From 28th June- 2nd July, the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) held the 2021 All Secretariats’ Meeting. The virtual event gathered the secretariats of CPDE’s constituencies, including six regions, sectors, and task forces to reflect the past achievements, current status, and ongoing activities. The event also aimed to provide updates on key development cooperation and development effectiveness policy issues, understand the situation of the global platform’s constituencies, and review past agreements while committing towards the promotion and the way forward of effective development cooperation. Ms. Bilijana Spasovska, BCSDN’s Executive Director, and Ms. Marija Vishinova, BCSDN’s Communication and Information Officer, represented the Europe secretariat.
The three-day event was opened by Ms. Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo, the Executive Director of IBON International, who addressed the current platform’s developments and networks’ challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
After presenting the ASM agreements and updates on the first day of the meeting, the CPDE constituencies, including BCSDN, provided a brief presentation on a Constituency Health Check session and shared the status of their project accomplishments in the last two years.
The second day of the meeting was dedicated to Constituency Discussions. The participants divided into groups reflected on the global policy issues in their constituency, the specific constituencies’ development cooperation/development effectiveness policy issues; the way to improve constituency engagement and policy work, etc. On this occasion, Ms. Biljana Spasovska pointed the continuous shrinking of the civic space as the key issue for the Europe region; as well as the increased efforts of the CSOs in the region to fight back this trend by investing efforts to improve their accountability and effectiveness. The second day was followed by the Global Secretariat presentation on the current communications plan, covering topics on the constituencies’ communication activities related to EDC and CPDE; the communications challenges, etc.
The third day of the event focused on reviewing country activities and their contribution to the programme objectives, discussing issues concerning membership, and summarizing the ASM agreements and action points.
For more information on the CPDE All Secretariats’ Meeting 2021, please find the Agenda here.