The Assistant to the USAID Administrator Michele Sumilas led the U.S. delegation to the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which took place on November 14th and 15th in Paris. OECD countries account for 95 percent of the world’s official development assistance, making the DAC an important venue for setting common international standards and approaches for global development.
The Committee brings together 32 like-minded democracies to discuss economic and development issues that affect global development policy, international cooperation, and implementation. Recent developments, including Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and other geopolitical challenges, brought additional considerations to this year’s development assistance conversations.
For this session of high-level meetings, a particular emphasis was placed on locally led development, a top U.S. priority globally. In keeping with this principle, the United States through USAID plans to provide one fourth of its funding to local partners around the world by the end of 2025. Through a round table hosted by the United States and Norway, countries were able to discuss best practices and ways forward with partner countries present.
Finally, on the sidelines of the meetings, four OECD countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on “Total Official Support for Sustainable Development” (TOSSD), to set reporting standards for official sustainable development support separate from Official Development Assistance (ODA). TOSSD is important because it will allow the comparability of development data, making it usable for analysis regardless of who provided the assistance or whom the recipient was. Canada, France and Spain joined the U.S. in signing.
