Parliamentary Conference on “Delivering the Right to Health

with the Health Millennium Development Goals”

 

Panel III - Parliamentarians in action on Global Health and MDGs: examples of Parliamentary Leadership

 Starting ODA on global health in a challenging context

 

Name:            Şerban RĂDULESCU, Senator, Member of the Subcommittee for Population and Development, Senate of Romania

 

Country:        ROMANIA

 

Distinguished Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

It is a great pleasure to be here today, representing the Subcommittee for Population and Development of the Senate of Romania and to speak before you on such an important matter: official development assistance on global health.

 

Let me thank the organizers for this opportunity.

 

Romania’s National Policy of International Development Cooperation:

building up the legislative framework

 

Following its accession to the European Union in 2007, Romania has gradually moved from aid recipient to aid donor status.

 

In order for this transition to be successful, priority was given at governmental and parliamentary levels to the building up of the legislative and institutional framework for our national policy of international cooperation for development.

The first step was made in 2006, when the National Strategy on International Development Cooperation Policy and a corresponding Action Plan were adopted.

The Strategy aligns Romania’s international cooperation for development with the values, principles and objectives of the European Consensus for Development. It aims at pushing back poverty in developing countries, including low income and middle income countries, in the context of global efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals; humanitarian aid in case of disasters or prolonged military conflicts is also included.

I should stress that the Strategy defines sectoral priorities, and health is one of them. In this area, we focus on: reproductive health, the prevention and control of communicable diseases, and fighting HIV/AIDS (through promoting good practices in the management of the programs financed by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the training of medical personnel).

The next legislative step we took was the adoption, in October 2006, of a law setting up the legal basis for the financing of aid activities from the national budget. Financing is made from the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the institution tasked to coordinate the implementation of our policy of international cooperation for development.

The relevant legislative framework was completed in 2007 with a Government Decision regulating the specific actions related to development assistance as regards scheduling, and the institutional and financial mechanisms.

Romania’s ODA for Health

 

In 2007 Romania’s policy of international cooperation for development became operational, with financial multilateral contributions in support to MDGs related efforts.

 

My country’s contributions to international development in the health sector to date can be summarized as follows:

-          contribution to the UNFPA budget for improving access to basic health services, especially to reproductive health services for the Roma population in the Republic of Moldova (in 2008);

-          contributions to the general budget of the World Health Organization;

-          contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the UNICEF general budget (in 2007, 2008 and 2009);

-          grant schemes for the Republic of Moldova and for Georgia, implemented though the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), aimed to foster partnership between the Romanian civil sector and that in the two target countries, including through cooperation in the health sector (in 2009).

 

In May 2009, we joined the Pilot Group for Innovative Financing for Development as observer. Inter-ministerial consultations are currently ongoing regarding the opportunity of the adoption by Romania of the UNITAID tax (airline ticket levy) to support international development in the health sector.

 

ODA commitments: parliamentary input and perspective

 

First, I would like to say a few words about the Subcommittee I represent here today. Despite the fact that it is a relatively new parliamentary structure, we managed to bring to the Senate’s attention the main initiatives, commitments and goals of the international and European parliamentary community regarding the global objectives on population and development.

 

Once the Subcommittee affiliated to the EPF in October 2008, its members, and through them the entire Senate, were connected in a structured and coherent manner to the European parliamentary agenda and the debates on population and development.

 

Our parliamentary approach to development is based on the premise that implementing the Cairo Program of Action is essential for achieving the development objectives agreed upon globally. 

 

The Subcommittee is a co-signer of the Brussels Parliamentary Declaration that, among other recommendations, reaffirms the need for parliamentarians and the specialized parliamentary bodies to be more involved in the national, European and international decision making process with impact on health and the global development.

 

One of the Subcommittee’s main priorities is to raise awareness in Parliament and among all relevant stakeholders on the need to increase development assistance allocations to population/sexual and reproductive health and rights.

 

To this end, we are using the parliamentary oversight tools at hand, such as questions, interpellations and political statements, in order to draw attention on the need to allocate resources for health within the official development assistance.  

 

In this context, in March 2009, the Chairman of the Subcommittee addressed a written Parliamentary Question to the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, regarding “Romania’s assistance for development on reproductive health”. The answer was that Romania’s ODA focuses, in a first stage, on certain priority areas where national experience and comparative advantages can be capitalized on, namely: promotion of human rights, consolidation of democracy; economic development; education, and that health is also a priority area in which Romania is prepared to contribute with ODA.

 

On June 17^th 2009, our Subcommittee organized the 35^th Anniversary Meeting of the World Population Conference, Bucharest, 1974, in cooperation with UNFPA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The meeting focused on the Conference significance and its impact on population and development policies, global demographic trends since 1974, international goals on population an development, parliamentary role and contributions, demographic situation and perspectives in Romania etc.

 

The event took place under the auspices of the President of the Senate and brought together parliamentarians and experts from standing committees on population and development, representatives of the Romanian Presidency and Government, of the European Commission and EPF, members of the Romanian Academy, of the National Institute for Statistics, of the civil society and of the UN System in Romania.  

 

A major conclusion of the debates was that parliaments can have an extremely important contribution in drawing up the new ODA architecture and must act on it. The Subcommittee members took the opportunity of having together all major national stakeholders to put forward a set of very concrete recommendations.

 

Drawing from the experience of the European parliaments with longstanding democratic traditions, we called for an effective, informed and supported involvement of Parliament, through its specialized committees, in defining, implementing and evaluating Romania’s policy of cooperation for development.

 

We invited the Foreign Affairs Ministry and other entities involved to design capacity building programs for Parliament in the area of development assistance.

 

We stressed that health should be better prioritized in Romania’s ODA, in accordance with the European Union commitments and the national Strategy. Also, as regards health, and particularly reproductive health and the fight against infectious diseases, we underlined the need for Romania to direct more of its development assistance to bilateral projects, in addition to multilateral funding.

 

Finally, we suggested that the future technical assistance programs capitalize, wherever possible, the knowledge, information and expertise accumulated in Parliament, at the level of specialized bodies, including the Senate’s Subcommittee for Population and Development.

 

 

In conclusion,

 

In order to meet the assumed commitments, resources are needed. And, as every donor country, the main challenge we face is the scarcity of resources.

 

As members of the Senate of Romania, we concur with our European colleagues in supporting the allocation of at least 10% of development assistance to programs on population and reproductive health.

 

At the same time, we are fully aware that this is a difficult task. I might add that for Romania this task is unavoidably burdened with a double challenge: on one hand, the inherent limitations of our first steps in this new capacity as donor; on the other hand, the consequences of the economic crisis, which drastically affect the resources available at global level.

 

Still, despite our internal economic difficulties, the ODA budget for 2010 is slightly higher than the one of 2009.

 

In order to address the complex development cooperation environment, assistance for development should be based on a mix of policies to respond to the necessity of correlating the intervention in different domains.

 

Also, it is important to stress that a successful transition from recipient to donor country requires not only institutional and legislative changes, but also change of mentality within the society.

 

The results of a recent poll among Romanian citizens on the significance of international cooperation for development highlighted the need for much more initiative from the authorities in order to promote a genuine development cooperation culture, able to lead to what we might call a society for development.

 

For us there are still many lessons to be learnt. And, before concluding, I would like to say that we are very much interested to learn from your experience on mechanisms and modalities of having a meaningful parliamentary contribution to the drawing up and implementation of the national policy of cooperation for development.

 

Thank you!