UNDP | Europe & CIS | Emerging Donors in Europe & CIS

Emerging Donors

Most states in the RBEC region are recipients of official development assistance (ODA). But the new member states of the European Union, as well as Croatia, Turkey and the Russian Federation, have recently started to contribute to development cooperation as donor countries. By transferring expertise within and beyond the region, these countries can help the global community to achieve the MDGs and especially the eighth one, which calls for strenthening of development cooperation partnerships and increasing ODA flows to developing countries.

Following extensive preparatory work with the new donor countries listed above, UNDP's Bratislava Regional Centre launched the Emerging Donor Initiative (EDI) in 2003. The goal of EDI is threefold:

To promote development cooperation between emerging donor countries and recipient countries, with a special focus on Southeast Europe and the CIS;
To strengthen capacities in emerging donor countries to effectively deliver development assistance;
To enhance the role of UNDP, and the UN system overall, as a major partner for donors to provide aid to countries to the east and south.

Emerging donors are playing a growing role in the development process. In the past several years, the demand for expertise in other transition and developing countries has been increasing. As former recipient countries that have successfully navigated the transition process, emerging donors are in a unique position to provide expert knowledge to the development community. By sharing with other donors the experience and "best practices” of their transition, emerging donors can boost ODA and help fulfil the Millennium Development Goals.

EDI: The First Successes

UNDP has helped to build national capacities for development cooperation, prepare development cooperation frameworks, and establish ODA delivery mechanisms in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and Latvia, and most recently in Russia. The launching of similar activities is currently being discussed with Slovenia and Poland.

In order to promote national expertise and to establish transparent and programmatically sound ODA delivery mechanisms, UNDP has signed agreements with Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic to establish trust funds as resources for aid delivery. These trust funds can also promote trilateral cooperation between traditional and emerging donors on the one hand, and recipient countries on the other.

EDI: International Conference (June 2009)

SHARING TRANSITION EXPERIENCE AMONG THE EU MEMBER STATES, THE BALKAN COUNTRIES, AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, together with the Bratislava Regional Centre of the United Nations Development Programme, organized the international conference on “Sharing transition experience among the EU Member States, the Balkan countries, and the Commonwealth of Independent States”. The event was held on June 25 and 26, 2009 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava, Slovakia and it was financed by the Slovak-UNDP Trust Fund. The conference brought together experts from development aid recipient countries, traditional donor countries and 12 new EU member states. The main objectives of the conference included:

To create dialogue among new EU member states, traditional donor countries and partner countries in the S-E Europe and CIS;
To assess how the new EU member states can share their transitional experience;
To foster innovative joint initiatives and to discuss principles of aid effectiveness.

Conference programme

Conference final report

List of participants

Main conference presentations: