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Plan Europe’s Reaction to the Agenda for Change
Friday, October 14th, 2011

Plan welcomes the European Union’s renewed commitment to international development cooperation and the fight against poverty in the form of the Agenda for Action. We support the conclusions of this Communication that development and human rights are inextricably linked, and that young people need to be at the heart of our development response.

If the EU’s response is to be consistent with this analysis, then they will need to take an approach to development that is people-centred, and rights-based. In this context we feel that any prioritization should be towards the world’s poorest people, and not the world’s poorest countries. The European Commission (EC) proposal on differentiation between low and middle income countries risks ignoring the rights of the 75% of the world’s poor living in middle income countries like India and China.

The Agenda for Change acknowledges that it is “critical to societies to offer a future to young people”. As a child-centreed organization, Plan welcomes the acknowledgement of the importance of young people, who make up the majority of the population in most developing countries. We would encourage the EU however to look at young people not only as recipients, but as dynamic development actors in their own right who should be consulted and included in decisions that affect them and supported as members of civil society.

We strongly support the increased emphasis on the importance of social and human development issues such as education and health, and the commitment to meet the 20% target. We encourage the EU to meet this target in the European Development Fund (EDF) as well as the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI). But the EU needs to think about more than just numbers, and ensure they are providing quality programmes which strengthen systems and ensure fair access.

We welcome the renewed commitment to education, but are concerned that recent evaluations of the EC’s education programmes, both by the EC and the EU Court of Auditors highlight that while considerable funding has gone to education, there has been very little emphasis on quality education and this has resulted in a lesser impact than could have otherwise been achieved. The Agenda for Change does not propose any solutions for how it will address these problems, but we feel there is a need for increased coordination, a move away from General Budget Support (GBS) to Sector Budget Support (SBS), and a focus on quality education programmes which include community participation and address critical barriers to education, such as early marriage, and violence in schools. We welcome as well the support for global health and hope that this commitment will be reflected in the development and adequate resourcing of the EC’s action plan for global health.

The Agenda for Change includes references to the importance of gender equality to achieving development objectives, however we had hope that this issue would have been given greater priority, given the weight of evidence demonstrating that addressing these inequalities are the key to eliminating poverty. The 2012 World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development specifically notes that income growth by itself does not deliver greater gender quality on all fronts and that closing differences in access to economic opportunities and the ensuing earnings and productivity gaps between women and men should be a priority.

The Communication includes commitments that gender will need to be mainstreamed throughout EU action, if development goals are to be achieved. Gender and women’s rights should remain at the centre of EU development objectives as both a standalone and cross-cutting area of work. The EU Gender Action Plan acknowledges the need for a two-track approach, that is, mainstreaming and targeted action that addresses gender inequalities and resources needs to be provided to enable this. We also support concerns raised by CONCORD that the focus on growth and the private sector will not address the needs of women and girls.

We welcome the commitment of the EC to play an increased role not simply as donor but as coordinator, convener and policy-maker and the potential this has for increased aid-effectiveness, but we encourage the EC to ensure that development principles remain the priority in external relations and that development cooperation does not become a tool of the EU’s external policy. The objective of EU Development policy should not be to contribute to making Europe a strong and competitive player in the global economy.

Finally, we welcome the EC’s renewed commitment to human rights and democracy, but we remind the EC that strengthening government’s accountability to their citizens must include supporting civil societies’ inclusion in decision-making. The EU should invest in strengthening civil society and ensure they are included in policy dialogue with Third Countries. Supporting a strong civil society which can hold its government to account means including excluded groups, including women and youth organizations, in all levels of dialogue. We welcome the support for civil society organizations as both watch-dogs and partners and hope that the implementation of this commitment, which has been weak in the past, is made a priority in all EU Delegations.