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Since the early 1990s, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) has advocated for providers of official development assistance to take into consideration the impact of non-aid policies on development outcomes, since these policies, in areas such as diplomacy or security, can (and almost always do) have a greater developmental impact than aid. To meet the challenge of human development, it argues that donor countries should ensure that their non-aid related policies support, or at the very least do not undermine, these efforts.

With a special focus on the place of democracy strengthening and the potential role of parliaments in this agenda, our panel “Linking Democracy, Diplomacy and Security – An opportunity for Canada?” will give examples on how the shortfall in policy coherence and integration translated in panelists’ field experiences and present what it sees as the main obstacles and opportunities to achieve greater coherence and integration. The latter will be articulated as recommendations for the foreign policy establishment. Finally, the panel will interact with the audience to determine what they see as the biggest opportunities for better integration, based on the recommendations presented by our panellists.