Guest Blog by Brian Tomlinson
May 7, 2014
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), launched in 2008 in Accra, aimed to make information about foreign aid spending easier to access, understand and use. It was and remains a noble ambition, well worth pursing for several reasons. First and foremost, access to information on the use of public resources for development cooperation is a citizen’s right. Understanding of the trends and policies affecting allocations of public resources for aid, including resources raised from the public by private organizations, requires access to detailed data and information that can be adapted and analyzed independently by end-users wherever they may live. Such access is an important, albeit insufficient, basis for improving democratic accountability for aid, whether on the part of Canadians or citizens of developing countries where aid is intended to have beneficiary outcomes.
Canada joined IATI in December 2011. Relative to other donors, Canada has made very significant progress in providing access to comprehensive data and descriptive information on existing and past aid projects. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development demonstrated its commitment to IATI by hosting the IATI Technical Advisory Group in January 2014, the first time it has met outside of Europe.
So what does this mean for aid accountability? Sadly, in Canada’s case, not a great deal. Aid transparency to date has mostly been about improving access to timely statistics, which should be comprehensive and comparable among all donors. While these numbers are an important ingredient, genuine accountability is about ensuring that those responsible for the aid program are fully answerable to Canadians and the intended beneficiary populations.
For that, documentation and access to relevant policies and guidelines, detailed country program strategies, aid conditions and project documentation, as well as perspectives of affected organizations, constituencies and beneficiaries are essential. They form the basis for informed dialogue and commentary. For many donors, and certainly this includes Canada, access to this level of information about foreign aid is very much lacking. The Asian Development Bank publishes all project documentation on its website. In Canada, however, analysts must resort to access-to-information requests to obtain information that should be on the public record, often waiting months and sometimes years, only to receive highly redacted documents.
Data and documents are essential preconditions for accountability, but equally important is regular access by recipient governments, the media, academics and practitioners to decision-makers for consultations on aid programs and directions. All governments at the 2011 Busan High Level Forum committed themselves to supporting “democratic ownership,” which includes structured institutionalized participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) and other stakeholders in establishing development priorities. Evidence to date, however, collected recently by the CSO Partnership for Effective Development, notes only modest progress in a few countries. And when consultations do occur, government closely controls the timing, content and format, selecting the participants and shaping the outcomes. This has certainly been the experience of most CSOs in Canada over the past eight years.
While Canada has made progress on the numbers, we have a long way to go on true aid accountability.
For further reading please consult the following policy paper by Brian Tomlinson: