Aid and Beyond: Transparency, accountability and results
As negotiations heat up ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum on aid effectiveness (HLF-IV), many countries are keen to move beyond a narrow aid effectiveness agenda, bringing in a broader range of actors and issues in recognition of the changing development landscape. Emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are becoming ever more important. The demand for Africa’s oil and mineral resources is growing, providing many African countries with new revenue streams. Traditional donors’ aid budgets are under pressure. And people are taking to the streets and the twitter-verse to demand more transparent and accountable governance, from north Africa to north America and beyond. However, broadening the conversation to include more actors and issues beyond aid, must not and need not be at the expense of clear, measurable and time-bound commitments on aid effectiveness.
At Busan, countries should make commitments to deliver and use aid in ways that promote transparent and accountable financing for development, and that focus clearly on results. This will put people and politics back in the picture, enabling citizens in both developing and developed countries to see what resources are available, how they are spent, and what results they achieve so that they can hold their governments to account.
On transparency, wealthy donor countries must commit to make aid transparent, publishing aid information in a timely, comprehensive and comparable manner, and in line with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). In addition, developing country governments should commit to making budget information available and accessible to their citizens. As the International Budget Partnership puts it: “open budgets, transform lives”. And transparency should be promoted in relation to other development resources, including natural resource revenues.
On accountability, participants at Busan should promote open and inclusive decision-making in developing countries, not only on aid management but on development policies more broadly. Donors should commit to provide the support that key accountability institutions such as parliaments and audit institutions need to hold governments to account. And donors and developing countries should – alongside ensuring that civil society can operate and organize safely and effectively – commit to do what is needed to help citizens use information to demand accountability.
Across all of their discussions on aid and development effectiveness, participants at Busan must focus on results and measuring development outcomes. Without good information about results, there can be little learning or accountability. Investments in statistical capacity and results monitoring in development countries must be stepped up so citizens in those countries can measure their own progress towards achieving national and international goals. And country-led monitoring processes in developing countries should be complemented by a global monitoring framework.
By making clear and monitorable commitments on transparency (including IATI), accountability and results, Busan can put people and politics back in the picture, make aid more effective and help to ensure that all development resources – aid and beyond – are used effectively in the fight against poverty.
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11/11/2011 at 6:31 am
I have always wondered why there is little progress made on one important PD principle, MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY. Cooperating partner or donor country and their institutions would like to hold aid recipient countries to account for aid received, but they in turn vehemently refuse account for overal received from donor HQs to the recipient country. There are weak oversight arrangements – civil servants don’t demand enough of the donor country employees who manage and discburse donated resources. Mutual implies two way i.e. i account to you; you account to me as well. At the centre of all this is acceptable flow of information.
In Zambia the Monitoring is full of indicators monitoring performance of the Government, and yet there is no indicator to measure how the donors or civil society who also tap into the resources are doing. It is assumed that civil servants are more corrupt than those working for donors or civil society. They are all human beings, with the same characteristics and flaws.
Second PD principle should also kick in: use the same institutions to account for resources. You can not have situations where donors and CSOs report in a different manner, using different standards.