Day One – Global Partnership High-Level Meeting

The first day of the Mexico HLM was a very successful day for IATI, beginning with an announcement during the opening plenary by Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-Se that Korea would join IATI in 2015 – a move that he said would increase the trust  of both taxpayers and partners.

USAID Administrator Raj Shah mentioned IATI in his remarks to Plenary One on Progress since Busan, saying that IATI allowed people to see where aid is going. Lei Lei Thein, Deputy Minister National Planning and Economic Development for Myanmar, spoke about the open source Aid Information Management System that is currently being developed, which will be fully compatible with IATI. Vitalice Meja, Reality of Aid Co-ordinator for Africa, also mentioned IATI in this session, referring to it as a good example of improvement in transparency.

During the plenary, delegates were shown a short video on transparency and accountability which referred to IATI and d-portal, the new country-based information platform that tracks resource flows. The tracker has been jointly developed by IATI and Development Initiatives, and aims to provide line ministries, parliamentarians and civil society with information that can assist with the planning and monitoring of development activities. d-portal was well received in the market place and on the first day we were able to give live demonstrations individually to more than 40 delegates.

Tomorrow at 8am, IATI will co-host focus Session 18 on Delivering development results through good governance, transparency and effective institutions, with ministers from Sweden, Honduras and the United Arab Emirates joining us as panel speakers. We look forward to a lively debate and hope that IATI members attending the HLM will support this event.

Read Annelise’s  summary of the pre-meetings ahead of the HLM.