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The 1700 people who came to Accra for the big aid effectiveness conference this week are packing their bags, but the agreement they managed to cobble together here looks to leave a lasting impact.

More than 100 ministers were on hand here for what many called a watershed.  As I noted in an earlier posting, the Accra conference was preceded by a major conference of civil society organizations (CSOs).  Then starting on Tuesday at the official conference, 82 CSOs were given seats and played a major role in the proceedings.  That CSO presence, combined with a strong push from some of the official delegations here, produced an agreement that goes much further than ever before towards transparency, civil society engagement, and fostering stronger developing country leadership in the $100 billion-a-year international aid business.

“One of the hallmarks of Accra has been the CSO inclusiveness here,” Antonio Tujan, chair of the CSO Steering Group that was highly active in preparing for the Accra conference.  "And this has generated great excitement not only from CSO actors but from others."

While the proof will be in the implementation, the final Accra Action Agenda (AAA) contains important innovations in the way international aid is delivered.  Compared to the draft that was worked out ahead of time, the final document contains a number of new elements:

• New language focused on reducing the use of policy conditionality in favor of mutually agreed conditions linked to a country's national development strategy
• New numerical targets for program-based approaches and use of country systems
• New language on South-South cooperation that was demanded by Brazil and other MICs
• New commitments on transparency, audit, parliamentary scrutiny, mutual assessments of performance and the use of "credible, independent evidence" to assess both partner country and donor performance

The last bullet point is a victory for the very large presence of civil society here and a very articulate and organized parliamentary delegation that was very effective in getting its arguments into the meeting.  This meeting had the largest ever CSO presence in an international aid policy meeting, and their influence  was conspicuous in every event.  In preparation for the event, an advisory group conducted far-reaching global consultations and analytical work, with more than 5000 civil society representatives from 3500 organizations participating.  This resulted in the publication of a set of case studies, a synthesis of findings and a set of recommendations that were broadly endorsed at the roundtable.  After Accra, CSO representatives said they will now expect much more information from donors and recipients about aid programs to help them with their monitoring efforts and to help them coordinate their own CSO aid programs.  One study presented here estimated that CSOs themselves contribute up to $25 billion a year in development assistance.

Lastly, but importantly, the final agreement preserved the important language on capacity development that was taken directly from the "Bonn Consensus."

Participants acknowledged that while CSOs are widely accepted as critical to the development process, much work still remains to be done.  “Governments have tended to see the role of civil society as one of contestation,” said  Emmanuel Akwetey, Director of the Institute for Democratic Governance in Ghana, who noted that certain key reforms, such as right-to-information laws, have stagnated in many countries.  “The greatest obstacle is the perception that civil society is someone out in the street protesting who cannot understand anything,” he said, adding that governments need to develop their capacity and skills to engage more effectively with an increasingly demanding public.