leadership. Assessing whether CSAs genuinely represent the voices of marginalised groups is important to avoid reproducing exclusion, though what qualifies as a truly representative CSA remains undefined. To avoid path-dependency, where programmes repeatedly rely on the same professionalised intermediaries, development partners can actively seek to reach beyond usual partners and invest in strengthening the capacity of under-represented CSAs supporting marginalised groups (Vernon, 2015[158]).
Indigenous Peoples are among the world’s most marginalised groups and frequently experience systemic exclusion from social, economic and political systems. Investments in infrastructure, agriculture and resource extraction initiatives have at times exacerbated these harms, resulting in violence, displacement or the appropriation of Indigenous traditional lands.
Recognising both their unique challenges and valuable contributions is important (IFAD, 2022[159]). In countries with significant Indigenous populations, development partners can engage with and support Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, establishing mutual confidence and respecting traditional governance structures. Support to such organisations through direct funding or capacity strengthening can nurture community leadership and enable community-owned resource management. Effective engagement requires a clear understanding of each community’s cultural practices and systems of governance, alongside sensitivity to historical and political contexts, particularly where communities face exclusion or lack recognition. Development partners can address local barriers to participation, for example, by working with trusted interpreters as multiple local dialects and the lack of direct equivalents for many Indigenous concepts can otherwise undermine mutual understanding.
Finally, development partners can draw on Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge to help define and prioritise dimensions of poverty, inequalities and well-being, aligning interventions with their traditional values and knowledge system (OECD, 2023[11]). For example, Indigenous food sovereignty is considered an important dimension of well-being, allowing communities to manage their own cultivated or wild harvests in ways that meet their cultural, spiritual and nutritional needs.
4.3.2. Addressing barriers to participation and managing risks
People and communities experiencing poverty and inequalities face significant immediate and structural barriers to meaningful participation in development processes and broader public life – spanning economic, social, political and environmental dimensions. Economic barriers include the direct costs of participation and time poverty; social barriers range from stigma and discrimination to language and confidence; political barriers include restrictive laws, weak accountability systems and fear of retaliation; and environmental barriers include geographic isolation and disruption due to climate shocks. Table 4.5 provides a diagnostic tool to help development partners identify and analyse these barriers across dimensions – noting that structural and immediate barriers often reinforce each other. Context analysis (see Section 2.4.1) is essential to identify how participation is influenced by relationships within and between marginalised groups, between rights-holders and duty-bearers, and between development partners and the individuals and communities receiving assistance.
Participatory processes themselves – whether led by communities, CSAs or governments – risk reinforcing exclusion rather than reducing it, particularly where participant selection reflects discriminatory social norms (Wazir and Sinha, 2024[160]). Participatory approaches have often misidentified participants and incorporated the voices of the privileged, with evidence that participants in development projects are more likely to be wealthier, more educated, part of a non-marginalised ethnicity, male and more politically connected (Mansuri and Rao, 2013[161]). This risk of elite capture underscores the importance of deliberate outreach and careful participant selection.
The risk of elite capture underscores the importance of deliberate outreach and careful participant selection.
Note: See Chapter 1 for more on the dimensions and structural and immediate causes of poverty and inequalities. These barriers are relevant across all entry points for participation outlined in this section, including partner country systems (Section 4.3.4) and development partners' own programmes and processes (Section 4.3.5).
Source: Authors’ compilation based on UNDP (2018[144]; 2025[155]), Bray et al. (2020[147]) and Chapter 1.
Addressing these barriers is necessary but not sufficient; development partners also need to actively manage the risks that participatory processes themselves can generate. Elite capture and misidentification of participants, discussed above, are among the most common. Two further risks warrant attention.
First, participation cannot be assumed to be universally beneficial but can also cause harm or fatigue. In contexts of overlapping deprivations, limited time, energy and capacity can lead to engagement fatigue – particularly when participation does not result in tangible improvements. Some participatory tools can also exacerbate tensions within and between communities. For example, participatory mapping or community wealth ranking exercises – where community members help determine how resources are allocated based on local knowledge – can create or intensify conflict between those who receive support and those who do not. People experiencing poverty and inequalities are not a homogenous group and approaches that work for some may exclude or harm others. Careful design, ongoing adaptation and context-sensitive approaches are therefore essential.
Second, there may be context-specific constraints preventing participation. In some contexts, national authorities may impose constraints such as restricted access to refugee settlements or conflict-affected areas, legal or administrative limitations on trade unions, or prohibitions on CSAs representing certain marginalised groups or advocating for specific issues. In the most extreme cases, individuals or groups such as ethnic minorities or members of the LGBTIQ+ community may face active persecution. Such conditions can severely limit development partners' ability to engage safely with affected communities and the risks to participants must be carefully assessed when planning participatory approaches (HRW, 2013[162]).
4.3.3. Applying guiding principles to operationalise meaningful participation
Development partners’ approach to participation can range along a spectrum from unbalanced to transformative, depending on factors such as ambition, capacity, available resources and feasibility. In unbalanced arrangements, people experiencing poverty and inequalities lack power and any consultation is not meaningful. In aligned collaborations, they are consulted but their impact on decision making is constrained by development partner‑defined boundaries. Further along the spectrum, more meaningful participation includes co‑responsible partnerships grounded in shared visions, joint decision making and more equitable power. Ultimately, in transformative partnerships, community agency is central and power is genuinely shared (OECD, 2024[163]; Smith, Martin and Griffiths, 2023[164]). Development partners can reflect where their current approaches sit on this spectrum and consider how to progressively shift toward more co-responsible and transformative forms of participation.
Table 4.6 sets out seven guiding principles to help development partners operationalise meaningful participation. These apply whether they are supporting participation in partner country systems (Section 4.3.4) or embedding participation in their own programmes and processes (Section 4.3.5). In both cases, development partners can either embed participatory mechanisms or tools into broader interventions, or support dedicated initiatives where the participation of people experiencing poverty and inequalities is the explicit objective, such as community-led development programmes or participatory budget initiatives.
Source: Authors’ compilation based on ATD Fourth World/De Schutter (2024[145]); Mansuri and Rao (2013[161]); Cloete and Veda (2024[165]); IFAD (2009[166]); OECD (2023[167]) and HRW (2013[162]).
4.3.4. Supporting the participation of people experiencing poverty and inequalities in partner country systems
Development partners can support partner country governments in moving beyond ad hoc consultation to a more systematic integration of people experiencing poverty and inequalities into national and subnational systems and processes. This spans a wide range of areas, as set out in Table 4.7. For instance, such support could involve promoting inclusive governance reforms and establishing structures for dedicated dialogue and outreach with specific mechanisms, quotas or minimum thresholds for marginalised groups (UN Women, 2025[168]; UN, 2017[169]), as with the World Bank’s support to create the National Council for the Development of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (World Bank, 2018[170]). Support for grievance mechanisms, social audits, citizen monitoring and feedback loops embedded in public service delivery – discussed more broadly in Section 4.1.1 in the context of accountability and oversight – can also strengthen the engagement of marginalised groups, provided they are designed to be accessible, inclusive and responsive to those furthest from formal processes.
At the local level, development partners can support approaches that bring decision making systems closer to communities and enable more direct engagement with people experiencing poverty and inequalities. Community-led development, for instance, places decision making power and control over resources in the hands of communities (see Box 4.12). It enables community members to identify priorities, plan and implement actions, embedding participation within local systems and ensuring development processes reflect lived experiences. Central institutions can also take a community-led approach – Box 4.3 includes an example of support for national human rights institutions in the Pacific advancing community-led culturally grounded, rights-based initiatives. Development partners can also support participatory budgeting processes, which institutionalise community engagement within public finance processes, expanding participation in resource allocation decisions. Across these approaches, deliberate attention to persistent barriers in participation remains essential to ensure the most marginalised are not left out. Further guidance on supporting locally led development is available in the OECD Guidelines on Locally Led Development (2026[99]).
Community-led development for rural poverty reduction in the Philippines
The Philippines’ Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services rural poverty alleviation programme was grounded in a community‑led development model that placed planning and decision making directly in the hands of communities facing poverty and marginalisation to identify priority needs and implement locally selected projects (ADB, 2012[171]). Supported by the World Bank and development partners, it reached over 1.6 million households during 2002-13 (World Bank, 2014[172]). Community members consistently reported improvements in access to services and greater participation in local development processes. An evaluation found that the programme effectively broadened community participation – including among women, Indigenous Peoples and marginalised groups – and generated measurable improvements in both income and non-income dimensions of poverty, governance, transparency and collaboration between communities and government, strengthening local institutional and community representation.
Participatory budgeting for inclusive local governance in Kenya
Kenya used a participatory budgeting approach in their Accountable Devolution Programme, supported by the World Bank and funded by Denmark and the United Kingdom, enabled communities to decide on approximately 30% of local county development funds and deliberately included marginalised groups (World Bank, 2017[173]). Targeted outreach and inclusive participation mechanisms were embedded across planning, budgeting and implementation processes, with counties expanding engagement through decentralised forums and tailored approaches for marginalised groups such as women, youth, persons with disabilities and people in remote areas. Measures included holding meetings closer to communities and thematic consultation sessions for specific groups, providing sign language interpretation, and using radio and local networks to reach those with limited access to formal information channels. The initiative strengthened community ownership and trust: as people saw their inputs lead to tangible outcomes, participation increased and communities took responsibility for sustaining projects over time. However, participation remained uneven, with persistent barriers – including limited awareness, geographic isolation, restrictive social norms and unequal access to information and resources – limiting the inclusion of the most marginalised.
Participatory development of Jamaica’s multidimensional poverty index (MPI)
Jamaica developed its national MPI using participatory methods to capture perspectives of people experiencing poverty and inequalities, with support from the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the Caribbean Development Bank (Marín Morales, 2026[174]). The Planning Institute of Jamaica conducted focus group discussions with 357 participants across 17 communities in rural and urban areas, including youth, older persons and intersectional groups such as female-headed households, people with disabilities, teenage mothers and youth without parental support. These discussions explored people’s experiences, perceptions and causes of poverty, revealing multidimensional and overlapping deprivations. The process also highlighted deeper systemic barriers including perceived institutional failures, such as state neglect or dysfunction, injustice and red tape, and inter-generational poverty stemming from sex work, lack of family support and perceptions of futility. These insights informed the selection and weighting of indicators in Jamaica’s national MPI, resulting in a measure grounded in people’s lived experiences of intersecting deprivations and inequalities which serves as a policy tool to better identify at-risk groups and support more targeted and effective poverty reduction strategies.
Critically, fostering systemic participation requires not only strengthening participatory mechanisms but also addressing the structural barriers that prevent the most marginalised from engaging with them in the first place (see Section 4.3.2). Development partners can play an important role in helping address the broader social norms and power dynamics that shape whose voices are considered legitimate in public life. At the institutional level, this can include supporting engagement with actors who perpetuate discriminatory norms to help shift dominant narratives and gradually bring about structural change (UN Women, 2025[168]; UN, 2017[169]). It can also involve supporting first-hand testimony of life stories from people experiencing poverty and inequalities – through policy dialogue or videos for example – which can create empathy and shift perceptions more effectively than data alone, helping to humanise experiences of exclusion and making the case in ways that resonate with decision makers and the wider public (UNDP/OPHI, 2025[175]; PARIS21, 2025[176]). At the intervention level, projects aimed at empowering women and girls can benefit from meaningfully engaging men and boys to challenge harmful notions of masculinity and support the transformation of patriarchal norms (IEO, 2024[177]). At the community level, development partners can support public hearings, outreach to community collectives, door-to-door dialogues and engagement with religious groups where appropriate (UN Women, 2026[102]).
4.3.5. Embedding participation in development partners’ own policies and programmes
Development partners can strengthen the relevance, adaptability and accountability of their co-operation by ensuring the meaningful participation of people experiencing poverty and inequalities is embedded into every stage of the policy and programme cycle (OECD, 2012[178]). Participatory methods reveal individual experiences of intersecting identities and overlapping deprivations, identify blind spots and unintended consequences, and support more inclusive and context‑sensitive solutions. Table 4.8 highlights how meaningful participation adds value at each stage – from strategic planning and intervention design through to implementation, monitoring, evaluation and learning – with examples of participatory approaches and mechanisms that development partners can use further illustrated in Box 4.13.
Participatory methods reveal individual experiences of intersecting identities and overlapping deprivations, identify blind spots and unintended consequences, and support more inclusive and context‑sensitive solutions.
The diagnostic framework for assessing barriers in Table 4.5 and the guiding principles in Table 4.6 apply throughout; bringing the right principles as development partners and paying active attention to immediate and structural barriers that can prevent the most marginalised from engaging are both key. Participatory processes complement both context analyses of poverty and inequalities discussed in Chapter 2 and the monitoring and evaluation tools and statistical systems outlined in Chapter 5. Insights from participation, combined with other forms of evidence such as data analysis and contextual research, can be triangulated to build a comprehensive evidence base centred on the knowledge, experiences and perspectives of people experiencing poverty and inequalities (ATD Fourth World/De Schutter, 2024[145]).
Australia’s participatory approach to defining its disability and inclusion strategy
Australia’s International Disability Equity and Rights Strategy marks a shift from a focus on inclusion to a commitment to equity and rights for persons with disabilities. It is guided by the principle of “nothing without us”, emphasising active inclusion, participation and leadership of persons with disabilities in all stages of policy and program development across sectors. The approach recognises intersectionality, acknowledging how disability intersects with gender, age and ethnicity, and it seeks to address the distinct challenges faced across different groups and life stages. Promoting the preconditions for inclusion is one of the priorities of the strategy, aiming to remove barriers to the equal participation of persons with disabilities in international engagement, for example through improved accessibility, assistive technology and support services. The strategy itself was shaped by persons with disabilities in a wide international consultation process that prioritised under-represented voices even within the disability rights movement. An external reference group comprising diverse representatives from the disability movement provided critical input and feedback, ensuring that the strategy reflects the lived experiences and needs of persons with disabilities (OECD, 2025[179]).
The mainstreaming of participation in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance gender equality toolkit
Canada’s feminist approach requires that international assistance be informed by meaningful engagement with women and girls in all their diversity, alongside engagement with other partners (GAC, 2024[180]). Participatory methods are highlighted throughout this toolkit, from gender-based and intersectional context and risk analysis to identify barriers to participation, to tools that support participation throughout the project cycle, including inclusive consultations and the co-creation of indicators and targets. It is sustained during implementation through ongoing dialogue, shared planning and inclusive governance mechanisms, and is embedded in monitoring and evaluation, where stakeholders help assess and validate results. Within this framework, project directors ensure that participation is monitored, while project officers promote the active and meaningful participation of women and girls, particularly in decision making, throughout the project lifecycle.
Empowering rural people living in poverty through the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) participatory Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Project
This collaborative initiative was designed to provide a comprehensive, participatory approach to understanding and addressing rural poverty in diverse contexts (IFAD, 2014[181]). It was designed as a tool that measures multiple and complex dimensions of poverty – including basic needs, assets, risks and social equality – as well as underlying causes, in order to design interventions that empower communities to address the specific constraints they face. It uses a relatively simple method, surveying a sample of people living in poverty to gather data on their perceptions of the essential and interconnected aspects of their lives, livelihoods and environments, providing actionable data to guide the planning, design, monitoring and evaluation of development projects. The tool can be used across the project cycle, from baseline assessments and situation analyses at project inception, to mid-course adjustments during implementation and evaluations at project completion, enabling informed decision making and adaptive responses to evolving local conditions. Its user-friendly design enables local project staff to implement it directly, while also creating a starting point for discussion and engagement with communities.
Norway’s experience with a participatory approach to combatting food insecurity in Mali
The impact of Norwegian food security support in Mali is closely tied to the active engagement of right-holders in the design, implementation and monitoring of interventions (Norad, 2023[182]). Interviews and group discussions highlighted that initiatives were most successful when communities were consulted and involved in decision-making processes, such as introducing new crops or production techniques. For instance, extensive dialogue with local communities on the introduction of shea butter ensured its acceptance and usability; and women’s participation in income-generating activities such as vegetable production enhanced households’ food access and improved women’s self-esteem and financial independence. The evaluation however revealed gaps in sustained follow-up with right-holders, limiting the long-term uptake of training and demonstrations. Overall, findings suggest that active engagement of, and support to, rights-holders yielded tangible benefits, but stronger mechanisms for participation, follow-up and coherence and co-ordination with other organisations could further enhance outcomes.
The Inclusive and Deliberative Elaboration & Evaluation of Policies (IDEEP) tool
Developed by the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and ATD Fourth World (2024[145]), the IDEEP tool helps decision makers to ensure meaningful participation of people experiencing poverty in policy design and evaluation, complementing existing assessment tools by centring lived experiences and addressing all dimensions of poverty. Selected suggested actions from the IDEEP tool include:
✓ Complement existing policy assessment tools by providing a qualitative and deliberative approach that captures and harnesses the lived experience of persons in poverty to improve policymaking.
✓ Understand the local cultural, social and political context and tailor approaches appropriately.
✓ Create an environment where all participants feel valued and heard regardless of their background.
✓ To guarantee protection from reprisals or loss of entitlements, consider using separate peer groups and spokespersons to maintain confidentiality and anonymity.
✓ Triangulate the ex-post qualitative perspectives from people experiencing poverty (interviews, testimonies and focus group discussions) with academic literature and quantitative methods.
Source: Authors’ compilation based on ATD Fourth World/De Schutter (2024[145]), Sida (2021[183]) and Malena (2023[41]).
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← 1. Civil society refers to uncoerced human association or interaction by which individuals implement individual or collective action to address shared needs, ideas, interests, values, faith and beliefs that they have identified in common, as well as the formal, semi- or non-formal forms of associations and the individuals involved in them. It is distinct from states, private for-profit enterprises, and the family (OECD, 2021[116]).. It includes a wide range and variety of actors, including development NGOs, community groups, women's organisations, faith-based organisations, philanthropy organisations, professional associations, trade unions, social movements, coalitions, collectives and advocacy groups. While the concept of “civil society organisations” typically refers to formally registered entities, that of “civil society actors” also encompasses informal groups, movements and networks that may lack formal status but represent citizens and drive social change.
← 2. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 32; UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 7; UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Article 7; ILO Convention No. 169 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; UNOCHR guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights.