Dinner Remarks
by H.E. Cho Tae-yul
Vice Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea
at the 2015 Development Cooperation Forum HLS
April 8, 2015

Ambassdaor Martin Sajdik, President of ECOSOC,
Ambassador George Talbot,
Under-Secretary-General Wu Hongbo,
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for your lively and interactive discussions today on the new paradigm of development cooperation in the post-2015 era.

I myself had the opportunity to participate in the Luxembourg High-Level Symposium in 2011 in my capacity as a member of the UN DCF Advisory Group. For this reason, today’s symposium carries special meaning for me personally.

In the course of the last four years, the landscape of international development cooperation has undergone remarkable changes.

Back in 2011, the global ODA had declined for the first time in 13 years in the aftermath of the international economic crisis, and, with only four years remaining until the deadline, the prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were bleak and uncertain.

Earthquakes and tsunamis that ravaged northeastern Japan, the worst famine in Somalia that threatened the lives of over 12 million and the Eurozone crisis were a few of the headline news at that time, all of which cast a dark shadow over the joint efforts by the international community to promote happiness of the global village.

Nevertheless, the international community did not yield to such global challenges.

Instead, as members of the global family, we extended our helping hands to those struck by disaster.

We searched for solutions to the impending climate change, and established a set of principles to maximize the development effectiveness of aid.

Working together, we overcame the world economic crisis enabling the global ODA to rebound within two years, and fully embarked on the post-2015 process.

The agenda of this year’s DCF High Level Symposium, which is more concrete and refined than four years ago, signifies that the more crises we face, the stronger our aspiration for a better future becomes and the more know-how and wisdom accumulate in the process.

Distinguished Guests,

Over the last four years, the Republic of Korea has also witnessed significant change.

In 2011, as an emerging donor that had just joined the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), Korea began to align its development cooperation governance with global standards, and received its first peer review from the OECD DAC.

Korea also hosted the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in the same year and contributed to the launch of the Busan Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC).

But the more surprising change was the private sector’s rapidly growing enthusiasm for participating in development cooperation.

Following Korea’s accession to the OECD DAC, the number of civil society organizations (CSO) dedicated to eradicating global poverty increased exponentially, while private companies started to devise concrete CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility) and CSV(Creating Shared Value) projects.

Many young Koreans have volunteered to work in the development cooperation field, and Korea has emerged as the second largest country, following the United States, in terms of the number of volunteers going overseas.

Moreover, when the Korean Government sought to recruit 30 health workers to help fight the devastating Ebola outbreak in Western Africa last year, 188 people applied to be part of the emergency team, vindicating the Korean people’s compassion for lending a helping hand.

Where does all this passion and energy stem from? This is a puzzle that I myself belonging to Korea’s post-war generation and having experienced poverty firsthand cannot easily figure out.

One thing I know for sure is the sense of empathy coming from Korea’s past experience of poverty and the self-confidence gained from overcoming it.

The commitment and compassion of the Korean people is undoubtedly the most invaluable asset of Korea’s development cooperation and to make full use of it, the Korean Government has strived to foster partnership with the private sector.

And today we are still working hard to provide an exemplary model for public-private partnership (PPP) in which the government and the private sector hold mutual trust and count on each other as reliable development cooperation partners.

Efficient and innovative PPP also lies at the heart of aligning various commitments and means of implementation, which is one of the key messages of today’s High-Level Symposium.

Distinguished Guests,

The ever-changing development cooperation environment has significantly affected the way we view poverty and the methodology employed to eradicate poverty.

Our past experiences illustrate that development cooperation has been influenced by the context of the era and the varying political and economic interests.

However, the post-2015 agenda is based upon the premise of consistency, which is starkly different from the past trajectory of development cooperation.

Universality, the basic philosophy of the post-2015 agenda, calls for the participation and cooperation of all stakeholders with a view to upholding human values that transcend time and space.

I believe that this is a far more profound and outstretching progress than in any other discourse or campaign in the history of international development cooperation.

I hope that all of you, representing various development cooperation stakeholders, will play a pioneering role in spreading out this spirit of universality and inclusiveness within your respective organizations and beyond. I am confident that this is the very road to enhancing the value of the DCF.

Thank you. /End/