Polish aid

The OECD currently has 36 member countries, which include the most advanced as well as emerging economies. Poland joined the Organisation in 1996. Represented by the European Commission, the European Union formally takes part in meetings and work of the OECD and its bodies but without the right to vote in decision making.

Development Assistance Committee

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is an OECD body whose task is to develop standards of providing assistance to developing countries and to increase its effectiveness. The OECD DAC serves as a forum for dialogue on development cooperation, enabling the use of partners’ experience and helping to formulate development cooperation programmes. To this end, the Committee:

• adopts policy guidelines and recommendations on development assistance;
• performs peer review assessments of the member countries’ national assistance programmes;
• publishes statistics and reports on development cooperation.

When applying for Committee membership, an OECD member country must fulfil three conditions:

1. have appropriate strategies, policies, actions, and institutional frameworks for development cooperation;
2. have an accepted measure of development assistance effort (the benchmark being the minimum volume of assistance of USD 100m or the ratio of assistance funding to gross national income at 0.2%);
3. keep a system of performance monitoring and evaluation for development cooperation programmes.

 

Poland has been actively involved in the DAC’s work for several years and received formal membership on 22 October 2013. As part of its membership obligations, Poland is committed to following DAC guidelines and implementing its recommendations. It also reports full statistics on the volume of its foreign assistance.

The Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) is an important body which supports the DAC. It provides professional analyses and consultancy in development cooperation in the area of assistance effectiveness, results-based management, performance monitoring and evaluation, private sector involvement, and other cross-cutting issues.

The OECD DAC also includes working groups which deal with specific areas of development cooperation at expert level, e.g. the Working Party on Development Finance Statistics (WP-STAT), the Network on Development Evaluation (EVALNET), the Network on Gender Equality (GENDERNET), the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) and others.

In addition, a DAC High Level Meeting is organised once a year to define the overall direction of OECD members’ development cooperation policies and discuss the most important issues affecting global development cooperation. Also annually, the DAC holds its Senior Level Meeting to discuss current development cooperation issues.