Achieving the targets

The White Papers recognise that neither the UK, nor any other individual donor country, can achieve the International Development Targets on their own. Each developing country must lead the effort, with the international community providing support for governments committed to reforms necessary to achieve the poverty eradication target. And if national governments lack this commitment, civil society must press them to act. In all cases, however, countries should be able to make considerable progress towards the Targets by the due date.

But targets need to be used in an intelligent way. Regular public assessment of how developing and transition countries as a group, and region by region, are performing against a simple and intelligible standard, is essential. One principle reason is to enable development assistance to be driven by results, rather than the amount of support provided ('output-driven' rather than 'input-driven'). Doing so highlights areas of comparative success and failure, provides a form of accountability to people everywhere for the effort being put into development, and supports the process of offering everyone the range of basic life opportunities that should be available to all.

The underlying vision is one of governments consulting widely, both internally and externally, on policies to achieve the International Development Targets, and then setting out a clear strategy to achieve them.

However, even where the policy commitment and performance from a partner government is strong, DFID's interventions have to be carefully targeted. The main mechanism by which poverty elimination will be delivered is through co-ordinated donor contributions, made within the framework of agreed, country-led poverty reduction strategies, and fully integrated with national poverty reduction strategies (linked to the World Bank's Comprehensive Development Framework). Where this is possible, DFID assistance will move towards budget support, sector programmes, and debt relief. DFID is also supporting the movement towards simplifying common disbursement systems and procedures, untying aid, and the 'common pool' approach to development, such as represented by the Utstein Initiative.

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