We work with governments and civil society organisations to improve the effectiveness of development co-operation in delivering the sustainable development goals.
Civil Society’s role in promoting sustainable development
Civil society is a key actor in the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), as well as in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery strategies. Yet, civil society faces ever-growing challenges, such as shrinking civic space, attacks against human rights, and rising autocratisation.
Aid providers should enhance their support for civil society to address effectiveness gaps and enable its members to strengthen their accountability mechanisms.
The OECD DAC Civil Society Days are a biennial forum that explores challenges facing civil society and builds bridges across a diverse set of development actors to engage with one another, identify opportunities and find solutions to better enable civil society as independent development actors.
The 2023 Civil Society Days took place over three days, from 19 to 21 June, and focused on “Enabling locally led transformation and balancing partnerships”.
The DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance
The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance provides the first international framework to guide and incentivise development co-operation and humanitarian assistance providers in advancing their policies and practices to support civic space and civil society actors, at home as well as in partner countries or territories. Adherents to the DAC Recommendation break new ground by committing to its three pillars:
Respecting, protecting and promoting civic space;
Supporting and engaging with civil society;
Incentivising CSO effectiveness, transparency and accountability
The OECD DAC adopted the Recommendation on the 6 of July 2021 after an extensive consultation process with the 30 DAC member countries, within the OECD, and with other stakeholders including the DAC-CSO Reference Group.
CSOs are playing a major role in the framework of sustainable development, namely for improving economic, social and political conditions in developing countries.
Aid is characterized as going to CSOs when it is in the form of core contributions and contributions to programmes, and the funds are programmed by the CSOs. Aid is characterized as going through CSOs when funds are channeled through CSOs to implement donor-initiated projects (earmarked funding).
Key facts on the flows of official development assistance (ODA) to and through CSOs:
DAC members’ aid for CSOs was close to USD 24 billion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2021.
The average funding for CSOs was 14.3% of bilateral ODA in 2021.
Funding through CSOs is much more common than funding to CSOs, representing 88% of ODA for CSOs. The majority of DAC members continue to work with CSOs as implementing partners or contractors.
ODA for donor country-based CSOs (USD 14.98 billion) is much higher than ODA for developing country-based CSOs (USD 2.05 billion).
The top 7 DAC CSO donors in 2021 are: USA, EU Institutions, Germany, UK, Sweden, Canada and Netherlands
The share of bilateral aid for CSOs varies across DAC members, from Spain’s 44% to Japan’s 1%. There is a group of 11 donors under 10%, 6 from 11% to 20%, and 13 above 20%.
The top five sub-sectors of intervention for bilateral ODA channeled through CSOs in 2020-21 were Emergency Response, Government & Civil Society, Population Policies & Reproductive Health, Health, and Education.
DAC Members and Civil Society
OECD Legal instruments