The Task Team’s “Guidance and Good Practice on CSO Development Effectiveness and the Enabling Environment” explains what the international commitments on the CSO enabling environment and CSO development effectiveness mean in practice for different development actors using a four-part framework (see below) and a range of good practice examples.

To support CSOs to fully play their role as key actors in development, governments committed to create a conducive environment for CSOs to operate in (CSO enabling environment), while CSOs committed to advance their own effectiveness, accountability and transparency. Both are needed for CSOs to maximize their contribution to development.

Although the commitments on the CSO enabling environment and CSO development effectiveness have existed for over a decade, progress in their realization is slow. This is amongst others due to insufficient awareness of the existence of these commitments and what they entail.

At the same time, the need to make progress on these issues has become increasingly urgent with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, whereby CSOs are included both as a means and an end of development. The CSO enabling environment and CSO development effectiveness are prerequisites for CSOs to be able to act as implementers of the SDGs and watchdogs for accountability.

The “Guidance and Good Practice on CSO Development Effectiveness and the Enabling Environment” was developed against this background.

The Guidance is delivered as part of the Task Team’s Global Partnership Initiative Advancing the CSO enabling environment and CSO development effectiveness (link to ongoing activities – initiatives).

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