Ministerial-level government officials from both donor and recipient countries, civic groups and private-sector officials from 160 countries will gather in Busan on Tuesday to discuss how to make development aid work better, organizers said.

About 2,500 delegates for the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, or HLF-4, will assess how much progress has been made in improving the effectiveness of aid, share global experiences in delivering the best results and set a new agenda for development.

The forum, which is the first in Asia, follows on from the first High-Level Forum on Harmonization meeting in Rome in 2003, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 and the 2008 meeting in Accra, Ghana.

Key participants will include Korean President Lee Myung-bak, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Queen Rania of Jordan and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Secretary-General Angel Gurria.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair praised Korea for becoming the first country to go from aid recipient to donor, saying more countries should follow the foot steps of “the Korean miracle” in a contribution article to the Washington Post on Sunday.

“The international goal must be to make sure many more countries are transformed,” Blair said, adding that “within a generation no country need be dependent on aid.”

Aid effectiveness topics to be discussed will be reflected in a Busan Outcome Document, which is to be endorsed on the last day of the meeting on Thursday.

The detailed program on Tuesday includes a morning plenary session, “How far have we come,” with the attendance of scholars and aid professionals such as Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs and OECD’s Development Assistance Committee chair Brian Atwood.

The morning and afternoon sessions will cover ownership and accountability, country systems and institutions, addressing aid fragmentation, aid predictability, capacity development and knowledge exchange, South-South cooperation and public-private cooperation.

The opening ceremony will be held on Wednesday morning where prominent participants including Gurria, Lee, Ban and Clinton are scheduled to deliver speeches.

Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kim Sung-hwan will host a dinner for delegates later on Wednesday.

On Thursday, participants will debate how to maximize the impact of development aid and seek a new consensus on aid and a post-Busan framework.

Seoul officials said the forum will focus on setting a development direction for developing countries and establish new rules for international development.

The forum is coming at a time of global challenges such as financial crises, food security and climate change.

The Busan gathering will serve as an opportunity to cast a new perspective on development cooperation for the 21st century, observers said.

By Kim Yoon-mi
(yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)