Government officials from 26 developing nations and representatives from numerous bilateral and multilateral aid agencies met in Rome, Italy from 24-25 February to look at ways to streamline the policies and procedures that guide aid delivery worldwide.

The meeting, sponsored by the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, focused primarily on voluntary application of good practices by donors and recipients and their application in country assistance programmes.
“The Rome meeting offers us the chance to change decades of past practices,” said James Adams, Vice President for Operational Policy at the World Bank. “Donors and developing countries need to work more effectively together to remove the bottlenecks in delivering aid. We can achieve that by reviewing our aid policies, procedures and practices and aligning them with a common approach that reduces the burden on the poor countries.”
The two-day meeting concluded with a Declaration of Harmonization, which emphasizes, inter alia, the need to: ensure that development assistance is delivered in accordance with partner country priorities, including poverty reduction strategies and similar approaches, and that harmonization efforts are adapted to the country context; review and identify ways to amend individual institutions’ and countries’ policies, procedures, and practices to facilitate harmonization; intensify donor efforts to work through delegated cooperation at the country level and increase the flexibility of country-based staff to manage country programmes and projects more effectively and efficiently; expand country-led efforts to streamline donor procedures and practices, including enhancing demand-driven technical cooperation; and promote harmonized approaches in global and regional programmes.
Links to further information
Rome Declaration on Harmonization
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/Harm-RomeDeclaration2_25.pdf
World Bank press release, 21 February 2003
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:20093195
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