As the U.K. works to foster greater transparency in delivering aid, other donors, as well as aid-recipient nations should follow suit, ActionAid says.
“[A] UK guarantee is not enough,” Melissa Hall, ActionAid’s aid policy adviser, wrote in The Guardian.
Hall urged all donor and aid-recipient governments to sign up for the International Aid Transparency Initiative that pushes for international standards in making aid information easier to access, use and understand. The British government should call on other G-8 members to implement similar aid transparency measures at the upcoming G-8 summit in Canada in late June, she added.
U.K. international development minister Andrew Mitchell has announced a new “aid transparency guarantee,” an independent aid watchdog, and a review of Britain’s multilateral partners in a bid to assess the delivery and impact of U.K. development assistance.
The details of the independent aid watchdog have yet to be worked out. It is not yet clear what it will measure and whether it will have oversight of the entire U.K.’s official development assistance or just funding of the Department for International Development, Hall noted.
“Governments in developing countries have strategies and policies that set out the kind of aid they need to support their national development. Only people in developing countries themselves can judge whether aid is working, and we must rely on their criteria,” Hall concluded.
