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Foreword
As this book goes to press, we have about 12 years to reach or miss the targets set
in the Millennium Declaration and the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
These targets represent promises that every country in the world have already
pledged to keep. The Monterrey Consensus shows how those promises can be
kept: through a new partnership that imposes mutual obligations on developed
and developing countries.
The overall success or failure of this new global partnership will hinge on the
commitments of rich countries to help poorer counterparts who are undertaking
good faith economic, political and social reforms. The success of the MDGs also
depends on their being translated into nationally owned priorities and targets,
and adapted to the particular local conditions. National ownership means that a
country needs to decide for itself the difficult questions of how to allocate scarce
resources – choosing, for instance, whether girls’ education should be a bigger
budget priority than clean water. If we want to succeed, this new global partnership
needs to be an honest compact to empower people, to build and sustain
institutions with a solid level of performance, and to create space for vibrant civic
engagement and societies to shape and pursue their own destiny.
For that reason, this research project has focused on the question of capacity
development. This volume, the third book in the series, explores the operational
implications, from the standpoint of capacity development, for dealing with longstanding
development dilemmas. It aims to provide additional impetus to the
current drive for harmonization of donor practices as convergence around country
priorities, processes and systems. It also addresses head on some of the most
problematic issues related to incentives, such as compensation schemes, project
implementation units, brain drain and corruption. I am hopeful that this book will
prove useful to decision makers and development practitioners alike, in particular
in developing countries, and inspire new ways to care for the fertile ground on
which local ownership and capacity grow.
Mark Malloch Brown
Administrator
United Nations Development Programme
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