Last week was the OECD’s 50^th anniversary and Brian Atwood, Chair of the DAC-OECD and former head of USAID, has discussed aid transparency in an interview with ONE.

He points to how the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action have made greater aid transparency a central principle. Referring to the DAC’s new ‘pledging guidelines’, he states that donors will be forced to: “abide by procedures for making pledges that are more predictable, more measurable, more comparable, more realistic, accountable and transparent.”

Atwood goes on to say that in aid transparency, “there has been some progress made, but there is no question that there are still problems like double counting. When a developing country sets up a coordination unit they have a hard time figuring out what everyone is doing in their country. We need to get at that problem and fix it. Civil society groups are having a good influence here.”

Read the full interview

Hillary Clinton has also been speaking this week as part of the OECD’s 50^th anniversary. The U.S. Secretary of State stressed that the organisation still works on the same principles that it was founded upon:

“For all of its changes, the OECD remains as it was in those earliest days, a community of shared values, open and effective markets, human rights freedoms, and the rule of law, accountable governments and leaders, free, fair and transparent competition.” (Clinton Speech)

A new initiative has also been announced by the U.S. State Department to help developing countries increase domestic revenues called ‘Domestic Financing for Development’ (DF4D). DF4D will include:

• New policy directives for State and USAID personnel to elevate the fight against corruption.
• An ”innovation fund to create incentive and boost political support for anticorruption efforts and tax reform”.
• A pilot project to help countries make reforms in these areas.

(Source: ONE Blog: ‘Boosting Mutual Accountability through Domestic Financing’)

Read the full speech