Development Cooperation Forum meets at a critical juncture for multilateralism

No one is safe until everyone is safe. No country, company or community can end the COVID-19 crisis working in isolation. International development cooperation can help the most vulnerable to reduce risks, build resilience to future shocks and ultimately, avoid a lost decade for development.

The 2021 High-level meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF), which convenes this month, will try to identify and promote inclusive solutions for more effective development cooperation in all its diverse forms – financing, capacity support, policy change and multi-stakeholder partnerships; North-South, South-South and triangular, public, private and blended.

Through evidence-based discussions, developing countries, development partners and all other stakeholders at the Forum will produce practical policy guidance for ensuring that development cooperation effectively navigates the current landscape.

The Forum participants will focus on how short- and medium-term pandemic response and recovery measures can strengthen health systems and infrastructure in the long-term, reducing future health risks and pandemics.

To tackle the climate crisis and associated hazards, participants will examine how development cooperation can enable a more sustainable trajectory aligned with the Paris Agreement.

They will also highlight the latest advances in development cooperation in the areas of digital technology and data, scientific collaboration and related innovation.

Building back better – and fairer -- demands more concerted, creative and flexible implementation of the global agreements, founded on strengthened developing country capacities and systems for resilience. A reimagined understanding of development cooperation – informed by risk, oriented to resilience, and strongly linked with climate action – can serve as a ballast for collective action.

The Development Cooperation Forum is unique in its inclusive, global character, bringing together the diversity and dynamism of international development cooperation, in all its forms.

Join the action; bring your insights and ambitions to the 2021 Development Cooperation Forum (6-7 May 2021).

Photo by UNDP India.