Publish What You Fund issues the following statement in response to the final communiqué of the first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC):

“We welcome the commitment by the GPEDC to accelerate efforts to publish timely, comprehensive, comparable and forward-looking information on cooperation efforts, in accordance with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) by 2015 – and to improve the quality of published data.

“We now expect these words to be turned into action. While a small number of development providers have made good progress in making their aid more transparent, the vast majority are currently off-track to meet their Busan commitment of full implementation by 2015.

“We welcome the commitment of South-South providers to share more information about their activities in other developing countries in the Mexico communiqué. However, such information will be most useful if it is shared in a standard format, and provided systematically – in accordance with the expressed needs of partner countries and civil society organisations – rather than on an ad-hoc basis.

“We would encourage South-South providers to engage in discussions to build on IATI – a flexible publishing standard – to create a standard that accurately captures the specificities of their efforts, ensuring greater transparency, usability and accountability of their data – and thus more effective development cooperation.”

This statement is supported by our international partners: Oxfam UK, Oxfam U.S., Transparency International and the ONE Campaign.

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. Publish What You Fund is the not-for-profit global campaign for global aid transparency, which publishes an Index ranking donors according to their aid transparency efforts.
2. Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Index is the industry standard for measuring global aid transparency. As a fully independent assessment, it measures and compares donor progress in making their aid information open and accessible.
3. Please find the GPEDC communiqué here:  http://effectivecooperation.org/wordpress/app/uploads/2014/04/FinalConsensusMexicoHLMCommunique.pdf
4. For more information please contact [email protected] or call +44 (0)2031 762 512.