Pakistan's International Development Partners — The Aid Effectiveness Mountain Session

Pakistan's international development partner community — the bilateral aid agencies (DFID/FCDO UK, USAID, GIZ Germany, JICA Japan, AusAID), the multilateral institutions (World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, WHO Pakistan), and the international foundations working in Pakistan — convenes regularly in Islamabad's F-6 and G-6 meeting rooms.

The development effectiveness conversation — the honest assessment of whether the aid is working, what the coordination failures are, and what Pakistan's development trajectory actually requires — happens imperfectly in the institutional meeting room. The cedar estate at Bhurban, 47km from the Islamabad development community's centre of gravity, provides the protected mountain environment for the honest conversation that the institutional context inhibits.

The inter-agency coordination retreat, the bilateral programme review, the sector working group strategy session: all benefit from the mountain's specific quality of distance from the Islamabad meeting culture and proximity to the natural environment that Pakistan's development challenges are ultimately about.