I. BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS FOR DEVELOPMENT: PRINCIPLES AND STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION CONSIDERATIONS
 

1.    The RGC’s overall objective of building development cooperation partnerships is to further support Cambodia’s sustainable socio-economic development with equity to reduce poverty by effectively promoting and supporting the emerging partnership model of development cooperation, based on Cambodian leadership, ownership, and accountability, thus contributing to increased effectiveness of development resources, to increased resource mobilization, and to a sharper focus of development cooperation on human development, poverty reduction, and participatory decentralized development.

2.    The principles for building these development cooperation partnerships that have been outlined in the RGC’s working paper on ”A New Development Cooperation Partnership Paradigm for Cambodia” would continue to guide Government’s actions. These principles are:

• A Common Vision and Shared Objectives - firmly rooted and based on national and sectoral development objectives, with consensus reached on a mutually agreed set of policy directions, implementation strategies, results and expected outcomes.

• Agreed Governance and Accountability Structures - well-articulated roles and responsibilities forming a “shared accountability” where partners would be collectively accountable for the success and operation of the arrangement, operating within well-defined decision making processes and rules where transparency in decision making, operations and access to information are particularly critical.

• Harmonized Strategic Management and Operational Capacities - the simplification, streamlining and harmonization of operational policies and capacity development practices particularly in the areas of financial management, program/project planning, procurement, audit and evaluation, staffing, information and communications systems, with credible reporting and monitoring that should lead to the development of common or joint program/project evaluation and audit reviews.

• Learning and Adaptation Capacities – Partnerships will be built cautiously and with sufficient flexibility in the arrangements to ensure that each can generate learning and innovation, experiences that can be adapted and replicated across sectors.

• Building and Maintaining Trust - Each partner must value the reliability and worth of the arrangement. Having trust means having confidence in one another that each partner will do what they say they will do, and mean what they say. Agreed mechanisms to support accountability, transparency of decision making, information and reporting, audit and evaluation are essential to sustain trust. There must be certain agreed codes of conduct and specific partnership rules of engagement where mutual decisions can be made openly, with clear mechanisms for problem identification and dispute resolution.

3.    At the CG Meeting in June 2001, in a paper that provided an update on the progress that had been made, the Royal Government also identified the following strategic implementation considerations in developing effective cooperation partnerships with our development partners.

• Ownership, Commitment and Shared Resources.  Development partnerships are seen as governing modalities of managed relationships that facilitate the achievement of sectoral and thematic outcomes through coordinated and more formally integrated activities involving multiple projects, sub-programs and supporting activities. It is recognized that within Government there are gaps in the management capacities and that efforts to build capacities for national execution need to be dealt with openly and in a transparent manner.

• Flexible Partnership Modalities. The choice of development partnerships models or approaches would depend on what can best serve the interests of Cambodia. At present, two distinct type of partnerships are envisaged: national partnerships, such as between the State, civil society and private sector; and those partnerships that involve donor countries, international agencies, private sector investors and NGOs.

• Starting Gradually, Getting Priorities Right and Using Pilots.  The priority and sequencing for pilots that are linked to national development goals and priorities has already been established. The pilot initiatives need to be managed strategically to ensure that lessons learned can be captured and disseminated, and that national capacities are developed and sustained.

• Identifying and Differentiating Partner Roles: It is envisaged that the composition of partners will depend on the purpose of the partnership. In development partnerships involving external donors and NGOs, the Lead Partner should, in all instances, be a national organization (this could be a central or local level of government, possibly a national NGO or private sector organization). The role of the External Lead Partner would also vary, depending on comparative advantages and strengths of the partners and the requirements of the partnership. The External Lead Partners should act as a catalyst, facilitator, technical and resource advisor. The role and responsibilities of the External Lead Partner or facilitator are more than just providing resources, it requires building trust, having expertise on the ground to interact with and build the confidence of the sectoral ministry(ies) and other donors, and a willingness to be flexible in both the timing and use of whatever resources are available. It is therefore critical and crucial that donors organize and mobilize themselves to optimize the comparative advantages of individual donors. In particular, the major lending agencies should forge stronger relationships with UN agencies and some bilateral agencies.

• Developing National (In-country) Coordination Capacities. The Strategic Management Framework for development partnership must have capacity development as the centerpiece and should focus on national execution of all technical interventions in order to boost national capacity and competencies at local and central levels of the Government as well as the civil society and the private sector.

• Strengthening External Donor Capacities for Aid Management & Coordination. There is room for strengthening external donor coordination at the country level. Internal donor policies, practices and procedures also need to be closely examined to ensure that they are supportive of Government’s policy thrusts for national ownership, leadership and overall coordination, specifically in the context of developing collaborative partnerships.

• Implications for Good Governance and Administration Reform. Reforms in governance and public administration are a major part of the solution to a number of existing aid management/coordination problems and issues. Performance and existing capacity constraints within the civil service need be addressed by both civil service reforms and reforms in services delivery.  This will require enlightened management on the part of both the Royal Government and its external partners on how very limited public sector human resources can best be managed in the short-term, and realistically developed over the longer term.

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