15 Feb Big win for accountability in aid transparency
On Wednesday in Paris, a group of international donors agreed to a new standard for publishing their aid flows, in a common language and format, to make the information easier to access and compare. Although this may not seem particularly exciting at the outset, it is a huge victory in terms of making aid to developing countries more effective and more accountable.
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)—which is a coalition of donor countries and multilateral organizations, recipient countries, and civil society organizations—aims to improve and increase transparent reporting on aid flows and activities. At present, individual donors largely decide themselves what and how much information they want to make public regarding money they spend on international development. What they do publish isn’t always easily comparable to what other donors make available, and that makes it very difficult to track aid flows at the international level, or even within specific recipient countries. With IATI’s help, and with the new standard developed by their steering committee on Wednesday, more and more donors will be encouraged to publish their information in a common format on their registry.