News / International
Politicians should be held to account on aid: Humanitarians and development actors say
30 Mar 2013 at 06:53hrs | Views
Humanitarian and development actors should develop a method to hold politicians to account for aid pledges, UK Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan said.
"A promise is only a promise until it's in the bank," he told IRIN. "It's exciting to get headline pledges, but it's important to make sure that money translates on the ground."
He shared his idea at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) conference this week, telling participants:
"One thing that would help the whole system would be the establishment of a universally accepted process under which any pledge to spend money was registered, measured, monitored and implemented, because if a politician wins the floors by making a promise, then he must be made to follow it through with the concrete action that was promised."
The aid community has an increasing number of systems to track how money is spent, but it has few systems to track pledges.
One model, Duncan said, is the World Bank pledging process used in Yemen last year, when states that collectively pledged US$8 billion in two pledging conferences signed on paper how much they had pledged and what the money would go towards, "so that they can be held to account."
The brain child of the idea was Wael Zakout, who manages the World Bank's work in Yemen.
With government support, he has created a system whereby donors will meet with government officials every three months - with media present - to report on four sets of figures: the original pledge; the amount that has been programmed (the number of projects to be financed and their amount); the amount in approved programmes, where a project agreement has been signed between the donor and the government; and the amount of money already disbursed.
The Yemeni government is also developing a more detailed database to track projects.
The first such meeting was held in February and ended with a listing of those donors who had not delivered on their promises, which was then presented to the Friends of Yemen meeting of foreign ministers.
"A promise is only a promise until it's in the bank," he told IRIN. "It's exciting to get headline pledges, but it's important to make sure that money translates on the ground."
He shared his idea at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) conference this week, telling participants:
"One thing that would help the whole system would be the establishment of a universally accepted process under which any pledge to spend money was registered, measured, monitored and implemented, because if a politician wins the floors by making a promise, then he must be made to follow it through with the concrete action that was promised."
The aid community has an increasing number of systems to track how money is spent, but it has few systems to track pledges.
The brain child of the idea was Wael Zakout, who manages the World Bank's work in Yemen.
With government support, he has created a system whereby donors will meet with government officials every three months - with media present - to report on four sets of figures: the original pledge; the amount that has been programmed (the number of projects to be financed and their amount); the amount in approved programmes, where a project agreement has been signed between the donor and the government; and the amount of money already disbursed.
The Yemeni government is also developing a more detailed database to track projects.
The first such meeting was held in February and ended with a listing of those donors who had not delivered on their promises, which was then presented to the Friends of Yemen meeting of foreign ministers.
Source - All Africa
