Transparency in aid: the time is now
How corruption hurts aid and development
The path to better aid: Transparency ● Ownership ● Mutual accountability
Civil Society at the Accra High-Level Forum
The Publish What You Fund (PWYF) Campaign
Dialogue continues: Meetings on the horizon
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Representatives from nearly 100 donor and recipient countries, multilateral aid and development agencies, and civil society organisations will meet in Accra, Ghana, from 2 to 4 September for the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.

With the half-way mark passed for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and with global development processes still often undermined by inefficiency, corruption and disarray, the Accra Forum is an essential window for action. But so far it seems the conference may fall short on priority issues, in particular on accountability, transparency and the fight against corruption.

The forum, under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), takes place only every three years and sets the global development agenda for years to come.

The previous forum issued the influential Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, which laid out ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability as objectives to be realised by 2010, in order to achieve traction in the global fight against poverty.

Transparency International sees a significant shortfall in reaching these objectives and is calling for urgent action at Accra and beyond to remedy this. The current draft of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) does not go far enough in defining practical measures and timelines for the way forward.

Development assistance aims to reduce poverty and to support equitable economic and social development. Recipients and donors must ensure that development resources are used for their intended purpose and not diverted through corruption, waste or abuse. Not only does corruption undermine international efforts to reduce poverty, it also further compromises the welfare of the most marginalised communities.

Corruption also skews the playing field when it comes to participation in decision-making, access to key public services (such as education, health and water) and markets for goods and services. Citizen ownership, the overarching pre-requisite for the aid-effectiveness agenda, remains unachievable with widespread corruption. It undermines political processes and political pluralism. In post-conflict areas and fragile states, corruption emplifies and inflames existing tensions tensions.

Without making up the shortfall on the Paris Principles and without providing greater detail on overcoming corruption, the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) [the draft communiqué that will be approved by attending governments and agencies] the international community is poised to miss a golden opportunity to deliver change and improve lives of those who need it most.

Taking a firm stand against corruption is a minimum requirement to reach all other effectiveness objectives and it is up to donor and recipient countries to set the ‘tone at the top’.

One key issue that underpins progress on accountability and the fight against corruption is local demand versus donor-driven aid. There are serious questions about how the lack of local ownership dilutes aid effectiveness and, even worse, opens the door to abuse and corruption.

In order to achieve the levels of citizen ownership, participation and government accountability that are at the ‘heart of the Paris Declaration’, it is essential that the AAA sets time-bound commitments for their achievement alongside with anti-corruption measures. These should include establishing:

• clear timelines and benchmarks to measure what constitutes transparency;
• anti-corruption institutions — such as aid agency investigation units and government anti-corruption agencies.

Transparency and mutual accountability are key conditions for fighting corruption and maximising the effectiveness of aid. TI therefore advocates:

• Improving access to and disclosure of public information on aid flows and programmes by both donor and recipient countries, to facilitate better monitoring and participation;

• Cleaning up public procurement and sanctioning violators using tools such as TI’s standard no-bribes framework for public bidding, the Integrity Pact, to ensure clean infrastructure projects with a greater focus on country-based as opposed to donor-driven practices;

• Involving civil society in recipient countries in decision making processes regarding aid policies and budgets;
• Strengthening accountability mechanisms and institutions of oversight, with a focus on country-systems, using holistic governance models such as TI’s National Integrity System, and focussing on demand-driven aid.

Civil society groups have been acting in coalition to make sure that the voices of ordinary people are heard and that the promises of the Paris Declaration are not forgotten. The work has been organised by the CSO International Steering Group (ISG), which was formed in January 2007 to coordinate, analyse and plan for the meetings in Accra. Members of the ISG include ActionAid International, CIVICUS, Eurodad, Reality of Aid and Social Watch. More than 350 CSOs from around the world have signed onto its key policy messages to be delivered in Accra.

The ISG has been the coordinating body to organise a civil society parallel session to the High Level Forum (HLF). It will bring together more than 400 CSOs from 31 August to 1 September, to discuss and finalise their recommendations to the HLF decision-makers.

The Publish What You Fund (PWYF) Campaign is a new initiative to promote transparency in international aid. The Campaign is calling for greater transparency on the part of donors on the amounts and nature of the aid that they give. Together with greater disclosure from recipient countries, this will enable civil society, the media and investigators to ‘follow the money’, discouraging fraud, theft and corruption.

The High Level Forum is the first of three major meetings in the last half of the year, including a UN High-Level Event on Millennium Development Goal progress in New York on 25 September, and the UN International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha at the end of November. Cumulatively, these events will decide the future of the global development framework in the medium-term, and, with it, the fate of billions of people currently mired in poverty.

Accra High Level Forum website
Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)
The Paris Declaration
CSO Response to AAA

Q&A: Women Do Most, With Least Assistance
IPS, 14 August 2008