Quality and effectiveness as starting points 

Finland cooperates with many different actors to achieve its development policy objectives. Partners include states, organisations and companies. Each cooperation modality has its own special characteristics and strengths.

The theories of change prepared for development policy priority areas define Finland's most important objectives in terms of results and describe in more detail how Finland contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The theories of change show how Finland’s development policy and cooperation influence global sustainable development through different cooperation modalities.

As part of the development policy procedure reform implemented during the government term, ten quality criteria were defined for Finland's development cooperation. The quality criteria form the core of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ quality assurance system, which aims to ensure the coherence of projects and programmes with Finland's development policy objectives and the quality requirements that guide it.

In addition to the actual results, effectiveness is a term used in connection with development policy. This refers to the quality of development cooperation: how development cooperation is implemented, what factors support the attainment of objectives and how well the objectives set have been achieved. Finland is committed to implementing internationally accepted principles of effective development cooperation: country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, transparency and mutual accountability.

Finland participates in both the monitoring of the implementation of the effectiveness principles and the development of the monitoring system through the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the EU. The revised international effectiveness monitoring system will be completed by the end of 2022.

The most recent monitoring round of the implementation of the principles in 2018 showed that the reporting of Finland's development cooperation funding is transparent and that on average, the funding supported country ownership and the use of country systems better than other donors.

Effectiveness and quality are the starting points for strategic results-based management of Finland's development cooperation. The results and effectiveness of individual projects, different cooperation modalities and development policy as a whole are monitored. Synthesis reports concerning different cooperation modalities are prepared annually. These are based on the progress and annual reports by different actors as well as evaluations of individual projects or cooperation modalities. Furthermore, the work is developed further based on the observations presented in the reports.

The contexts in which development policies are being implemented have changed significantly over the past years. Among other things, fragility, conflicts and the impacts of climate change have increased and the space of civil society has been restricted. In this changed operating environment, the effectiveness principles also need to be reinterpreted. For example, ensuring country ownership and inclusive partnership can be challenging in situations where civil society has little room for movement or where there is an armed conflict in the partner country.