Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program
for the 32nd NISPAcee Annual Conference 2024, Tbilisi, Georgia

Title

Challenges and lessons learned by Romania in the process of planning and coordinating the international development cooperation policies against the new global dares backdrop

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Author(s)

Ioana Teodora Bitoiu, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

Presenter(s)

Ioana Teodora Bitoiu, National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract

The international development cooperation policy plays a key role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the current strategic framework of the 2030 Agenda. Presently, the plan to provide Official Development Assistance (ODA, or aid) is strongly impacted by the continuation of some megatrends such as climate change, migration, lack of resources, etc. to which is added the polycrisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, and compounded by the war in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. The specific problems faced by the developing countries have led to a sharp increase in the current demand for ODA. Therefore, the need to honour the commitments assumed and addressed in these policies, such as those for providing continuous support to countries in vulnerable situations, requires donor states to improve their ODA policy planning and coordination system.
From this perspective, the paper presents the main institutional, procedural and technical measures considered by Romania, as an ODA provider, to improve its international development cooperation policy, in particular, through the lens of complying with the national target of increasing the level of ODA to 0.33% of GNI until 2030.
Following a retrospective model, the paper introduces the main inferences, challenges and opportunities of Romania in its endeavour to adequately adapt its ODA policy to the current new international context, by also emphasising the commitments made regarding the policy coherence for development.
In terms of methodology, in order to better asses to ODA quantity and quality, the paper turns to both statistics (pertaining to national and international databases) and document analysis, i.e. official national documents, documents of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and case studies.