Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said the Obama administration will share control over U.S. foreign aid with recipient countries, ending Washington’s longtime policy of "dictating" to those nations how to spend the money.
The secretary’s remarks are certain to ignite a heated debate about the role foreign governments — mostly in developing countries — should play in deciding how to spend American taxpayers’ dollars.
Belgian Karel de Grucht, the European commissioner for development, angered authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He spoke of a lack of transparency in the exploitation of mineral resources in DR Congo, corruption and lack of leadership, and urged Congolese officials to start working instead of talking too much.
ODI has released a briefing paper by Sam Moon and Tim Williamson titled "Greater aid transparency: crucial for aid effectiveness".
Research related to this paper has been funded by the International Budget Partnership and Publish What You Fund with the aim to inform and influence the International Aid Transparency Initiative, an ongoing process that is building an international standard for aid information as a follow on from the resolutions in the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action.
USAID’s past experience with local institutions in Pakistan indicates that many of these local organizations are faced with institutional capacity issues and overall weaknesses in their internal controls, financial management and absorptive capacity, leading to a higher degree of risk and ultimately more audit recommendations.
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Briefing Paper with ODI and IBP Greater Aid Transparency: crucial for aid effectiveness This paper sets out and explores the link between donor aid and recipient country budgets, and the role greater transparency about aid can play in improving budget transparency, the quality of budgetary decisions, and accountability systems. The paper goes on to explore how current initiatives to improve […]
Writing in Progress magazine today, Publish What You Fund’s Federico Pirzio-Biroli warns that there is a real risk that donor countries will get away with this accounting slight of hand at Climate Change talks in Copenhagen unless a transparency measure is included in a climate financing deal. The poverty advocacy group ONE has launched a last ditch attempt to stop aid money being ‘double counted’. Their petition will be handed to the Danish host of the conference next week and asks:
