{"id":122454,"date":"2015-07-07T09:28:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T13:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.org\/us\/?post_type=one_press&p=122454"},"modified":"2015-07-07T09:28:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T13:28:30","slug":"ahead-of-uns-ebola-conference-one-warns-about-lack-of-accountability-for-governments-ebola-donations","status":"publish","type":"one_press","link":"https:\/\/www.one.org\/us\/press\/ahead-of-uns-ebola-conference-one-warns-about-lack-of-accountability-for-governments-ebola-donations\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of UN\u2019s Ebola conference, ONE warns about lack of accountability for governments\u2019 Ebola donations"},"content":{"rendered":"

In new white paper, The ONE Campaign calls for more transparent and standardized reporting of donors\u2019 pledges and disbursements<\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 As the outbreak of Ebola spread last fall, and pressure on the global community to contribute to the fight intensified, national governments, foundations, and philanthropists stepped up with aggressive public pledges of support. Keeping track of those pledges and monitoring their disbursement, however, proved difficult and \u2014 at times \u2014 impossible because of inconsistent, inefficient, and often opaque reporting processes and standards.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the message of a new report from The ONE Campaign, which worked to track pledges and disbursements<\/a> during the crisis. It was released ahead of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon\u2019s Ebola Recovery Conference, to be held this Thursday and Friday in New York with the goal of mobilizing the resources necessary to accelerate West Africa\u2019s recovery from the outbreak.<\/p>\n

The white paper can be downloaded as a PDF here<\/a>, or found on Medium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most fundamental questions asked during a humanitarian crisis is, \u2018how much have donors promised to this effort?\u2019 But in the case of the Ebola outbreak, this question has been incredibly difficult to answer \u2014 and that\u2019s a huge problem,\u201d ONE\u2019s Global Health Policy Director Erin Hohlfelder <\/strong>said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t know what has really been pledged and delivered, no one can adequately match promised resources to the needs on the ground. That means gaps cannot be easily identified and we risk losing time, resources, and lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the world gears up to confront a humanitarian crisis like the Ebola outbreak, generosity has to be paired with accountability,\u201d ONE\u2019s President and CEO Michael Elliott<\/strong> said. \u201cWe worked with partners for more than six months to document the pledges made to fight the outbreak so that the world could ensure that those promises were kept. This was literally about saving lives. In this age of unprecedented access to data and technology, surely we can do better. Until the global tools for tracking pledges and disbursements are modernized and made more transparent, we are doomed to repeat these mistakes in future humanitarian crises.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report highlights several cases that demonstrated the problems with the current system:<\/p>\n