The 2011 Reality of Aid Report ‘Democratic Ownership and Development Effectiveness: Civil Society Perspectives on Progress since Paris’ overview chapter was released in advance of the full report launch planned for October at the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness meetings in Paris.

The overview explains the current issue of a lack of aid information, and goes on to state that the International Aid Transparency Initiative is seen as being fit to address the issue:

“CSOs indicate that their access to aid flow information at the country level is usually either very partial or unavailable, and seldom covered by information access laws. In a few countries in recent years, public access to an aid database through the government or the donors is available, but no country reported access to important qualitative information on the results expected or achieved in various aid activities. These qualitative gaps in aid information compound the methodological problems of understanding the development impacts of aid allocations for poverty reduction and social justice, as will be apparent in the next section of this chapter […] globally CSOs have acknowledged the progress of IATI and its potential to address the issue of public access to consistent and comparable aid information systems at the country level. The DCD Survey notes, “IATI … is perhaps the most significant initiative at the global level aiming to improve accessibility of information on aid, … [including] information on forward spending plans, and documentary information (e.g. country strategies, conditionality, results frameworks)” [Survey, 59].

p.13 Reality of Aid Report ‘Democratic Ownership and Development Effectiveness: Civil Society Perspectives on Progress since Paris’ overview chapter

Read the Reality of Aid report overview chapter in full.