June 2017: The Secretariat of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has published a summary of the fifth biennial high-level meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum. The Forum approached development cooperation from a multi-stakeholder perspective that encompassed financial resources, capacity-building, technology development and transfer, and policy change, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA).

The Forum took place at UN Headquarters in New York, US, in July 2016, under the theme ‘Development cooperation: lever for effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda.’ The meeting underscored the urgency of integrating sustainable development in development cooperation practices, and of focusing primarily on those furthest behind. The summary states that the Forum recognized the need for increased context-specific information on development cooperation needs, policies and best practices.

The summary highlights the Forum’s discussions on science, technology and innovation (STI), climate change and resilience building. The summary notes that participants called for strengthened efforts by the UN to support Southern partners.

The document reports that the Forum also called for improving the evidence base on engaging the private sector in development cooperation, to further enable knowledge sharing and trust building in this area.

The summary states that the Forum identified new opportunities for strengthening monitoring systems for development cooperation.

On monitoring and accountability, the summary states that the Forum identified both significant capacity gaps and new opportunities for strengthening monitoring systems for development cooperation. The Forum further called for mainstreaming inclusive, multi-stakeholder partnerships and bottom-up approaches in all forms of development cooperation. [Publication: Summary of the fifth biennial high-level meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum]