Above is a word cloud generated from the Vientiane Declaration on Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation from the 2015 High Level Roundtable Meeting.
Where are the people? The term only appears three times in the document itself, and those are within the Lao PDR’s name.
Other terms such as rights, empowerment, participation, rural, ethnic minority, and even core sectors such as education, health or agriculture are also missing.
Surely development partners use these words in soliciting resources and reporting on programmes, so why are they so noticeably absent in this important document meant to guide development action for the next decade?