ACCOUNTABILITY & INCLUSIVITY ARE KEY TO PACIFIC CSO’s DEVELOPMENT EFFECTIVENESS
Date: 11 November 2016
Suva – Accountability and inclusivity are key to Pacific civil society’s development effectiveness says Pacific Islands Association of NGOs chairman, Drew Havea.
“As, Pacific civil society sector, we are now called to accelerate our efforts to demonstrate development effectiveness in our body of work. We need to develop positive working relationships with governments, development partners and our CSO sector as a whole,” Havea said as he opened the Pacific CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) Regional meeting at the Forum Secretariat in Suva this morning.
“We need to ensure that the impacts and benefits are of those we serve in our communities and we are not leaving anyone behind>’
He commended the effort by the Pacific CPDE secretariat, PIANGO to organize the three sub regionals meetings.
“Melanesia had their meetings last year and Micronesia sub regions had their meeting in FSM in September and Polynesia finished their meeting yesterday.”
He said it was also good to note that women, youth, people with disability, migrant and indigenous sectors have been active and we still need to work on other like faith based, rural, labour and so on.”
“As Pacific CSO leaders, we must demonstrate accountability to our constituencies, embrace transparency and welcome inclusivity in our processes, procedures and structures,” he told the 20 CSO leaders from Cook islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu.
He said the CPDE provides Pacific CSOs with the opportunities to link their different priorities and engage with leaders at the national, regional and global levels.
“Engagement at these different levels means we have to grow into our new role. We need new ways to lead our sector with new innovations and approaches to how we do our businesses effectively and most importantly an open mind to include everyone in our journey.”
He said PIANGO is in a position to move their Pacific vision and agenda along the CPDE structure to the global arena especially after the Pacific was separated from Asia and officially made a standalone region at the Global CPDE Council in Brussels earlier this year.
“This will be done through the commitment of our coordinator, focal persons at the regional level and all of you who are sub regional focal persons and the support of each our national civil society sector,” Havea said.
ENDS