Official development assistance

Official development assistance (ODA) is central to the global partnership for development. It assists developing countries in their development efforts, including supporting their efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Thus, following the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, the international community recognized the need for a substantial increase in ODA at the 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), after which the volume of ODA (in constant 2013 dollars) began to increase, rising, for most of the past fifteen years, from $80.7 billion in 2000 to $134.4 billion in 2014. The FfD conference also called on donor and recipient countries to strive to make ODA more effective and undertook to explore innovative sources of financing for development.1 Important intergovernmental work ensued on both topics, increasingly joined by foundations and civil society organizations. Moreover, as financial and technological capabilities strengthened in a number of developing countries, initiatives for the provision of assistance among developing countries gathered momentum. Participants in these initiatives have supplemented and increasingly cooperated with providers of bilateral and multilateral ODA, which remain at the core of international development cooperation.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Partnerships for the Goals