From the beginning of 2007, the Hungarian NGDO Platform HAND has been actively involved in a completely new area of work - at least for Hungarian NGOs. Following the inspiration and experiences gained through the publication of the first CONCORD aid watch report in 2006, the Hungarian organisations decided to monitor the Hungarian ODA performance more closely and with investigating more details than ever done by anyone before. Based on the data acquired during several months of continuous "struggle" with the responsible government offices (it was a challenge for them too to provide data in a structured and consistent manner and not the least in time), the first ever aid watch report in Hungary was published and presented to the media on October 18th, 2007.
The same day, HAND also organised an Aid Watch Seminar to provide space for a debate about the findings of the report and to discuss the so called "12 points of the Aid Watch Working Group" containing the recommendations of the NGOs. Some 50 participants - representatives of the government, NGOs, private companies, universities and research institutes – discussed the trends of Hungarian international development depicted in the report.
The NGO recommendations included in the 12 points were concentrating on the transparency of and free access to official data of Hungarian ODA, questions related to aid effectiveness and the commitments Hungary made and how it will fulfill these commitments. International speakers gave insight into the Italian and the Europe wide aid watch activities, and two presentations showed as well the perception of Hungarian ODA activities in the Balkan region and in Africa.
The publication of the report was supported by the Presidency Fund and the seminar by the Regional Partnership Program. The documentation (partly in Hungarian and English) of the seminar will be soon available in CD format and on HAND’s website (http://www.hand.org.hu) containing the entire Hungarian Aid Watch report in Hungarian and a short English summary.
Download the English summary of the first Hungarian Aid Watch Report:
http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/aidwatch_hand_engl_summary.pdf
For further information please contact Reka Balogh at office@hand.org.hu
Information provided by Reka Balogh, HAND
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment