Steering Committee member Sigrid Kaag answered some key questions on the sidelines of the third Global Partnership meeting held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 25-26 July, 2013.
Watch the interview here.

The UNDP and UNDG has been very active since the very beginning obviously in the run up to the Busan conference, which led to the Busan outcome document in which the Global Partnership for Effective Development is really center stage. We bring to it basically our support for global monitoring efforts around the 10 indicators, but more importantly we are the engine at country level working with our national partners to ensure that the priorities they set are implemented, that progress is being achieved against their voices on global development and inclusive development are heard and brought back to the global policy table.

Q: How much is happening on the ground?

Implementation is still varied. Of course it has taken a bit to get the Global Partnership, in terms of steering committee, the process the overall political direction to get it off the ground but that is normal.

In the meantime countries have not waited. With the support of UNDP and UN country team members and national partners they have taken parts of an agenda in some countries we see that there is progress around the role of the private sector in inclusive development, in other countries there is a stronger emphasis on aid coordination and planning, or looking at work in the civil society. It is varied, but we see measurable progress across a wide range of countries.

Q: What do you expect from the first Ministerial-level meeting?

First of all we are delighted that an emerging economy and a strong Southern development provider such as Mexico has accepted to be the host.

I think our expectations of course are high a lot of interest around the post-2015 agenda a lot of knowledge as to how partnerships could work what we can do at the global level, what we can do to foster further debate about the emerging post-2015 agenda and what the role and takeaways are of each of the development partners.

Countries, civil society, private sector, foundations, and individuals as well of course it is a high level ministerial where a number of topics will be placed on the agenda. Domestic resource mobilization being one, the role of the private sector, South-South co-operation, triangular co-operation and also issues such as knowledge sharing these are all central to the changes we see in the development architecture and the emerging development paradigm.

So the Global Partnership, the first every Ministerial, is an important benchmark. I think it has tremendous scope for debate and also testing of experiences and last but not least we will look at the implementation of the Busan commitments so there is also a measurement of accountability towards one another within the international community.